Part 10

Passing to modern criticism, we find one writer declaring that Rochester’s character “belongs to the realm of the railway bookstall shilling novel,” while to another it seems “of all her creations the most wonderful ... from her own inmost nobility of temper and depth of suffering she moulded a man, reversing the marvels of God’s creation.”

It is not, I think, necessary to be dogmatic in comparing the “greatness” of _Villette_ and _Jane Eyre_. The former is “more elaborated, more mature in execution, but less tragic, less simple and direct.” The influence of personal tragedy (assuming her love for Monsieur Heger) obviously permeates the work; leading to the idealisation of the pedagogue genius (revived in Louis Gerard Moore, Esq.--himself half Flemish), and to unjust hostility against the Continental feminine (partially atoned for in Hortense Moore). On the other hand, it is more in touch with real life; less melodramatic, though still sensational; more acutely varied, and equally vivid, in characterisation.

Finally, in _Shirley_, if the spirit of Charlotte Brontë is less concentrated, it burns with no less steady flame. Here, for almost the first time in a woman-writer, we find that eager questioning upon the earlier struggles between capital and labour--the risks attendant upon the introduction of machinery, the proper relations between master and men--which afterwards became part of the stock material for fiction. We find, too, much shrewd comment upon her own experience of clerical types--no less in the contrast between Helstone and Hall than in the somewhat heavily satirised curates; and some, probably inherited, injustice towards Dissenters. The characterisation is far more varied and more realistic; since we have at least two pairs of lovers, the numerous Yorke family, and a whole host of “walking ladies and gentlemen,” more or less carefully portrayed. Local colour appears in several passages of enthusiastic analysis of Yorkshire manners; and the philosophy is frequently turned on everyday life. For example:

“In English country ladies there is this point to be remarked. Whether young or old, pretty or plain, dull or sprightly, they all (or almost all) have a certain expression stamped on their features, which seems to say, ‘I know--I do not boast of it--but I _know_ that I am the standard of what is proper; let everyone therefore whom I approach, or who approaches me, keep a sharp look-out, for wherein they differ from me--be the same in dress, manner, opinion, principle, or practice--therein they are wrong.”

Yet the inspiration of _Shirley_ echoes _Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_. Here, too, as we have seen,--though the heroine is a rich beauty,--Man should be Master; and “indisputably, a great, good, handsome man is the first of created things.” Yet neither Shirley nor her friend Caroline have anything in common with the “average” woman, who, “if her admirers only _told_ her that she was an angel, would let them _treat_ her like an idiot”; or with her parents, who “would have delivered her over to the Rector’s loving-kindness and his tender mercies without one scruple”; or with the second Mrs. Helstone, who “reversing the natural order of insect existence, would have fluttered through the honeymoon, a bright, admired butterfly, and crawled the rest of her days a sordid, trampled worm.”

_Jane Eyre_, 1847. _Shirley_, 1849. _Villette_, 1852. _The Professor_, 1857.

“JANE EYRE” TO “SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE”

(1847-1858)

EMILY BRONTË (1818-1848) can scarcely, in character or genius, be accommodated to any ordered consideration of development. Regarded by many enthusiasts as greater than her more famous sister, she stands alone for all time. Her one novel, _Wuthering Heights_, is unique for the passionate intensity of its emotions and the wild dreariness of its atmosphere. Save for the clumsily introduced stranger, who merely exists to “hear the story,” the entire plot is woven about seven characters, all save one nearly related, and a few servants.

“Mr. Heathcliff,” said the second Catherine, “_you_ have _nobody_ to love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery. You _are_ miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? _Nobody_ loves you--_nobody_ will cry for you when you die! I wouldn’t be you!”

Charlotte calls him “child neither of Lascar nor gipsy, but a man’s shape animated by demon life--a Ghoul--an afreet”; and “from the time when ‘the little black-haired swarthy thing, as dark as if it came from the Devil,’ was first unrolled out of the bundle and set on its feet in the farm-house kitchen, to the hour when Nelly Dean found the grim, stalwart corpse laid on its back on the panel-enclosed bed, with wide-gazing eyes that seemed to ‘sneer at her attempt to close them, and parted lips and sharp white teeth that sneered too,’” this human monster dominates every character and event in the whole book. Men and women, Linton or Earnshaw, are but pawns in his remorseless brain; thwarting his will, daring his anger time after time; yet always submitting at last to the will of their “master”: save, indeed, at the fall of the curtain, when he had “lost the faculty of enjoying destruction.” For the passion of Heathcliff’s strange existence is gloomy revenge--against fate and his own associates. Bitterly concentrated on the few human beings--all occupying two adjacent farms--with whom his life is passed, he seems the embodiment of an eternal curse, directed to thwart every natural feeling, every hope of happiness or peace.

