About Women

Walter Bosont in the Gentleman's Magazine. Reade, in fact, invented the True Woinan. That ia to say, he was the first who found her. There have been plenty of sweet and charming women in stories - the patiënt, loving Amelia ; the bouncing country girl, Sophy Western ; the gracef ui and gracieuscs ladies oL Scott ; the pretty dummies of Dickens ; the insipid sweetne3ses of Thackeray ; the proper middle-class (or upperclass) girl of Trollope; the conventional girl of the better lady noveliats. There have also been disagreeable girla, especially the bad-style detestable girl of the "worser" lady novelista ; but R9ade - the trouvere - has feund the veal woman. You will meet her on every page of all his novela. What is she? My f riend, Columbuu's egg was uot simpler. She is just exactly like a man, like ourselves, but with certain womanly tendencies. Like ourselvea, she ardently desires love. She knows that it is the bese - the absolutely best- thing the world has to giv'e ; that we are all born for love- man and woman alike : that to lack this conaummate and supreme blessing is to lose the best part of life. Since she desires above all things to be wooed, and Í3 forbidden to woo on her own account, she conceals her own thoughts, yet, from her own experience in hiding, she is quick at reading the thoughts of others. She is satisfied with nothing less than what she herself gives, which is all herself. Her reserve leads her, in the lower natures, to deceit and falsehood. Her devotion, which iá part of her nature, leads her - also in the lower natures - to suspicionand jealousy. Sheisalway3 in the house, and therefore her minrt is apt to run in narrow groeves. The prodigality and wastef ulneas of men are thiügs beyond her under3tanding or patience. She is unversed in affairs, and therefore compreheads nothing of compromise. She is generally ill-educated, and therefore is incapable of forming a judgment ; henee sheis carried away by every wind of doctrine ; as, f or instance, in matters ecclesiastical, knowing nothing of the Early Church or its hi3tory, she believes the poor little Ritualist cúrate, who knows, indeed, no more than herself ; or in Art, where f or want of a standard she is led astray by every fad and fashion of the day, and worthips sad-faced flatnessea with raptare; or in dress, where, her taste being uncultivated, she puts on whatever is most hideous and unbecoming, provided it ia worn by everybody else. This is the woman whom Charles Reade presenta to us. She is not, at all events, insipid ; no ideal woinen are ; if she is artificial, he shows the real woman beneath. What he loves most is the woman whom fashion has not spoiled the true, genuine woman, with her ural passion, her jealousy, her devotion, her love of admiration, her üdelity, her righteous wrath, her maternal ferocity, her narrow faith, her shrewdness, even her audacity of falsehood when that can serve her purpo3e, and her perfect abnegation of sel f.