Reviews of Mary Tappan Wright’s The Test (1904)

compiled by Brian Kunde

Reviews from: | The Anaconda Standard, 7/10/04 | Atlanta Constitution, 4/10/04 | The Booklovers Magazine, 12/04 | | Chicago Daily Tribune, 4/2/04 | Congregationalist and Christian World, 4/30/04 | The Critic, 9/04 | | The Dial, 6/1/04 | Hartford Courant, 4/30/04 | The Lamp, 5/04 | Leslie’s Monthly Magazine, 7/04 | Life, 5/12/04 | | The Literary World, 8/04 | Montgomery Advertiser, 4/17/04 | New York Sun, 5/04 | | New York Times, 1/30/04, 4/30/04 | Outlook, 6/18/04 | The Salt Lake Telegram, 3/5/04 | | The San Francisco Chronicle, 4/10/04 | Springfield Sunday Republican, 4/10/04 | | St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 7?/04 | The Washington Post, 3/26/04 | The Worcester Spy, 4/24/04 | These contemporary reviews of Mary Tappan Wright’s The Test are reproduced complete, with both positive and negative judgments intact, in the order of their original publication. —BPK, March 12, 2008. As of the latest update, this page features 23 reviews. —BPK, September 18, 2009. <— New York Times, January 30, 1904, page BR66: Some February Books.      Charles Scribner’s sons will bring out in February two novels. One is “The Test,” by Mary Tappan Wright, author of “A Truce,” “Haggards of the Rock,” and “Aliens;” the other, “The Sailor’s Star,” by Anna A. Rogers, author of “Sweethearts and Wives.” Mrs. Wright is said to have added a further and remarkable volume to a noteworthy group of stories by her new novel. The situations in it show her art even better than “The Aliens” did. [Note: remainder of paragraph, on the Rogers novel, is omitted.] <— The Salt Lake Telegram, March 5, 1904, page 7:                                         COMMENT AND GOSSIP OF BOOKS AND AUTHORS.                                         —      A welcome bit of literary news is that Mary Tappan Wright, author of that good novel, “Aliens,” has a new book just coming from the press of the Scribners; its title is “The Test.” <— The Washington Post, March 26, 1904, page 14: REVIEWS OF NEW BOOKS THE TEST. By Mary Tappan Wright. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Washington: Ballantyne & Sons. Cloth. Price, $1.50.      How much can the heart of a woman stand this side of madness or suicide? Apparently, according to Mrs. Wright’s story, which is one of some intensity, there is no limit to woman’s endurance, nor to her power of forgiveness, nor to her ability to enjoy life again when her days of pain and anguish are over. The book is one of contemporary American life. It presents no problem other than the one outlined, if that may be called a problem. It is restful sometimes just to read a story without being bothered with abstruse questions of psychology or morals or law. Yet Mrs. Wright has given the reader plenty to think about from beginning to end of this not too happy tale. <— Chicago Daily Tribune, April 2, 1904, page 13: More Plays by Mr. Yeats. BY ELIA W. PEATTIE.      . . .      But we pass to graver matters—to “THE TEST,” by Mary Tappan Wright, who has, for several years past, been steadily improving in her work, till she is, in my opinion, to be classed with Mary Wilkins as a delineator of character. That she will in time exceed Miss Wilkins there is not much doubt, for her sympathies are wider, and she has more humor. At the same time, there is no device of intensity, of conscientiousness, or of corroding self-consciousness imagined by Miss Wilkins that Miss—or is it Mrs.—Wright cannot match hue for indigo hue, black for horrible black, drab for unutterable drabness.      Browning’s phrase—so characteristic of him, with his incandescent gaze into the secret soul—is the keynote:                          “O, a crime will do           As well, I reply, to serve for a test,           As a golden virtue through and through.”      “The Test” is the story of village people in New York or Massachusetts. I do not think the precise locality is indicated. There are persons of importance and nobility in the town, and almost all of them are of good stock. But perpetual malaria has undermined them. The dullness of the town is as a dry rot. Life lacks its deep and satisfying hue—the tragedy and adventure of the city, which, by a curious process, keeps the great majority of its dwellers stainless, content to watch and criticise the drama in which they are too timid to participate. In the village it is different. Even the best revolt from the inanity. They feel the need of emphasis and make it—to their own undoing, usually. I know one medium sized town which puts forth more human catastrophes of horrible and fascinating picturesqueness than Chicago ever dreams of. I can’t imagine why, unless it is because there are crime belts even as there are cyclone belts. (And it does, by the way, give a Chicagoan a peculiar pleasure to be pitying another town for its corruption.) But to return to Miss Wright's work: “The Test” is a crime—not an unnatural one, but the most natural, and, in a sense, the most disinterested one in the world. And it tests not only those who are at fault, and those who were related to the evil doers by ties of blood, but the whole community. In the light of this grievous sorrow-sin, character stands revealed. It is a search light revealing dark places and hidden treasures. The story is one of absorbing interest, at no time morbid, never by any conceivable interpretation base, and coming at last to a noble and satisfactory conclusion. (Charles Scribner’s Sons.) <— Atlanta Constitution, April 10, 1904, page C6: “The Test.”      