Now one very marked thing about Meredith"s structure is the agreement of the two crises, that of character and that of circ.u.mstances. When any one of his characters chooses for good or evil, for wisdom or folly, at that very time, and by that very choice, he decides his future happiness and success, or unhappiness and failure. Therein lies the decision of the question whether that particular novel shall be a tragedy or a comedy.
When Dahlia Fleming chooses evil, she chooses unhappiness. No kind Providence intervenes to save her from her harvest. How many of our little writers of to-day would have caused her marriage with Edward to take place in the end! Is not Meredith"s conclusion far more true to life?
When Diana of the Cross-Ways resists Percy"s temptings and is led by her hatred of his evil to betray his secret, she chooses for her own happiness in the end. The storms through which she goes to reach it are the natural result of her impulsive, unbalanced mind.
Stronger still is the teaching in "The Tragic Comedians." When Clotilde chooses the craven"s part to play, she chooses also the craven"s reward.
It is in his scientific insight into moral life that Meredith"s growth beyond Beowulf, Shakespeare, and even Browning appears. We of the nineteenth century would be sorry to think that we had not one master who goes even deeper into our modern life than these. We believe that, as men of the later twentieth century look back upon our day, they will call George Meredith our greatest literary exponent.
Beowulf a.s.serts the general truth that Circ.u.mstance and Character determine Destiny.
Shakespeare has not gone very much farther in the philosophy of life.
He teaches that character determines character, and that circ.u.mstance determines circ.u.mstance; and that, in some way, circ.u.mstance obeys character.
Browning would advance a step and teach us, as his age taught the world, that the dependence of the external upon the spiritual comes about through the agency of a personal G.o.d.
But Meredith takes up the cry of our scientific age, and says: "The G.o.d of this world is in the machine, not out of it."
This is no irreverent teaching, for Meredith is not irreverent. It is simply the search for primary causes. It is the result of the same tendency that leads us to be dissatisfied with calling typhoid fever a "dispensation of Providence," and to lay it to bad drains. Like evolution in the physical world, this theory does not tend to remove G.o.d, but to explain more fully his agency and methods. It is no new theory. But the manner of its teaching is as new as this latter nineteenth century of ours.
If one were to compare Meredith with Shakespeare on this subject, one would naturally coordinate Macbeth and Rhoda Fleming, Diana of the Cross-Ways and King Lear.
"Rhoda Fleming" is, like "Macbeth," a tale with a moral purpose. The dependence of fate on the moral choice is its chief thought. The book gains force, as all these novels do, from its striking characterizations. We see Dahlia, the fair-haired one, whose great failing is weakness,--the fault of a negative character. And we see plainly the long process of pain to which she thereby subjects herself in the course of her purification.
Rhoda, her sister has, on the other hand, the defects of the positive character. She is head-strong, over-proud. It is from these characteristics that she suffers or leads others to suffer. "The Fates that mould us, always work from the main-spring."
In her relations with Anthony Hope, Rhoda takes the part of the tempter. The interview between the two shows such wonderful insight into character that from this pa.s.sage alone Meredith might be ranked as great. Rhoda discovers that she has sold her sister in marriage to a brute. In her head-strong desire to buy her off from him, she goes to her uncle to beg for a large sum of money. Anthony, although a poor man in reality, has always delighted in deceiving his brother and his nieces on that point. Rhoda finds him struggling with the greatest temptation of his life. He has carried home money belonging to the bank of which he is a trusted employee. His love of money, his former deceit, make him very weak before Rhoda. So he falls. She is allowed to take with her the money she wants. As the reader looks back over the story, he sees that the money will prove useless for her ends, and that his fall will ruin her uncle"s life. Meredith here shows himself a master of tragedy.
The life of the strong, impulsive, young Robert is not so dependent upon the crises of temptation. For he knows himself and lives with a constant purpose to conquer himself. His purpose is stronger than his pa.s.sions. In respect to his obedience to Socrates"s favorite maxim, he is a man rare even in our self-conscious age. What shall we say of Edward, "villain and hero in one"? Like Dahlia he loses his life"s happiness through his besetting sin. Several times a courageous word said that ought to be said, or a brave deed done that should have been done might have saved him. And each time he proves himself a coward, until it is too late. Like the children of Israel he would not enter the promised land for fear of the inhabitants thereof. Like them too, he atoned by spending his forty years in the wilderness, and there laying down his life.
We must not neglect the "fascinating Peggy Lovell,"--a coquette whose charm even a woman can feel. Avarice and love of pleasure are her besetting sins. And avarice leads her to her fate. She has chosen to sow her wild oats and to accrue her debts. These she pays, as we all must in one way or another, with herself. Her way is to marry the man who can pay them rather than the man she loves.
