THE SISTERS BRONTE
The effect produced upon the general mind by the appearance of CharlotteBronte in literature, and afterwards by the record of her life when thatwas over, is one which it is nowadays somewhat difficult to understand.Had the age been deficient in the art of fiction, or had it followed anylong level of mediocrity in that art, we could have comprehended thismore easily. But Charlotte Bronte appeared in the full flush of a periodmore richly endowed than any other we know of in that special branch ofliterature, so richly endowed, indeed, that the novel had taken quitefictitious importance, and the names of Dickens and Thackeray rankedalmost higher than those of any living writers except perhaps Tennyson,then young and on his promotion too. Anthony Trollope and Charles Readewho, though in their day extremely popular, have never had justice froma public which now seems almost to have forgotten them, formed apowerful second rank to these two great names. It is a great addition tothe value of the distinction gained by the new comer that it wasacquired in an age so rich in the qualities of the imagination.
But this only increases the wonder of a triumph which had no artificialmeans to heighten it, nothing but genius on the part of a writerpossessing little experience or knowledge of the world, and no sort ofsocial training or adventitious aid. The genius was indeed unmistakable,and possessed in a very high degree the power of expressing itself inthe most vivid and actual pictures of life. But the life of which it hadcommand was seldom attractive, often narrow, local, and of a kind whichmeant keen personal satire more than any broader view of humanexistence. A group of commonplace clergymen, intense against theirlittle parochial background as only the most real art of portraiture,intensified by individual scorn and dislike, could have made them: thecircle of limited interests, small emulations, keen little spites andrancours, filling the atmosphere of a great boarding school, theBrussels _Pensionnat des filles_--these were the two spheres chieflyportrayed: but portrayed with an absolute untempered force which knewneither charity, softness, nor even impartiality, but burned upon thepaper and made everything round dim in the contrast. I imagine it wasthis extraordinary naked force which was the great cause of a success,never perhaps like the numerical successes in literature of the presentday, when edition follows edition, and thousand thousand, of the bookswhich are the favourites of the public: but one which has lived andlasted through nearly half a century, and is even now potent enough tocarry on a little literature of its own, book after book following eachother not so much to justify as to reproclaim and echo to all the windsthe fame originally won. No one else of the century, I think, has calledforth this persevering and lasting homage. Not Dickens, though perhapsmore of him than of any one else has been dealt out at intervals to anadmiring public; not Thackeray, of whom still we know but little; notGeorge Eliot, though her fame has more solid foundations than that ofMiss Bronte. Scarcely Scott has called forth more continual droppings ofelucidation, explanation, remark. Yet the books upon which thistremendous reputation is founded though vivid, original, and striking inthe highest degree, are not great books. Their philosophy of life isthat of a schoolgirl, their knowledge of the world almost _nil_, theirconclusions confused by the haste and passion of a mind self-centred andworking in the narrowest orbit. It is rather, as we have said, the mostincisive and realistic art of portraiture than any exercise of thenobler arts of fiction--imagination, combination, construction--orhumorous survey of life or deep apprehension of its problems--upon whichthis fame is built.
The curious circumstance that Charlotte Bronte was, if the word may beso used, doubled by her sisters, the elder, Emily, whose genius has beentaken for granted, carrying the wilder elements of the commoninspiration to extremity in the strange, chaotic and weird romance of"Wuthering Heights," while Anne diluted such powers of socialobservation as were in the family into two mildly disagreeable novels ofa much commoner order, has no doubt also enhanced the central figure ofthe group to an amazing degree. They placed her strength in relief bydisplaying its separate elements, and thus commending the higher skilland larger spirit which took in both, understanding the moors and wildcountry and rude image of man better than the one, and misunderstandingthe common course of more subdued life less than the other. The threetogether are for ever inseparable; they were homely, lowly, somewhatneglected in their lives, had few opportunities and few charms to thecareless eye: yet no group of women, undistinguished by rank, unendowedby beauty, and known to but a limited circle of friends as unimportantas themselves have ever, I think, in the course of history--certainlynever in this century--come to such universal recognition. The effect isquite unique, unprecedented, and difficult to account for; but therecannot be the least doubt that it is a matter of absolute fact whichnobody can deny.
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These three daughters of a poor country clergyman came into the worldearly in the century, the dates of their births being 1816, 1818, 1820,in the barest of little parsonages in the midst of the moors--a wild butbeautiful country, and a rough but highly characteristic and keen-wittedpeople. Yorkshire is the very heart of England; its native force, itskeen practical sense, its rough wit, and the unfailing importance in thenation of the largest of the shires has given it a strong individualcharacter and position almost like that of an independent province. Butthe Brontes, whose name is a softened and decorated edition of a commonIrish name, were not of that forcible race: and perhaps the strongstrain after emotion, and revolt against the monotonies of life, whichwere so conspicuous in them were more easily traceable to their Celticorigin than many other developments attributed to that cause. They weremotherless from an early age, children of a father who, after havingbeen depicted as a capricious tyrant, seems now to have found a fairerrepresentation as a man with a high spirit and peculiar temper, yetneither unkind to his family nor uninterested in their welfare. Therewas one son, once supposed to be the hero and victim of a disagreeableromance, but apparent now as only a specimen, not alas, uncommon, of theordinary ne'er-do-well of a family, without force of character orself-control to keep his place with decency in the world.
These children all scribbled from their infancy as soon as the power ofinscribing words upon paper was acquired by them, inventing imaginarycountries and compiling visionary records of them as so many imaginativechildren do. The elder girl and boy made one pair, the younger girlsanother, connected by the closest links of companionship. It was thoughtor hoped that the son was the genius of the family, and at the earliestpossible age he began to send his effusions to editors, and to seekadmission to magazines with the mingled arrogance and humility of ahalf-fledged creature. But the world knows now that it was not poorBranwell who was the genius of the family; and this injury done him inhis cradle, and the evil report of him that everybody gives throughouthis life, awakens a certain pity in the mind for the unfortunate youthso unable to keep any supremacy among the girls whom he must haveconsidered his natural inferiors and vassals. We are told by CharlotteBronte herself that he never knew of the successes of his sisters, thefact of their successive publications being concealed from him out oftenderness for his feelings; but it is scarcely to be credited that whenthe parish knew the unfortunate brother did not find out. The unhappyattempt of Mrs. Gaskell in writing the lives of the sisters to make thismelancholy young man accountable for the almost brutal element in EmilyBronte's conception of life, and the strange views of Charlotte as towhat men were capable of, has made him far too important in theirhistory; where, indeed, he had no need to have appeared at all, had thefamily pride consisted, as the pride of so many families does, inveiling rather than exhibiting the faults of its members. So far as canbe made out now, he had as little as possible to do with theirdevelopment in any way.
There was nothing unnatural or out of the common in the youthful life ofthe family except that strange gift of genius, which though consistentwith every genial quality of being, in such a nature as that of Scott,seems in other developments of character to turn all the elements intochaos. It
s effect upon the parson's three daughters was, indeed, not ofa very wholesome kind. It awakened in them an uneasy sense ofsuperiority which gave double force to every one of the littlehardships which a girl in a great school of a charitable kind, and agoverness in a middle-class house, has to support: and made life harderinstead of sweeter to them in many ways, since it was full of the bitingexperience of conditions less favourable than those of many personsround them whom they could not but feel inferior to themselves.
