Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/33

 our idea and loyally enforce it? Yes—now and then. Familiar cases? There is the case of little Em'ly in David Copperfield. She is the typical victim of the typical seducer; and Dickens punishes them both in approved traditional fashion. He drowns the wicked lover—which is, of course, a logical consequence of departure from legal status. He sends the victim with her "soft sorrowful blue eyes" to Australia, where she attempts to expiate her guilt by a life of self-sacrifice. She has many a good offer of marriage; But, uncle,' she says to me, 'that's gone for ever. Here we have the doctrine of the irretrievable. That doctrine is sternly proclaimed by George Eliot in the graver case of Hetty Sorrel in Adam Bede. The repentant lover tries to do something for Hetty. His last words are that it is no use: "You told me the truth when you said to me once, 'There's a sort of wrong that can never be made up for. Neither Scott nor Jane Austen could have handled these elementary cases in a more strictly orthodox fashion. Our idea is again fortified.

But the great Victorian novelists pushed their speculations beyond the elementary problems raised by the victim-villain situation. They had,