ver, they do not attain
an ideal which is constantly realized by their living, but faulty sisters.
They do not show the faith, the devotion, the self-forgetfulness, and
self-sacrifice which women exhibit daily without being conscious that
they have done anything especially creditable. They experience, so far
as their own words and acts furnish evidence of their feelings, a sort
of lukewarm emotion which they dignify with the name of love. But they
not merely suspect without the slightest provocation, they give up the
men to whom they have pledged the devotion of their lives, for reasons
for which no one would think of abandoning an ordinary (p. 280)
acquaintance. In "The Spy" the heroine distrusts her lover's integrity
because another woman does not conceal her fondness for him. In "The
Heidenmauer" one of the female characters resigns the man she loves
because on one occasion, when heated by wine and maddened by passion, he
had done violence to the sacred elements. There was never a woman in
real life, whose heart and brain were sound, that conformed her conduct
to a model so contemptible. It is just to say of Cooper that as he
advanced in years he improved upon this feeble conception. The female
characters of his earlier tales are never able to do anything
successfully but to faint. In his later ones they are given more
strength of mind as well as nobility of character. But at best, the
height they reach is little loftier than that of the pattern woman of
the regular religious novel. The reader cannot help picturing for all of
them the same dreary and rather inane future. He is as sure, as if their
career had been actually unrolled before his eyes, of the part they will
perform in life. They will all become leading members of Dorcas
societies; they will find perpetual delight in carrying to the poor
bundles of tracts and packages of tea; they will scour the highways and
by-ways for dirty, ragged, hatless, shoeless, and godless children, whom
they will hale into the Sunday-school; they will shine with unsurpassed
skill in the manufacture of slippers for the rector; they will exhibit a
fiery enthusiasm in the decoration and adornment of the church at
Christmas and Easter festivals. Far be the thought that would deny
praise to the mild raptures and delicate aspirations of gentle natures
such as Cooper drew. But in novels, at least, one longs for a (p. 281)
ruddier life than flows in the veins of these pale