Dumas _fils_' "Dame aux
Camelias" is a great melodramatic story; but it is so exceptional in
its incidents and episodical in its character, that its heroine is
quite worthless as a specimen for examination and analysis; and it is,
beside, so very French as to be almost valueless in this regard, for
that reason alone. What it would be well to have written is the story
of an abandoned woman, told simply and without any reserve, except that
of decency, and purely from a woman's point of view. But, except by a
woman, and at the cost of the experience to be recounted, this is
manifestly possible only to genius. The author of "Out of the Depths"
has not attained the _desideratum_; but has yet approached so near it,
that we fear the right man, or, possibly, woman, may be deterred from
the attempt to do better. If so, there is a good subject--good for the
making of a grand psychological, physiological, and dramatic
study--lost.
The subject of this professed autobiography, Mary Smith, is the
daughter of a gardener on a large English estate. Her family is much
noticed and favored by the ladies of the mansion, and she, who is
handsome and intellectual, soon acquires tastes and an education above
her position; and as she is vain and selfish and of a voluptuous
temperament, the consequence seems inevitable.
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