Unforgiven
A Novel. By . New York : George S. Wilcox.
As literature, we suppose that “Unforgiven ” is not wholly worthy of notice here or elsewhere ; and yet it is such a story as very many people would read if it fell in their way, — we have, indeed, read it quite through ourselves. It illustrates, too, some fatal æsthetic and ethical tendencies, and would afford a text for a very pretty discourse, if one had a mind to preach either good taste or good morals ; and as it seems a first book, and the author appears very much in earnest, and does not mean any harm (as so many novelists of her sex seem to do, nowadays), we think it not quite unprofitable to speak of it. She — for, on the whole, we think it is not he — who has written it, undertakes to make us acquainted with the sorrows of such a sinful experience as Hawthorne has depicted in “ The Scarlet Letter,” only in this case the victim is a young lady in the best society, whose error is so well concealed that she continues a leader of fashion, and but for “a drawn look about the eyes,” and a “ cold, impassive expression,” shows no outward mark of the anguish within. She will not marry her seducer when he returns penitent from Europe, and the man whom she comes to love, and whom, after a terrible struggle, she allows herself tacitly to deceive as concerns her past life, and promises to marry, discovers her secret by chance. He is one of those all-accomplished doctors in whom ladynovelists delight, and it is at the death-bed of Clarine’s child, which he had supposed to be her brother’s, that he learns the truth from her frantic grief. This scene is really well conceived, and for the most part well executed, but it stands almost alone in the book. Here two people actually speak from hearts of their own, simply and strongly, and the effect is necessarily good. But usually the characters are uncertain in their motives, and insupportably ornate in their conversation. Their talk is often such as you would expect to hear, say, at a Southern tournament,—so ceremonious, so flowery, so bland, while their moral ideas have a curious obliquity. We shrink from noticing the ease with which Clarine’s ruin is accomplished ; but it is surprising that she should consider herself deceived by a man who did not intimate marriage to her. She is, however, of an odd temper throughout, and carries a particularly high hand with her father, whom she thinks she may learn to hate, because he wishes some visible token of the remorse that afflicts her, but who is yet on his own part a person of singular habits of mind for a clergyman. It is not so bad that he should wish her to marry her “ deceiver,” and thus secure the family respectability against the chances of the discovery of her secret; but it is very bad that he should suffer his particular friend, Doctor Purdon, to fall in love with Clarine and offer her marriage, and should rejoice in their engagement, without thinking it his duty to tell him her history. There is ever so much anguish asserted for Clarine, but her beauty, her elegance, her social brilliancy, are fondly dwelt upon, and as to her error the reader has only a wretched and confusing sense of incongruity somewhere. Clarine suffers chiefly from those perfunctory pangs which the author makes her feel when she gets her alone. It appears no more than is due that at last, having found peace by forgiving everybody, and resolutely eschewing marriage, she should live to be just as lovely in gray hair as in blond, should not look half her age, and should be able to sing in such a way that young girls must cry out, “ It is surely an angel’s voice ! O, I could worship her ! ”
We ought to be grateful, however, to the author of “ Unforgiven,” that she did not take a shorter method than broken pride and relinquished hate to make her Clarine an honest woman, for every one must see what a simple and easy thing it would have been to restore her uncontaminated to the bosom of society by having her reverend father shoot the betrayer on sight.
In the course of the book there are the awfulest things hinted about New York fashionable life, which it would be really shocking, though ever so interesting, to believe. We prefer not to believe them, on the whole; and, for our own part, we wish heartily that the ladies, when they write novels, would leave such cruel themes as the author of “ Unforgiven” has chosen. We should like, now, to have a little of the amusing insipidity, the admirable dulness, of real life depicted in fiction. We would rather know what took place in a young lady’s mind on a shopping excursion than be told of the transactions of her soul after her ruin; and the chances are, we hope, that most novelists of her sex could treat her better in the former attitude. To our simple taste there is sufficient tragedy in the idea of her getting home a new dress spoiled by the dress-maker ; and if you must have intrigue, what black arts are not employed to avoid the acquaintance of certain people, what wiles to achieve the friendship of others ! Besides there is in life ever so much love-making of a perfectly harmless kind, and even amiable flirtation, that we ask nothing worse. What more pathetic figure need one look upon than that of a young girl who somehow expects a call, or a bow, or an invitation to dance, which she does not get ?
These things, carefully studied and lightly done, are really much more desirable in fiction than clouds and crimes and sins and shames of whatever tint ; and we respectfully ask the attention of Berriedale to them when she writes again.