A strong novel of contemporary American life by a writer whose early short stories, “A Truce,” “[As] Haggards of the Rock,” and others equally remarkable, showed her the possessor of a very individual and original talent, the noteworthy development of which was strikingly shown in her recent thoughtful novel of the south, “Aliens.” In this new novel, “The Test,” Mrs. Mary Tappan Wright’s singular intensity and power to move, so repeatedly shown, are at their strongest, and the situations of the story are such as to call forth all her exceptional literary art.—Charles Scribner’s Sons, publishers, New York, $1.50. Sold in Atlanta by Buel Book Company. <— The San Francisco Chronicle, April 10, 1904, page 8: “The Test.”      An admirable character of a woman has been drawn by Mary Tappan Wright in Alice Lindell in “The Test.” She has loved not wisely, but too well, and the opening of the story finds her overwhelmed by the information that her lover, young Tom Winchester, son of the Senator, has married another woman in a fit of drunkenness. Social ruin stares Alice in the face, but her hesitation before taking her own life and bravely battling through life is only momentary. She decides in favor of the struggle. Alice’s first act is to have an explanation with Tom Winchester, in which she briefly states their conduct, saying: “We have broken, Tom, and must pay—I in base coin, shame and agony and disgrace: but, Tom, you must pay in gold, in honor, in glory, in self-conquest.” The career of the man is merely outlined, his correction of his vices and his rise to high political position.      The long story of the debt paid by the woman through nine years of humiliation, family dissension and the promptings of her heart, furnishes the material of “The Test.” She is sustained nobly by the Senator and his daughter, and to a certain extent by her sister, but Alice’s worst trials come from her mother, a woman of violent character and unrelenting bitterness. One of the satisfactions to be derived from this novel is its every-day reality of situations. As there is said to be no royal road to learning, so there is no smooth way to be trod toward rehabilitation. It is a rough road on which the tender feet of Alice Lindell are often made to bleed and never to grow callous.      “The Test” is a story of life as it is, not only as to the main characters of the story, but also as to those of subordinate importance. Such, for instance, is that of Alice’s sister, Gertrude, whose engagement with John Prescott, a young minister and future Bishop, is allowed to remain in abeyance for years owing to his narrow and intolerant self-sufficiency and selfishness, and involves scenes with his mother in which her keen perception and disdainful humor appear forcibly. Mary Tappan Wright has gone profoundly into the female heart in “The Test,” and its reading cannot fail to strongly affect its women readers. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons: price $1.50.) <— Springfield Sunday Republican, April 10, 1904, page 19: IN THE WAY OF LITERATURE — SOME OF THE RECENT NOVELS — BY MARY TAPPAN WRIGHT —      In “The Test” (Scribner’s), Mary Tappan Wright (whose admirable earlier novel of the middle South, “Aliens,” deserves a much more conspicuous place than it has had) takes a bold subject and treats it in a daring way, yet with such honesty of purpose as to take away all offense. Beginning with excellent judgment in the middle of her tragic story, she shows us in the opening chapter Alice Lindell, a clever and well-educated girl, wronged and deserted on the eve of marriage by Tom Winchester, son of the senator whom Alice has served as a confidential secretary. Tom had been sincere in his love, and is as sincere in his remorse, but has been led away by the coquetry of an unprincipled woman, and has married her while he is under the influence of drink. He is ready to desert his wife and make Alice such poor reparation as he can, but she is an honest girl and declines to sanction any measures toward a divorce. Nor will she leave town to hide her shame among strangers. Senator Winchester takes her part, and insists that she continue her work as secretary. Heavy as is her burden, no less severe is the blow upon the rest of the family, which though poor is