Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 109.djvu/691

 a book twice as long, if he had written to the end of time, he could never have made the woman of the story real, for the combination of traits which he has attempted to make is monstrous and impossible.

Over-fastidiousness, delicacy, sensitiveness, could never lead to her solution of the problem. There is no genuine character-creation in this over-minute account of Dolores Cannynge, no imaginative grasp of the situation, no artistic fusion of story and background. As the Fruitful Vine moves on its unpleasant way to its revolting conclusion, we are aware all the time of sickliness, morbidity, a dreary emphasis on physical fact suggesting the resourcelessness of a generation aware, apparently, of only one way to take hold on life.

A bit of relief comes in the picturing of the happy home of the Denzils; but this phase of the story, except in the scenes dealing with the illness and death of the father, is commonplace enough. One wonders why the action should take place in Rome? Not all the beauty, significance, pathos, of Rome, past and present, can glorify the theme, partly because they have nothing to do with it, and the descriptions, sandwiched between the pseudo-scientific expositions of character, are no vital part of the motive power of the book.

Another story, of far less pretension, set against the same background, attains a far higher degree of artistic veracity. In Her Roman Lover we find evidence of close and quiet work in character-study, and the presentation of widely-differing types is deftly and significantly done. The fact that the American girl and the Roman youth reveal two races does not mean that individual portraiture is sacrificed for the sake of the larger investigation. The attractions and repulsions of two contrasting personalities, the deep, if not complete, affection, the inevitable clash, make up a plot which unfolds itself so naturally that you cease to think of it as a plot. Among the many books which deal with the Italian temperament one rarely finds such close observation, and there is much subtlety in the way in which the fine meshes of thought and of feeling are woven and interwoven with the action. The background is delicately and suggestively sketched, but never obtruded; moreover, it is an essential part of the story.

There is always in Mrs. Deland’s work genial observation of human nature, with constant outlook for its better side. The gift of humor, added to her gift of sympathy, meant unusual richness of dower for a woman, and it is partly due to the humor, perhaps, that she has been allowed to keep, with her moral earnestness, an artistic sincerity that reckons with the facts.

The new novel is large in scope and deep in purpose the story of a ruthlessly strong feminine personality which dominates everything about her, and becomes the determining influence in the fate of the chief personages in the book. At moments the Iron Woman suggests an abstraction, and seems compact of all the iron qualities of unflinching womankind of all times and all countries. If her peculiarities of hair, dress, and manner are a trifle overdone, appearing in almost mechanical repetition, yet in the main she seems true to fact, and is by far the most interesting character in the book, effectively set against a background of flaring light and molten metal from her foundry. The slow revelation of passionate maternal love, concealed by