TWO BOOKS ABOUT WOMEN.* Is there anything that has undergone

so much change of style in the last hundred years as novels F When they first attained a real standing in literature, they teemed with moral reflec- tions, which perhaps the young people of that day did not skip as their great-grandchildren assuredly would have done; then, in the hands of Miss Austen, Miss Edgeworth, and Miss Ferrier, they became careful studies of character, with pleasant dialogue, a moderate amount of plot, and a good deal of de- scription. Novels of character and of plot flourished side by side very successfully for many years; but English readers always seem to want an apology to their consciences for being amused, so in the last thirty or forty years has arisen "the novel with a purpose," which reigns triumphant in the pre- sent day. At first the " purpose " was somewhat veiled ; Dickens, for instance, carefully wrapped it up in humour and incident, though he could not conceal it; but lately the veil has been discarded, and so completely does " purpose "

• (1.) Woman Unsexed. By H. Hermann Chilton. London : Fonlsham and Co. —42) Woman—through a Man's Eyeglass. By Malcolm 0. 1349.11111116. London : Heinemann.

now take the upper hand of amusement, that there are many clever novels—notably a recent and brilliantly suc- cessful one—which do not from beginning to end contain a line by which any human being could be diverted. Mr.

Chilton's Woman Unsexed is a novel of purpose, that purpose being to impress upon us "the old ideal that woman's sphere is the home : what a glorious perspective might dawn upon us yet if all women, excluded from the grosser haunts of men —the workshop, the mart, the platform—were to let the tide of their boundless enthusiasm flow into ancient channels of ministration and love." In explanation of the "ancient channels," it must be stated that the story is dated 1924, by which time, according to Mr. Chilton, there will be female M.P.'s, female preachers, and female orators ; but in spite of all these concessions to the weaker sex (in which we suppose the franchise is included), the condition of working women is even worse than at the present day. Thousands of young girls are slowly ground down into sickness and death by being employed in the lowest kind of work at the lowest rates of pay; thousands of workmen are starving because their places are filled by women, and neither the working classes themselves, nor those above them, make any attempt to improve matters. The satire is too slightly veiled and too unjust to excite very keen interest ; the author is at his best in his sketch of the working-man hero, John Crowther, and of Ruth, the deformed girl whom he has saved from starvation ; but the plot is a thin one. Crowther, the foreman of a large toy-manufactory, in which a wholesale destruction of young girls in body and mind is supposed to be carried on, tries to interest Margaret St. Ives, the owner of the manufactory, in doing something for the improvement of her employees, with no result but making her very angry, and falling hopelessly in love with her himself. She marries her "manager," Reginald Beauchamp, who is murdered on his wedding-day by a workman whom he has wronged, and the widow gives herself up to good works, and helps every one except the people who work in her manufactory.

At this point, a monster rising, headed by a secret society called the "Brotherhood of Labour," takes place in London. The Brotherhood march to the Houses of Parliament, demand instant redress for all their wrongs—Mr. Chilton does not make it very clear what these wrongs are—and failing to obtain it on the spot, proceed to burn, sack, and pillage London, till overwhelmed by the soldiers. Crowther is badly hurt in defending Mrs. Beauchamp's house, and carried in there to be nursed during a long illness by her and Ruth, who is certainly the best character in the book. He recovers to total blindness, and then Margaret proposes to marry him ; but he refuses to let her do so until he shall in some way achieve distinction. This he does, first by becoming an M.P., and then by making a long and very prosy maiden speech, to which the House listens with remarkable patience, but it may certainly be considered successful, since we learn that it brought about a change of Ministry, the "Elimination of Women's Labour Act," and his own marriage.

This last, however, does not take place until Margaret Beau- champ has consented to give up every shilling of her fortune to founding a college for working men, "in which a street-arab, if he perseveres, shall rise from infant-class to University in an unbroken gradation," and to keeping up the toy-works, "not for our advantage, but the work-girls'." As Crowther is blind and penniless, it is a little difficult to know what be and his wife and their children lived upon; but we are told at the end of the book that they had "shot at a higher mark than they could reach," so perhaps they kept some of the money for themselves eventually. It does not seem to us that the author has chosen a very successful vehicle for his purpose and theories ; but possibly he may reach in this way a class of readers whom he could not otherwise interest in them.

If Mr. Chilton is anxious to show us woman as she will be after thirty more years of the existing state of things, Mr.

