Part 9
In fact, the artistic achievement of _Cranford_ is the creation of an atmosphere. Like the authors of _Evelina_ and of _Emma_, Mrs. Gaskell is frankly feminine, and not superior to the smallest detail of parochial gossip; but while the ideals of refinement portrayed are more akin to Miss Burney’s (allowing for altered social conditions), her methods of portraiture more nearly resemble Miss Austen’s. She depends, even less, upon excitement, mystery, or crime, and _Cranford_, indeed, may be described as “a novel without a hero,” without a plot, and without a love-scene. Miss Brown’s death is the one event with which we are brought, as it were, face to face throughout the whole sixteen chapters. The realities of life, whether sad or joyful, are enacted behind the scenes and never used for dramatic effect, a reticence most striking in the incident of Captain Brown’s heroic death. They serve only to reveal the strong and true hearts of those whose dainty old-world mannerisms have already secured our sympathy.
Mrs. Gaskell has _left out_ even more than Jane Austen of the ordinary materials of fiction (though she is an adept at pathos), and her characters are equally living. She has less wit, but almost as much humour.
The most obvious limitation of _Cranford_, indeed, is more apparent than real. As everyone will remember, “all the holders of houses” are women. “If a married couple settles in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford evening tea-parties, or he is accounted for by being at his regiment, his ship, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a railroad. In short, whatever does become of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford. What could they do there?... A man is so in the way in the house.”
Even the Rector dare not attend a public entertainment unless “guarded by troops of his own sex--the National School boys whom he had treated to the performance.” The “neat maid-servants” were never allowed “followers”; and it was Miss Matty’s chief consolation in starting her little business that “she did not think men ever bought tea.” She was afraid of men. “They had such sharp, loud ways with them, and did up accounts, and counted their change so quickly.”
Yet, in fact, the masculine element in _Cranford_ comes frequently to the front; and the men’s characters are drawn with no less firmness of outline than the women’s. Miss Matty derives much from her Reverend father--deceased, from that sturdy yeoman Thomas Holbrook, and from “Mr. Peter.” It is Captain Brown, and no other, whose misfortunes unmask the real tenderness of Miss Jenkyns herself; and the good Mr. Hoggins occasions the only serious discord narrated in the select circle of “elegant females,” to whom his uncouth surname was a perpetual affront. The unfortunate conjurer, Signor Brunoni, otherwise Mr. Brown (was it accident or design, we wonder, which gave him the same plebeian name as the gallant Captain?); his brother Thomas; the great Mr. Mulliner, “who seemed never to have forgotten his condescension in coming to live at Cranford”; honest farmer Dobson; and dear, blundering Jim Hearn, whose tactful notion of kindness was “to keep out of your way as much as he could”; each played their part in the lives of their lady-betters.
Thomas Holbrook, his quotations from Shakespeare, George Herbert, and Tennyson; his love of Nature; his two-pronged forks; and his charming “counting-house,” have no less subtle originality than any character in the whole book; and we should hesitate to name any record of perfect fidelity, without sentimentalism, to be compared with the simply chivalrous and cheerful attentions of this gentleman of seventy to the old lady who had refused, at the bidding of father and sister, “to marry below her rank.” One can only echo the pious aspiration (so touching in its unselfish abandonment of a cherished ideal), by which alone Miss Matty betrayed the emotions excited by the visit to her old lover: “‘God forbid,’ said she, in a low voice, ‘that I should grieve any young hearts.’”
Holbrook, moreover, had been no doubt largely responsible for encouraging the inherent good qualities of Miss Matty’s scapegrace brother (afterwards the popular Mr. Peter), whose thoughtless pranks form so strange, and yet so fitting, a background to those finished miniature-sketches of the stern Rector and his sweet young wife. It is, indeed, a fine instance of poetical justice by which Mr. Peter is allowed, in his old age, to bestow a richly merited peace and comfort, in addition to the diversion of masculine society, upon the very sister whose early life had been so terribly clouded by his misdeeds.
One is almost tempted to say that Mrs. Gaskell does scant justice to the first invader of the Amazons, when she refers to Captain Brown as “a tame man about the house.” Yet those of us with sufficient imagination to realise the firm exclusiveness of Miss Deborah Jenkyns, should appreciate the significance of the phrase. The military gentleman, “who was not ashamed to be poor,” only found his way to that lady’s good graces by sterling qualities of true manliness. He was “even admitted in the tabooed hours before twelve,” because no errand of kindness was beneath his dignity or beyond his patience.
Miss Matty expresses the prevailing sentiment about men, as she has done on most subjects worthy of attention, with that “love of peace and kindliness,” which “makes all of us better when we are near her.”