Emily Brontë reveals no conception of humanity save this fiendish misanthrope; churlish boors like Hindley and Hareton Earnshaw; weak good people like Edgar, Isabella, and Linton; passionate sprites like the two Catherines. Old Joseph indeed contains some elements of the comic spirit, exhibited in hypocrisy; and Nelly Dean alone has _both_ virtue and strength of character. But in making, or striving to unmake, marriages between these “opposites”; in forcing their society upon each other, and hovering around his helpless victims; the arch-fiend Heathcliff has ample scope for the indulgence of his diabolical whim. The tormenting of others and of himself; the perverse making of misery for its own sake; the ingenious exercise of brutal tyranny, are food and drink to this twisted soul. In ordinary cases we should wonder what might have happened had Catherine married him. We should set about picturing Heathcliff in happy possession of the love for which he craved so mightily: we should have murmured, “What cruel waste.” But the power of Emily Brontë’s conception denies us such idle imaginings. Heathcliff was manifestly incapable of “satisfaction” in anything, and there, as elsewhere, was Catherine his true mate. No circumstances, the most roseate or ideal, could have tamed his savage nature, quieted his stormy discontents, or lulled his passion for hurting all creatures weaker than himself. Such love as his must always have crushed and devoured what it yearned for: he could never have had enough of it: have rested in it, or rested upon it. He was, indeed, possessed by the “eighth devil.”

In reality, then, the resemblance between Charlotte and Emily Brontë is comparatively superficial, arising from similarity of experience and the bleak atmosphere of the scenes and people among which they lived.[13] Emily can scarcely be called an exponent of human passion, since the beings she has created bear little or no resemblance to actual humanity.

Charlotte has told us that her sister’s impressions of scenery and locality are truthful, original, and sympathetic; the bleakness of the atmosphere is not exaggerated. But, on the other hand, we learn--as we should expect--that “she had scarcely more practical knowledge of the peasantry among whom she lived, than a nun has of the country people who sometimes pass her gates.... She knew their ways, their language, their family histories: she could hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but with them she rarely exchanged a word.” Hence, having a naturally sombre mind, she drank in only “those tragic and terrible traits of which, in listening to the secret annals of every rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receive the impress.”

For those characteristics, more or less superficial, in which her dramatis personæ resemble real life, they are drawn, with marvellous insight and sympathy, from the moorlands; but they are not, themselves, moorland folk. They are sheer creations of the imagination. The terrible possibilities which lurk within us are used indeed in the compounding, but so combined and concentrated as to banish all human semblance. It is up to any of us to become such as Heathcliff and the rest, for she has not violated the _possibilities_; but a kinder fate, that grain of virtue and gentleness without which no human being was ever born and held his reason, has saved us from the absolutely elementary passions, tormenting and repining, of these strange beings.

She is as far from realism as an “unromantic” writer can well be; and, by sheer force of will or vividness of imagination, compels and fascinates us to accept, as worthy of study and full of interest, the characters she has created.

And because, as has been often noticed, women are--curiously enough--not usually pre-eminent in imagination, her work remains supreme for certain qualities, which we may vainly seek elsewhere in English literature.

* * * * *

ANNE BRONTË (1820-1849) sheds but a pale glimmer beside her fiery sisters. She produced two novels: _Agnes Grey_, the record of a governess, and _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_, a morbid picture of “talents misused and faculties abused”--both founded on personal experience. She worked quietly, but with mild resolution; reproducing exactly her own observations on life, never straying beyond what she believed to be literally the truth. “She hated her work, but would pursue it. When reasoned with on the subject, she regarded such reasonings as a temptation to self-indulgence. She must be honest: she must not varnish, soften, or conceal.”

Anne Brontë has left us her “warning”; and if the stories embodying the moral are not particularly stimulating or dramatic, they do, after a painstaking fashion, reveal character and reflect life. She had, moreover, a mild humour, entirely denied to Charlotte or Emily, as the following description of an “unchristian” rector may serve to show:

“Mr. Hatfield would come sailing up the aisle, or rather sweeping along like a whirlwind, with his rich silk gown flying behind him and rustling against the pew doors, mount the pulpit like a conqueror ascending his triumphal car; then, sinking on the velvet cushion in an attitude of studied grace, remain in silent prostration for a certain time; then mutter over a Collect, and gabble through the Lord’s Prayer, rise, draw off one bright lavender glove, to give the congregation the benefit of his sparkling rings, lightly pass his fingers through his well-curled hair, flourish a cambric handkerchief, recite a very short passage, or, perhaps, a mere phrase of Scripture, as a headpiece to his discourse, and, finally, deliver a composition which, as a composition, might be considered good.”