unusually intelligent and has held a high place in the little college town in the West. Alice’s younger sister Gertrude is engaged to a clever and strenuous young clergyman, who wants to do the right thing and yet can hardly bring himself to marry into a disgraced family. The study of his scruples and of the relationship between these lovers is one of the most skilful parts of a well-written book. If any part of the novel is open to question it is the very part that is meant to be the strongest—the singular relationship between Alice and Tom’s wife Harriet. Harriet losing her own child, takes a morbid desire to have Alice’s daughter Anna, and Alice finally yields. The author has not quite succeeded in making this part of the story natural. Nor does the story of Sallie, the sinner of a lower sort, introduced by way of a parallel to Alice’s downfall help the novel. It may be imagined that to end so peculiar a tale was no easy task. Mrs. Wright has chosen the most obvious and perhaps to most readers the most satisfactory ending. Yet the development of the story is by no means equal to its opening, or to the admirable art with which the tragedy in the Lindell family is depicted. There is much of the skillful exposition of character that appeared in “Aliens,” while in dramatic intensity the novel suggests some of Mrs. Wright’s striking short stories, in the volumes entitled “A Truce” and “Haggards of the Rock.” [sic: “As Haggards of the Rock” is meant, which is not a separate volume but a story in A Truce.] <— Montgomery Advertiser, April 17, 1904, page 11: NEW BOOK NEWS CONDUCTED BY MARTHA YOUNG —      Ever since the publication a few years ago of Mary Tappan Wright’s early short stories, “A Truce,” “Haggards of the Rock,” and others equally remarkable, there has been recognized in her a very individual and original talent promising unusual things for the future. This promise was partly fulfilled in her striking and thoughtful novel of the South, “Aliens,” the impression of which is not yet forgotten.      In the new novel, she makes a further and remarkable addition to a very noteworthy group. The singular intensity and power to move, shown repeatedly in “Aliens,” are here at their strongest, and the situations in “The Test” are such as to call out all Mrs. Wright’s exceptional literary art. — <— The Worcester Spy, April 24, 1904, page 5: New Books “The Test”      By Mary Tappan Wright (Charles Scribner’s Sons)      This is one of the most interesting books of the year. Mrs. Wright is already well known as the author of several books, among which are “A Truce” and “Haggards of the Rock.” [sic] Her new story, “The Test,” is intensely strong and dramatic throughout. It is the love story of a young man and woman in every way fitted for one another. He has one drawback to an otherwise perfect young manhood and that is love for drink.      Alice Lindell, the heroine of the story, is a girl beautiful of face and disposition. While trying to keep her lover, Tom Winchester, away from drink, she takes a step which spoils her life in the eyes of her friends. Tom, while intoxicated, is led into marrying another girl for whom he feels nothing but disgust. He is almost wild when he becomes himself, but Alice still exerts her good influence over him and she finally persuades him to become an influence in the world.      The reader is taken into the daily life of Alice and Tom and their friends and and [sic] many troubles and disappointments from which there seems no possible outlet. Tom’s wife dies and he hastens home to Alice, whom he is at last free to marry. The end of the book leaves the two just starting to a new world where Tom has secured a diplomatic position and the reader feels that they deserve the happiness which seems at last about to come to them.      There is not a dull moment in the book and the unexpected is always happening. We feel sure that those who have read Mrs. Wright’s former books will thoroughly enjoy her new book. <— Congregationalist and Christian World, April 30, 1904, page 612: FICTION      The Test, by Mary Tappan Wright. pp. 360. Chas. Scribner’s Sons. $1.50. The situation which Mrs. Wright presents is a painful one, involving terrible experiences for both hero and heroine in her unquestionably powerful story. In the end the courage and endurance of the sinning woman prove sufficient both for her own moral recovery and for the upholding and transformation of the man she loved. The story moves in a small college town of the middle West. The picture of the inevitable unhappiness dogging the footsteps of sin is clearly drawn and the moral interest holds the reader’s attention strongly throughout. Mrs. Wright’s women are more convincing than her men, yet the latter, if not entirely true to life, have the interest of a woman’s ideal of what a man should do and be in difficult circumstances. <— Hartford Courant, April 30, 1904, page 18: . . . “The Test” by Mary Tappan Wright is a remarkable story both in style and in incident. That its purpose is a serious one and that the question it presents is taken seriously and with a true regard for the fundamentals underlying life and society, no one who knows Mrs. Wright’s strong and intelligent work will doubt. . . . [Remainder of review will be posted when available.] <— New York Times, April 30, 1904, page BR296: A STUDY OF CONSCIENCE. WE have found some difficulty in getting at the purpose, ethical or artistic, of Mary Tappan Wright in giving to a world of novel readers in search of entertainment her new book, called “The Test,” which the Scribners publish. This is a book distinctly well written, if to write well, in making fiction, is to so write as to hold the attention of even an unwilling reader and compel him to note with something like admiration the skillful development of the traits of personages for whom he feels no liking whatever.      We do not know that “The Test” can be called “realistic,” yet it has certain of the qualities of avowedly realistic art in that it treats of the hates and jealousies, the small passions, bigotries, and ambitions of a group of generally unlikable human beings. Two elderly women, shockingly narrow-minded and ill-tempered, and another elderly woman, who is quite unaccountably broad-minded but not a bit more agreeable; a number of foolish, purposeless old men, who are, to be sure, very like some of the old men one must meet in his daily walks; a handsome human male animal, bred to no principles, the creature of his appetites, who seems to be set up as a sort of demigod; a morally weak young woman with the gift of obstinacy and a serviceable conscience; another young woman with a less easily comprehended conscience but rather better morals; three other assorted young women who all view life through queer spectacles, and a priggish young theological man make up the principal characters. There are plenty of minor personages well sketched. The background of town and country is well done. Mary Tappan Wright knows her trade as novelist. As novelists go she is one among ten thousand.      That is why we feel sorry about her book. We ask: “Why did she write it?” to which she may fairly respond, “Why do you read it?”—and read it you will, probably, if you pick it up.      Presumably it is as a study of the human conscience, its powers and its limitations, that we must regard this new novel, if we are to regard it at all seriously. Alice Lindell, because she wanted to get away from home, because she was dominated by a stronger personality, because she foolishly believed that if a good girl marries a bad man she can make him good, promises to marry Tom Winchester, and before the day set for the wedding is no longer a good girl. Then Tom, under the influence of liquor, suddenly marries another girl. There is a chapter describing how Alice spends her wedding day. There are many things Alice might do—kill herself, borrow money of Tom’s father and go far away, run away with Tom, as he proposes, when he comes to the parental home with his bride—but her conscience compels her to stay in the town in which she was born, sordid, petty, unlovely Genoa, (presumably in the Middle West,) and take her penalty of shame and contumely, bear her bitter mother’s taunts and the world’s jeers, and compel Tom, by force of her example, and by personal appeal, to make the best of his life. Alice’s conscience compels her to this course and holds her to it. Presumably the result is triumph. She lives down a great deal of shame, and in the climax is relatively happy.      We are quite sure that this story, which is human and likely enough, could be told so as to impress the reader more strongly, to uplift his thoughts from the sordidness and baseness of common life, by a writer of larger gifts. Genius can illumine mean subjects. Even then, would it be worth telling at this late day? Better, it seems to us, tell a tale of decent love and humor or adventure to entertain the multitude, a tale that may charm for a while and soon be forgotten, then to waste talent so genuine on a picture of life which is not large enough or broad enough to be accepted as typical, and which many worthy folks will be inclined to call untrue and base.      Mary Tappan Wright has a keen sense of humor, good descriptive powers, a good working knowledge of human nature, an effective style. She can tell a story well. She ought to be urged to tell pleasant stories. We have too many of the other kind. <— New York Sun, May 1904: THE TEST By MARY TAPPAN WRIGHT Author of “Aliens,” etc. The New York Sun says:      “A remarkable story of conscience. . . .      “The man or woman who begins it will read through to the end and be glad he read it. . . .      “There are fine bits of scenery, as might be expected, for Mrs. Wright has a keen sense of nature; there are vivid glimpses of life in small towns; there are a number of interesting women, analyzed by a woman who knows them.” NOTE.