Cooper of the
Quakerism of his ancestors; for he sometimes used it in his private
letters. But since the action of his stories was in nearly all cases
laid in a period in which the second person singular had become obsolete
in ordinary speech, an unnatural character is given to the dialogue,
which removes it still farther from the language of real life.

His failure in characterization was undoubtedly greatest in the women he
drew. Cooper's ardent admirers have always resented this charge. Each
one of them points to some single heroine that fulfills the highest
requirements that criticism could demand. It seems to me that close
study of his writings must confirm the opinion generally entertained.
All his utterances show that the theoretical view he had of the rights,
the duties, and the abilities of women, were of the most narrow and
conventional type. Unhappily it was a limitation of his nature that he
could not invest with charm characters with whom he was not in moral and
intellectual sympathy. There was, in his eyes, but one praiseworthy type
of womanly excellence. It did not lie in his power to represent any
other; on one occasion he unconsciously satirized his inability even to
conceive of any other. In "Mercedes of Castile" the heroine is (p. 279)
thus described by her aunt: "Her very nature," she says, "is made up of
religion and female decorum." It is evident that the author fancied that
in this commendation he was exhausting praise. These are the sentiments
of a man with whom devoutness and deportment have become the culminating
conception of the possibilities that lie in the female character. His
heroines naturally conformed to his belief. They are usually spoken of
as spotless beings. They are made up of retiring sweetness, artlessness,
and simplicity. They are timid, shrinking, helpless. They shudder with
terror on any decent pretext. But if they fail in higher qualities, they
embody in themselves all conceivable combinations of the proprieties and
minor morals. They always give utterance to the most unexceptionable
sentiments. They always do the extremely correct thing. The dead
perfection of their virtues has not the alloy of a single redeeming
fault. The reader naturally wearies of these uninterestingly discreet
and admirable creatures in fiction as he would in real life. He feels
that they would be a good deal more attractive if they were a good deal
less angelic. With all their faultlessness, moreo