It is the lady-like age: and so it is the age of ladies' novels. Women
have it all their own way now in romance. They carry off all the
prizes, just as girl students do in the studios of Paris. Up to a
certain point, within their own limits, they are supreme. Half the
modern romance, and many people think the better half, is written by
women. That is perfectly natural, an obvious result of modern society.
The romance to which our age best lends itself is the romance of
ordinary society, with delicate shades of character and feeling in
place of furious passion or picturesque incident. Women are by nature
and training more subtle observers of these social _nuances_ and
refined waverings of the heart than any others but men of rare genius.
The field is a small and home-like area, the requirements are mainly
those of graceful intuition, the tone must be pure, lady-like, subdued.
In this sphere it is plain that women have a marked superiority; it is
the sphere in which Jane Austen is the yet unapproached queen. But we
may look for more Jane Austens, and on wider fields with a yet deeper
insight into far grander characters. The social romance of the future
is the true poetic function of women. It is their own realm, in which
they will doubtless achieve yet unimagined triumphs. Men, revolting
from this polite and monotonous world, are trying desperate expedients.
But they are all wrong; the age is against it. Try to get out of
modern democratic uniformity and decorum and you may as well try to get
out of your skin. Mr. Stevenson was driven to playing at Robinson
Crusoe in the Pacific, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling once seemed bent on
dying in a tussle with Fuzzy-Wuzzy in the Soudan. But it is no good.
A dirty savage is no longer a romantic being. And as to the romance of
the wigwam, it reminds me of the Jews who keep the Feast of Tabernacles
by putting up some boughs in a back yard.
Let us have no nonsense, no topsy-turvy straining after new effects,
which is so wearisome to those who love the racy naturalism of Parson
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