HEROINES OF FICTION. Who is Your Favourite?

Otago Witness, Issue 2059, 10 August 1893, Page 41

HEROINES OF FICTION. Who is Your Favourite?

The New York Recorder recently invited its readers to send in answers to the query, 11 Who is your favourite heroine in fiction," which attracted a large and varied number of replies. It is remarkable that Charles Dickens's works supplied American readers with the great majority of favourite heroines. The following is a compilation of some of the best letters published : — ESTHER. Fairest of all heroines in fiction is Esther, in Dickens's "Bleak House." Her character is at once gentle, cheerful, sympathetic, and completely unselfish. Although her living representative would not be considered great to-day, would probably be looked downupon, because of her obscure birth, still she would be truly great to those who chose to see the nobility of a simple, pure life, well lived. She must ever stand as the sweet ideal of a womanly woman. ESTHEE ST7NMEBSON. Pictures of ideal womanhood such as Dickens has given us in Esther Summerson are rare indeed. Beginning life as she did, under a cloud of shame ; knowing that she had brought no joy, at any time, to anybody's heart, yet winning everybody's love, drawing all hearts to her own, by her sympathetic unselfish nature; so brave in her womanly truth and sincerity, so self-sacrificing, and withal so gentle and modest, In the whole range of imaginative literature can there be a more perfeot character than noble little Dame Burden ? MAGGIE TULLiyEE. Have it in two words— Maggie Tulliver. She did wrong, though not intentionally ; and after that, though so young, she never had one moment of happiness. She bore her punishment—great indeed ' compared with the offence — alone, and so patiently and bravely that to me she has no equal in fiction. EDITH. No one but loves to see a mettlesome horse, and even so a man loves to see a mettlesome woman. We have such in Edith, in " Dombey and Son." This woman had a heart, much as appearances were against her. Witness her love for Florence. Her courage was superb. She held Corker completely at bay, sleek villain that he was ; and this, too, while he fancied he had the woman at his mercy. She bad the God-given trait — forbearance. DB ZAY. Bun through the list and stop at Dr Zay, the noble woman Frank Stockton pour trays in his interesting novel by that name. Who has read of her heroic surrender of all that was most dear to her in life that she might labour among the sick and neglected, and has not admired and revered such a character ? With what a firm yet gentle hand does Dr Zay lead her patient and lover along the path of duty I I think the description of such a ! character should urge all women to " do the duty that lies nearest them "in a trustful, loving spirit, even if it demands some selfsacrifice. FLOBENCE DOMBEY. Did there exist in real life" a girl, pure and simple, unable to stand the shunning of a cruel world, much less the most noticeable coldness of a father, but who in meekcess, unable to gain the love she so much wished for from her father, made her life bearable by loving her friends most dearly and even though in a somewhat conservative way loving her father even more ?, She would be a true heroine ia every sense' of the word. Florence Dpmbey was thus,' and should, in my estimation, be considered the heroine of | fiction. LAD? DE Unique among heroines' or (lotion is Miss Lady de Bougainville, whose courage was moral rather than physical, as a woman's should be. I admire her, because a lie or a debt was a degrading thing for her ; for her staunch fidelity to her husband, weak and contemptible though be was ; for her beautiful motherhood ; for her sterling principles and high sense of honour ; because she kept the old rector's secret; for heriDnate refinement and dignified candour ; becausbsbe.was such a womanly wdmat?', as wpll as a brave lady. S.be. seems to prove the poet's words : This, above all, to thine own self bo true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. LITTLE EVA. , . I do not think there can be found a grander character in fiction than little Eva St. C'air, the heroine of the famous tale 14 Uncle Tom's Cabin." Born of wealthy, flaveholding parents of the South, with a beautiful countenance.and reared by a selfish, narrow-minded mother, she became a $hild of liberty, equality, and fraternity. She was not vain from beauty, wa#not proud from high birth, was not ruined by her surroundings,

From her character we can draw nothing but love— Jove given alike to the bond and the free, to the black and the white, to the good and the vile. She could take a miserable negro child, whose position' in life was as degraded as hers was h'ga, and tell her that she loved her and wished only for her good. She could kiss the old negro— Uncle Tom— as she did her father. She was a heroine of advanced thought, looking forward to that great time when we will all be equal, and sect and colour are known no more. They are the greatest who overcome. She overcame the teachings of her surroundings to follow the doctrine of Christ. If we all followed her example life on earth would be a paradise. This then being so, what pen could trace a grander character ? And who is a greater heroine than Eva St. Olair ? LITTLE NELL. Tou almost think of my favonrite heroine io fiction as one who really lived. Dickecs's Little Nell was only a child, to be sure, but possessed all those qualities which make the noble woman. Her influence for good was felt wherever she happened, and in her patience and endurance she equalled the Spartans. PORTIA. All things considered, Portia I agree with Mrs Jameson that Shakespeare's heroine unites in herself all the noblest and most lovable qualities that ever met together in woman. Although endowed with unusual mental power, she is wholly free from pedantry. Her generosity is unbounded. She is beautiful and gentle — noble, simple, humble, pure. Even the melancholy Jacques would have found her charming. In summing up Portia's character I can do no better than apply to her 'Wordsworth's description of a perfect woman — The noble woman nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command, The creature not too bright and good J For human nature's daily food. For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

