THE NOVEL OF THE NEW WOMAN.

 By HENRY SPEED.

" Once upon a time " there were a man and a woman who loved each other. They married, and were happy " ever afterwards." That is the Genesis of the Story. It is the origin of the novel, as it is the beginning of the world. With the eating of the true of knowledge the subsequent happiness is eliminated. But the misfortunes of the hero and heroine are the gain of the gentle reader, who searches the later pages of the book of life for Revelations, and is compensated for the lost of innocence. For we are now " free from the leprous taint of respectability," yea, even " as gods, knowing good and evil."

It is a far cry from Eve to Evadne— from the First Woman to the Latest Creation but though the latter is of course "a perfect woman in a perfect world," they have yet the same " organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions," and though thought may be widened with the process of the suns, the flight of ages leaves human nature much the same —even to the old hankering after the forbidden fruit, which is the liet motif of the novel of the New Woman.

 The New Woman's ambitions and aspirations are, like Mr Weller's knowledge of London—"extensive and peculiar." What she hankers after just now, one of her champions declares, is " to see the life of slum, palace, and workshop ; to enter into the trades and professions; to doctor, nurse, and so forth; to have to look after herself, and to hold her own as against men ; to travel ; to meet with sexual experience ; to work in trade unions ; to join in social and political uprisings and rebellious, etc." To fit her for this modest career she is educated in a manner which formerly would have been thought somewhat unusual. Angelica, it will be remembered, while yet a child, discharged her " squeaking governess," engaged a tutor, and devoted herself to pugilism, varying the Marquis of Queensbury rules with the rule of three, and the language of the prize ring with a little Latin. Evadne, one would think, when perusing the list of her accomplishments, had an eye towards the position of resident physician at an antipodean hospital. She studied anatomy, physiology, pathology, prophylactics, and therapeutics, and had obtained an extraordinary knowledge of the digestive processes and their ailments. Yet, in spite of the richness of the mental and physical endowments of these women, there is a je ne sais quoi about them, which somehow prevents them from having a scintilla of the charm of the heroines we once loved. The pathological lady becomes a psychic vivisectionist who dissects souls in the callous and unscientific manner of a child pulling the legs off a fly. While the attraction of the masculine female is precisely of that nature which gathers a gaping crowd to stare at a bearded woman in a dime museum. We read of Ideala, Angelica, Marcella, Dodo, Lady Tempest, Herminia Barton, and all the other Women who Did, but our thoughts wistfully return to Imogen, Thelma, Oriana, Little Nell, Laura Arden, Miranda, Hypatia, and all those others who so worthily upheld the " unstained scepter of womanhood."

The life of the modern woman as pictured in her novels is a perpetual struggle for the unattainable, and strife with the inevitable, coupled with a noble scorn of the proprieties. In short she wants to revolt and be revolting. She beats her wings against the bars of respectability till she falls exhausted in the mire, and becomes the prey of the literary chiffonnier, who rakes off her last few rags of reputation. She is cursed with discontent. When she was a child, she cried for the moon. Now she is a woman, she wants the earth ; and the magnitude and multiplicity of her aims are only equalled by the insignificance of her attainments. After centuries of shrieking for freedom she has achieved bloomers, bicycles, and some bad books.

Her scorn of order is only equalled by her hatred of law. Like the Irishman in the story, she has only to find that certain course is law to be at once " agin it."' How can laws be right, when they are made by those, whom Mrs Evadne Colquhoun in terms of new-womanly tenderness terms "skulking creatures of the opposite sex?" Susan Phillotson lays it down that " domestic laws should be made according to temperaments, which should be classified, each class having its special laws in all matters of emotion and affection, differing from the laws of other classes," and asks in her simple, artless way " what is the use of thinking of laws, if they make you miserable ?" She tires of her husband, and leaves him for another man, to whom she has transferred her fickle fancy, on the plea that to do otherwise would be a sin. " Feeling is all," says Faust to Marguerite, " names are but sounds smoke-clouding the fire of heaven," Like Mr Tommy Atkins in Kipling's song she sighs for a land, " where there ain't no Ten Commandments." When this at present benighted country is brought up to date by these end of the century epicureans, Shiels' Act will be amended, and the law of Moses repealed.

The Novel of the New Woman has been classified into two divisions—the erotic and the tommyrotic. Of the latter class a recent book affords a shocking example. In it we are given a moving picture of what we shall see at the advent of " the all-conquering, all redeeming,'' fin de siecle female. We are shown Victoria with the '' female sex everywhere victorious." Law and order are overcome by " lady law-breakers " and " beautiful bushrangeresses," and crowning glory ruled by a " governess," who plays football in knickerbockers. The latter garment always occupied such a prominent position in the emancipationists' field of vision, that one is led to wonder whether some women's burning aspirations for the equality of the sexes are not, after all, merely a domineering desire to " wear the breaks." This style of novel is, of course, too stupid to be hurtful, but the evils of the erotic class are far-reaching and disastrous, for books are " talismans and spells," and, Svengali-like, their potency is not decreased by their repulsiveness. The demand for these works has increased with the supply, and has caused such a craze, that we are almost overwhelmed by the dismal throng of Decadents, Diabolists, Symbolists, Parnassians, et hoc genus omne. These books affect to tell the truth about the world, but they seem rather of the flesh than the world, and more of the devil than either.