“I don’t mean to deny that men are troublesome in a house. I don’t judge from my own experience, for my father was neatness itself, and wiped his shoes in coming in as carefully as any woman; but still a man has a sort of knowledge of what should be done in difficulties, that it is very pleasant to have one at hand ready to lean upon. Now Lady Glenmire” (whose engagement to Mr. Hoggins was the occasion of this gentle homily), “instead of being tossed about and wondering where she is to settle, will be certain of a home among pleasant and kind people, such as our good Miss Pole and Mrs. Forrester. And Mr. Hoggins is really a very personable man; and so far as his manners--why, if they are not very polished, I have known people with very good hearts, and very clever minds too, who were not what some people reckoned refined, but who were tender and true.” Again: “Don’t be frightened by Miss Pole from being married. I can fancy it may be a very happy state, and a little credulity helps one through life very smoothly--better than always doubting and doubting, and seeing difficulties and disagreeables in everything.”
The finality of the above quotations may further remind us of an unexpected conclusion to which a careful study of _Cranford_ must compel the critic. Despite its apparent inconsequence, the desultory nature of the narrative, and its surprising innocence of plot, the work is composed with an almost perfect sense of dramatic unity. In reality every event, however trivial or serious, every shade of character, however subtle or obvious, is at once subordinate and essential to the character of the heroine. A heroine, “not far short of sixty, whose looks were against her,” may not attract the habitual novel-reader; but unless we submit to the charm of Miss Matty’s personality, we have misread _Cranford_. Deborah, the domineering, had not so much real strength of character, and serves only as a foil to her sister’s wider sympathies; the superficial quickness of Miss Pole never ultimately misled her friend’s finer judgment; the (temporary) snobbishness of the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson troubles her heart indeed, but leaves her dignity unruffled; and the other members of the circle scarcely aspire to be more than humble admirers of the “Rector’s daughter.” Miss Matty, of course, is sublimely unconscious of her own influence, and the authoress very nearly deceives us into fancying her equally innocent. But she gives away the secret in her farewell sentence; and I, for one, would not quarrel with her for pointing the moral. Miss Matty can never lose her place in the Gallery of the Immortals, and we would not neglect to honour the painter’s name.
Mrs. Gaskell, in _Cranford_, may claim to have reached perfection by one finished achievement; which embodies the ideal to which we conceive that the work in fiction peculiar to women had been, more or less consciously, directed from the beginning. Probably the art would have been less flawless, if applied--as it was by sister-novelists--to a wider range of persons and subjects. Nothing of quite this kind has been again attempted, and it is not likely that such an attempt would succeed.
We should only notice, in passing, that Mrs. Gaskell left other admirable, and quite feminine, work on more ordinary lines. _Wives and Daughters_ is a delightful love story; while _North and South_ and _Mary Barton_ are almost the first examples of that keen interest in social problems, and the life of the poor, in legitimate novels (not fiction-tracts), which we shall find so favourite a topic of women from her generation until to-day.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] She is writing, again, to Miss Clavering.
[11] When _Pride and Prejudice_, _Emma_, and _Mansfield Park_ had all been published.
[12] _Fraser’s Magazine_, Jan. 1838.
A LONELY SOUL
(CHARLOTTE BRONTË, 1816-1855)
The genius of Charlotte Brontë presents several characteristics which do not belong to the more or less orderly development of the earlier women’s work. In the first place she is primarily a romancist, depending far more on emotional analysis than on the exact portraiture of everyday life. Though her materials, like theirs, are gained entirely from personal experience, she clothes them with a passionate imagination very foreign to anything in Miss Burney or Jane Austen. She writes, in other words, because her emotions are forced into speech by that very intensity; not at all from amused observation of life. It would be difficult, indeed, to find outside her few remarkable stories so powerful an expression of passion as felt by women--who do not, as a rule, admit the power of such stormy emotions. Her work is further remarkable for being mainly inspired by memory; while the recognition of responsiveness in women leads her to paint _mutual_ passion as it has been seldom revealed elsewhere.
Much has been written of late years concerning the life of Charlotte Brontë, and we have been told that the mystery is solved at last. For despite the almost startling frankness of Mrs. Gaskell’s famous _Life_; despite the intimate character of many of her published letters; it has always been recognised that the Charlotte Brontë of the biographers was _not_ the Charlotte Brontë of _Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_. Now that we have the letters to Monsieur Heger, however, it seems to be a prevailing conclusion that reconciliation, and understanding, are possible. If Charlotte Brontë, like her own Lucy Snowe, was in love with “her master”; if he was perfectly happy in his married life and, however responsive to enthusiastic admiration, found warmer feelings both embarrassing and vexatious; we have discovered the tragedy which fired her imagination, the utter loneliness which taught her to dwell so bitterly on the aching void of unreturned affection, to idealise so romantically the rapture of marriage. Personally we are disposed to accept these interpretations, but not to rely on them for everything. To begin with, it is always dangerous to dwell upon any “explanation” of genius; and, in the second place, it was not Charlotte Brontë’s experiences (which others have suffered), but the nature awakened by them, which determined their artistic expression.
