Gaskell, while the
latter was preparing her Memoir of Charlotte Bronte, and her favourable
estimate of the book we have already seen. About 1859 or 1860 she
returned to England and lived out the remainder of her days in complete
seclusion in a Yorkshire home that she built for herself. The novel to
which she refers in a letter to her friend never seems to have got itself
written, or at least published, for it was not until 1890 that Miss Mary
Taylor produced a work of fiction--_Miss Miles_. {259a} This novel
strives to inculcate the advantages as well as the duty of women learning
to make themselves independent of men. It is well, though not
brilliantly written, and might, had the author possessed any of the
latter-day gifts of self-advertisement, have attracted the public, if
only by the mere fact that its author was a friend of Currer Bell's. But
Miss Taylor, it is clear, hated advertisement, and severely refused to be
lionised by Bronte worshippers. Twenty years earlier than _Miss Miles_,
I may add, she had preached the same gospel in less attractive guise. A
series of papers in the _Victorian Magazine_ were reprinted under the
title of _The First Duty of Women_. {259b} 'To inculcate the duty of
earning money,' she declares, 'is the principal point in these articles.'
'It is to the feminine half of the world that the commonplace duty of
providing for themselves is recommended,' and she enforces her doctrine
with considerable point, and by means of arguments much more accepted in
our day than in hers.
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