Twelfth Meeting, Friday, January 26, 1883. W. C. COUPLAND, M.A., B.Sc., in the Chair. A Paper by W. G. MARTLEY, B.A., on "The Part played by Women in Browning's Poems," was read by Mr. Furnivall. The following is an Abstract of the Paper. 1. INTRODUCTORY.-BROWNING'S IDEAL. No description of Browning's women, nor analysis of their feelings, can be adequate unless based on an accurate knowledge of his teaching as regards— 1. What, for want of a better name, may be called electric sympathy. 2. The nature and conditions of Marriage. Browning sees in woman a being of like endowments and responsibilities with man. Here, as elsewhere, he is the poet of positive belief. He is the champion of woman's truth and honour. He reflects the higher side of our civilization; he is the poet of progress. He rejects all one-sided life as incomplete, whether that of the voluptuary or the ascetic. Isolation means failure; the true life of men and women is in the world, not the convent. Only by association with others can the soul attain its true development. Unconverted life is not life at all; contact with others is the usual means of conversion. Thus true marriage is an instrument of conversion. The souls of men and women are complementary; each is imperfect, together they make a single whole. Apparent dualism ends in real unity. The conviction of the eternity of marriage meets us again and again in Browning's poems; e. g. Prospice, Any Wife to any Husband, The Epilogue to Fifine. Evelyn Hope teaches the same lesson in another form. The great stress which Browning lays on the mutual influence of the sexes is emphasized by the fact that he hardly ever treats of woman in her life apart from man. 2. CONVERSION BY SYMPATHY. In many of Browning's poems the time of the action is synchronous with the turning-point of a life. The conscience, unable to decide for itself at the crisis, is helped to form a decision by the intervention of another nature. If the good be taken or the bad rejected, conversion is effected; if the good be forsaken, the soul, having missed its chance, deviates further and further from the right path. The life of a man or woman is only a half life till roused to new vigour and energy by an electric sympathy with another soul. This is well shown in the Statue and the Bust. So, too, Colombe's whole life was changed by the advent of Valence. "This is indeed my birthday-soul and body; Its hours have done on me the work of years." 1 This appears in the April number of Modern Thought. 3. MARRIAGE, Browning tells us that marriage is not a consummation, but a beginning. To him a conventional marriage is no marriage; only "a marriage of true minds" deserves the name. Once formed, such a marriage is eternal; nothing can destroy it. It is this which forms the burthen of Any Wife to any Husband. Dying, the wife cries, "Wilt thou dare Say to thy soul, and who may list beside, Therefore she is immortally my bride, Chance cannot change my love nor time impair?" Even when, as in The Worst of It, or Andrea del Sarto, this high ideal is not realized, we feel that after all we may "Leave Now to dogs and apes, Man has Forever," (A Grammarian's Funeral) and that, supposing the two souls are complementary, they will be brought together in the end. For a perfect marriage it is not enough that the two souls should be bound together by sympathy; there must also be equality. Throughout Browning's poems there is no hint that Woman is inferior to Man. 4. CHARACTERISTICS OF BROWNING'S WOMEN. It is difficult to point out any one quality as pre-eminently characteristic of Browning's women, unless it be their intense humanness. They are such as we meet every day; not brighter or better than others, though in the best there are traces of earnestness, of a belief in duty, and a readiness to surrender themselves for the benefit of others. It is this humanness that makes some of Browning's heroines so interesting, that always lends such pathos to their position. Life is a struggle, and they are not fenced by any supernatural protection. They are not angels who have never known temptation. They are exposed to the ordeal of life, and either attain their true development or suffer the penalty of failure. No poetical justice saves them because they are women. 5. WOMAN AND LIFE'S ORDEAL. a. Mildred Tresham. Turning from the general to the particular, we may take Mildred Tresham as an example of the preceding remarks. She is thus described by her brother: "She has never known You cannot know the good and tender heart, She sinned; ignorantly, it is true, but the curse came upon her. Her life was blighted. After Pompilia and Colombe, Mildred is the most interesting figure in Browning's poems. Her youth, her tenderness, her constancy to Mertoun, her truthfulness even when the truth was torture, as well as the passionate love she inspired in all around her, form a portrait which for subtlety of touch and truth of workmanship cannot easily be matched. Mildred did not live in vain. We rise from reading her story "Feeling God loves us, and that all that errs Is a strange dream, which death will dissipate."