Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/134

 monologue. More objective are Jane Austen's Mr. Bennet and his daughter Elizabeth. The former particularly is a satiric soloist acting as Greek chorus to the follies of his wife, daughters, and certain young men.

This delightful relationship between father and daughter, a sort of satiric defensive alliance against the besieging army of silly exactions and vexations, finds a clear if fainter echo in that of Dr. Gibson and Molly (in Mrs. Gaskell's Wives and Daughters), who plan in the temporary absence of the elegant stepmother to do "everything that is unrefined and ungenteel."

The exponents of satiric wit in the Victorian novel may be thrown for convenience into three or four divisions.

There is the native or rustic type, whose shrewd observations are condensed into homely but poignant epigrams. That such characters have always existed is evident from the existence of a whole literature of proverbial philosophy, of anonymous origin, like ballads and fabliaux. Conspicuous in the van of the few who have been lifted from this obscure anonymity is the redoubtable Mrs. Poyser. It is no valid discount to George Eliot's achievement to say she produced only one Mrs. Poyser. Indeed, it might add something to her luster to note that no other novelist has produced even one.

The only other deserving of mention is a countryman in Lytton's What Will He Do with It, chosen in this case also because he illustrates the generic class of stage-drivers, whose brightest light is the American Yuba Bill. This one is described in the chapter heading as "a charioteer, to whom an experience of British Laws suggests an ingenious mode of arresting the progress of Roman Papacy." He discourses to his passenger: