"The position," she goes on, "in itself so tragic, is one which can scarcely be expressed without calling forth inevitable ridicule, a laugh at the best, more often a sneer, at the women whose desire for a husband is thus betrayed. Shirley and Caroline Helstone both cried out for that husband with an indignation, a fire and impatience, a sense of wrong and injury, which stopped the laugh for the moment. It might be ludicrous, but it was horribly genuine and true." (This is more than can be said of Mrs. Oliphant's view of the adorable Shirley Keeldar who was Emily Brontë. It is ludicrous enough, and it may be genuine, but it is certainly not true.) But Mrs. Oliphant is careful not to go too far. "Note," she says, "there was nothing sensual about these young women. It was life they wanted; they knew nothing of the grosser thoughts which the world with its jeers attributes to them: of such thoughts they were unconscious in a primitive innocence which, perhaps, only women understand." Yet she characterizes their "outcry" as "indelicate". "All very well to talk of women working for their living, finding new channels for themselves, establishing their independence. How much have we said of all that" (Mrs. Oliphant thinks that she is rendering Charlotte Brontë's thought), "endeavouring to persuade ourselves! Charlotte Brontë had the courage of her opinions. It was not education nor a trade that her women wanted. It was not a living, but their share in life.... Miss Brontë herself said correct things" (observe that insincerity is insinuated here) "about the protection which a trade is to a woman, keeping her from a mercenary marriage; but this was not in the least the way of her heroines." (Why, you naturally wonder, should it have been?) "They wanted to be happy, no doubt, but above all things they wanted their share in life, to have their position by the side of men, which alone confers a natural equality, to have their shoulder to the wheel, their hands on the reins of common life, to build up the world and link the generations each to each." (And very proper of them, too.) "In her philosophy, marriage was the only state which procured this, and if she did not recommend a mercenary marriage she was at least very tolerant about its conditions, insisting less upon love than was to be expected" (!) "and with a covert conviction in her mind, that if not one man, then another was better than any complete abandonment of the larger path. Lucy Snowe for a long time had her heart very much set on Dr. John and his placid breadth of Englishism; but when she finally found out that to be impossible her tears were soon dried by the prospect of Paul Emanuel, so unlike him, coming into his place."