Читать книгу The Women Who Make Our Novels онлайн

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“Gabriella was the product of the same school, but instead of being used by circumstances, she used them to create her own destiny. The two books are exact converses. Where Virginia is passive, Gabriella is active.

“Virginia desired happiness, but did not expect it, much less fight for it, and consequently in a system where self-sacrifice was the ideal of womanhood she became submerged by circumstances just as have been so many other women of her type. Gabriella, on the other hand, desired happiness and insisted on happiness. Gabriella had the courage of action and through molding circumstances wrested from life her happiness and success.”

“And the third book?” The reader must not think from the condensed and coalesced extracts of what Miss Glasgow has said about her work that she talks readily. She does not. You have, sometimes, rather to drag it out of her—that is, what you want concerning her own work. On literature generally she talks with freedom, wisdom and point.

“The third book may never be written,” Miss Glasgow answered. “If it should be, it will deal with a woman who faces her world with the weapons of indirect influence or subtlety.”