Part of the difficulty arises from the two almost contradictory methods in which she “worked up” her stories. She had remarkable powers of observation and borrowed from real life as recklessly as Shakespeare borrowed plots, with very similar indifference to possible criticism. In this matter, indeed, she cannot be altogether acquitted of malice or spite; and we do not learn with unmixed pleasure how many “originals” actually existed for her dramatis personæ.
But, on the other hand, if “every person and a large proportion of the incidents were copied from life,” the emotional power of her work is entirely imaginative. As pictures of life, her stories are inadequate and unsatisfying, partly because there is so much in human nature and in life which does not interest her: so much of which she knew nothing; and she is only at home in the heart of her subject. Here again she is in no way realistic--as was Jane Austen in manners or George Eliot in emotion--but entirely romantic, however original her conception of romance. Her heroes and heroines are as far from everyday humanity, and as ideal and visionary, as Mrs. Radcliffe’s, though she does not, of course, follow the “rules” of romance: rather creating out of her own brain a new heaven and a new earth, inhabited by a people that know not God or man.
Apart from the rude awakening at Brussels, again, she exhibited in private correspondence by turns the strange contrasts between common sense and emotionalism which mark her work.
She defines the “right path” as “that which necessitates the greatest sacrifice of self-interest”: she thinks, “if you can respect a person before marriage, moderate love at least will come after; and as to intense passion, I am convinced that that is no desirable feeling.”
She advises her best friend that
“no young lady should fall in love till the offer has been made, accepted, the marriage ceremony performed, and the first half-year of wedded life has passed away. A woman may then begin to love, but with great precaution, very coolly, very moderately, very rationally. If she ever loves so much that a harsh word or a cold look cuts her to the heart, she is a fool. If she ever loves so much that her husband’s will is her law, and that she has got into the habit of watching his looks in order that she may anticipate his wishes, she will soon be a neglected fool.”
On the other hand, “if you knew my thoughts, the dreams that absorb me, and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up, and makes me feel society, as it is, insipid, you would pity me and I daresay despise me.”
Her emotion on first seeing the sea is absolutely overpowering; and surely we know the woman who insisted on visiting a maidservant “attacked by a violent fever,” fearlessly entered her room in spite of every remonstrance, “threw herself on the bed beside her, and repeatedly kissed her burning brow.”
Experience with her, in fact, had never been confined to the external happenings, which can be accumulated, with more or less sympathy, by the biographer; and her own declaration of how she worked up episodes outside her own experience may be applied, without much modification, to her manipulation of that experience itself. Asked whether the description of taking opium in _Villette_ was based on knowledge,
“She replied, that she had never, to her knowledge, taken a grain of it in any shape, but that she had followed the process she always adopted when she had to describe anything which had not fallen within her own experience; she had thought intently on it for many and many a night before falling to sleep--wondering what it was like or how it would be--till at length, sometimes after the progress of her story had been arrested at this one point for weeks, she wakened up in the morning with all clear before her, as if she had in reality gone through the experience, and then could describe it word for word as it had happened.”
It is obvious that, if no less feminine than her predecessors, the nature and methods of Charlotte Brontë would produce very different work from theirs. In narrative and description she remains domestic and middle-class. She does not adopt the “high” notions of aristocracy, she does not plunge into the mysteries of crime. Her plots are laid “at home,” so to speak, and among the professional classes or small gentry with whom she was personally familiar. The only material which may be noticed as a new departure is derived from her particular experiences in schools in England and abroad, combined with her intimate knowledge of the governess and the tutor. In _Shirley_, again, she is one of the earliest women to devote any serious attention to the progress of trade and the introduction of machinery, with its effect on the social problems of the working classes.
In construction, on the other hand, she is admittedly inferior to her predecessors, since her plots are melodramatic, and her characterisation is disturbed by a somewhat morbid analysis of unusual passion. Her feminine ideal has no parallel in the “sensibility” of Fanny Burney or the sprightly “calm” of Jane Austen. Its most distinguishing characteristic is, naturally, revealed in the attitude assumed towards man. The hero, the ideal lover, is always “the Master” of the heroine. Jane Eyre being a governess and Lucy Snowe a pupil, we might perhaps miss the full significance of the phrase; but even the strong-minded Shirley refuses Sir Philip Nunnely, because, among other reasons, “he is very amiable--very excellent--truly estimable, but _not my master_; not in one point. I could not trust myself with his happiness: I would not undertake the keeping of it for thousands; I will accept no hand that cannot hold me in check.”