The great school, which it was Charlotte Bronte's first act when shebegan her literary career to invest with an almost tragic character ofmisery, privation, and wrong, was her first step from home. Yorkshireschools did not at that period enjoy a very good reputation in theworld, and Nicholas Nickleby was forming his acquaintance with thesqualid cruelty of Dotheboys Hall just about the same time whenCharlotte Bronte's mind was being filled with the privations anddiscontents of Lowood. In such a case there is generally some fire wherethere is so much smoke, and probably Lowood was under no very heavenly_regime_: but at the same time its drawbacks were sharply accentuated bythat keen criticism which is suggested by the constant sense of injuredworth and consciousness of a superiority not acknowledged. The samefeeling pursued her into the situations as governess which she occupiedone after another, and in which her indignation at being expected tofeel affection for the children put under her charge, forms a curiousaddition to the other grievances with which fate pursues her life. Nodoubt there are many temptations in the life of a governess; theposition of a silent observer in a household, looking on at all itsmistakes, and seeing the imperfection of its management with doubleforce because of the effect they have on herself--especially if shefeels herself competent, had she but the power, to set thingsright--must always be a difficult one. It was not continued long enough,however, to involve very much suffering; though no doubt it helped tomature the habit of sharp personal criticism and war with the world.
At the same time Charlotte Bronte made some very warm personalfriendships, and wrote a great many letters to the school friends whopleased her, in which a somewhat stilted tone and demure seriousness isoccasionally invaded by the usual chatter of girlhood, to the greatimprovement of the atmosphere if not of the mind. Ellen Nussey, MaryTaylor, women not manifestly intellectual but sensible and independentwithout either exaggeration of sentiment or hint of tragic story,remained her close friends as long as she lived, and her letters tothem, though always a little demure, give us a gentler idea of her thananything else she has written. Not that there is much charm either ofstyle or subject in them: but there is no sort of bitterness or senseof insufficient appreciation. Nothing can be more usual and commonplace,indeed, than this portion of her life. As in so many cases, theartificial lights thrown upon it by theories formed afterwards, clearaway when we examine its actual records, and it is apparent that therewas neither exceptional harshness of circumstance nor internal strugglein the existence of the girl who, though more or less in arms againsteverybody outside--especially when holding a position superior to herown, more especially still when exercising authority over her in anyway--was yet quite an easy-minded, not unhappy, young woman at home,with friends to whom she could pour out long pages of what is, on thewhole, quite moderate and temperate criticism of life, not withoutcheerful allusion to now and then a chance curate or other young personof the opposite sex, suspected of "paying attention" to one or other ofthe little coterie. These allusions are not more lofty or dignified thanare similar notes of girls of less exalted pretensions, but there is nota touch in them of the keen pointed pen which afterwards put up theHaworth curates in all their imperfections before the world.
The other sisters at this time in the background, two figures alwaysclinging together, looking almost like one, have no great share in thissofter part of Charlotte's life. They were, though so different incharacter, completely devoted to each other, apparently forming no otherfriendships, each content with the one other partaker of her everythought. A little literature seems to have been created between them,little chapters of recollection and commentary upon their life, sealedup and put away for three years in each case, to be opened on Emily's oron Anne's birthday alternately, as a pathetic sign of their close unity,though the little papers were in themselves simple in the extreme. Annetoo became a governess with something of the same experience asCharlotte, and uttering very hard judgments of unconscious people whowere not the least unkind to her. But Emily had no such trials. Sheremained at home perhaps because she was too uncompromising to beallowed to make the experiment of putting up with other people, perhapsbecause one daughter at home was indispensable. The family seems to havehad kind and trusted old servants, so that the cares of housekeeping didnot weigh heavily upon the daughter in charge, and there is no evidenceof exceptional hardness or roughness in their circumstances in any way.
In 1842, Charlotte and Emily, aged respectively twenty-six andtwenty-four, went to Brussels. Their design was "to acquire a thoroughfamiliarity with French," also some insight into other languages, withthe view of setting up a school on their own account. The means weresupplied by the aunt, who had lived in their house and taken more orless care of them since their mother's death. The two sisters werenearly a year in the Pensionnat Heger, now so perfectly known in everydetail of its existence to all who have read "Villette." They wererecalled by the death of the kind aunt who had procured them thisadvantage, and afterwards Charlotte, no one quite knows why, went backto Brussels for a second year, in which all her impressions wereprobably strengthened and intensified. Certainly a more clear andlifelike picture, scathing in its cold yet fierce light, was never madethan that of the white tall Brussels house, its class rooms, itsgardens, its hum of unamiable girls, its sharp display of rancorous andshrill teachers, its one inimitable professor. It startles the reader tofind--a fact which we had forgotten--that M. Paul Emmanuel was M. Heger,the husband of Madame Heger and legitimate head of the house: and thatthis daring and extraordinary girl did not hesitate to encounter gossipor slander by making him so completely the hero of her romance. Slanderin its commonplace form had nothing to do with such a fiery spirit asthat of Charlotte Bronte: but it shows her perfect independence of mindand scorn of comment that she should have done this. In the end of '43she returned home, and the episode was over. It was really the onlyepisode of possible practical significance in her life until we come tothe records of her brief literary career and her marriage, both towardsits end.
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The prospect of the school which the three sisters were to set uptogether was abandoned; there was no more talk of governessing. We arenot told if it was the small inheritance of the aunt--only, Mr. ClementShorter informs us, L1500--which enabled the sisters henceforward toremain at home without thought of further effort: but certainly this waswhat happened. And the lives of the two younger were drawing so near theend that it is a comfort to think that they enjoyed this moment ofcomparative grace together. Their life was extremely silent, secluded,and apart. There was the melancholy figure of Branwell to distract thehouse with the spectacle of heavy idleness, drink, and disorder; butthis can scarcely have been so great an affliction as if he had been amore beloved brother. He was not, however, veiled by any tender attemptto cover his follies or wickedness, but openly complained of to alltheir friends, which mitigates the affliction: and they seem to havekept very separate from him, living in a world of their own.
In 1846 a volume of poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, waspublished at their own cost. It had not the faintest success; they wereinformed by the publisher that two copies only had been sold, and theonly satisfaction that remained to them was to send a few copies to someof the owners of those great names which the enthusiastic young womenhad worshipped from afar as stars in the firmament. These poems werere-published after Charlotte Bronte had attained her first triumph, andpeople had begun to cry out and wonder over "Wuthering Heights." Thehistory of "Jane Eyre," on the other hand, is that of most
works whichhave been the beginning of a career. It fell into the hands of the rightman, the "reader" of Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., Mr. Williams, a manof great intelligence and literary insight. The first story written byCharlotte Bronte, which was called "The Professor," and was the originalof "Villette," written at a time when her mind was very full of theemotions raised by that singular portion of her life, had been rejectedby a number of publishers, and was also rejected by Mr. Williams, whofound it at once too crude and too _short_ for the risks ofpublication, three volumes at that period being your only possible formfor fiction. But he saw the power in it, and begged the author to tryagain at greater length. She did so; not on the basis of the "Professor"as might have seemed natural--probably the materials were still too muchat fever-heat in her mind to be returned to at that moment--but by thestory of "Jane Eyre," which at once placed Charlotte Bronte amid themost popular and powerful writers of her time.