Like Charlotte, she prefers a plain heroine, seeming almost jealous of beauty in others, and regards man as the natural “master” of woman.

Art, inspired by a sense of duty, need not detain us further.

* * * * *

MRS. CRAIK (1826-1887) belongs, in all essentials, to the modern school of novelists; although (like many another of her day) she appears almost more out-of-date than the women of genius who preceded her. For the “average” writers belong to one age and only one. Yet the enormous mass of work she produced may still be read with some pleasure, and deserves notice for its competent witness to certain phases of development in women’s work.

In the first place she practically invented the “novel for the young person” (which is not “a children’s story”); and, in the second, she carried to its extreme limit that enthusiasm for domestic sentimentality (which is quite different from “sensibility”) so dear to the Early Victorians.

Obviously it can be no matter for surprise that, as women became accustomed to the use of their pen and experienced in its influence, they should wake at last to the peculiar needs of their daughters--for a class of story which, without the false ideals of romance or the coarseness of early fiction, was in itself thoroughly interesting and absorbing. We have seen that, in purifying the novel, our greatest women-novelists were, for the most part, content to practise their art as an art. Jane Austen, undoubtedly, is a peculiarly wholesome writer (and therefore an influence for good); but she had no direct moral purpose. And the didactic elements in Miss Edgeworth, Hannah More, and Harriet Martineau are somewhat inartistically pronounced.

In Mrs. Craik’s day the desire for improvement was phenomenally active and varied. She was “conscious” of this particular opening (afterwards expressed and developed by Miss Yonge), and, in her own manner, prepared to meet it. It is impossible not to recognise that the whole appeal of _John Halifax, Gentleman_ is directed towards youth. The feminine idealism, whether applied to men or women, embraces all the vague and innocent dreams of heroic virtue which belong to the dawn of life. The supreme domination of family life, the education “at home” for boys and girls alike, and a thousand other minutiæ of feeling and opinion, are designed for that period--possibly the most important in character-training--before experience has tested the will. There is no shirking of truth, the method is realistic; and we must recognise the value of an atmosphere so refined and purified, yet manly and practical. For John Halifax is always a fighter, one who makes his own way--without sacrifice of principle or losing his sympathy with the less capable, and less fortunate, among the sons of toil.

_John Halifax_ may fairly be taken as “standing” for Mrs. Craik. Here and in other novels (numbering about fifty) we may read her message, understand the Early Victorian lady, and observe one groove along which the woman-novelist was destined to work with comparative independence. From revealing themselves, they have turned (as had Charlotte Brontë with very different results) to give away their ideal of manhood.

* * * * *

MRS. OLIPHANT (1828-1897) belongs to the same group of thoroughly efficient Victorian novelists as Mrs. Craik. Living to an old age she produced nearly a hundred volumes, all witnessing the scope and power which had now been accepted in women’s work. Her output is far more varied than Mrs. Craik’s--bolder, more humorous, and less sentimental. She published some admirable history, a notable record of the Blackwoods--involving expert, if rather emotional, criticism--and dabbled in the Unseen. Having great sympathy with the Scotch temperament, she also imparted a more modern tone to the “national” novel, somewhat after Galt’s manner.

In her work also we find, very definitely, the “note” of protest. Those truly feminine young ladies (a Jane Austen pair), the daughters of the _Curate-in-Charge_, for example, are perpetually in revolt against convention. Mab, the artist, suffers from a governess who considers drawing “unladylike,” and believes that “a young lady who respects herself, and who has been brought up as she ought, _never looks at gentlemen_: There are drawings of _gentlemen_ in that book. Is that nice, do you suppose?”[14] The practical Cicely shoulders the family burdens; and is promptly “cut” by her friends, _because_ she takes up the post of village schoolmistress. Like “John Halifax” she had been compelled to face life (for others as well as herself) with absolutely nothing but “her head and her hands.” With less fuss she made an equally good fight, with no encouragement from that proud and tender-hearted old gentleman, her father, whose one idea of happiness was to “fall into our quiet way again.” He “felt it was quite natural his girls should come home and keep house for him, and take the trouble of the little boys, and visit the schools: How is a man like that to be distinguished from a Dissenting preacher?” To them it still seems: “We cannot go and do things like you men, and we feel all the sharper, all the keener, because we cannot _do_.”

It is doubtful if women had ever been less conscious of their limitations, or less dissatisfied with them; but the definite expression of criticism arose at this period, because they were acquiring the habit of expressing themselves, and had glimpses of possible change. From Charlotte Brontë, women not only pictured life from a feminine standpoint, but discussed and criticised it--a movement which “found itself” in George Eliot.

