Identifier: characteristicso00jame (find matches)
Title: Characteristics of women : moral, poetical, and historical
Year: 1853 (1850s)
Authors: Jameson, Mrs. (Anna), 1794-1860
Subjects: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 Women in literature
Publisher: Boston : Phillips, Sampson
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
me, the character of Ophelia bears a certain relation to that of the
Greek Iphigenia,† with the same strong distinction between the
classical and the romantic conception of the portrait. Iphigenia led
forth to sacrifice, with her unresisting tenderness, her mournful
sweetness, her virgin innocence, is doomed to perish by that relentless
power, which has linked her destiny with crimes and contests, in
which she has no part but as a sufferer; and even so, poor Ophelia,

• Goëthe. See the analysis of Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister.
† The Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides.

O P H E L I A . 123
" Divided from herself and her fair judgment, appears here like a
spotless victim offered up to the mysterious and inexorable fates
" For it is the property of crime to extend its mischiefs over
innocence, as it is of virtue to extend its blessings over many that
deserve them not, while frequently the author of one or the other
is not, as far as we can see, either punished or rewarded.^• But there's
a heaven above us!

^• Goëthe
Text Appearing After Image:
J. Hayter. D.I. Glover & T. Kelly.

MIRANDA.
Act 1 Sc.2.

MIRANDA

WE might have deemed it impossible to go beyond Viola, Perdila,
and Ophelia, as pictures of feminine beauty; to exceed the one in
tender delicacy, the other in ideal grace, and the last in simplicity,—
if Shakspeare had not done this; and he alone could have done it.
Had he never created a Miranda, we should never have been made
to feel how completely the purely natural and the purely ideal can
blend into each other.
The character of Miranda resolves itself into the very elements of
womanhood. She is beautiful, modest, and tender, and she is these
only; they comprise her whole being, external and internal. She
is so perfectly unsophisticated, so delicately refined, that she is all
but ethereal. Let us imagine any other woman placed beside Miranda
—even one of Shakspeare's own loveliest and sweetest creations—
there is not one of them that could sustain the comparison for a
moment; not one that would not appear somewhat coarse or artificial
when brought into immediate contact with this pure child of nature,
this " Eve of an enchanted Paradise."

Note About Images