Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/139



old, the strong to the imbecile. He stretches out the arm of Mezentius and fetters the dead to the living."

The novelist most admittedly generous to women is Meredith, and we have him to thank for Margaret Lovell, Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, Diana Warwick, and Clara Middleton, with Mrs. Berry as a sort of compromise between Mrs. Poyser and Mrs. Tulliver. Yet they do not any more than live up to their boasted reputations, as dainty rogues in porcelain, famous epigrammatists, the quoted astonishment of drawing-rooms.

The real Victorian Shakespeare in the matter of women is Trollope. Not entirely unworthy of the sisterhood of Beatrice, Viola, and Portia, are Miss Dunstable, Lily Dale, Lucy Robarts, and Violet Effingham; Madeline Stanhope might be added as a village Cleopatra.