ASIATIC CRUELTY. The Chinese officials constantly sentence political offenders to the most awful tortures, — to be killed, for example, by a slow chopping into little bits. The king who ruled in Barman in 1850 habitually sentenced the women of any family whose head was convicted or suspected of treason to be ripped up— the great American missionary Dr Kincaid saw it done, and risked his own life by felling the executioner — and their children to be pounded up in the mortars used for pounding grain. The wife of Theebau, the king whom we dethroned, is said to have delivered fearful sentences, which we do not recount because the evidence is still so imperfect and so impaired by the wish to attribute extra cruelty to a dethroned house. The charge against the late guicowar of having offenders stamped to death by elephants appears, however, to be true ; while every traveller in Persia relates horrible stories of brigands and others being built alive into stone walls, the head alone protruding. Jung Babadoor, we all know, shot with his own hands a large company of his opponents beguiled into a royal hall j and only lately telegrams have |been received asserting that the Khan of Khejat bad slain 3,000 of his subjects— not in battle— and had " murdered" 65 persons of distinction, inoluding five of his own wives, and had in consequence been deposed by the Government of India. — Speotator.

DANCE AT A JAPANESE BANQUET. All at once, with a little burst of laughter, a number of young girls enter, make the customary prostration of greeting, glide into the open space between the ranks of the guests, and begin to serve the wine with a graeeand dexterity of which no common maid is capable. They are pretty ; they are clad in very costly robes of silk ; they are girdled like queens ; and the beautifully dressed hair of each is decked with fresh Sowers, with wonderful combs and pins, and with curious ornaments, of gold. They greet the stranger as if they had always known himj they iest, laugh, and utter funny little cries. Thess are the geisha, or dancing girls, hired for the banquet. Samisen (Gustars), tinkle. T;he dancers withdraw to a clear space at the farther end of. the banquetting hall, always vast enough to admit of many more guests than ever assemble upon common occasions. | Some form the orchestra, under the direction of a woman of uncertain age; thare are several samisen, and a tiny drum played by a child. O.thers, sicgly or in pairs, perform the dance. It may be swift and merry, con? sisting wholly of graceful posturin#4-tw,o girls dancing together with such coincidence '< of step and. gesture a,g onjy year.s of training could render possible. But more frequently | it is rather like acting than like what we Oo- * cidentals call dancing — acting accompanied • with extraordinary waving of sleeves and fans, and with a play o£ eyes and features, , sweet, subtle, subdued, w.holly Oriental. i There are more voluptuous dances known to geisha, but upon ordinary occasions and , before refined audiences th.ey ppurt^ay beautiful old Japanese traditions, like the legend of the flaher l^Jrasblma, beloved by the Sea Qod's daughter} and at [.intervals they sing ancient Chinese poems, expressing a natural 1 emotion with delioious vividness by a Sew exquisite words. And always they pour the wine— that warm, pale yellow, sleepy wine which fills the veins with soft contentment,, making a fain^ sense of ecßtacj X through wbioh, as through some poppied sleep, the commonplace becomes wondrous and blissful, and the geisha, inajds of pavadlse, and the world much sweeter than, in the natural order oi things, it could ever poßßibly be. The banquet, at first so silent, slowly changes to a merry tumult. The ooHjpacy break ranks, form groups ; and from group to group the girls pass, }<ii}gbißg, prattlirg— still pouring saH into the caps which are being exchanged and emptied with long bowa. Men begin to sing old samurai songs, old-Chinese poems. One or two even dance. A geisha tucks her robe well tip to her l^neas } and the eamisen strike up the oujck melody, "Kompira fuce-fune." As the music plays she begins to r^a lightly and swiitly in a figure of Q, and a young man carrying a sake bottle and cup also runs in the same figure oif8. it the two' meet on a line A tUa oae through whose error the meetic^happens must drink a oup of sake. The music becomes quickejr

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and quicker, and the runners run faster and faster, for they must keep time to the melody, and the giesba wins. In another part of the room, guests and giesha are playing ken. They sir g as they play, facing each other, and clap their hands, and fling out their fingers at intervals with little cries; and the samisen keep time.