-Pauline. b. Pompilia. In Mildred we see one who failed in life's ordeal; let us now take one who passed through it in its most terrible form, and preserved her innocence and purity unsullied to the end. If Mildred's innocence betrayed her, Pompilia was the prey of others' greed. In everything she is, as Caponsacchi calls her, "the perfect soul Pompilia." Like Mildred, she is really an orphan. "I never had a father-no, nor yet A mother... How very different a lot is mine From any other woman's in the world!" At thirteen she was married, hardly knowing what it meant, to a man three times her age, who took her for the sake of the gold she was to bring, caring little for the helpless child. Every contrivance was used to undermine her purity in vain. Weak in many things, in this Pompilia was strong. Meek and patient, she would have borne her misery to the end, had she only had herself to care for. It was the mother's instinct that nerved her to flight at last. The means she chose showed the innocence of her soul. She knew that Caponsacchi loved her, and that she loved him; and the knowledge of this mutual passion, so fervent, so futile, so pure, made her believe that he could not wrong her, and gave him courage to save her from her husband's insupportable tyranny. Caponsacchi's devotion is the one ray of light in the darkness and gloom in which Pompilia's life ends. It is this which nerves her to seize a sword, when Guido overtakes them, and make one desperate effort to end the tangle of her life by killing him. As the Pope says, her purity gave her courage; might came to succour right. But in vain. Pompilia dies, a girl of seventeen, "falsely, falsely murdered." Dying, her thoughts turn to Caponsacchi, and she gives utterance to her faith in another world, where there is no marriage, but a closer union. 6. THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN LOVE AND AMBITION. a. Colombe. In Mildred and Pompilia Browning has given us types of women who had to struggle for life or death. In Colombe and Constance there is another kind of struggle, as real, though perhaps not as tragic-that between love and ambition, love and self-sacrifice. In Colombe's Birthday the part played by Valence is hardly less important than that of the heroine. The meeting with him was the beginning of a new life for Colombe. She had hitherto lived among shams; from henceforth she was to live amid the eternal truths of life. Before she had been a child, merry with a child's mirth; then she became a woman, impressed with a feeling of life's seriousness and its reality. She said herself "I lived, a girl, one happy leisure year; Let me endeavour to be the Duchess now." But it was too late. She had looked upon her place as one of pageantry and pleasure; she had forgotten its duties and responsibilities. She had not sought her people's love nor roused their fear; they were ready to give her up for Berthold. It was a girl's fault; but punishment ever follows on neglect of the world's laws. But there was still one hope for her; Valence and Cleves were loyal still, and were ready to face death for her sake. Must she forsake these though the rest of her subjects desert her? She answers "While Cleves but yields one subject of this stamp, I stand her lady till she waves me off." But all depended upon the Prince's claim. If that could be established, it would be her duty to give way to him. She turned to Valence for help and advice. But she did not stop here, but continued, with the frankness that was one of her characteristics "Believe in your own nature, and its force Of renovating mine! I take my stand Only as under me the earth is firm: So prove the first step stable, all will prove. That first, I choose; the next to take, choose you." It was a serious time; she had reached the supreme moment of her life. The crisis came; she did not fail. She was offered the crown of an empress without love; she chose-love and Valence. "I take him; give up Juliers and the world. b. Constance. In Colombe's case love triumphed over ambition. If we turn to In a Balcony we shall again see its victory, not only in a woman's, but also in a man's heart. However, for us Constance is the all-important figure. Her struggle was harder than that of Colombe, for her love and ambition were both centred in Norbert. For her, true love was the renunciation of Norbert; her highest duty to resign him to the Queen. The difficulty of this piece is mainly caused by the extreme suddenness of the transitions, and by the fact that in some of the scenes the actors are at cross-purposes. The play opens with a dispute between Constance and Norbert as to the advisability of asking the Queen's