greeable. To my way of thinking, it is
principally the craving for novelty in characterisation that has
wrought the change in our heroines of fiction, although new freedom
and responsibilities have evolved new types. Naturally the
pulchritudinous weakling we shall always have with us, ugly girls with
brains are a welcome relief from the eternal purring of the popular
girl with the baby smile. But it would be a mistake to call Hedda, or
Mildred, or Undine, new women. Mildred is the most "advanced," Hedda
the most dangerous--she pulled the trigger far too early--and Undine
the most selfish of the three. The three are disagreeable, but the
trio is transitional in type. Each girl is a compromiser, Undine being
the boldest; she did a lot of shifting and indulged in much cowardly
evasion. Vulgarians all, they are yet too complex to be pinned down by
a formula. Old wine in these three new bottles makes for disaster.
Undine Spragg is the worst failure of the three. She got what she
wanted for she wanted only dross. Ibsen's Button-Moulder will meet her
at the Cross-Roads when her time comes. Hedda, like Strindberg's
Julia, may escape him because, coward as she was when facing harsh
reality, she had the courage to rid her family of a worthless
encumbrance. If she had been a robust egoist, and realised her nature
to the full, she would have been a Hedda Gabler "reversed," in a word,
the Hilda Wangel of The Master Builder. But with Mildred she lacked
the strength either to renounce or to sin. And Undine Spragg hadn't
the courage to become downright wicked; the game she played was so
pitiful that it wasn't worth the poor little tallow-dip. What is her
own is the will-to-silliness. As Princess Estradina exclaimed in her
brutally frank fashion: "My dear, it's what I always say when people
talk to me about fast Americans: you're the only innocent women left
in the world...." This is far from being a compliment. No, Undine is
voluble, vulgar, and "catty," but she isn't wicked. It takes brains to
be wicked in the grand manner. She is only disagreeable and
fashionable; and she is as impersonal and monotonous as a self-playing
pianoforte.

BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER

PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

=Ivory Apes and Peacocks.= 12mo. _net_, $1.50
=New Cosmopolis.= 12mo. _net_, $1.50
=The Pathos of Distance.= 12mo.