ometric
adjustment, when a woman's talent is at zero, journalistic approbation is
at the boiling pitch; when she attains mediocrity, it is already at no
more than summer heat; and if ever she reaches excellence, critical
enthusiasm drops to the freezing point. Harriet Martineau, Currer Bell,
and Mrs. Gaskell have been treated as cavalierly as if they had been men.
And every critic who forms a high estimate of the share women may
ultimately take in literature, will on principle abstain from any
exceptional indulgence toward the productions of literary women. For it
must be plain to every one who looks impartially and extensively into
feminine literature that its greatest deficiencies are due hardly more to
the want of intellectual power than to the want of those moral qualities
that contribute to literary excellence--patient diligence, a sense of the
responsibility involved in publication, and an appreciation of the
sacredness of the writer's art. In the majority of woman's books you see
that kind of facility which springs from the absence of any high
standard; that fertility in imbecile combination or feeble imitation
which a little self-criticism would check and reduce to barrenness; just
as with a total want of musical ear people will sing out of tune, while a
degree more melodic sensibility would suffice to render them silent. The
foolish vanity of wishing to appear in print, instead of being
counterbalanced by any consciousness of the intellectual or moral
derogation implied in futile authorship, seems to be encouraged by the
extremely false impression that to write _at all_ is a proof of
superiority in a woman. On this ground we believe that the average
intellect of women is unfairly represented by the mass of feminine
literature, and that while the few women who write well are very far
above the ordinary intellectual level of their sex, the many women who
write ill are very far below it. So that, after all, the severer critics
are fulfilling a chivalrous duty in depriving the mere fact of feminine
authorship of any false prestige which may give it a delusive attraction,
and in recommending women of mediocre faculties--as at least a negative
service they can render their sex--to abstain from writing.

The standing apology for women who become writers without any special
qualification is that society shuts them out from other spheres of
occupation. Society is a very culpable entity, and has to answer for the