I remember well the extraordinary thrill of interest which in the midstof all the Mrs. Gores, Mrs. Marshs, &c.--the latter name is mentionedalong with those of Thackeray and Dickens even by Mr. Williams--cameupon the reader who, in the calm of ignorance, took up the first volumeof "Jane Eyre." The period of the heroine in white muslin, theimmaculate creature who was of sweetness and goodness all compact, hadlasted in the common lines of fiction up to that time. Miss Austenindeed might well have put an end to that abstract and empty fiction,yet it continued, as it always does continue more or less, the primitiveideal. But "Jane Eyre" gave her, for the moment, the _coup de grace_.That the book should be the story of a governess was perhaps necessaryto the circumstances of the writer: and the governess was already afavourite figure in fiction. But generally she was of the beautiful,universally fascinating, all-enduring kind, the amiable blamelesscreature whose secret merits were never so hidden but that they might beperceived by a keen sighted hero. I am not sure, indeed, that anybodybelieved Miss Bronte when she said her heroine was plain. It is veryclear from the story that Jane was never unnoticed, never failed toplease, except among the women, whom it is the instinctive art of thenovelist to rouse in arms against the central figure, thus demonstratingthe jealousy, spite, and rancour native to their minds in respect to thewomen who please men. No male cynic was ever stronger on that subjectthan this typical woman. She cannot have believed it, I presume, sinceher closest friends were women, and she seems to have had perfect faithin their kindness: but this is a matter of conventional belief which hasnothing to do with individual experience. It is one of the doctrinesunassailable of the art of fiction; a thirty-ninth article in whichevery writer of novels is bound to believe.
Miss Bronte did not know fine ladies, and therefore, in spite of herselfand a mind the reverse of vulgar, she made the competitors for Mr.Rochester's favour rather brutal and essentially vulgar persons, anerror, curiously enough, which seems to have been followed by GeorgeEliot in the corresponding scenes in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story," whereCaptain Wybrow's _fiancee_ treats poor Tiny very much as the beauty inMr. Rochester's house treats Jane Eyre. Both were imaginary pictures,which perhaps more or less excuses their untruthfulness in writers bothso sincere and lifelike in treating things they knew. It is amusing toremember that Jane Eyre's ignorance of dress gave a clinching argumentto Miss Rigby in the _Quarterly_ to decide that the writer was not andcould not possibly be a woman. The much larger and more significant factthat no man (until in quite recent days when there have been instancesof such effeminate art) ever made a woman so entirely the subject andinspiration of his book, the only interest in it, was entirelyoverlooked in what was, notwithstanding, the very shrewd and tellingargument about the dress.
The chief thing, however, that distressed the candid and as yetunaccustomed reader in "Jane Eyre," and made him hope that it might be aman who had written it, was the character of Rochester's confidences tothe girl whom he loved--not the character of Rochester, which wascompletely a woman's view, but that he should have talked to a girl soevidently innocent of his amours and his mistresses. This, however, Ithink, though, as we should have thought, a subject so abhorrent to ayoung woman such as Charlotte Bronte was, was also emphatically awoman's view. A man might have credited another man of Rochester's kindwith impulses practically more heinous and designs of the worst kind:but he would not have made him err in that way.
In this was a point of honour which the woman did not understand. Itmarks a curious and subtle difference between the sexes. The woman lessenlightened in practical evil considers less the risks of actual vice;but her imagination is free in other ways, and she innocently permitsher hero to do and say things so completely against the code which isbinding on gentlemen whether vicious or otherwise that her want ofperception becomes conspicuous. The fact that the writer of the reviewin the _Quarterly_ was herself a woman accounts for her mistake insupposing that the book was written if not by a man, by "a womanunsexed;" "a woman who had forfeited the society of her sex." Andafterwards, when Mrs. Gaskell made her disastrous statements aboutBranwell Bronte and other associates of Charlotte's youth, it was withthe hope of proving that the speech and manners of the men to whom shehad been accustomed were of a nature to justify her in any suchmisapprehension of the usual manners of gentlemen. It was on thecontrary, as I think, only the bold and unfettered imagination of awoman quite ignorant on all such subjects which could have suggestedthis special error. The mind of such a woman, casting about forsomething to make her wicked but delightful hero do by way ofdemonstrating his wickedness, yet preserving the fascination which shemeant him to retain, probably hit upon this as the very wickedest thingshe could think of, yet still attractive: for is there not a thrill ofcuriosity in searching out what such a strange being might think or say,which is of itself a strong sensation? Miss Bronte was, I think, thefirst to give utterance to that curiosity of the woman in respect to theman, and fascination of interest in him--not the ideal man, not SirKenneth, too reverent for anything but silent worship--which has sincerisen to such heights of speculation, and imprints now a tone uponmodern fiction at which probably she would have been horrified.
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There were numberless stories in those days of guilty love and betrayal,of how "lovely woman stoops to folly," and all the varieties of thatendless subject; but it was, except in the comic vein, or with grotesquetreatment, the pursuit of the woman by the man, the desire of the loverfor the beloved which was the aim of fiction. A true lady of romancewalked superior: she accepted (or not) the devotion: she stooped fromher white height to reward her adorer: but that she herself shouldcondescend to seek him (except under the circumstances of fashionablelife, where everybody is in quest of a coronet), or call out for him toheaven and earth when he tarried in his coming, was unknown to thesituations of romantic art. When the second of Charlotte Bronte's booksappeared, there was accordingly quite a new sensation in store for thepublic. The young women in "Shirley" were all wild for this lover who,though promised by all the laws of nature and romance, did not appear.They leaned out of their windows, they stretched forth their hands,calling for him--appealing to heaven and earth. Why were they left towear out their bloom, to lose their freshness, to spend their days insewing and dreaming, when he, it was certain, was about somewhere, andby sheer perversity of fate could not find the way to them? Nothing wasthought of the extra half-million of women in those days; perhaps it hadnot begun to exist; but that "nobody was coming to marry us, nobodycoming to woo" was apparent.
Young ladies like Miss Charlotte Bronte and Miss Ellen Nussey herfriend, would have died rather than give vent to such sentiments; butwhen the one of them to whom that gift was given found that her pen hadbecome a powerful instrument in her hand, the current of the restrainedfeeling burst all boundaries, and she poured forth the cry which nobodyhad suspected before. It had been a thing to be denied, to beindignantly contradicted as impossible, if ever a lovesick girl putherself forth to the shame of her fellows and the laugh of the world.When such a phenomenon appeared, she
was condemned as either bad orfoolish by every law: and the idea that she was capable of "runningafter" a man was the most dreadful accusation that could be broughtagainst a woman. Miss Bronte's heroines, however, did not precisely dothis. Shirley and Caroline Helstone were not in love so much as longingfor love, clamouring for it, feeling it to be their right of which theywere somehow defrauded. There is a good deal to be said for such a view.If it is the most virtuous thing in the world for a man to desire tomarry, to found a family, to be the father of children, it should be noshameful thing for a woman to own the same desire. But it is somehowagainst the instinct of primitive humanity, which has decided that thewoman should be no more than responsive, maintaining a reserve inrespect to her feelings, subduing the expression, unless in the "once,and only once, and to One only" of the poet.
