Of Miss Johnston's latest novel, "Hagar," we are assured that it is "a glowing argument for feminism, a stirring human drama, a piece of noble literature." Reduced to its lowest terms, this means that the book is a plea for greater freedom for women, and a very pleasant story. The first half, indeed, is so pleasant that the reader is vividly reminded of sunny days in his or her own childhood, of long country roads and remote hilltops-a forgotten, dreamlike country, whose features come back, like a writing in invisible ink, under the mellow light of its pages. The little Hagar is as real as David Copperfield, and the scene on the slow-moving canal boat where we are introduced to her has unusual charm. She is going home, and with her we catch our first glimpse of the old Virginia mansion: The earth was in shadow, but the sky glowed carnation. Against it stood out the long, low red-brick house of Gilead Balm. At either gable end rose pyramidal cedars, high and dark against the vivid sky. In the lane there was the smell of dewy grass, and on either hand, back from the vine-draped rail fences, rolled the violet fields. Somewhere in the distance sounded the tinkling of cow bells. The ardent sky began to pale, the swallows were circling above the chimneys of Gilead Balm, and now the silver Venus came out clear. In this picture-like environment Hagar grew up; the trouble was that the picture did not grow with her. From the morning that the shocked household found the little girl of 12 reading Darwin, and unanimously upbraided her for "contaminating her mind" with improper literature, she was an alien among her own, and a rebel. Fortunately for herself, she was also a genius. She began story writing at 13, and when we say farewell to her at thirty-odd she is "good for something more than $10,000 a year" from her books. This is where the novel begins to sag-where most women's and many men's novels begin to sag. The childhood and youth of the hero or heroine are treated with sympathy and truth. The author looks in his own heart and writes, and the readers says, "Exactly! I was just like that myself when I was a child," not because he really was like that, but because the picture is a human one. But as the reader and the read grow up together, as it were, a difference develops. The character in the book suddenly unfolds wings and sails calmly away, while the reader remains on foot and gapes resentfully after. What gives Mr. [Arnold] Bennett and Mr. [H. G.] Wells and Mr. [John] Galsworthy their vogue is their trick of keeping heroes and readers trudging along together, through mud and sunshine, tired and often depressed, but always comrades. The women who have done this for their heroines in the whole history of English literature could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Another reason for Miss Johnston's failure to convince us of the reality of Hagar's womanhood as she did of Hagar's youth is the lack of perspective upon it. Great movements photographed in passing have at the best only cinematographic value; the film shakes, the action becomes galvanic, the scenes telescope each other as we gaze. "Hagar" is an argument for the emancipation of women, not from moral conventions, but from those that would forbid her to agitate for better social conditions, to earn her own living, to refrain from undesired matrimony, to work for the ballot. If Miss Johnston had laid the scene of Hagar's later rebellion, as she did her earlier one, in the South, or anywhere where these particular freedoms are less a matter of course than they are in New York, the picture would have held a keener interest. Instead, we see beautiful and devoted women in artistic gowns addressing admiring throngs in east side halls, or moving through a "still, pearl-gray mid-afternoon" at an open-air meeting in Union Square, where "all was a picture, lightly shifting with gleams of gold and a woman's voice, earnest, lilting."
About the Author: Mary Johnston (November 21, 1870 - May 9, 1936) was an American novelist and women's rights advocate from Virginia. She was one of America's best selling authors during her writing career and had three silent films adapted from her novels. The daughter of an American Civil War soldier who became a successful lawyer, Mary Johnston was born in the small town of Buchanan, Virginia. A small and frail girl, she was educated at home by family and tutors. She grew up with a love of books and was financially independent enough to devote herself to writing. Johnston wrote historical books and novels that often combined romance with history. Her first book Prisoners of Hope (1898) dealt with colonial times in Virginia as did her second novel To Have and to Hold (1900) and 1904's Sir Mortimer. The Goddess of Reason (1907) uses the theme of the French Revolution and in Lewis Rand (1908), the author portrayed political life at the dawn of the 19th century. Mary Johnston. To Have and to Hold was serialized in the The Atlantic Monthly in 1899 and published in 1900 by Houghton Mifflin. The book proved enormously popular and was the bestselling novel in the United States in 1900. Johnston's next work titled Audrey was the 5th bestselling book in the U.S. in 1902, and Sir Mortimer serialized in the Harper's Monthly Magazine from November 1903 through April 1904 and published in 1904. Her best-selling 1911 novel on the American Civil War, The Long Roll, brought her into open conflict with Stonewall Jackson's widow, Mary Anna Jackson. Beyond her native America, Johnston's novels were also very popular in Canada and in England. Three of Johnston's books were adapted to film. Audrey was made into a silent film of the same name in 1916 and her blockbuster work To Have and to Hold was made into a silent film in 1916 and filmed again in 1922. Pioneers of the Old South was adapted to film in 1923 under the title Jamestown. During her long career, in addition to twenty-three novels, Johnston wrote a number of short stories, one drama, and two long narrative poems. She used her fame to advocate women's rights, strongly supporting the women's suffrage movement. Johnston died in 1936, at the age of 65, at her home in Warm Springs, Virginia. She was interred in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. Her house at Warm Springs, Three Hills, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. Her Richmond home on Linden Row was listed in 1971.