Browning's Heroines Part 40

I think the saddest thing in this poem is its last stanza; for we feel, do we not? that _now_ she is having her first opportunity to be both happy and good--free from the intolerable magnanimity of this husband.

And so, by making a male utterance too "n.o.ble," Browning has almost redressed the balance. The tear had been too frequently a.s.signed to woman; exultation too often had sounded from man. We have seen that many of the feminine "tears" were supererogatory; and now, in this chapter of the Woman Won, we see that she can tap the source of those salt drops in man. But not in _James Lee's Wife_ is the top-note of magnanimity more strained than in _The Worst of It_. Moral gymnastics should not be practised at the expense of others. No one knew that better than Browning, but too often he allowed his subtle intellect to confute his warm, wise heart--too often he fell to the lure of "situation," and forgot the truth. "A man and woman _might_ feel so," he sometimes seems to have said; "it does not matter that no man and woman ever have so felt."

And thus, now and then, he gave both men and women--the worst of it. But oftener he gave them such a best of it that I hardly can imagine a reader of Browning who has not love and courage in the heart, and trust and looking-forward in the soul; who does not, in the words of the great Epilogue:--

"Greet the unseen with a cheer."

FOOTNOTES:

[308:1] Compare this pa.s.sage with one in a letter to E. B. B.: "In this House of Life, where I go, you go--when I ascend, you run before--when I descend, it is after you."

THE END