_Wilhelm Meister_ is, as Niebuhr
truly said, "a menagerie of tame animals." Doubtless Goethe's
women--certainly his women of culture--are more truly and inwardly
conceived and created than Scott's. Except Jeanie Deans and Madge
Wildfire, and perhaps Lucy Ashton, Scott's women are apt to be
uninteresting, either pink and white toys, or hardish women of the
world. But then no one can compare the men of the two writers, and not
see Scott's vast pre-eminence on that side.
I think the deficiency of his pictures of women, odd as it seems to
say so, should be greatly attributed to his natural chivalry. His
conception of women of his own or a higher class was always too
romantic. He hardly ventured, as it were, in his tenderness for them,
to look deeply into their little weaknesses and intricacies of
character. With women of an inferior class, he had not this feeling.
Nothing can be more perfect than the manner in which he blends the
dairy-woman and woman of business in Jeanie Deans, with the lover and
the sister. But once make a woman beautiful, or in any way an object
of homage to him, and Scott bowed so low before the image of her,
that he could not go deep into her heart.
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