Charlotte Bronte was the first to overthrow this superstition.Personally I am disposed to stand for the superstition, and dislike alltransgression of it. But that was not the view of the most reticent andself-controlled of maidens, the little governess, clad in all the strictproprieties of the period, the parson's daughter despising curates, andunacquainted with other men. In her secret heart, she demanded of fatenight and day why she, so full of life and capability, should be leftthere to dry up and wither; and why Providence refused her thecompletion of her being. Her heart was not set on a special love; stillless was there anything fleshly or sensual in her imagination. It is ashame to use such words in speaking of her, even though to cast themforth as wholly inapplicable. The woman's grievance--that she should beleft there unwooed, unloved, out of reach of the natural openings oflife: without hope of motherhood: with the great instinct of her beingunfulfilled--was almost a philosophical, and entirely an abstract,grievance, felt by her for her kind: for every woman dropped out ofsight and unable to attain the manner of existence for which she wascreated. And I think it was the first time this cry had been heard outof the mouth of a perfectly modest and pure-minded woman, nay, out ofthe mouth of any woman; for it had nothing to do with the shriek of theSapphos for love. It was more startling, more confusing to the generalmind, than the wail of the lovelorn. The gentle victim of "adisappointment," or even the soured and angered victim, was a thingquite understood and familiar: but not the woman calling upon heaven andearth to witness that all the fates were conspiring against her to cheather of her natural career.
So far as I can see this was the great point which gave force toCharlotte Bronte's genius and conferred upon her the curiouspre-eminence she possesses among the romancers of her time. In this view"Shirley," though I suppose the least popular, is the mostcharacteristic of her works. It is dominated throughout with thiscomplaint. Curates? Yes, there they are, a group of them. Is that thething you expect us women to marry? Yet it is our right to bearchildren, to guide the house. And we are half of the world, and where isthe provision for us?
This cry disturbed the critic, the reader, the general public in themost curious way; they did not know what to make of it. Was it ashameless woman who was so crying out? It is always the easiest way, andone which avoids all complications, to say so, and thus crush everyquestion. But it was scarcely easy to believe this in face of othercircumstances. Mrs. Gaskell, as much puzzled as any one, when CharlotteBronte's short life was over, tried hard to account for it by"environment" as the superior persons say, that is by the wicked follyof her brother, and the coarseness of all the Yorkshiremen round; andthus originated in her bewilderment, let us hope without otherintention, a new kind of biography, as the subject of it inaugurated anentirely new kind of social revolution. The cry of the women indeedalmost distressed as well as puzzled the world. The vivid genius stillheld it, but the ideas were alarming, distracting beyond measure. The_Times_ blew a trumpet of dismay; the book was revolution as well asrevelation. It was an outrage upon good taste, it was a betrayal ofsentiments too widespread to be comfortable. It was indelicate if notimmodest. We have outgrown now the very use of this word, but it was apotent one at that period. And it was quite a just reproach. That cryshattered indeed altogether the "delicacy" which was supposed to be themost exquisite characteristic of womankind. The softening veil is blownaway, when such exhibitions of feeling are given to the world.
From that period to this is a long step. We have travelled through manyyears and many gradations of sentiment: and we have now arrived at astandard of opinion by which the "sex-problem" has become the mostinteresting of questions, the chief occupation of fiction, to bediscussed by men and women alike with growing warmth and openness, theimmodest and the indelicate being equally and scornfully dismissed asbarriers with which Art has nothing to do. My impression is thatCharlotte Bronte was the pioneer and founder of this school of romance,though it would probably have shocked and distressed her as much as anyother woman of her age.
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The novels of Emily and Anne Bronte were published shortly after "JaneEyre," in three volumes, of which "Wuthering Heights" occupied the firsttwo. I am obliged to confess that I have never shared the commonsentiment of enthusiasm for that, to me, unlovely book. The absence ofalmost every element of sympathy in it, the brutality and misery,tempered only by an occasional gleam of the heather, the freshness of anoccasional blast over the moors, have prevented me from appreciating aforce which I do not deny but cannot admire. The figure of Heathcliffe,which perhaps has called forth more praise than any other single figurein the literature of the time, does not touch me. I can understand howin the jumble which the reader unconsciously makes, explaining him moreor less by Rochester and other of Charlotte Bronte's heroes, he may takehis place in a sort of system, and thus have humanities read into him,so to speak, which he does not himself possess. But though the horrorand isolation of the house is powerful I have never been able toreconcile myself either to the story or treatment, or to the estimate ofEmily Bronte's genius held so strongly by so many people. There isperhaps the less harm in refraining from much comment on this singularbook, of which I gladly admit the unique character, since it has beenthe occasion of so many and such enthusiastic comments. To me EmilyBronte is chiefly interesting as the double of her sister, exaggeratingat once and softening her character and genius as showing those limitsof superior sense and judgment which restrained her, and the softerlights which a better developed humanity threw over the landscape commonto them both. We perceive better the tempering sense of possibility bywhich Charlotte made her rude and almost brutal hero still attractive,even in his masterful ferocity, when we see Emily's incapacity toexpress anything in _her_ hero except perhaps a touch of that tragicpathos, prompting to fiercer harshness still, which is in the soul of aman who never more, whatever he does, can set himself right. This is theone strain of poetry to my mind in the wild conception. There was nomeasure in the younger sister's thoughts, nor temperance in her methods.
The youngest of all, the gentle Anne, would have no right to beconsidered at all as a writer but for her association with theseimperative spirits. An ordinary little novelette and a moral story,working out the disastrous knowledge gained by acquaintance with theunfortunate Branwell's ruinous habits, were her sole productions. Shewas the element wanting in Emily's rugged work and nature. Instead ofbeing two sisters constantly entwined with each other, never separatewhen they could help it, had Anne been by some fantastic power swampedaltogether and amalgamated with her best beloved, we may believe thatEmily might then have shown herself the foremost of the three. But thegroup as it stands is more interesting than any single individual couldbe. And had Charlotte Bronte lived a long and triumphant life, afanciful writer might have imagined that the throwing off of those otherthreads of being so closely attached to her own had poured greater forceand charity into her veins. But we are baffled in all our suggestionsfor the amendment of the ways of Providence.
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The melancholy and tragic year, or rather six months, which swept fromHaworth Parsonage three of its inmates, and left Charlo
tte and herfather alone to face life as they might, was now approaching; and itseems so completely an episode in the story of the elder sister'sgenius as well as her life, that its history is like that of anunwritten tragedy, hers as much as her actual work. Branwell was thefirst to die, unwept yet not without leaving a pathetic note in therecord. Then came the extraordinary passion and agony of Emily, whichhas affected the imagination so much, and which, had it been for anynoble purpose, would have been a true martyrdom. But to die the death ofa Stoic, in fierce resistance yet subjection to Nature, regardless ofthe feelings of all around, for the sake of pride and self-will alone,is not an act to be looked upon with the reverential sympathy which,however, it has secured from many. The strange creature with her shoeson her feet and her staff in her hand, refusing till the last toacknowledge herself to be ill or to receive any help in her weakness,gives thus a kind of climax to her strange and painful work. Her deathtook place in December of the same year (1848) in which Branwell died.Anne, already delicate, would never seem to have held up her head afterher sister's death, and in May 1849 she followed, but in all sweetnessand calmness, to her early grave. She was twenty-eight; Emilytwenty-nine. So soon had the fever of life worn itself out and peacecome. Charlotte was left alone. There had not been to her in either ofthem the close companion which they had found in each other. But yetlife ebbed away from her with their deaths, which occurred in such astartling and quick succession as always makes bereavement moreterrible.