One and all, major and minor characters, they come to the crises of their destinies. One after another chooses according to his character his life. This is Meredith"s teaching.
But our author is not always sounding the very depths of life. He is no preacher, but a painter of human nature. The power of mind has a large place in his books. "Drink of faith in the brains a full draught," he tells us; and again:--"To read with a soul in the mirror of mind Is man"s chief lesson."
"Diana of the Cross-Ways" teaches the partial failure, the temporary unhappiness, that result from lack of mental balance. It is the story of a charming, brilliant, but impulsive woman who makes many mistakes and who suffers from them. Diana is capable of loving one unworthy of her, and for such lack of wisdom she pays dearly. Yet she holds firmly and purely to the right and so wins happiness in the end. She is foolish sometimes, but she is not a fool. Hence her story is not a tragedy.
This novelist-philosopher has taught us, then, that folly tends to bring failure, but that righteousness is stronger than folly. He is not content to stop in his teachings even here. In "The Tragic Comedians"
he goes still further, and deals with the interrelations of the moral and intellectual. For character rules intellect, as intellect reacts upon character.
"The Tragic Comedians" begins with the birth of a love. With Clotilde, daughter of a highly respectable, but very conventional citizen, Alvan, a Jew and demagogue, a man of widespread and somewhat notorious reputation, falls in love. Clotilde is a beautiful, bright woman; interesting, but cowardly. Like all Meredith"s heroes and heroines, she has her besetting sin.
To this sudden, overpowering new love Clotilde yields her heart, but will not yield her actions. She is afraid. While Alvan would go at once to her parents to ask for her hand, Clotilde, seeing only too plainly how little hope there is of obtaining their consent, prefers to dally with matters, and insists on his postponing the interview. Alvan"s straightforward nature cannot understand such half-way measures. He leaves her unsought for a time, and begins to fade out of Clotilde"s mind. Suddenly, when in the mountains with a friend, she hears that Alvan is near. She wants him then, and goes to seek him. Again he misunderstands her. This time he asks her to run away with him, but she refuses, seeming not so much shocked as afraid. She answers, not in a womanly, straightforward way, but with an evasion. Then she consents to let him speak to her father and mother. She addresses them first on the subject, but is met with a torrent of angry words. The poor thing cannot stand that. In her weakness she makes her next great mistake, and runs away to Alvan, beseeching him to marry her secretly. The woman who would not listen to his request for this very thing but a day or two before now begs for it. She finds that it is too late. Her lover, in his pride, has determined to meet her parents on their own ground.
He will win her, he now declares, by conventional methods. So he takes her to a friend"s home. It is there that the chief crisis of the book takes place, a crisis which is one of the most interesting I know in literature. It is a moral crisis.
Clotilde has come to it through various steps of weakness. Alvan has reached it through pride and its reaction from his former shady life to a desire for conventionalism. A strong man who had before obeyed conventional rules might there have thrown them aside. To Alvan, on account of their long disuse, they seemed more precious than they need.
So Alvan meets the crisis overconfident in his strength. Clotilde meets it afraid, cowering in her weakness. Of her state Meredith says:
"Men and women alike, who renounce their own individuality by cowering thus abjectly under some other before the storm, are in reality abjuring their idea of that other, and offering themselves up to the genius of Power in whatsoever direction it may chance to be manifested, in whatsoever person. We no sooner shut our eyes than we consent to be prey, we lose the soul of election."
Alvan handed Clotilde back to her parents. She meekly did what he said.
She was hurt. She could not understand his action. Had she but stood up against this mistake, he might have had pity on her even yet. Or, had he not changed his own rigid determination, the action might have prevented that worst result, the weakening of her belief in him. There is nothing like cowardice to destroy one"s faith in others. There is nothing like courageous action to clear away those mists of doubt.
Clotilde"s "craven" will began to demoralize her mind.
But her chance is not over yet. She may still cling to Alvan. Doubtless he will seek her, he has not given her up. Ah, but circ.u.mstances were too strong. For the craven they are always too strong. By a short imprisonment, by family storms and prayers, Clotilde is reduced to external subjection. The disorder of her mind increases.
While submitting to her father"s command, while writing words of dismissal to Alvan, and even accepting the attentions of a former suitor, she still says in her heart of hearts that she will always be loyal to him. How peculiar seems the twisting, "serpentine" nature! She still waits for Alvan to save her from the chains she daily forges for herself. Meanwhile Alvan does his best. He uses all means,-- conventional and otherwise. He finally forces permission from Clotilde"s father to hold a free interview with Clotilde. She is to tell him openly and freely whether she will marry him or not. So he hopes to free her of coercion.
So far as circ.u.mstances are concerned, there is now nothing to prevent a happy ending; but from moral causes it is impossible.
