PAMELA'S DAUGHTERS By Robert Palfrey Utter and Gwendolyn Needham Pamela's
Daughters (Lovat Dickson, iss.) is a lively history of the heroine in fiction since Richardson. After the rise of Capitalism, woman was faced with the fact that " gentility consists in doing nothing." Her chastity was her sole wealth. With it she might win a husband ; without it she was driven to prostitution and death. The " lass with the delicate air, " the maiden of " precious sorrows and divine sensibilities," these were the heroines who won. The others obeyed Goldsmith's Law—laid down in " When lovely woman stoops to folly "—and died. But today they do not die, neither do they faint or weep. The modern " lovely woman " merely " . .. smooths her hair with automatic hand And puts a record on the gramophone" when "the folly" is over. So gene- rous is the scale and so copious the quotations that the book is really a history, of woman since the Middle Ages. But the writers' enthusiasm outruns their judgement. They lead us to no conclusion save the cry : " Calvin, where is thy sting ; Victoria, thy Victory ? " But the reader perceives that, unlike the heroine of the ephemeral novel, the heroines in the works which have lasted are more than mere epitomes of contemporary fashions. Let their emancipated successors laugh at their modesty and their stays only if they equal them in courage, beauty and sensibility.
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