This occurred at the height of her mental activity. "Shirley" had beenpublished, and had been received with the divided feeling we havereferred to; and when she was thus left alone she found, no doubt, thesolace which of all mortal things work gives best, by resuming hernatural occupation in the now more than ever sombre seclusion of theParsonage, to which, however, her favourite friend, Ellen Nussey, camefrom time to time. One or two visits to London occurred after the twofirst publications in which, a demure little person, silent and shy, yetcapable of expressing herself very distinctly by times, and by no meansunconscious of the claim she now had upon other people's respect andadmiration, Charlotte Bronte made a little sensation in the societywhich was opened to her, not always of a very successful kind. Everybodywill remember the delightfully entertaining chapter in literary historyin which Mrs. Ritchie, with charming humour and truth, recounts thevisit of this odd little lion to her father's house, and Thackeray'sabrupt and clandestine flight to his club when it was found that nothingmore was to be made of her than an absorbed conversation with thegoverness in the back drawing-room, a situation like one in a novel, andso very like the act of modest greatness, singling out the leastimportant person as the object of her attentions.
She is described by all her friends as plain, even ugly--a small womanwith a big nose, and no other notable feature, not even the bright eyeswhich are generally attributed to genius--which was probably, however,better than the lackadaisical portrait prefixed to her biography, aftera picture by Richmond, which is the typical portrait of a governess ofthe old style, a gentle creature deprecating and wistful. Her lettersare very good letters, well expressed in something of the old-fashionedway, but without any of the charm of a born letter-writer. Indeed, charmdoes not seem to have been hers in any way. But she had a few verystaunch friends who held fast by her all her life, notwithstanding theuncomfortable experience of being "put in a book," which few peoplelike. It is a gift by itself to put other living people in books. Thenovelist does not always possess it; to many the realms of imaginationare far more easy than the arid realms of fact, and to frame an image ofa man much more natural than to take his portrait. I am not sure that itis not a mark of greater strength to be able to put a living andrecognisable person on the canvas than it is to invent one. Anyhow, MissBronte possessed it in great perfection. Impossible to doubt that thecharacters of "Shirley" were real men; still more impossible to doubtfor a moment the existence of M. Paul Emmanuel. The pursuit of such asystem requires other faculties than those of the mere romancist. Itdemands a very clear-cut opinion, a keen judgment not disturbed by anystrong sense of the complexities of nature, nor troubled by anypossibility of doing injustice to its victim.
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One thing strikes us very strongly in the description of the school,Lowood, which was her very first step in literature, and in which therecan now be no doubt, from her own remarks on the manner in which it wasreceived, she had a vindictive purpose. I scarcely know why, for, ofcourse, the dates are all there to prove the difference--but my ownconclusion had always been that she was a girl of fourteen or fifteen,old enough to form an opinion when she left the school. I find, withmuch consternation, that she was only nine; and that so far as such astrenuous opinion was her own at all, it must have been formed at thatearly and not very judicious age. That the picture should be so vividwith only a little girl's recollection to go upon is wonderful; but itis not particularly valuable as a verdict against a great institution,its founder and all its ways. Nevertheless, it had its scathing andwounding effect as much as if the little observer, whose small judgmentworked so precociously, had been capable of understanding the thingswhich she condemned. It would be rash to trust nineteen in such areport, but nine!
It was at a different age and in other circumstances that CharlotteBronte made her deep and extraordinary study of the Brussels Pensionnat.She was twenty-seven; she had already gone through a number of thoseyears of self-repression during which, by dint of keeping silence, theheart burns. She was, if we may accept the freedom of her utterances infiction as more descriptive of her mind than the measured sentences ofher letters, angry with fate and the world which denied her a brightercareer, and bound her to the cold tasks of dependence and the company ofdespised and almost hated inferiors during the best of her life. Hertremendous gift of sight--not second sight or any visionary way ofregarding the object before her, but that vivid and immediate visionwhich took in every detail, and was decisive on every act as if it hadbeen the vision of the gods--was now fully matured. She saw all that wasabout her with this extraordinary clearness without any shadow upon theobject or possibility of doubt as to her power of seeing it all roundand through and through. She makes us also see and know the big whitehouse, with every room distinct: the garden, with its great trees andalleys: the class-rooms, each with its tribune: the girls, fat and roundand phlegmatic in characteristic foreignism, and herself as spectator,looking on with contemptuous indifference, not caring to discriminatebetween them. The few English figures, which concern her more, are drawnkeen upon the canvas, though with as little friendliness; the teacherssharply accentuated, Mdlle. Sophie, for instance, who, when she is in arage, has no lips, and all the sharp contentions and false civilities ofthose banded Free Lances, enemies to everybody and to each other; theimage of watchful suspicion in the head of the house--all these are setforth in glittering lines of steel. There is not a morsel of compunctionin the picture. Everybody is bad, worthless, a hater of the whole race.The mistress of the establishment moves about stealthily, watching, hereyes showing through a mist in every corner, going and coming without asound. What a picture it is! There is not a good meaning in the wholeplace--not even that beneficent absence of meaning which softens theview. They are all bent on their own aims, on gaining an advantage greator small over their neighbours; nobody is spared, nobody is worth arevision of judgment--except one.
The little Englishwoman herself, who is the centre of all this, is notrepresented as more lovable than the rest. She is the hungry littleepicure, looking on while others feast, and envying every one of them,even while she snarls at their fare as apples of Gomorrah. She cannotabide that they should be better off than she, even though she scornstheir satisfaction in what they possess. Her wild and despairing rushthrough Brussels when the town is _en fete_, cold, impassioned,fever-hot with rancour and loneliness, produces the most amazing effecton the mind. She is the banished spirit for whom there is no place, thelittle half-tamed wild beast, wild with desire
to tear and rendeverything that is happy. One feels that she has a certain justificationand realises the full force of being left out in the cold, of having nopart or lot in the matter when other people are amused and rejoice. Manyother writers have endeavoured to produce a similar effect with mildermeans, but I suppose because of a feeble-minded desire to preserve thereputation of their forlorn heroine and give the reader an amiable viewof her, no one has succeeded like the author of "Villette," who is in noway concerned for the amiability of Lucy Snowe.
For the impartiality of this picture is as extraordinary as its power.Lucy Snowe is her own historian; it is the hot blood of theautobiographist that rushes through her veins, yet no attempt is made torecommend her to the reader or gain his sympathy. She is much too realto think of these outside things, or of how people will judge her, orhow to make her proceedings acceptable to their eyes. We do not knowwhether Charlotte Bronte ever darted out of the white still house,standing dead in the moonlight, and rushed through the streets and, likea ghost, into the very heart of the gaslights and festivities; but itwould be difficult to persuade any reader that some one had not done so,imprinting that phantasmagoria of light and darkness upon a livingbrain. Whether it was Charlotte Bronte or Lucy Snowe, the effect is thesame. We are not even asked to feel for her or pity her, much less toapprove her. Nothing is demanded from us on her account but merely tobehold the soul in revolt and the strange workings of her despair. Itwas chiefly because of the indifference to her of Dr. John that Lucy wasthus driven into a momentary madness; and with the usual regardlessindiscretion of all Charlotte Bronte's amateur biographers, Mr. Shorterintimates to us who was the living man who was Dr. John and occasionedall the commotion. The tragedy, however it appears, was unnecessary, forthe victim got over it with no great difficulty, and soon began the muchmore engrossing interest which still remained behind.