—This notice faithfully reflects the reception the book has general received from the critics. 12mo. $1.50 [Quoted in a Scribner’s display advertisement in The Lamp, May 1904, page 348 (the “note” is added in a repeat printing in The Lamp, June 1904, page 439); complete review not yet located.] <— The Lamp, a Review and Record of Current Literature, May 1904, page 318: SOME OF THE NEW FICTION BY ELEANOR HOYT SPRING fiction, up to date offers few sensational features; but it includes a surprisingly large number of readable books, and, on the whole, a high average of merit in a season’s fiction argues more enjoyment for the novel-reading public than spectacular interest attaching to a few meteoric successes.      Many of the new novels deserve an adjective more laudatory than “readable,” although that word, conscientiously used, spells, high praise.      Mary Tappan Wright’s “The Test,” for example, is readable, but it is much more than that.      When Mrs. Wright wrote “Aliens,” she made a place for herself among the novelists whose work demands serious consideration. “The Test” strengthens her position, fulfills much promise, justifies more expectation. The author has made of the sin of a man and a woman a test for all the folk who figure in her book—a test of individual, of family, of community. The story is simple enough and it is told simply, clearly, forcibly, with a certain fine reserve and freedom from hysteria. Mrs. Wright paints the life of a little town, the souls and deeds of its people with keen insight, wide human sympathy, relentless logic. The shadow-darkened intensity of some of her work recalls the Mary E. Wilkins of “A New England Nun” days, but her brush strokes are broader and freer than those of Miss Wilkins, though no less sure.      She has too, a leaven of humor to lighten her soul study. Her folk do not live altogether in italics. She has found happiness as logical as suffering and a vein of cheerful sanity runs through even her grayest chapters, insuring them against the morbidness that is the most dangerous pitfall in the path of the novelist who deals familiarly with souls. (Scribner’s.) <— Life, May 12, 1904, page 468: The LATEST BOOKS A novel which is not for girls is The Test, by Mary Tappan Wright. This is rather an unusual story, for America. It is an interesting study of very individual Characters and, while it condones a form of Christian charity not over-popular among Christians, it is thoughtful and sane. <— The Dial, June 1, 1904, pages 368, 370: NOTES ON NEW NOVELS.      A social rather than a racial problem forms the theme of Mrs. Mary Tappan Wright’s “The Test” (Scribner), setting it far apart from its predecessor, “Aliens.” In this newer novel a young girl, affianced to an erratic but lovable fellow, yields herself to his desires on his plea that it will help him to walk the straighter by giving him a feeling of possession. This done, he drinks too much, falls under the temporary domination of a girl in a distant city who has always wished him for a husband, and marries her. His father has served as a senator of the United States, and has been utilizing the girl’s intelligent services in the care of his correspondence and the preparation of a history of his times. He stands her friend when the trouble comes, while her widowed mother, in outraged respectability, turns upon the girl and rends her. In the course of years the patient sufferer redeems herself in the eyes of the rest of her townsfolk, small-souled as most of them are. The situations in “The Test” are powerful and controlled, and the book deserves well of those with a taste for true literature. <— Outlook, June 18, 1904, page 422: The Best Recent Novels      Mrs. Mary Tappan Wright also draws the portrait of a child of passion, but with a difference of temperament and of manner as marked as the difference between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries. There has been from the beginning a touch of the uncommon in Mrs. Wright’s stories, and in none has she departed more widely from the motives and manner of average current fiction than in “The Test” (Scribner); a story of searching analysis, of insight into those difficult problems in which passion and will are alike powerful, of clear, strong, courageous handling of a very difficult subject. “The Test” is the story of a woman’s fall through a mistaken idea of the influence of complete surrender, and of heroic self-recovery in the community which knows every stage of the disaster. There is no evasion of the inevitable, no slurring of penalties, no weakening of the force of the inexorable law, in this moving story. There is no attempt to simplify the problem by exluding some of its most tragic elements. On the contrary, full force is given to all the punitive elements in the situation, and the blows fall on the head of the sinning woman with merciless severity. The story has faults; it is overwrought; there are moments when the reader feels as if the strain were too terrible to be borne even in sympathy. Out of this fire of punishment comes a noble and winning character, redeemed by her own heroic submission to the consequences of her deed, reinstated in the regard of her fellows, and holding the hearts of her readers. The construction of the story is not perfect, and the style often lacks ease and free movement. <— St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July? 1904, page ?: MARY TAPPAN WRIGHT THE TEST “Intense human interest holds one to the last paragraph.”