That it was
due to votes or even little legal inequalities about marriage, I feel
myself here too close to realities even to discuss. My own guess is that
it has been due to the great neglect of the military spirit by the male
Victorians. The woman felt obscurely that she was still running her
mortal risk, while the man was not still running his. But I know nothing
about it; nor does anybody else.
In so short a book on so vast, complex and living a subject, it is
impossible to drop even into the second rank of good authors, whose name
is legion; but it is impossible to leave that considerable female force
in fiction which has so largely made the very nature of the modern
novel, without mentioning two names which almost brought that second
rank up to the first rank. They were at utterly opposite poles. The one
succeeded by being a much mellower and more Christian George Eliot; the
other succeeded by being a much more mad and unchristian Emily Bronte.
But Mrs. Oliphant and the author calling herself "Ouida" both forced
themselves well within the frontier of fine literature. _The Beleaguered
City_ is literature in its highest sense; the other works of its author
tend to fall into fiction in its best working sense.
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