Nothing up to this point has attracted us in "Villette," except, indeed,the tremendous vitality and reality of the whole, the sensation of theactual which is in every line, and which forbids us to believe for amoment that what we are reading is fiction. But a very differentsentiment comes into being as we become acquainted with the blackbullet-head and vivacious irascible countenance of M. Paul Emmanuel. Heis the one only character in Miss Bronte's little world who has a realcharm, whose entrance upon the stage warms all our feelings and awakensin us not interest alone, but lively liking, amusement and sympathy. Thequick-witted, quick-tempered Frenchman, with all the foibles of hisvanity displayed, as susceptible to any little slight as a girl, aseasily pleased with a sign of kindness, as far from the English ideal asit is possible to imagine, dancing with excitement, raging withdispleasure, committing himself by every step he takes, cruel,delightful, barbarous and kind, is set before us in the fullest light,intolerable but always enchanting. He is as full of variety as Rosalind,as devoid of dignity as Pierrot, contradictory, inconsistent, vain, yetconquering all our prejudices and enchanting us while he performs everyantic that, according to our usual code, a man ought not to be capableof. How was it that for this once the artist got the better of all herrestrictions and overcame all her misconceptions, and gave us a man tobe heartily loved, laughed at, and taken into our hearts?
I cannot answer that question. I am sorry that he was M. Heger, and themaster of the establishment, and not the clever tutor who had so much ofMadame Beck's confidence. But anyhow, he is the best that Miss Bronteever did for us, the most attractive individual, the most perfectpicture. The Rochesters were all more or less fictitious,notwithstanding the unconscious inalienable force of realism which givesthem, in spite of themselves and us, a kind of overbearing life; butMiss Bronte never did understand what she did not know. She had to see athing before it impressed itself upon her, and when she did see it, withwhat force she saw! She knew M. Paul Emmanuel, watching him day by day,seeing all his littlenesses and childishness, his vanity, his big warmheart, his clever brain, the manifold nature of the man. He stands out,as the curates stood out, absolutely real men about whom we couldentertain no doubt, recognisable anywhere. The others were either awoman's men, like the Moors of Shirley, whose roughness was bluster (shecould not imagine an Englishman who was not rough and rude), and theirstrength more or less made up; or an artificial composition like St.John, an ideal bully like Rochester. The ideal was not her forte--shehad few gifts that way: but she saw with overwhelming lucidity andkeenness, and what she saw, without a doubt, without a scruple, shecould put upon the canvas in lines of fire. Seldom, very seldom, did anobject appear within reach of that penetrating light, which could bedrawn lovingly or made to appear as a being to be loved. Was not thesole model of that species M. Paul? It would seem that in the piteouspoverty of her life, which was so rich in natural power, she had nevermet before a human creature in whom she could completely trust, or onewho commended himself to her entirely, with all his foibles andweaknesses increasing, not diminishing, the charm.
It is, in my opinion, a most impertinent inquiry to endeavour to searchout what were the sentiments of Charlotte Bronte for M. Heger. Any onewhom it would be more impossible to imagine as breaking the very firstrule of English decorum, and letting her thoughts stray towards anotherwoman's husband, I cannot imagine. Her fancy was wild and her utterancefree, and she liked to think that men were quite untrammelled by thoseproprieties which bound herself like bonds of iron in her privateperson, and that she might pluck a fearful joy by listening to theirdreadful experiences: but she herself was as prim and Puritan as anylittle blameless governess that ever went out of an English parish. Butwhile believing this I cannot but feel it was an intolerable spite offortune that the one man whom she knew in her life, whom her storycould make others love, the only man whom she saw with that realillumination which does justice to humanity, was not M. Paul Emmanuelbut M. Heger. This was why we were left trembling at the end of LucySnowe's story, not knowing whether he ever came back to her out of thewilds, fearing almost as keenly that nothing but loss could fitly endthe tale, yet struggling in our imaginations against the doom--as if ithad concerned our own happiness.
Was this new-born power in her, the power of representing a man at hisbest, she who by nature saw both men and women from their worst side, asign of the development of genius in herself, the softening of thatscorn with which she had hitherto regarded a world chiefly made up ofinferior beings, the mellowing influence of maturity? So we might havesaid, had it not been that after this climax of production she neverspake word more in the medium of fiction. Had she told the worldeverything she had to say? Could she indeed say nothing but what she hadseen and known in her limited experience--the trials of school andgovernessing, the longing of women, the pangs of solitude? That strangeform of imagination which can deal only with fact, and depict nothingbut what is under its eyes, is in its way perhaps the most impressive ofall--especially when inspired by the remorseless lights of that keenoutward vision which is unmitigated by any softening of love for therace, any embarrassing toleration as to feelings and motives. It isunfortunately true in human affairs that those who expect a bad endingto everything, and suspect a motive at least dubious to every action,prove right in a great number of cases, and that the qualities of truthand realism have been appropriated to their works by almost universalconsent. Indeed there are some critics who think this the only true formof art. But it is at the same time a power with many limitations. Theartist who labours, as M. Zola does, searching into every dust-heap, asif he could find out human nature, the only thing worth depicting, withall its closely hidden secrets, all its flying indistinguishable tones,all its infinite gradations of feeling, by that nauseous process, or bya roaring progress through the winds, upon a railway brake, or the visitof a superficial month to the most complicated, the most subtle ofcities--must lay up for himself and for his reader many disappointmentsand deceptions: but the science of artistic study, as exemplified inhim, had not been invented in Charlotte Bronte's day.
She did not attempt to go and see things with the intention ofr
epresenting them; she was therefore limited to the representation ofthose things which naturally in the course of life came under her eyes.She knew, though only as a child, the management and atmosphere of agreat school, and set it forth, branding a great institution with aninsufferable stigma, justly or unjustly, who knows? She went to anotherschool and turned out every figure in it for our inspection--a communityall jealous, spiteful, suspicious, clandestine: even the chance pupilwith no particular relation to her story or herself, painted with allher frivolities for the edification of the world did not escape. "Shewas Miss So-and-So," say the army of commentators who have followed MissBronte, picking up all the threads, so that the grand-daughter of thegirl who had the misfortune to be in the Brussels Pensionnat along withthat remorseless artist may be able to study the character of herancestress. The public we fear loves this kind of art, however,notwithstanding all its drawbacks.
On the other hand probably no higher inspiration could have set beforeus so powerfully the image of M. Paul. Thus we are made acquainted withthe best and the worst which can be effected by this method--the base inall their baseness, the excellent all the dearer for theircharacteristic faults: but the one representation scarcely lessoffensive than the other to the victim. Would it be less trying to theindividual to be thus caught, identified, written out large in the lightof love and glowing adoration, than in the more natural light of scorn?I know not indeed which would be the worst ordeal to go through, to bedrawn like Madame Beck, suspicious, stealthy, with watchful eyesappearing out of every corner, surprising every incautious word, than tobe put upon the scene in the other manner, with all your peccadilloesexposed in the light of admiration and fondness, and yourself put toplay the part of hero and lover. The point of view of the public is onething, that of the victim quite another. We are told that Miss Bronte,perhaps with a momentary compunction for what she had done, believedherself to have prevented all injurious effects by securing that"Villette" should not be published in Brussels, or translated into theFrench tongue, both of them of course perfectly futile hopes since thevery desire to hinder its appearance was a proof that this appearancewould be of unusual interest. The fury of the lady exposed in all herstealthy ways could scarcely have been less than the confusion of herspouse when he found himself held up to the admiration of his town asLucy Snowe's captivating lover. To be sure it may be said the public hasnothing to do with this. These individuals are dead and gone, and noexposure can hurt them any longer, whereas the gentle reader lives forever, and goes on through the generations, handing on to posterity hisdelight in M. Paul. But all the same it is a cruel and in reality animmoral art; and it has this great disadvantage, that its area isextremely circumscribed, especially when the artist lives most of herlife in a Yorkshire parsonage amid the moors, where so few notablepersons come in her way.
