Browning's Heroines

ed that mood to woman. But he does not show her as alone in suffering love's pain. The lyrics we are now to consider give us woman as the mak

han woman's does; that in the feminine utterances "little beyond the actual love of this life is imagined";[277:1] and that in such utterances "we no

oman, we may suppose, being-as if she were not quite certainly a person-included in Nature. That a devotee of Browning should retain this attitude may well surprise us, since nothing in his "teaching" is clearer than that woman is the great inspiring influence for man. But the curious fact which has struck both Mr. Nettleship and myself-that, in Browning's work, woman does so frequently, when expressing herself, fail in breadth and imagination-may very well account for the obsolete gesture in this interpreter. . . . Can it be, then, that Browning was (as

hrase contemned of him. No love is in vain. Grief, anguish even, may attend it, but never can its issue be futility. Nor is this merely the already familiar view that somehow, though rejected, love benignly works for the beloved. "T

s mine now! She has los

, grown perfect, I shall

the proving both our p

quickly! This world's u

social world remote from her adorer's; in each she has, nevertheless, perceived him and been drawn to him-but in Cristina is caught back int

looked at me if she mea

n, you call such, I suppo

pleases, and yet leave

knew it, when she fixed

means nothing-that she is, simply, a coquette. But he "can't tell what her look said." Certainly not any "vile cant" about giving her heart to him bec

as well, he declares that it was a moment of true revelati

re, God knows! but not qu

denied us, when the sp

m its false ones, and

the wrong way, to it

to him also in the event, not because she had not recognised him. She had recognised him, and more-she had recognised th

better ends, there may even be deeper blisses, but that

fatuity! He sees that she "knew

, next moment, the worl

t for ever. Never fea

knowledge, lest we walk t

those who "catch God's secret" is simply to m

s mine now! She has los

torious one-the one who has two souls to work with! He will prove all that such a pair can accomplish; and then death can come quickly: "this world's

e a humanist to keep us always on so shining a peak; he knew that there are lower levels, where the wounded wings m

spray the b

blossom wi

tree-top sh

nest and h

hope beyo

y's, which the fl

ed out, built

rt the Queen

d! . . . Gratitude, we see always, for the gift of love in the heart, for God's secret. The lover was left alone, but he had known the thril

ever been his at al

bound the ro

rose, I str

em where Pau

ot turn as

ie. Suppos

s, they might

nth, he tried to learn

venture

ot hear my

ring; fold m

line had ba

e has been learning to love her. Now he h

give me heav

may-I sti

n heaven, bl

humiliation" commonly assigned to unsuccessful love, he never dreams: where can be humiliation in having caught God's secret? . . . And even if she have

dearest, si

t length my

ng all my l

life seemed me

s written and

eart rises

pride and t

he hope you

emory of

ide, if you w

one more last

alf-pitiful, dwell on him for a moment-"wi

. R

replenishe

ght was at l

istress, s

ether, breat

y more am

e world may end

n down upon his breast the fairest, most celestial cloud in evening-skies . . . a

, near and y

st fade for h

e and lingere

a moment on

itself out-there shall be no repining, no qu

that, had

gain, so mi

ve loved me?

ave hated,

*

are riding

is enfranchised spirit seems to range the universe-everywhere the don

ould love me;

e. We are hedged in everywhere by the fleshly screen. But they two ride, and he sees her bosom lift and fall. . . . To the rest, then, their crowns! To the statesman, t

s better, by

xpress it like him; but has he had it? When he dies, will he have been a whit

's a joy! For

The poet shall sing the joy

oo, with his twenty y

your Venus,

rl that ford

s even worse. After his life's labours, they say (even his friends say) that the opera is great

uth; but we r

to strive? We must lead some life beyond, we must have a bliss to die for! If he

good, would he

d she are beyo

*

him: he will not whine; what she does shall somehow have its good for him-she shall not be wrong! He has the thought of her

the world may

r, so deeply has he mused on what she is to him: it is the great paradox-almost one forgets that she is there, so intimate the union, and so silen

has not spo

hat hers is the same? Then what would it mean? . . . And the hope so manfully resigned floods b

s flower of love, they both are fixed so, ever shall so abide-she wi

just prove t

ogether, for

*

with him in all, as she is in this? Will the proud dark eyes have forgotten the pity-and the pride? . . . The wrong that has been done to Browning by his too-subtle "interpreters" is, in my view, incalculable. Always he must be, for them, the teacher. Bu

s may be the change from the minute's joy to an eternal fulfilment of joy." Does this mean anything? And if it did, does that stanza mean it? I declare that it means nothing, and that the stanza means what instinctively (I feel and know) each reader,