The chains she has forged for herself are too strong. Her fancies have become diseased by long straining to a cowardly deceit. She think"s Alvan"s messengers deceitful too.
So she refuses. She throws away thereby her last chance. And yet--can we believe it?--she still hopes. Alvan has done his best and has failed. His friends have tried to help him. Circ.u.mstance has given away before them. And she has thrown away their help--yet she still hopes.
Alvan sends a challenge to her father. Prince Marko accepts it, and now her shuddering trust is in Providence. Marko will be killed. Now Alvan shall have her hand. But "Providence" does not save her. Alvan is killed, and Prince Marko returns Clotilde cannot understand it. She is stunned, but recovers sufficiently to marry Prince Marko.
"Not she, it was the situation they had created which was guilty," she had thought.
"The craven with desires expecting to be blest is a zealot of the faith which ascribes the direction of events to the outer world."
Of Alvan"s death, Meredith says some very characteristic words. Let me quote once again:
"He perished of his weakness, but it was a strong man that fell."
"He was "a tragic comedian," one of the lividly ludicious, whom we cannot laugh at, but must contemplate, to distinguish where their character strikes the note of discord with life; for otherwise, in the reflection of their history, life will seem a thing demoniacally inclined by fits to antic and dive into gulfs."
This, then, is George Meredith"s message. We have eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the power to choose between the two has entered into our souls. We are under the rule of a great overhanging law. Destiny"s wheels we cannot stop, but through our capacity for moral choice, our hands lie on the b.u.t.ton that moves the whole machine in its relation to our own individual lives.
This is a great lesson. How strong in its likeness to the teachings of our great masters of the past! How needful in its new scientific form to-day! How suggestive as to the universe! Does it not follow that as our lives are planned so is this universe planned in which we live!
Does it not follow that the spiritual is the central life upon which all else depends? It is the teaching of the childhood of the race, broadened through knowledge of life"s pa.s.sion, humbled and heightened through sight of G.o.d"s hand, strengthened and widened through the opening of our eyes in modern science to a fuller and clearer knowledge, not only of the machinery of the universe, but also of its motive power.
_Emily G. Hooker_.
THE TRAGEDY OF OPHELIA.
RENUNCIATION.
The "Tragedy of Hamlet" has its origin in the murder of Hamlet"s father, its development in Hamlet"s preparation for revenge, and its consummation in the murderer"s death. It is well summed up in the Anglicized t.i.tle of the old German play, "Fratricide Punished,"
("Hamlet," Variorum Edition, Furness, Vol. II., p. 121). In the progress of this tragedy Ophelia"s own sad story has no part or lot.
She is in it, but not of it, and her relationship to it is an episode.
Like "The Murder of Gonzago," however, it is a tragedy within the tragedy, but it turns wholly upon the loves of Hamlet and Ophelia, their interruption, and its result. For this reason it is greatly shorn of detail, and therefore doubtless it has always been regarded as a mystery.
"The Tragedy of Ophelia" opens with a narrative of Hamlet"s ardent pursuit of Ophelia with vows of love, the surrender of her maiden heart to him, and their free and bounteous interviews thereafter. Here the action of the drama begins, and her father, doubting the integrity of Hamlet"s purpose, forbids her further reception of his attentions, and, apparently without explanation made to Hamlet, she obeys him. Of what Hamlet thinks or says of this we are not in terms informed, and can only infer it from his conduct towards her afterwards. But that conduct was of a most extraordinary character, seeming to many students of the play to be inexplicable. The explanations of others may be resolved into three theories, each of which deserves a pa.s.sing notice. It has been claimed that insanity will account for it, and indeed Hamlet"s treatment of Ophelia has been the chief argument advanced in proof of his insanity; but it is incredible that Shakespeare should have devoted the only two interviews which he had with her, and which had so important an influence upon her life, to the mere vaporings of a madman. It has been suggested that he is putting on "an antic disposition," as he had foretold he would, with a view to deceiving the King concerning his intentions, and such conduct would have been fitting with the temptress in Belleforest"s "Hystorie," (_Ibid_., 91); but Shakespeare has transformed the creature of that story into Hamlet"s gentle sweetheart, and so to lacerate her soul by way of subterfuge would have been an act of unjustifiable brutality, of which he could by no means have been guilty. It has been urged that his mind"s eye is jaundiced by his mother"s gross behavior, and that thereupon he turns distrustfully from womankind; but long after his mother"s wicked marriage, perhaps a month afterwards, he is reveling in Ophelia"s love,--a balm that gracious Nature often pours on bleeding hearts. And further, from either of these points of view, the sudden and extravagant change in Hamlet"s feelings towards Ophelia, the cruel harshness of his speech to her soon after, and his subsequent complete indifference to her, are beyond the requirements of the situation, and the theories therefore seem rather to perplex than to explain.