THE WOMEN NOVELISTS

Although women wrote novels before Defoe, the father of English fiction, or Richardson, the founder of the modern novel, we cannot detect any peculiarly feminine elements in their work, or profitably consider it apart from the general development of prose. In the beginning they copied men, and saw through men’s eyes, because—here and elsewhere—they assumed that men’s dicta and practice in life and art were their only possible guides and examples. Women to-day take up every form of fiction attempted by men, because they assume that their powers are as great, their right to express themselves equally varied. But there was a period, covering about a hundred years, during which women “found themselves” in fiction, and developed the art, along lines of their own, more or less independently. This century may conveniently be divided into three periods, which it is the object of the following pages to analyse: From the publication of Evelina to the publication of Sense and Sensibility, 1778-1811. From the publication of Sense and Sensibility to the publication of Jane Eyre, 1811-1847. From the publication of Jane Eyre to the publication of Daniel Deronda, 1847-1876.