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There was however one subject of less absolute realism which CharlotteBronte had at her command, having experienced in her own person and seenher nearest friends under the experience, of that solitude and longingof women, of which she has made so remarkable an exposition. The longsilence of life without an adventure or a change, the forlorn gaze outat windows which never show any one coming who can rouse the slightestinterest in the mind, the endless years and days which pass and pass,carrying away the bloom, extinguishing the lights of youth, bringing adreary middle age before which the very soul shrinks, while yet thesufferer feels how strong is the current of life in her own veins, andhow capable she is of all the active duties of existence--this was theessence and soul of the existence she knew best. Was there no help forit? Must the women wait and long and see their lives thrown away, andhave no power to save themselves?
The position in itself so tragic is one which can scarcely be expressedwithout calling forth an inevitable ridicule, a laugh at the best, moreoften a sneer at the women whose desire for a husband is thus betrayed.Shirley and Caroline Helston both cried out for that husband with anindignation, a fire and impatience, a sense of wrong and injury, whichstopped the laugh for the moment. It might be ludicrous but it washorribly genuine and true. Note there was nothing sensual about theseyoung women. It was life they wanted; they knew nothing of the grosserthoughts which the world with its jeers attributes to them: of suchthoughts they were unconscious in a primitive innocence which perhapsonly women understand. They wanted their life, their place in the world,the rightful share of women in the scheme of nature. Why did not it cometo them? The old patience in which women have lived for all thecenturies fails now and again in a keen moment of energy when some onearises who sees no reason why she should endure this forced inaction, orwhy she should invent for herself inferior ways of working and give upher birthright, which is to carry on the world.
The reader was horrified with these sentiments from the lips of youngwomen. The women were half ashamed, yet more than half stirred andexcited by the outcry, which was true enough if indelicate. All verywell to talk of women working for their living, finding new channels forthemselves, establishing their independence. How much have we said ofall that, endeavouring to persuade ourselves! Charlotte Bronte had thecourage of her opinions. It was not education nor a trade that her womenwanted. It was not a living but their share in life, a much morelegitimate object had that been the way to secure it, or had there beenany way to secure it in England. Miss Bronte herself said correct thingsabout the protection which a trade is to a woman, keeping her from amercenary marriage; but this was not in the least the way of herheroines. They wanted to be happy, no doubt, but above all things theywanted their share in life--to have their position by the side of men,which alone confers a natural equality, to have their shoulder to thewheel, their hands on the reins of common life, to build up the world,and link the generations each to each. In her philosophy marriage wasthe only state which procured this, and if she did not recommend amercenary marriage she was at least very tolerant about its conditions,insisting less upon love than was to be expected and with a covertconviction in her mind that if not one man then another was better thanany complete abandonment of the larger path. Lucy Snowe for a long timehad her heart very much set on Dr. John and his placid breadth ofEnglishism: but when she finally found out that to be impossible hertears were soon dried by the prospect of Paul Emmanuel, so unlike him,coming into his place.
Poor Charlotte Bronte! She has not been as other women, protected by thegrave from all betrayal of the episodes in her own life. Everybody hasbetrayed her, and all she thought about this one and that, and everyname that was ever associated with hers. There was a Mr. Taylor fromLondon about whom she wrote with great freedom to her friend MissNussey, telling how the little man had come, how he had gone awaywithout any advance in the affairs, how a chill came over her when heappeared and she found him much less attractive than when at a distance,yet how she liked it as little when he went away and was somewhatexcited about his first letter, and even went so far as to imagine witha laugh that there might be possibly a dozen little Joe Taylors beforeall was over. She was hard upon Miss Austen for having no comprehensionof passion, but no one could have been cooler and less impassioned thanshe as she considered the question of Mr. Taylor, reluctant to come toany decision yet disappointed when it came to nothing. There was nolonging in her mind for Mr. Taylor, but there was for life and actionand the larger paths and the little Joes.
This longing which she expressed with so much vehemence and some poeticfervour as the burden of the lives of Shirley and her friends has beenthe keynote of a great deal that has followed--the revolts andrebellions, the wild notions about marriage, the "Sex Problem," and agreat deal more. From that first point to the prevailing discussion ofall the questions involved is a long way; but it is a matter of logicalprogression, and when once the primary matter is opened, everyenlargement of the subject may be taken as a thing to be expected.Charlotte Bronte was in herself the embodiment of all old-fashionedrestrictions. She was proper, she was prim, her life was hedged in byall the l
ittle rules which bind the primitive woman. But when she lefther little recluse behind and rushed into the world of imagination herexposure of the bondage in which she sat with all her sisters was farmore daring than if she had been a woman of many experiences and knewwhat she was speaking of. She did know the longing, the discontent, theuniversal contradiction and contrariety which is involved in thatcondition of unfulfilment to which so many grey and undeveloped livesare condemned. For her and her class, which did not speak of it,everything depended upon whether the woman married or did not marry.Their thoughts were thus artificially fixed to one point in the horizon,but their ambition was neither ignoble nor unclean. It was bold, indeed,in proportion to its almost ridiculous innocence, and want of perceptionof any grosser side. Their share in life, their part in the mutualbuilding of the house, was what they sought. But the seed she thus sowedhas come to many growths which would have appalled Charlotte Bronte.Those who took their first inspiration from this cry of hers, have quiteforgotten what it was she wanted, which was not emancipation but anextended duty. But while it would be very unjust to blame her for thevagaries that have followed and to which nothing could be less desirablethan any building of the house or growth of the race, any responsibilityor service--we must still believe that it was she who drew the curtainfirst aside and opened the gates to imps of evil meaning, polluting andprofaning the domestic hearth.
The marriage which--after all these wild embodiments of the longing andsolitary heart which could not consent to abandon its share in life,after Shirley and Lucy Snowe, and that complex unity of three femalesouls all unfulfilled, which had now been broken by death--she acceptedin the end of her life, is the strangest commentary upon all that wentbefore, or rather, upon all the literary and spiritual part of herhistory, though it was a quite appropriate ending to Mr. Bronte'sdaughter, and even to the writer of those sober letters which discussedMr. Taylor, whether he should or should not be encouraged, and how itwas a little disappointing after all to see him go away. Her finalsuitor was one of the class which she had criticised so scathingly, onewho, it might have been thought, would scarcely have ventured to enterthe presence or brave the glance of so penetrating an eye, but who wouldseem to have brought all the urgency of a _grand passion_ to the sombreparlour of the parsonage, to the afternoon stillness of the lonely womanwho would not seem to have suspected anything of the kind till it waspoured out before her without warning. She was startled and confused byhis declaration and appeal, never apparently having contemplated thepossibility of any such occurrence; and in the interval which followedthe father raged and resisted, and the lover did not conceal hisheartbroken condition but suffered without complaining while the ladylooked on wistful, touched and attracted by the unlooked-for love, andgradually melting towards that, though indifferent to the man whooffered it. Mr. Bronte evidently thought that if this now distinguisheddaughter who had been worshipped among the great people in London, andtalked of in all the newspapers, married at all in her mature age, itshould be some one distinguished like herself, and not the mere curatewho was the natural fate of every clergyman's daughter, the simplest andleast known.
