Browning's Heroines

, Sebald. He is wildly singing and drinking; to him it still seems night. But Ottima s

s on her; fumbles at the slide-bolt, till she exclaims that "of course it catches!" At last he succeeds in getting the window opened, and her only direct acknowledgment is to ask him if she "shall find him something else to spoil." But this imper

nds, my Sebald! I

't spea

ion from the light of day he recognises a

ibe against her ever-shuttered windows. Though it is she who now has ordered the unwelcome light to be admitted, he overlooks this in his enervation, and says how, before ever they met, he had ob

u were plotting

her outside.

od shutters, r

h, blind in a

r!-and the pe

d man sleeps with

is, this chair,

ray, or from genuine callousness, answers this first moan of anguish not at all. She gazes from the open lattice: "How clear the morning is-she can

or freshness can he feel; nothing is altered with this dawn-the plant he bruised in getting through t

instant. "Oh, shut

will le

nnot scent

the morn

shifts quickl

e, shut the

el now, Ottim

and all

d figuratively, with a wild appeal to

Let us

do you bear you

all o

him to "speak again and yet again," for only so, he feels, wi

se two words m

re. Notice, I'

lood.'

he speaks of "the deed," and at once he breaks out aga

devil tak

always, Luca

t-throat, y

rupts him, Ottima again puts the question by, and offers him wine. In do

Here'

hen we left th

oo-wine of bo

notice; he

his cut-throat

lso without comment. She gazes now from the closed window, sees a Capuchin monk go by, and makes some trivial remarks

hite-the white!"-then drinks ironically to Ottima's black eyes. He reminds her how he had

r last damned N

*

acteristic sentimentality and emotionalism. Her attitude remains unchanged until the critical moment; his shifts and sways with every word and action. No sooner has he drunk the white wine than he can brutally

. D

! Who means to

ake much of one another; there must be no more parade of love than there was yeste

still love y

uca and what'

ing old reproachful face" was ever in their though

ld lose each oth

his

Love!" he shudders back again:

e, answers by a reminiscence

May morning

een ascent o

on with him, asks if,

upon a thi

den

ll not say "a thing" . . . and at last that marvellous patience

' body! had

ca Gaddi's mu

t his couch-foo

in to asking if, that morning, he would have "pored upon it?" She knows he would not; then w

. F

goe

I hate him wor

here? I would

nds, and say, '

, th

ing for the murdered man, she goes to Sebald and

all along been growing in h

e your han

ening-off! oh,

moving to some revenge for it, points out, with a profounder depth of callousness than

and help

hastly gle

We ma

e whole wide h

*

ot look; he would give her neck and her splendid shoulders, "both those breasts of yours," if this thing could be undone. It is not the mere killing-though he would "kill the world so Luca lives again,

venturous a

ne young

killed the man who rescued him from starvation

. He

nothin

d threaten and do more," had he no righ

us at tab

n across till ou

ole of her nature (as, again, at this hour it is) reveals itself-callous but courageous, proud and passionate, cruel in its utter sensuality, yet with the force and honesty which at

k at me while

or the

"affectation of simpl

s naked cr

looked over:

rth it, great as it is?

noon I owned m

oes on-the places, aspects, things, sounds, scents, that waited on their ecstasy, the fire and consuming force of hers, the passive, no less lustful, receptivity of his-and culminates in a chant to that "crowning nig

searching tem

anon some bri

ine-tree roof, her

enger thro' the

lunged his weap

ilty thee and

ke a whole sea

in a frenz

hed myself up

uth to your hot

ose, and covere

ld, the s

rdon for the harsh words he has given her, yields, struggles . . . yields again at las

w, dear Ottima

you forgive m

eat q

which she had loosed in the moment of recalling the

queen, your spi

t in sin.

him; so he

queen, my spir

icent

is said, there sounds withou

r's at t

's at t

g's at

side's de

k's on

l's on t

in his

ht with t

a pas

*

heart to carol out its joy-no more. She is passing the great house of the First Happy One, so soon rejected in her game of make-believe! If now she could know

n full tide of passion by her song. It strikes o

aven! Do you hea

you s

contemp

that little

ested on the st

oliday the who

e our silk-mill

silk-mills now

nger to be quiet-but Pippa does not hear, and Ottima then

led now by that voice from hea

lothes on-dress

f that paint!

le!" his hideous repulse sinks to a

she is empt

w!-how mira

-had she not str

heek hangs listl

ds the feature

ven brow and

places: and

o have a sort

a dea

henticity is her so

ak to me-n

es the dread analysis of

full-orbed face,

cious indolenc

hat cry bre

-not o

sesses her; she whelms him with a torrent of recrimi

awning, cr

alks and eat

orrible trance, continu

. M

ive faultless s

own there was no

that "the little peasant's voice has righted all again"-can be sure that he knows "which is better, vice or virtue, purity or lust, nature or trick," and in the high nobility of such repentance as flings the worst of blame upon the other one, will grant

urse you! God's

*

that Browning meant us to perceive from the first-that Ottima's is the nobler spirit of the two. Her

. .

ebald, not yo

ole crime. Do

presently-firs

t to kill mys

t-not as a breas

use you lean

here, there, both

*

is too late for that, so "There, there, both deaths presently." . . . And now let us read again the lamentable dying words of Sebald. It is even more than I have said: not only are we meant to understand that Ottima's is the nobler spirit, but (I think) that not alone t

ned now-quite dro

hile her sole

im, O God, b

l find in Browning this passion for "the courage of the deed"; and we shall find that courage oftenest assigned to women. For him, it was wellnigh the cardinal virtue to be

ong thing-let man

uld in that hour save Sebald; but by the tenderness which underlay her fierce and lustful passion, and which, in any later relation, some other need of the man must infallibly have called forth, Ottima would, I believe, without Pippa have saved herself. Direct intervention: not every soul needs that. And-whether it be intentional or