Mrs. Oliphant still speaks, and thinks, consciously, as a woman. But she does not “accept” everything. As to the craftmanship of fiction, we may now assume it for women, as had the public. We are reaching, indeed, the time when her province is no longer to stand aside. The later writers speak as individuals among artists, not as part of a group or school.

As mentioned above, Mrs. Oliphant also wrote competent criticism and played the part, still comparatively novel among women, of an all-round practical journalist, knowing the world of letters, familiar with publishers and the “business” of authorship, handling history or biography like a person of culture. In her later years she essayed, in _The Beleaguered City_ and elsewhere, some way into that field of psychic inquiry--developed by her son Laurence--and since their day a familiar topic in fiction.

At one time, indeed, greater things were expected of her. _The Chronicles of Carlingford_ (1863) approach genius. They appeared after _Adam Bede_, and it is scarcely surprising that men imagined the discovery of a second George Eliot. We find in them that almost masculine insight--from an intellectual eminence--of parochial affairs, small society, and the country town, combined with passionate character-analysis, emotional philosophy, and bracing humour, which constituted the individuality of George Eliot.

Mrs. Oliphant, in her early days, produced several “Chronicles,” in which the characters reappear, though diversely centralised; and we may consider two examples at some length.

_Miss Marjoribanks_, following the woman’s lead, is professedly a study in a certain feminine type. The heroine was known among her schoolfellows as “a large girl.”

“She was not to be described as a tall girl--which conveys an altogether different idea--but she was large in all particulars, full and well-developed, with somewhat large features, not at all pretty as yet, though it was known in Mount Pleasant that somebody had said that such a face might ripen into beauty, and become ‘grandiose,’ for anything anybody could tell. Miss Marjoribanks was not vain; but the word had taken possession of her imagination, as was natural, and solaced her much when she made the painful discovery that her gloves were half a number larger, and her shoes a hair-breadth broader, than those of any of her companions; but the hands and feet were perfectly well-shaped; and being at the same time well-clothed and plump, were much more presentable and pleasant to look upon than the lean rudimentary school-girl hands with which they were surrounded. To add to these excellences, Lucilla had a mass of hair which, if it could but have been cleared a little in its tint, would have been golden, though at present it was nothing more than tawny, and curly to exasperation. She wore it in large thick curls, which did not, however, float or wave, or do any of the graceful things which curls ought to do; for it had this aggravating quality, that it would not grow long, but would grow ridiculously, unmanageably thick, to the admiration of her companions, but to her own despair, for there was no knowing what to do with those short but ponderous locks.”

After which unconventional description, we are not surprised to learn that our heroine “was possessed by nature of that kind of egotism, or rather egoism, which is predestined to impress itself, by its perfect reality and good faith, upon the surrounding world.... This conviction of the importance and value of her own proceedings made Lucilla, as she grew older, a copious and amusing conversationalist--a rank which few people who are indifferent to, or do not believe in, themselves can attain to.”

Miss Marjoribanks had two objects in life--to “be a comfort to” her widowed father and “to revolutionise society.” Undoubtedly she “made” Carlingford, and, though her father was perfectly satisfied with his own management of life, she did actually succeed in proving herself essential to his well-being. A young woman who, on her own showing, “never made mistakes” and was “different” from other ladies, was able to effect much with the “very good elements” of Carlingford. She created a social atmosphere of peculiar distinction, she managed the most intractable of archdeacons, she found “the right man” to represent the borough. She was as fearless as, and far more successful than, Miss Woodhouse, in making marriages; and in every respect went her own way with a most engaging self-confidence. Dr. Marjoribanks respected and “understood” her, though he thought her more “worldly” than she proved herself; and no one gave her full credit “for that perfect truthfulness which it was her luck always to be able to maintain.”

The character is worth our study; for it is improbable that fiction has ever produced, or will ever venture to repeat, a heroine so entirely convinced of a mission in life, and so competent to carry it out. Scarcely ever concerned with sentiment, she had a genius for doing “the right thing,” and thoroughly enjoying the contemplation of her own achievements. Yet she was really generous and kind-hearted, entirely above jealousy or meanness. We may question, perhaps, whether any woman, or man either, was ever quite so consistent: since even in yielding to Cousin Tom’s importunities, she was but planning a new campaign--“to carry light and progress” into “the County.” Yet few readers will fail to recognise the power and charm of Lucilla Marjoribanks--a new revelation of what a woman conceives woman may be.

In all her dialogue, in the narrative, and in the minor characterisation, Mrs. Oliphant here proves herself an easy master of convincing realism. We know Carlingford and its inhabitants as intimately as our native town.