Jane Austen once playfully accused herself of having dared to draw a heroine who had fallen in love without first having ascertained the gentleman’s feeling. This is the normal achievement--in Charlotte Brontë--not only of heroines, but _of all women_. It is, of course, almost inevitable that since, in her work (as in those of her sister-authors) we see everything _through the minds_ of the women characters, we should learn the state of their heart _first_; but, in most cases at least, it is certain that we are in as much doubt as the heroine herself concerning the man’s feelings, and it is fairly obvious that often he has actually not made up his mind. The women in Charlotte Brontë, in fact, are what we now call “doormats.” They delight in _serving_ the Beloved; they expect him to be a superior being, with more control over his emotions; less dependent on emotion or even on domestic comfort, appropriately concerned with matters not suited to feminine intellects, and accustomed to “keep his own counsel” about the important decisions of life.
It is her achievement to have secured our enthusiastic devotion to “females” so thoroughly Early Victorian; for the heroines of Charlotte Brontë remain some of the most striking figures in fiction. They are really heroic, and, while glorying in their self-imposed limitations, become vital by their intensity and depth. Jane Austen once quietly demonstrated the natural “constancy” of women; Charlotte Brontë paints this virtue in fiery colours across all her work. Her incidental, but most marked, preference for _plain_ heroines--inspired, apparently, by passionate jealousy of popular beauty--serves to emphasise the abnormal capacity for passion and fidelity which, in her judgment, the power of easily exciting general admiration apparently tends to diminish.
A contemporary reviewer in the _Quarterly_--probably Lockhart--found this type of women disgustingly sly. The whole of _Jane Eyre_, indeed, fills him with holy horror, which is genuine enough, though expressed with most ungentlemanly virulence, and prefaced with the extraordinary suggestion that “Jane Eyre is _merely another Pamela_ (!) ... a small, plain, odd creature, who has been brought up dry upon school learning, and somewhat stunted accordingly in mind and body, and who is thrown upon the world as ignorant of its ways, and as destitute of its friendships, as a shipwrecked mariner upon a strange coast.” Rochester, on the other hand, he finds “captious and Turklike ... a strange brute, somewhat in the Squire Western style of absolute and capricious eccentricity.” The book is guilty of the “highest moral offence a novel-writer can commit, that of making an unworthy character interesting in the eyes of the reader. Mr. Rochester is a man who deliberately and secretly seeks to violate the laws both of God and man, and yet we will be bound half our lady writers are enchanted with him for a model of generosity and honour.”
We cannot, to-day, detect the “pedantry, stupidity, or gross vulgarity” of the novel; nor do we distinguish so sharply between the sly governess--“this housemaid _beau ideal_ of the arts of coquetry”--determined to catch Rochester, and the “noble, high-souled woman” who rejects his dishonourable proposals. The fact seems to be that masculine critics of those days regarded the _expression_ of emotion as indelicate in woman. Was it this criticism, or merely her knowledge of men, that inspired that bitter passage in _Shirley_:
“A lover masculine if disappointed can speak and urge explanation; a lover feminine can say nothing; if she did, the result would be shame and anguish, inward remorse for self-treachery. Nature would brand such demonstration as a rebellion against her instincts, and would vindictively repay it afterwards by the thunderbolt of self-contempt smiting suddenly in secret. Take the matter as you find it; ask no question; utter no remonstrance: it is your best wisdom. You expected bread, and you have got a stone; break your teeth on it, and don’t shriek because the nerves are martyrised: do not doubt that your mental stomach--if you have such a thing--is strong as an ostrich’s: the stone will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation: close your fingers firmly upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind; in time, after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob.”
Men could not conceive that any lady who was _conscious_ of love had “really nice feelings” about it. Moreover, Jane Eyre is “a mere heathen ... no Christian grace is perceptible upon her.” She upheld women’s _rights_, which is “ungrateful” to God. “There is throughout a murmuring against the comforts of the rich and against the privations of the poor, which, as far as each individual is concerned, _is a murmuring against God’s appointment_.” Wherefore the “plain, odd woman, _destitute of all the conventional features of feminine attraction_,” is not made interesting, but remains “a being totally uncongenial to our feelings from beginning to end ... a decidedly vulgar-minded woman--one whom we should not care for as an acquaintance, whom we should not seek as a friend, whom we should not desire for a relation, and whom we should most scrupulously avoid for a governess.”
This outspoken, and unsympathetic, criticism is yet eminently instructive. It shows us all that Charlotte Brontë accomplished for the first time; and reveals the full force of prejudice against which she was, more or less consciously, in revolt.
It remains only to note that in the matter of style her critics at once recognised her power. “It is impossible not to be spellbound with the freedom of the touch. It would be mere hackneyed courtesy to call it ‘fine writing.’ It bears no impress of being written at all, but is poured out rather in the heat and flurry of an instinct which flows ungovernably on to its object, indifferent by what means it reaches it, and unconscious too.”