The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

impression that to write at all is a proof of superiority in a woman. On this

ground, we believe that the average intellect of women is unfairly represented

by the mass of feminine literature, and that while the few women who write

well are very far above the ordinary intellectual level of their sex, the many

women who write ill are very far below it. So that, after all, the severer critics

are fulfilling a chivalrous duty in depriving the mere fact of feminine author

ship of any false prestige which may give it a delusive attraction, and in rec

ommending women of mediocre faculties�as at least a negative service they

can render their sex�to abstain from writing. The standing apology for women who become writers without any special

qualification is, that society shuts them out from other spheres of occupation.

Society is a very culpable entity, and has to answer for the manufacture of

many unwholesome commodities, from bad pickles to bad poetry. But society,

like "matter," and Her Majesty's Government, and other lofty abstractions, has

its share of excessive blame as well as excessive praise. Where there is one

woman who writes from necessity, we believe there are three women who write

from vanity; and, besides, there is something so antiseptic in the mere healthy

fact of working for one's bread, that the most trashy and rotten kind of femi

nine literature is not likely to have been produced under such circumstances.

"In all labour there is profit;"7 but ladies' silly novels, we imagine, are less the result of labour than of busy idleness. Happily, we are not dependent on argument to prove that Fiction is a department of literature in which women can, after their kind, fully equal men. A cluster of great names, both living and dead, rush to our memories in evidence that women can produce novels not only fine, but among the very finest;� novels, too, that have a precious speciality, lying quite apart from masculine aptitudes and experience. No educational restrictions can shut women out from the materials of fiction, and there is no species of art which is so free from rigid requirements. Like crystalline masses, it may take any form, and yet be beautiful; we have only to pour in the right elements�genuine observation, humour, and passion. But it is precisely this absence of rigid requirement which constitutes the fatal seduction of novel-writing to incompetent women. Ladies are not wont to be very grossly deceived as to their power of playing on the piano; here certain positive difficulties of execution have to be conquered, and incompetence inevitably breaks down. Every art which has its absolute technique is, to a certain extent, guarded from the intrusions of mere left-handed imbecility. But in novel-writing there are no barriers for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery. And so we have again and again the old story of La Fontaine's ass, who puts his nose to the flute, and, finding that he elicits some sound, exclaims, "Moi, aussi, je joue de la flute;"8�a fable which we commend, at parting, to the consideration of any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to the number of "silly novels by lady novelists."

1856 1856

7. Proverbs 14.23. 8. I also play the flute (French). Jean de La Fontaine (1621�1695), French author of beast fables.

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1350

MATTHEW ARNOLD

1822-1888

How is a full and enjoyable life to be lived in a modern industrial society? This was

the recurrent topic in the poetry and prose of Matthew Arnold. In his poetry the

question itself is raised; in his prose some answers are attempted. "The misapprehen

siveness [wrongheadedness] of his age is exactly what a poet is sent to remedy," wrote

Robert Browning, and yet it is to Arnold's work, not Browning's, that the statement

seems more applicable. In response to rapid and potentially dislocating social

changes, Arnold strove to help his contemporaries achieve a richer intellectual and

emotional existence. Matthew Arnold was born in Laleham, a village in the valley of the Thames. It

seems appropriate that his childhood was spent near a river, for clear-flowing streams

were later to appear in his poems as symbols of serenity. At the age of six, Arnold was

moved to Rugby School, where his father, Dr. Thomas Arnold, had become head

master. As a clergyman Dr. Arnold was a leader of the liberal or Broad Church and

hence one of the principal opponents of John Henry Newman. As a headmaster he

became famous as an educational reformer, a teacher who instilled in his pupils an

earnest preoccupation with moral and social issues and also an awareness of the

connection between liberal studies and modern life. At Rugby his eldest son, Mat

thew, was directly exposed to the powerful force of the father's mind and character.

The son's attitude toward this force was a mixture of attraction and repulsion. That

he was permanently influenced by his father is evident in his poems and in his writings