Heroines in Fiction.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4, 27 January 1906, Page 4

Heroines in Fiction.

(By Priscilla Wakefield.) Novel-, if well chosen, may be very useful reading, for they show life as it is. The characters need not be models. Much may be learned of

what to avoid in life or conduct by the very faults you discover in the characters in a hook. Motives of conduct. results of actions, may teach a strong lesson. Novels should be chosen. says an eminen' critic, “not for their freedom from evil, but for their possession of good. The chance and scattered evil that may here and there haunt, or hide itself in a powerful book, never docs any harm to a noble girl; but the emptiness of the author oppresses her. and his amiable folly degrades her.” Novels which are sensational, overstrained. unreal are dangerous. By their excitement they lead you to be discontented with ordinary life, or to form false impressions of life. Indiscriminate novel reading is an injury to good taste, for all reading

must be based on judgment or selection. The novels which crowd the shelves of a circulating library confuse you unless you learn to reject and to ehoose. It is a mistake to be alwayin search of new novel-, new sensations. or to think you must be in the tide of new excitements in reading. In your favourite books you iearu to love person-. A girl whose face lights up with intelligent pleasure when she talks of her favourite heroines and her reasons for liking them is one who will learn much from novels by good writers. A knowledge of characters in fiction is nece sary in general conversation. You need to understand allusions to them, or you will be voted ignorant. But you must go deeper than nis if you wish to find pleasure and benefit in reading fiction. The author who helps to quicken your sympathies, to make you love what is noble, pure and good, to pity what is weak, to de pise what is false and bad. who helps you to wish to do what is right, will point the wav to a rich, sweet life.

“It seems to me,” said a girl friend of mine, “that the ideals of this world are low enough, without an author filling the minds of young reader- with thoughts that raise questions in their minds and tend to rob them of their innocence. Rather let «a author write pure, healthful books that create high ideals in fhe reader and foster the growth of those one has. This. Loui a May Alcott has done. What book could be better for a young girl to form her ideals by than “Rose in Bloom”? Who that has r-id “Little Women” does not love the picture of the home, the abiding place of lie®. •To. Beth, and Atnv?”

Coming from a real girl these thoughts are well worth quoting. And just because in “Rose in Bloom” there is no moral intended in the story, the

lesson it teaches is all the sweeter and there are helpful hints here and there to “other ro es getting ready to bloom.” Ethel Newcome. in Thackeray’s "The Newcomes.” is a girl whom one migh* find in the everyday world of fashion now as well a- in a past century. Loving and lovable, she is very winning in her girlish affection for Clive Newcome. but the influence of her worldlyminded grandmother. I>ady Kew, makes her give him up and try to fancy she cares more for rank and splendour and wealth than for love. But Ethel begins to see from the unhappiness of others that there is nothing so wretched as a marriage without affection and respect, and she breaks off het engagement with the Marquis of Farinto h. She is “never an insipid saint.” says William Dean Howells, in his criticism of her character. She is no. perfect and not pretended to be perfect. but she is made to appear “capable of learning from her own faults and from the errors and miseries of others. . . Shr : really grows in our knowledge from a young, unformed girl to a mature woman, who has come to the knowledge of right and wrong by the use of her own sense and has finally chosen the right.”

A lovable girl heroine is Honor D’Everel. in Barbara Yechton’s story of that name. "Honor-bright” is a quick-minded, strong-hearted ‘‘womanchild,” whose love and courage uphold her father when misfortune and loss make it necessary to sell the old home. You may catch glimpses of Honor's loyal, valiant spirit from the words her father uses: Dear daughter! You have comforted me as no one eL' could: Honor-bright. I am depending on you to be my right hand all through this wretched business! . . . You are the sunshine of the house, brave daughter!” Honor has her moments of dejection and grief but she strugg es nobly. “I am not going to let myself be unhappy and afraid of trouble before it arrives,” she tells her brother, Geoff, who commends her for being “plucky.” "Why shouldn’t I be plucky?” she demands, and she quotes the family motto, which had come front a Crusader ancestor: “A great heart feareth nothing.” Pride of inheritance, pride of race were in Honor: these keep alive courage.

When the care and guidance of her younger brothers and sisters fall on Honor—with sorrow, loneliness and poverty to struggle against—her faithful promise, vowed to God in the still

night-watches, is, “I promise to take care of my brothers and sisteis, to de vote myself to them, and do always, as long as I live, my very best for them.” Jean- I.owrie. that Lass o’ Lowrie’s;, the “pit-girl,” who knew hard work, privation and ill treatment, who had "most of the faults of her clrss but none of their follies, and was half-feared, half-revered” by her companions at

the mine, is a very winning heroine. The author of this character. Mrs Bur nett, discovers gracious secrets in rough natures, sweetness beneath a forbidding exterior, the -oul of good ness in persons often misunderstood. We love Joan's resolute, fine face, hei truth, tenderness, kindness, loyalty.

moral and physical courage, and for her womanly resolve to make herself worthy of Derrick’s affection. A wonderful story of growth of character in a heroine is in George Eliot's "Mill on the Floss.” From an undisciplined girl Maggie Tulliver develops into a strong, self-disciplined woman. The conflict in her heart, in her love for Stephen, who is engaged to her cousin

Lucy, who is her friend as well as cousin, and who trusts her—while Maggie is pledged to Philip, who had given to her years of true devotion—is a bat tie between conscience and inclination. "Many things are difficult and dark to me,” she tells Stephen, "but I see one thing quite clearly—that I must not. cannot seek my own happiness by sacrificing others. ... X should lie haunted by the suffering 1 had caused.

Our love would be poi-oned. Don't urge me: help me-—help me because I love you.” she cries in an appeal to his manly honour. “We must part at once. . . . Faith fulness and constancy mean » ■mething else.” she asserts, "besides doing what ieasiest and pleasantest to out selves.”

When Stephen urges and pleads that it is the first time they have either of them loved with their whole heart and sou], Maggie answers: "No. not with my whole heart and soul, Stephen. 1 have never consented to it with my whole mind. There are memories and affections and longings after perfect goodness, that have such a strong hold on me; they could never quit me for

long; they would come back and be pain to me—repentance. I couldn’t live in peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself ana God. 1 have caused sorrow already—l know —1 feel it; but I have never deliberately consented to it: I have never said. 'They shall suffer that I may have joy.’ It has never been my will to marry you. . ." "Oh, some good will ecme by clinging to the right,” she cries.