rouse the slightest interest in the
mind, the endless years and days which pass and pass, carrying away the
bloom, extinguishing the lights of youth, bringing a dreary middle age
before which the very soul shrinks, while yet the sufferer feels how
strong is the current of life in her own veins, and how capable she is
of all the active duties of existence--this was the essence and soul of
the existence she knew best. Was there no help for it? Must the women
wait and see their lives thrown away, and have no power to save
themselves!

"The position," she goes on, "in itself so tragic, is one which can
scarcely be expressed without calling forth inevitable ridicule, a laugh
at the best, more often a sneer, at the women whose desire for a husband
is thus betrayed. Shirley and Caroline Helstone both cried out for that
husband with an indignation, a fire and impatience, a sense of wrong and
injury, which stopped the laugh for the moment. It might be ludicrous,
but it was horribly genuine and true." (This is more than can be said of
Mrs. Oliphant's view of the adorable Shirley Keeldar who was Emily
Bronte. It is ludicrous enough, and it may be genuine, but it is
certainly not true.) But Mrs. Oliphant is careful not to go too far.
"Note," she says, "there was nothing sensual about these young women. It
was life they wanted; they knew nothing of the grosser thoughts which
the world with its jeers attributes to them: of such thoughts they were
unconscious in a primitive innocence which, perhaps, only women
understand." Yet she characterizes their "outcry" as "indelicate". "All
very well to talk of women working for their living, finding new
channels for themselves, establishing their independence. How much have
we said of all that" (Mrs. Oliphant thinks that she is rendering
Charlotte Bronte's thought), "endeavouring to persuade ourselves!
Charlotte Bronte had the courage of her opinions. It was not education
nor a trade that her women wanted. It was not a living, but their share
in life.... Miss Bronte herself said correct things" (observe that
insincerity is insinuated here) "about the protection which a trade is
to a woman, keeping her from a mercenary marriage; but this was not in
the least the way of her heroines." (Why, you naturally wonder, should
it have been?) "They wanted to be happy, no doubt, but above all things
they wanted their share in life, to have their position by the side of
men, which alone confers a natural