Salamans aims at depicting her for us as she is ; and we are bound to say that in most cases he has been very successful. Under such headings as "The Modern Lady-Novelist," "The

Domestic Woman," "The Skittish Old Maid," "The Awfully Jolly Girl," "The Fin-de-Sisecle Woman," &c., he has given us a series of slightly satirical but generally kindly pictures of women in the present day; and his power of observation is keen and true, if not always very deep. In some instances we cannot but suspect Mr. Salamans of a little social treachery in drawing from living models and relating circumstances which

to general types,—for instance, in Mrs. Talespinner, the modern lady-novelist :—

"Mrs. Talespinner is, as a matter of fact, morally quite con- ventional, though she indulges in conversational and literary un- conventionalities. But fortunately she has a husband who

understands her as woman, while he admires her as writer, being able to distinguish between her intellectual self and her senti- mental, and thus he finds happiness in his home where a less discriminating and less generous man might find only domestic unrest. For with Mrs. Talespinner, her literary work is the domi- nating interest of her life, though she will tell you and convince herself that all her ambition is centred in her little sons, whom she purposes educating with a view to their one day being Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor, as these, to quote her own words, are the only professions which are not overcrowded.' This is the extent of Mrs. Talespinner's practical interest in her nursery,— the future careers of her baby-sons. She does not spend much time with them during the day; not that she is not very fond of them, but children fidget her and interrupt her writing. When, however, she does admit them to her presence, she does not attempt to play with them, but talks to them seriously and grandly of her pride in their progress towards high estates, and makes them promise, poor little mites to be Prime Ministers and Lord Chancellors, and instructs them prematurely in their duties. As to seeing to the details of their nursery existence,—well, they have an excellent and trustworthy nurse, and their father enjoys that kind of thing. Hers is the pride and privilege to care for for them intellectually. She has made up her mind that they shall be great men, that their greatness may reflect upon her as their Mother, and she candidly tells you that she only wishes to write brilliantly and successfully enough for people in after-years to say : No wonder they are such talented men,—they had a clever mother.' Mrs. Talespinner's husband, by his perpetual patience, good-humour, and large-mindedness prevents his wife's literary engrossment becoming domestically aggressive. Like all women when they undertake any professional occupation, she is what one may call shoppy! Whenever she makes any new acquaintance who perhaps is not conversant with her literary fame, she soon insidiously alludes to her writings, and then her husband, who is something of a wag in his way, will seriously remark, You may perhaps have gathered that my wife writes a little,' and then there will be a general laugh, and Mrs. Talespinner's literary exuber- ance and self-advertisement will pass as humorous, and become a source of interest instead of boredom."

Mrs. Restless, too, is good :— actually occurred: but as a rule, his sketches keep very fairly

"The busy-idle woman par excellence. To idle simply is im- possible to her, she must always be indefinitely busy with definite results. There is seldom any uncertainty about the results ; generally they are practically valueless or not worth the trouble they have cost, but they occupy a great deal of time in achieving for all that. In spite of her professed dislike to the idle members of the community, of the society butterflies that flutter over the flowered fields of pleasure, Mrs. Restless is never happier than when she is going to parties and theatres and fetes ; but when she does so she speaks of it as a duty rather than an amusement, and grumbles that society keeps her so busy. Not that she allows social occupations to interfere with her domestic cares. She has children, and they know it ! and servants, and they know it. She never allows them to forget that they are her children and her servants. She worries about everything and everybody, until I verily believe the infant in the cradle longs to find prussic acid in its bottle, if only to obtain a little peace On the whole, I feel that I frankly do not bear Mrs. Restless any grudge for not having fallen in with my matrimonial views years ago, when we were both in our teens, and I used to regard her enthusiasm about everything, and her ardent activity in the cause of, Heaven knows what, as something approaching the divine. Mrs. Restless is, beyond a doubt, an excellent wife, as in the long ago of my boy- hood I thought she would be; but I am glad she is another's."

Mr. Salamans dedicates his sketches of feminine character "To Her who first taught me the loveableness of woman— my Mother ; " and with his graceful little final tribute to his mother, written, he tells us, on his birthday, we must

conclude :—

"Let me talk to you of her, for in all the world of women I know of none so near perfection. Good mothers by their very love-worthiness preserve the moral equilibrium of the world. Therefore I am happy to believe that other men think their mothers superior to mine, though I have the advantage of them, for they do not know mine as I do. That makes all the difference. In a man's youth, when all the world is opening before him, his mother ceases for a time to be the guiding-star of his life, as she had been in his childhood, for there are so many other lights that flash across his way, and one serves as well as another to direct his onward course. But when he retraces his steps, wounded and weary, and longing for rest, he seeks again the steady starlight of a mother's love. And still you will say, I have not described her to you. Well, how can a man describe his own mother ? She is just—my Mother, and that is all I can tell you. That must convey to you a picture of ideal goodness, common-sense, and unselfish love,—in fact, as I said before, Motherhood in perfection. Wherever my Mother has been, she has always carried love and gratitude with her. And if this be so among strangers, what must it be with us who have known her all our lives ? That is why I feel so happy to-day; my Mother greets me, and you know that she is the sweetest, the—well, she is my Mother, God bless her!