ABSTRACT
Mr Gissing's novel is a strange compound of force and weakness. It has one woman's character-that of Isabel Clarendon, whose name is the title of the book-which is a masterpiece of invention and execution. It sounds like a paradox to say so, and yet it is true that both the charm of this woman and the originality of the study depend on the
fact that the character is after all an essentially commonplace one. She is a very nice woman, with nothing extraordinary about her. She does wrong, and owns it humbly; she has plenty of intelligence, but no genius; she has affections, but is not passionate; she has a conscience, but not a morbid one. Everybody admires her; all men worship her. She craves for love; she likes admiration, but she does not flirt. She has prejudices, and she knows they are prejudices, and tries to conquer them without succeeding. She fears poverty, and marries unworthily to escape from it; but after all she is not a worldly woman-only a coward. And all this is worked out with a delicate, affectionate carefulness which makes this one character a delightful feature in the book. To set against it, however, there is a background of plot which is exceedingly unpleasant. Moreover the story is told in a manner against which we must protest very strongly. It is, in truth, only half toldsome of the most important circumstances are only hinted at, the relations betwe~n the characters who are brought together in the story are left uncertain, and the imagination of the reader is kept constantly strained in unpleasant directions. Of course this sort of reserve has always one reason: the author fears that he will outrage the reader's taste if he states his plot in plain and full language. But the compromise does not really get over the difficulty. To those readers who can follow the suggestions, a story hinted is as good-or rather as bad-as told; to those who only imperfectly understand, it is almost sure to be worse. In any case a book so written must stand condemned as a work ofart; confusion ofpurpose is not more surely fatal to effect in composition than uncertainty of interpretation is to enjoyment. Much ofwhat we have said about the plot, we would apply also to the philosophical tendency of the book. That Mr Gissing does not look at the problems ofHfe from the orthodox point ofview is clear. It is not clear, however, what is his point ofview. There is a note of despair in most of the reflective passages, and one character, an interesting young woman called Ada Warren, declares herself an atheist. She is very disagreeable and very plain at the beginning, but in time she develops into good looks and greatness ofcharacter. The heroic part in the book is given to her, and she does one act of noble unselfishness; but the process by which her better self grows is not made very intelligible, nor do we feel at all sure how far Mr Gissing approves of her. Does he mean us to understand that atheism is the last word of human wisdom and that it is a word of despair though not of sin? If so, he would have done better to make his meaning clearer. There is a great
deal of skill in the construction of the subordinate characters in the story, and the conversations are well managed. The morbid man who is too fastidious to live in society and too weak to live alone is a particularly clever study, but he is rather too large for the story.