" The Woman Who Did " is a type of this class. It professes to be " written in support of the franchisement of woman," and the text, upon which the heroine, Herminia Barton, preaches, is that " marriage is a vile slavery," and an ignoble masculine device,'' and that “chastity is impossible, wicked, cruel." In the " Keynote " series the mirror of a libidinous imagination is held up to nature, and we see young and innocent girls married against their wills—in one instance " a Cardinal and seven priests assisting at the sacrifice"—to florid, bright-eyed, loose-lipped men of the world. The husband takes frequent visits to Paris, and the wife meets an artist, a tenor, or, if she wishes to show her originality, a doctor, with the inevitable result of even the slightest acquaintance with such romantic characters.

In one of these books the hero pictures the world as it appears to the sex-maniacs. " Take all these men—male and female," he says, " fashion them into one colossal man, study him, and what will you find in him ? Tainted blood, a brain with the parasites of a thousand systems sucking at its base, and warping it ; a heart robbed of all healthy feelings by false conceptions, bad conscience, and a futile code of morality—a code that makes the natural workings of sex a vile thing to be ashamed of the healthy delight in the cultivation of one's body as the beautiful sheath of one's soul and spirit, with no shame in any part of it, all alike being clean, a sin of the flesh, a carnal conception to be opposed by aceticism. A code that has thrown man out of balance . . . . a code that demands the sacrifice of thousands of female victims as the price of its maintenance, that has filled the universe with an unclean conception of things, a prurient idea of purity—making man a great sick man." The code of morality is the New Woman's bete noir. Frau Von Troll-Borostyani says the single life is a crime, and abolishes marriage altogether.

The beautiful moral of all this is that marriage is the root of all evil, and that nothing is so moral as immorality.

Of course, however, these theories are hardly as new as the writers seem to believe. They are, after all, merely a provender, highly spiced (food to the) appetite of the modern decadent. Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneer of the revolting novel, long ago discovered that " love is transitory," and taught, with more or less success, that marriage should be as ephemeral, years before Mr Grant Allen sought to reconstruct society by the loosening of the marriage tie. If George Egerton and her shrieking sisterhood had their way, the marriage certificate would be negotiable like a bill of exchange, with the additional advantage that the rules as to dishonor would, of course, have no application. But the Hill-top novels and Sir Bertram Ingledew to the contrary notwithstanding, to rail and sneer at the more or less — exactly as you care to make it—sacred institution of matrimony at this time of day appears about as flippantly futile as the hasty and ill-considered remarks of that nil-admirari young gentleman—probably a young Australian—who spoke disrespectfully of the equator. It reveals at once a want of sense—worse, it shows a want of sense of humor. "Cultivate humor," our old friend, Mrs Hawksbee, once remarked. " a well-educated sense of humor will save a woman when religion, training and home influences fail."

It would be a mistake, therefore, to take these scoffers too seriously. It is at once wiser and more charitable to regard their ravings as the outcome of temporary aberration. Sex mania apparently is just now the prevailing epidemic. When the public mind is restored to health, beautiful and true thoughts, brave deeds, and lofty ideals will once more regain their ascendancy over the cheap horrors of the penny-dreadful. The knell of the new novel has already been rung. The one reason, that caused it to be tolerated so long, is that, though crushed to earth, the germ of truth is there. It is so overwhelmed by, and out of proportion with, the padding of vain wisdom and false philosophy, that to search for it is like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay, and reminds one of Falstaff's half-penny worth of bread to such an intolerable deal of sack. But it is written in the cause of freedom, and though, for the moment, the "Insurrection of Women" has caused liberty to degenerate into license, and, as in all revolutions, the scum to rise to the surface, deep down underneath this frothy ebullition flows, steadily and irresistibly, the serious movement of genuine progress.

The " literature of mysteries of iniquity," as George Sand termed it, has therefore had its day. The Novel of the New Century will show us that we, Heirs of the Ages, have inherited other things than the insidious blood curses of the " Yellow Aster," and " Rougon Macquart " type. It will reveal our true birth-right. The elements of physiology will no longer be preferred to the elements of fiction. Sex will cease to degrade the novelist's theme to the cult of courtesan and costermonger. It will teach us the larger charity and wider sympathy, and its message may be put in the words of a Book, now obsolete : " Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be any virtue, and if there be praise, think on these things."

Geelong Advertiser (Vic. : 1859 - 1929), Saturday 6 June 1896, page 1