consent to their marriage. Norbert reluctantly agrees to approach the Queen under the guise of a wooer, and, when he is repulsed, to ask for Constance's hand, as the next best thing. Unfortunately the Queen takes Norbert's simulated passion for a real one, and is not undeceived till the end of the play. She hastens to confide her secret to Constance, who at first expresses surprise, and does not try to remove the false impression. When the Queen becomes more earnest and passionate, and shows that she is prepared to break down every barrier between herself and Norbert, Constance, in answer to the Queen's "He loves me," replies, He shall." We must suppose that Constance, finding the Queen ready to make every sacrifice to win Norbert, felt, in her own passionate devotion to him, that it might possibly be her highest duty to resign her right in him. This affords a clue to much in the next scene that would otherwise be unintelligible. Her love is transformed, not destroyed. When the Queen enters, Constance begins the task she has set herself in real earnest. She tries to confirm the Queen in her opinion that his homage to Constance was but the expression of a feeling towards herself, which awe of her position had prevented him from declaring, and to convince Norbert that she had, from the beginning, taken his advances in this sense, and is now willing to retire into the background. Possibly she has the bye-purpose of blunting the edge of the Queen's fury when at last Norbert's persistent straightforwardness reveals the truth. Of course there is a conflict in her heart. She is steeling herself to resign Norbert, striving to avert the Queen's anger, and putting her lover's constancy to the test. Norbert's fidelity comes out of the ordeal unscathed; but the Queen in the frenzy of her passion orders the guard to lead them to death. But death has no terrors for them. They have both passed through the fiery trial, and come out with love refined and purified. In the ecstasy of her self-abnegation Constance cries "We cannot kiss a second time like this, Else were this earth no earth." Her words come true. The kiss which ends the play ends also their lives. 7. WOMAN AS TEMPTER. a. Fifine. We have seen what life's ordeal may be for a woman, we have now to see what she may make it for others. Fifine, "with loveliness for law " "her beauty Her sole duty" (A Pretty Woman)— had been brought up in a society where virtue was almost unknown. She had been taught that her first duty was to win money for her troupe, and not to be scrupulous as to the means, Hence she did not shrink from using the base passions of others for her own advantage. Being of an impulsive nature, Fifine took some pleasure in her task. We must not be too hard upon her. Had her surroundings and training been different, she might have been a second Elvire. Those who give way to temptation inevitably become the tempter of others. This is the lesson of Fifine. Her life destroyed her soul. Hers was a merely animal existence; no grain of conscience turned her sour. degradation, we cannot but pity one so young and so graceful. In spite of her a siren luring men like Juan to destruction, and we see in her merely the dupe of a seducer, "more sinned against than sinning." b. Ottima. It is with far different feelings that we regard Ottima in Pippa Passes. In her there is no redeeming trait to save her from utter baseness, no lighter shades to relieve the darkness of the picture. The treacherous, voluptuous nature of the cruel Italian is in striking contrast with the impetuous, passionate soul of the German. When they have committed the murder he cannot get the horror of it from his thoughts; she only says, in words like Lady Macbeth's "Best never speak of it," She can weigh the sin in and is only anxious to enjoy the results of the crime. one balance and its results in another, and calmly declare the latter to outweigh the former. Her love for Sebald is merely a voluptuous passion. She gloats over the recollection of it in the past; she tempts him with it in the present. He cannot resist her blandishments, but even while he is crowning her, Pippa's voice ends the enchantinent for him, not for her. To her Pippa is only "that little ragged girl," but his moral nature is only dormant, not extinct. Ottima's furious "You hate me then? You hate me then ?" he can only reply "I hate, hate-curse you. God's in his heaven." To Then follows a vehement speech from Ottima, in which love, falsehood, burning passion are fused together in molten heat. Her frenzy overpowers Sebald. He sinks beneath the awfulness of his deed, but he cannot free himself from her influence. However, his awakening has proved her conversion, in part at least. She forgets self and thinks only of him. Her last words "Not me to him, O God, be merciful " show that to her too Pippa's song has become a reality. She recollects at last that |