Review of A Mountain Woman
Print Version:
Rev. of A Mountain Woman by Elia W. Peattie
The Nation 63
(10 Sept. 1896): 201
Page 201
The transportation of a magnificent primitive female, a daughter of nature, from a mountain fastness or isle of the ocean to a giddy centre of fashion is a favorite operation in fiction. Long ago Mr. Black performed it successfully in 'A Princess of Thule,' and recently Mr. Meredith has done it vigorously and volubly. As a matter of fact, no woman ever inspired the same sort of sentiment as a mountain or a cataract -- an abstract, impersonal sentiment exclusive of sympathy; and the sight of one whose appearance actually did suggest such objects would probably inspire more dismay than admiration. Against the few successes in humanizing a dryad, nymph, or mermaid may be scored innumerable failures, and of these none more complete than "A Mountain Woman," the first of a volume of short stories by Elia W. Peattie. This author has not shown discrimination in giving the first place to the stolid, enigmatical lady, described by an ardent lover as a "remnant left over from the heroic ages." All the subsequent tales, some soberly realistic and some pleasingly fantastic, are infinitely better, both in idea and in treatment. "Jim Lacy's [sic] Waterloo" is an impressive sketch of the trials that encompass the farmer in Nebraska, and the horrors of loneliness and thankless labor that frequently drive mad the farmer's wife. It is easy to see why a man with Lacy's strong passions and limited intelligence should fall on the Government and Eastern capitalists as responsible for untimely drought, the casual cyclone, dear transportation, and low prices. He must vent his bitter disappointment on something tangible, or curse God and die. His raving about the relation between flat money and universal prosperity is just as much like argument as is the familiar declamation of the professional Populist orator. The assumption is false and the words are foolish, but in Lacy's [sic] case, as in many others, the facts behind are tragic. The remaining stories of the volume have a pathetic strain, with enough lightness to mitigate the hopelessness of "Lacy's [sic] Waterloo."
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