Charlotte meanwhile said no word, but saw the curate enact varioustragic follies of love for her sake with a sort of awe and wonder,astonished to find herself thus possessed still of the charm which noneare so sure as women that only youth and beauty can be expected topossess. And she had never had any beauty, and, though she was not old,was no longer young. It is a conventional fiction that a woman still inthe thirties is beyond the exercise of that power. Indeed, it would behard to fix the age at which the spell departs. Certainly the demeanourof Mr. Nicholls gave her full reason to believe that it had not departedfrom her. He faltered in the midst of the service, grew pale, almostlost his self-possession when he suddenly saw her among the kneelingfigures round the altar; and no doubt this rather shocking and startlingexhibition of his feelings was more pardonable to the object of so muchemotion than it was likely to have been to any other spectator. Theromance is a little strange, but yet it is a romance in its quaintecclesiastical way. And soon Charlotte was drawn still more upon herlover's side by the violence of her father. It was decided that thecurate was to go, and that this late gleam of love-making was to beextinguished and the old dim atmosphere to settle down again for ever.Finally, however, the mere love of love, which had always been more toher than any personal inclination, and the horror of that permanentreturn to the twilight of dreamy living against which she had struggledall her life, overcame her, and gave her courage; but she marriedcharacteristically, not as women marry who are carried to a new home andmake a new beginning in life, but retaining all the circumstances of theold and receiving her husband into her father's house where she hadalready passed through so many fluctuations and dreamed so many dreams,and which was full to overflowing with the associations of the past.
We have no reason to suppose that it did not add to the happiness of herlife; indeed, every indication is to the contrary, and the husband seemsto have been kind, considerate and affectionate. Still this thing uponwhich so many of her thoughts had been fixed during her whole life,which she had felt to be the necessary condition of full development,and for which the little impassioned female circle of which she was theexpositor had sighed and cried to heaven and earth, came to her at lastvery much in the form of a catastrophe. No doubt the circumstances ofher quickly failing health and shortened life promote this feeling. Butwithout really taking these into consideration the sensation remains thesame. The strange little keen soul with its sharply fixed restrictions,yet intense force of perception within its limits, dropped out of theworld into which it had made an irruption so brilliant and so brief andsank out of sight altogether, sank into the humdrum house between theold father and the sober husband, into the clerical atmosphere withwhich she had no sympathy, into the absolute quiet of domestic life towhich no Prince Charming could now come gaily round the corner, out ofthe mists and moors, and change with a touch of his wand the greymornings and evenings into golden days. Well! was not this that whichshe had longed for, the natural end of life towards which her Shirley,her Caroline, her Lucy had angrily stretched forth their hands,indignant to be kept waiting, clamouring for instant entrance? And so itwas, but how different! Lucy Snowe's little housekeeping, all thepreparations which M. Paul made for her comfort and which seemed betterto her than any palace, would not they too have taken the colour ofperpetual dulness if everything had settled down and the Professorassumed his slippers by the domestic hearth? Ah no, for Lucy Snowe lovedthe man, and Charlotte Bronte, as appears, loved only the love. It is aparable. She said a little later that she began to see that this was thefate which she would wish for those she loved best, for her friendEllen, perhaps for her Emily if she had lived--the good man veryfaithful, very steady, worth his weight in gold--yet flatter than theflattest days of old, _solidement nourri_, a good substantial husband,managing all the parish business, full of talk about the Archdeacon'scharge, and the diocesan meetings, and the other clergy of the moorlandparishes. We can conceive that she got to fetching his slippers for himand taking great care that he was comfortable, and perhaps had it beenso ordained might have grown into a contented matron and forgotten theglories and miseries, so inseparably twined and linked together, of heryouth. But she only had a year in which to do all that, and this is howher marriage seems to turn into a catastrophe, the caging of a wildcreature that had never borne captivity before, and which now could nolonger rush forth into the heart of any shining _fete_, or to the windowof a strange confessional, anywhere, to throw off the burden of theperennial contradiction, the ceaseless unrest of the soul, the boilingsof the volcano under the snow.
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I have said it was difficult to account for the extreme interest stillattaching to everything connected with Charlotte Bronte; not only thestory of her peculiar genius, but also of everybody connected with her,though the circle was in reality quite a respectable, humdrum, a
nduninteresting one, containing nobody of any importance except thesister, who was her own wilder and fiercer part. One way, however, inwhich these sisters have won some part of their long-lasting interest isdue to the treatment to which they have been subjected. They are thefirst victims of that ruthless art of biography which is one of thefeatures of our time; and that not only by Mrs. Gaskell, who took up herwork in something of an apologetic vein, and was so anxious to explainhow it was that her heroine expressed certain ideas not usual in themouths of women, that she was compelled to take away the reputation of anumber of other people in order to excuse the peculiarities of these tworemarkable women. But everybody who has touched their history since, andthere have been many--for it would seem that gossip, when restrained byno bonds of decorum or human feeling, possesses a certain interestwhether it is concerned with the household of a cardinal or that of aparish priest--has followed the same vicious way without anyremonstrance or appeal for mercy. We have all taken it for granted thatno mercy was to be shown to the Brontes. Let every rag be torn fromCharlotte, of whom there is the most to say. Emily had the good luck tobe no correspondent, and so has escaped to some degree the completeexposure of every confidence and every thought which has happened toher sister. Is it because she has nobody to defend her that she has beentreated thus barbarously? I cannot conceive a situation more painful,more lacerating to every feeling, than that of the father and thehusband dwelling silent together in that sombre parsonage, from whichevery ray of light seems to depart with the lost woman, whose presencehad kept a little savour in life, and looking on in silence to see theirlife taken to pieces, and every decent veil dragged from the inner beingof their dearest and nearest. They complained as much as two voicelesspersons could, or at least the father complained: and the very servantscame hot from their kitchen to demand a vindication of their character:but nobody noted the protest of the old man amid the silence of themoors: and the husband was more patient and spoke no word. Even he,however, after nearly half a century, when that far-off episode of lifemust have become dim to him, has thrown his relics open for a littlemore revelation, a little more interference with the helpless ashes ofthe dead.
No dot is now omitted upon i, no t left uncrossed. We know, or at leastare told, who Charlotte meant by every character she ever portrayed,even while the model still lives. We know her opinion of her friends, orrather acquaintances, the people whom she saw cursorily and formed ahasty judgment upon, as we all do in the supposed safety of common life.Protests have been offered in other places against a similar treatmentof other persons; but scarcely any protest has been attempted in respectto Charlotte Bronte. The resurrection people have been permitted to maketheir researches as they pleased. It throws a curious pathos, a notunsuitably tragic light upon a life always so solitary, that this shouldall have passed in silence because there was actually no one tointerfere, no one to put a ban upon the dusty heaps and demand that nomere should be said. When one looks into the matter a little moreclosely, one finds it is so with almost all those who have speciallysuffered at the hands of the biographer. The Carlyles had no child, nobrother to rise up in their defence. It gives the last touch ofmelancholy to the conclusion of a lonely life. Mrs. Gaskell, wise woman,defended herself from a similar treatment by will, and left childrenbehind her to protect her memory. But the Brontes are at the mercy ofevery one who cares to give another raking to the diminished heap of_debris_. The last writer who has done so, Mr. Clement Shorter, had somereal new light to throw upon a story which surely has now beensufficiently turned inside out, and has done his work with perfect goodfeeling, and, curiously enough after so many exploitations, in a waywhich shows that interest has not yet departed from the subject. But wetrust that now the memory of Charlotte Bronte will be allowed to rest.
[Signature: Mrs. M. Oliphant]
GEORGE ELIOT
_By_ MRS. LYNN LINTON