established order of things, and have a jovial
dark sister and a dismal light one introduced
as startling novelties in one or two of the
hundred new volumes which we are likely to
receive next season from the Circulating
Library?

But, after all, our long-established two
sisters seem to be exceptional beings, and to
possess comparatively small importance, the
moment our minds revert to that vastly
superior single personage, THE HEROINE.  Let
me mention, to begin with, that we wish no
change to be made in our respectable,
recognised, old-fashioned Heroine, who has lived
and loved and wept for centuries.  I have
taken her to my bosom thousands of times
already, and ask nothing better than to
indulge in that tender luxury thousands of
times again.  I love her blushing cheek, her
gracefully-rounded form, her chiselled nose,
her slender waist, her luxuriant tresses which
always escape from the fillet that binds them.
Any man or woman who attempts, from a
diseased craving after novelty, to cheat me
out of one of her moonlight walks, one of
her floods of tears, one of her kneeling
entreaties to obdurate relatives, one of her
rapturous sinkings on her lover's bosom, is a
novelist whom I distrust and dislike.  He,
or she, may be a very remarkable writer;
but their books will not do for my family
and myself.  The Heroine, the whole Heroine,
and nothing but the Heroine—that is our cry,
if you drive us into a corner and insist on
our stating precisely what we want, in the
plainest terms possible.

Being, thus, conservatives in regard to the
established Heroine, though tainted with
radicalism in reference to the established
Hero, it will not, I trust, appear a very
unaccountable proceeding, if we now protest
positively, and even indignantly, against a
new kind of heroine—a bouncing,
ill-conditioned, impudent young woman, who has
been introduced among us of late years.  I
venture to call this wretched and futile
substitute for our dear, tender, gentle, loving old
Heroine, the Man-Hater; because, in every
book in which she appears, it is her mission
from first to last to behave as badly as
possible to every man with whom she comes in
contact.  She enters on the scene with a
preconceived prejudice against my sex, for which
I, as a man, abominate her; for which my
wife, my daughters, my nieces, and all other
available women whom I have consulted on
the subject, despise her.  When her lover
makes her an offer of marriage, she receives it
in the light of a personal insult, goes up to her
room immediately afterwards, and flies into
a passion with herself, because she is really
in love with the man all the time—comes
down again, and snubs him before company
instead of making a decent apology—pouts
and flouts at him, on all after-occasions, until
the end of the book is at hand—then, suddenly,
turns round and marries him!  If we feel
inclined to ask why she could not, under the
circumstances, receive his advances with
decent civility at first, we are informed that
her "maidenly consciousness" prevented it.
This maidenly consciousness seems to me very
like new English for our old-fashioned phrase
bad manners.  And I am the more confirmed
in this idea, because, on all minor occasions,
the Man-Hater is persistently rude and
disobliging to the last.  Every individual in the
novel who wears trousers and gets within
range of her maidenly consciousness, becomes
her natural enemy from that moment.  If
he makes a remark on the weather, her lip
curls; if he asks leave to give her a potato
at dinner-time (meaning, poor soul, to pick
out for her the mealiest in the dish), her neck
curves in scorn; if he offers a compliment,
finding she won't have a potato, her nostril
dilates.  Whatever she does, even in her least
aggressive moments, she always gets the
better of all the men.  They are set up like
nine-pins for the Man-Hater to knock down.
They are described, on their introduction, as
clever, resolute fellows; but they lose their wits
and their self-possession the instant they come
within hail of the Man-Hater's terrible tongue.
No man kisses her, no man dries her tears, no
man sees her blush (except with rage), all
through the three volumes.  And this is the
opposition Heroine who is set up as successor
to our soft, feminine, loveable, sensitive
darling of former days!

Set up, too, by lady-novelists, who ought
surely to be authorities when female characters
are concerned.  Is the Man-Hater a true
representative of young women, now-a-days?
If so, what is to become of my son—my
unlucky son, aged twelve years.  In a short
time, he will be marriageable, and he will
go into the world to bill and coo, and offer
his hand and heart, as his father did before
him.  My unhappy offspring, what a prospect
awaits you!  One forbidding phalanx of
Man-Haters, bristling with woman's dignity,
and armed to the teeth with maidenly
consciousness, occupies the wide matrimonial
field, look where you will!  Ill-fated youth,
yet a few years, and the female neck will
curve, the female nostril dilate, at the sight
of you.  You see that stately form, those
rustling skirts, that ample brow, and fall on
your knees before it, and cry "Marry me,
marry me, for Heaven's sake!"  My deluded
boy, that is not a woman—it is a Man-Hater
—a whited sepulchre full of violent expostulations
and injurious epithets.  She will lead
you the life of a costermonger's ass, until she
has exhausted her whole stock of maidenly
consciousness; and she will then say (in
effect, if not in words):—"Inferior animal,
I loved you from the first—I have asserted
my womanly dignity by making an abject
fool of you in public and private—now you
may marry me!" Marry her not, my son!
Go rather to the slave-market at Constantinople
—buy a Circassian wife, who has