—St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 12mo, $1.50. [Quoted in a Scribner’s display advertisement in The Critic, July 1904; complete review not yet located.] <— Leslie’s Monthly Magazine, July 1904, page 338: BOOKS OF THE HOUR “THE TEST,” by Mary Tappan Wright.      A vividly painful story of a good woman’s slip and the consequences. The great skill used in drawing unpleasant characters compels. the admiration we should more gladly give to more cheerful work. There are some delightful bits that illuminated the general gloominess of the book. (Charles Scribner’s Sons.) <— The Anaconda Standard, July 10, 1904, page 4: NEW BOOKS IN THE BUTTE LIBRARY      “The Test,” by Mary Tappan Wright. A strong American story wherein the human conscience plays a most important part. <— The Literary World, August, 1904, pages 235, 236: The Book Market NEW YORK, July 15, 1904.      . . . There has been increased demand of late for “The Test,” by Mary Tappan Wright, which was published early in the spring. F. R. H.. <— The Critic, September 1904, page 279: An Unconvincing Novel.      In contrast to the foregoing book [Joan of the Alley, by Frederick Orin Bartlett], “The Test”* is one of the most unconvincing novels that the present reviewer has ever read. With the exception of one incident, it is psychologically false from beginning to end in respect of the main situations. The exception is the fact that an inexperienced, trusting, refined girl might commit her honor to her lover in the hope that she might hold him and guard him from temptation. Vain the hope and foolish the girl! But many times has it happened.      It is, however, absolutely incredible that a practical father of a reckless son, when that son notified him of his marriage, while drunk, to another woman, should not insist on sending the betrayed girl away to a place where she could live in seclusion until her child was born. Senator Winchester was fond of the unfortunate Alice, yet he allowed her to remain in a little gossiping village, when he could perfectly well have sent her on research work for his history, with which she was assisting him, and have diverted suspicion through his influence as a respected citizen.      There is one good chapter, in which Alice imagines her marriage day and restrains her impulse to drown herself, knowing that she is to become a mother; but as a whole, the book is exasperating in the extreme, because it does not ring true. And there is not a gleam of humor to relieve the narrative. John Prescott, the young clergyman, is a stuffed doll, with his “senseless obstinacy,” which forbade him for eight years from discovering whether he was really engaged to Gertrude Lindell! She would have been a much more admirable character if she had refused the prig at the end of that time. What he was waiting for, no one knows.      Possibly such characters as Mrs. Wright describes do exist, but there are surely abnormal subjects of pathology, and not typical. The book is distinctly disagreeable in theme, and the treatment is not adequate to remove the bad taste. To be artistic, such a subject should be treated poetically or with extreme realism. The character-drawing is sketchy, aiming at realism without attaining it. The omission of the quotations at the head of the chapters would remove some of the amateurish effect. C. S.      * “The Test.” BY MARY TAPPAN WRIGHT. Charles Scribner’s Sons. <— The Booklovers Magazine, December 1904, Advertiser section [pages not numbered]: THE NEWEST BOOKS DECEMBER LIST ISSUED BY THE BOOKLOVERS LIBRARY, PHILADELPHA THE NEWEST FICTION 1771. Test, The     Mary Tappan Wright There is ability, decided ability in The Test. It is well written, well developed, well sustained, a frank but delicate handling of a difficult situation. A young woman bravely faces the disgrace and scandal, the estrangement and devastating bitterness that the coming of her baby brings, and by the force of a constantly developing nobility wins a belated happiness. (Charles Scribner’s Sons) last section  | main page |  next section These reviews were originally published in the journals credited. The works here reproduced are in the public domain. All other material in this edition is ©2008-2009 by Brian Kunde.