Browning's Heroines

THE GIRL IN "COUNT GISMOND"                          15

 II. PIPPA PASSES
        I. Dawn: Pippa                                    23
       II. Morning: Ottima                                36
      III. Noon: Phene                                    51
       IV. Evening; Night: The Ending of the Day          67

III. MILDRED TRESHAM                                      81

 IV. BALAUSTION                                           93

  V. POMPILIA                                            122


PART II

THE GREAT LADY

"MY LAST DUCHESS," AND "THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS"       165


PART III

THE LOVER

  I. LOVERS MEETING                                      199

 II. TROUBLE OF LOVE: THE WOMAN'S
        I. The Lady in "The Glove"                       215
       II. Dis Aliter Visum; or, Le Byron De Nos Jours   224
      III. The Laboratory                                233
       IV. In a Year                                     237


PART IV

THE WIFE

  I. A WOMAN'S LAST WORD                                 245

 II. JAMES LEE'S WIFE                                    250
        I. She Speaks at the Window                      254
       II. By the Fireside                               256
      III. In the Doorway                                257
       IV. Along the Beach                               258
        V. On the Cliff                                  261
       VI. Reading a Book, under the Cliff               262
      VII. Among the Rocks                               265
     VIII. Beside the Drawing-board                      268
       IX. On Deck                                       271


PART V

TROUBLE OF LOVE: THE MAN'S

  I. THE WOMAN UNWON                                     277

 II. THE WOMAN WON                                       304




PART I

[Illustration: GIRLHOOD]




BROWNING'S HEROINES




INTRODUCTORY


Browning's power of embodying in rhythm the full beauty of girlhood is
unequalled by any other English poet. Heine alone is his peer in this;
but even Heine's imagination dwelt more fondly on the abstract pathos
and purity of a maiden than on her individual gaiety and courage. In
older women, also, these latter qualities were the spells for Browning;
and, with him, a girl sets forth early on her brave career. That is the
just adjective. His girls are as brave as the young knights of other
poets; and in this appreciation of a dauntless gesture in women we see
one of the reasons why he may be called the first "feminist" poet since
Shakespeare. To me, indeed, even Shakespeare's maidens have less of the
peculiar iridescence of their state than Browning's have, and I think
this is because, already in the modern poet's day, girlhood was
beginning to be seen as it had never been seen before--that is, as a
"thing-by-itself." People had perceived--dimly enough, but with eyes
which have since grown clearer-sighted--that there is a stage in woman's
development which ought to be her very own to enjoy, as a man enjoys
_his_ adolescence. This dawning sense is explicit in the earlier verses
of one of Browning's most original utterances, _Evelyn Hope_, which is
the call of a man, many years older, to the mysterious soul of a dead
young girl--

     "Sixteen years old when she died!
       Perhaps she had hardly heard my name;
     It was not her time to love; beside,
       Her life had many a hope and aim,
     Duties enough and little cares,
     And now was quiet, now astir . . ."

Here recognition of the girl's individuality is complete. Not a word in
the stanza hints at Evelyn's possible love for another man. "It was not
her time"; there were quite different joys in life for her. . . . Such a
view is even still something of a novelty, and Browning was the first to
express it thus whole-heartedly. There had been, of course, from all
time the hymning of maiden purity and innocence, but beneath such
celebrations had lurked that predatory instinct which a still more
modern poet has epitomised in a haunting and ambiguous phrase--

     "For each man kills the thing he loves."

Thus, even in Shakespeare, the Girl is not so much that transient,
exquisite thing as she is the Woman-in-love; thus, even for Rosalind,
there waits the Emersonian _precis_--

     "Whither went the lovely hoyden?
       Disappeared in blessed wife;
     Servant to a wooden cradle,
       Living in a baby's life."

I confess that this tabloid "story of a woman" has, ever since my first
discovery of it, been a source of anger to me; and I do not think that
such resentment should be reckoned as a manifestation of modern
decadence. The hustling out of sight of that "lovely hoyden" is unworthy
of a poet; poet's eyes should rest longer upon beauty so
irrecoverable--for though the wife and mother be the happiest that ever
was, she can never be a girl again.

In the same way, to me the earliest verses of _Evelyn Hope_ are the
loveliest.