Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 109.djvu/688

 has more steadiness and less significance of detail, the gray monotony is never relieved. In this long tale of the woman who is the victim of bitter poverty and of men's selfishness, there is a certain reality of momentary impression, yet one lays it down with a feeling of wonder that so many facts can mean so little. Is this realistic veracity as close to the truth as it seems? When Jennie makes ready her dinner, first daintly decorating the table, then lighting the candles for it, then going out to put the leg of lamb into the oven to roast, ‘from three to four hours,’ say the cook-books, an amused skepticism is roused in the reader, who wonders if the ultra-realists, like Jennie, are not beginning at the wrong end in spreading the table before us. Here, as in Hilda Lessways, the personality slips through that which is said about it, though here one is less baffled by a feeling that there is personality there, if one were only permitted to know it, and the long, closely-detailed narrative leaves one with a feeling of unachieved character presentation.

Some of the notices of the book have spoken of the method as being like that of the Russian novelists, but surely the statement is misleading. In the Russian work there is a deep and tragic sense of fate, an undercurrent of emotion which makes their apparently unmoved recitation of details full of tragic power. One finds it in Tolstoy, in Turgénieff, in Dostoievsky. It comes from a depth of temperament that perhaps has in it something of the Oriental sense of unfathomable meanings. Of the thousand and one facts of daily life the Russian can work out a drama of destiny wherein the very surroundings seem heavily charged with significance. That splendid, listening impersonality of the Russian, the sphinx-sense of mystery, is a race characteristic, and cannot be borrowed.

Each nation must learn to express itself in its own way; the Russian method is inextricably a result of immemorial race-consciousness, and we can copy it no more successfully than we could copy their complexions, or the shape of their faces. That patient suspension of judgment during long brooding no race can imitate; we are more quick in thought, moving more swiftly to conclusions, right or wrong, and our art must represent us, as Russian art represents the Russians. It is impossible for us to get on without betraying our working programme, and where the method is attempted the author is betrayed, as here, by some minor prepossession. After a long and seemingly impersonal study of Jennie Gerhardt and her surroundings, he steps in at the end with the dubious plea in regard to the superiority of the type of woman who yields over-easily to masculine demands, right or wrong. The plea belittles the entire book, both ethically and artistically.

Aside from the personified theses, and the novels wherein the multitudinous facts of life are left to shift for themselves, the character-interpretations in this recent fiction are many and varied. Several of the people in Miss Abbott’s book of short stories are mere personifications of moods on the verge of hysteria, and hysterical language is found or invented to match the mood. In the Song of Renny, as in much of Mr. Hewlett’s work dealing with the past, we find long lines of battle, murder, and sudden death converging in erotic moments, and through all the picturesqueness of treatment the characters are done with the single intent of intensifying the effect of those moments.