Augustine Birrell in one of the volumes of Obiter Dicta, "were those unfortunates who, whilst carelessly strolling among sylvan shades,

inhumanly cold woman, who requires in him an unattainable unio

purple, yellow; and along these shafts, which symbolise experience, her lover is to travel-coming back to her at close of each wayfaring, for the rays end before her feet, ben

e sad slow sil

pity, pardon

ence that I

ed to b

untinged by the ray which he is to traverse. She sends him, deliberately; he must break through the quintessential

hoped the smile would pass the "pallid moonbeam limit," be "transformed at last to sunlight and salvation." If she could pass that goal and "gain love's birth," he scarce would know his clay from gold's own self; "for gold me

e one supre

sole and whole

sdain, repulsion, and he could not face those things; he rose from his kissing of her feet-he did go forth again. This time he might return, im

d. Still she stands, still she listens,

your sanctio

pon that untr

retrack m

pure soul, alike the source and tomb of that prismatic glow." To this yellow he has subjected himself utterly: she had ordained it! He was to "bathe, to burnish himself, so

ow ray. He pleads once more her own permis

gnition, no

re wonder at

rb, nay-flesh-d

his ad

must share the knowledge shrined in her supernal eyes. And this wa

your presen

pity, pardon

trusted her word that the feat can be achieved, the ray trod to its edge, yet he return unsmi

. No,

nture! No mor

l, and findin

the old stat

petrific

t invective. She is not so much har

man with the

he male ac

ruth subdues its rapier-edge to suit the bulrush spear that womanly falsehood fights with? Oh woman's ears that will not hear the truth! oh woman's "

s off. "Ah m

ave's querul

knows but this time the "crimson quest" may deepen to a su

his is not woman's mission! And in the lover's querulous outbreak-the "true slave's" outbreak-we may read the innermost meaning of the allegory. If women will set up "the pert pretence to match the male achievement," they must consent to take the world as men are for

d not return "absurd as frightful." . . . He cannot. Experience is not whole without "some wonder linked with fear"-the colours! The shafts ray from her "midmost home"; she "dwells there, hearted." True, but this is not experience, and she shall not conceit herself into believing it to be. She shall not set up the "pert pretence to match the male achievement": she shall learn that men make women "easy victors," when their rough effaces itself to smooth for woman's sake. One or the other she must c

tos-well-nigh the most abstract of all Browning's

rption in the thought of her: "the woman I loved so well, who married the other." He had been wont to "sit and look at his life." That life, until he met her, had rippled and run like a river. But he met her and l

, a thread of water might escape and run through the "evening-country," safe, untormented, silent, until it reached the sea. This would be his tender

nd way w

ld think, 'Per

ngs happen,

gh the sky in

the hard, and

no longer cha

have rolled from

vigorous, might try again to win her. . . . That wa

dead! No dou

; all the brooding days

l's done with:

ear and won

e life that

sentence, so

dead that wa

at was none of

e past left: wo

perhaps she does want him. He feels that she does-a "pulse in his cheek that stabs and stops" assures him that she "needs help in her grave, and finds

ve done more:

answer, and

s henceforth

more to dese

foe, get ric

ir arms, stare f

ven have burs

away to a ro

ror, bright, bloo

ad not don

e other do?

Edith! Here

six whole y

life with yo

grudged his st

ould overta

e loved you!

in the world,

ountable things. That he, young, prosperous, sane, and free, as he was and is, should have poured his life out, as it were, and held it forth to her, and s

you? 'Tis more

said; I was 'wa

*

head that was t

lady, assur

or maundered, or else, unmarried, strove to believe that the peace of singleness was peace, and not-w

you were let

d "looked to the other, who acqui

u his rubbish

doved you-di

r pink of poets? . . . But, after all, she had chos

ine, marked bro

nd wanting

bleed these te

come, and the

tagging yo

hat cry of the g

d only come

art and found what blood is; then would have twitched the robe from her lay-figure of a

was easy; lat

might meet yo

lip if one la

od news, you

knew that your

my time, keep

shall see; but not like the others; there shall be no turning aside, and he will begin at once as he means to end.

who decline,

ath in the darkn

mingled; one knows not which is which-the pride of love, humility of self. Only so could the loved one have declined to our level; only so could our love acquire value in those

way you had wi

ball in a

s chaste as a

-there was nev

outh, for it w

ed chin, too

in ways when you

you never co

n, however;

ed-some would

-footed ha

right when it

back on the

d kneel, and

live,

have high observance, courtship made p

d white too:

l over that b

, and you down

rst at her presence" by pouring it away, by drinking it down with her, as long ago he yearned to

mentators says so. She was the man's whole life, a

who decline,

death in the d

giving-in": it is for intenser life that he dies,

It does not come at all: the heart has known the loved one's loveliness. It has but hoped to come: the heart hoped with it. It has set a price upon itself, a cr

eates the love to

TNO

h this passage, Any Wife to any Husband-a

has written is more character

n By the

Introduction to the Stu

ainly never intended" (he also said) "to personify wisdom, or philosophy, or any other abstraction." And he summed up the, after all, sufficiently obvious meaning by saying that Numpholeptos is "an allegory of an impossible ideal object of love, accepted conventionally as such by a man who

cho of Heine, in one of h

d up, 'tis the

ances they

grave lie we

hine arms

d up, 'tis th

r Hell they

nothing, we

quietly