But the novel, like gossip, can also excite spurious sympathies and recoils, mechanical and deadening to the psyche. The novel can glorify the most corrupt feelings, so long as they are conventionally “pure.” Then the novel, like gossip, becomes at last vicious, and, like gossip, all the more vicious because it is always ostensibly on the side of the angels. Mrs. Bolton’s gossip was always on the side of the angels. “And he was such a bad fellow, and she was such a nice woman.” Whereas, as Connie could see even from Mrs. Bolton’s gossip, the woman had been merely a mealymouthed sort, and the man angrily honest. But angry honesty made a “bad man” of him, and mealymouthedness made a “nice woman” of her, in the vicious, conventional channeling of sympathy by Mrs. Bolton.