In this as in other essentials “Jane Eyre” is unsparingly human, and when Jane has got away from Rochester, and finds herself unexpectedly among her kindred, and even rich and independént, she does not prefer a loveless marriage, hallowed by the most exalted motives, with her cousin St. John, but elects rather to go back and seek out the man she loves, and when she has found him opportunely widowed by the disaster that has maimed and blinded him, to marry him. She offers no defence, and one must confess that the close of the story is not ideal. No part of the story, in fact, is so good as the beginning, where the hapless little orphan substantiates herself to us in the hard keeping of her cruel aunt and cousins; and in my second reading of the novel I have not been so much moved by the love-making between Jane and Rochester as I must have been when I first read it fifty years ago.
Rochester is of the forceful type of lover, and he seems scarcely so interesting as the plain little governess of his natural daughter thinks him, and as a whole contemporaneous generation of young girls once thought him. He has passed with his kind, and with several successive kinds; but in his time, as I have said, he was a true lover, and he began to be in love with Jane as soon as she with him. He likes her better than the insolent young ladies of his own rank whom he asks to his house, and with the proudest and coldest of whom he has some thoughts of committing bigamy before he attempts it with Jane? But neither at this time nor at that last time when she seeks him out, blind and maimed, is he so satisfactory in his part of hero as she in hers of heroine. Perhaps a hero who has been both punished and martyred is a little difficult to the imagination; and a hero who is condescending in his love is not much easier. But before this there is a signal moment when the lovers are unconsciously trembling towards each other, and are precipitated into consciousness of their passion by one of the grisly catastrophes of the story, which is illustrative of character in each; and I think that at least its older readers will like to see them in this moment again, though some young readers may think them a little old-fashioned, meeting them in it for the first time.
Jane has already heard a wild laugh from that part of the house where the crazy wife is confined, unknown to her, when on a certain night the lunatic makes her escape from her keeper; and the girl has gone to bed with vague, melancholy thoughts of Rochester. “But it was not fated that I should sleep that night. A dream had scarcely approached my ear, when... a demoniac laugh — low, suppressed, and deep — was uttered, as it seemed, at the very key-hole of my chamber door. The head of my bed was near the door, and I thought at first the goblin laugher stood at my bedside — or, rather, crouched by my pillow; but I rose, looked round, and could see nothing; while, as I gazed, the unnatural sound was reiterated, and I knew it came from behind the panels.... Something gurgled and moaned. Ere long, steps retreated up the gallery, toward the third-story staircase:... There was a candle burning just outside, left on the matting of the gallery.... I was amazed to perceive the air quite dim, as if filled with smoke.... Something creaked; it was a door ajar, and that door was Mr. Rochester’s, and the smoke rushed in a cloud from thence.... In an instant I was within the chamber. Tongues of flame darted round the bed: the curtains were on fire. In the midst of the blaze and vapor Mr. Rochester lay stretched motionless, in deep sleep. ‘Wake, wake!’ I cried. I shook him, but he only murmured and turned: the smoke had stupefied him. Not a moment could be lost: the very sheets were kindling. I rushed to his basin and ewer; fortunately the one was wide and the other was deep, and both were filled with water. I heaved them up, and deluged the bed and its occupant.... The hiss of the quenched element,... the splash of the shower bath I had liberally bestowed, roused Mr. Rochester at last. Though it was now dark, I knew he was awake; because I heard him fulminating strange anathemas at finding himself lying in a pool of water. ‘Is there a flood?’ he cried. ‘No, sir,’ I answered, ‘but there has been a fire.’... ‘In the name of all the elves of Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?... Have you plotted to drown me?’ ‘I will fetch you a candle, sir; and in Heaven’s name get up. Somebody has plotted something: you cannot too soon find out who and what it is.’ ‘There, I am up, now; but at your peril you fetch a candle yet: wait two minutes till I get into some dry garments, if any dry there be — yes, here is my dressing-gown; now run!’ I did run; I brought the candle which still remained in the gallery. He took it from my hand, surveyed the bed, blackened and scorched, the sheets drenched, the carpet round swimming in water. ‘What is it and who did it?’ he asked.... I briefly related to him what had transpired.... He listened very gravely; his face as I went on expressed more concern than astonishment.... ‘You have a shawl on?... Wrap it about you, and sit down in the arm-chair; there — I will put it on.... I am going to leave you a few minutes. I shall take the candle.... I must pay a visit to the second story.
Don’t move, remember, or call any one.’ He went: I watched the light withdraw. He passed up the gallery very softly, unclosed the staircase door with as little noise as possible, shut it after him, and the last ray vanished. I was left in total darkness.... A very long time elapsed.... I was on the point of risking Mr. Rochester’s displeasure by disobeying his orders, when a light once more gleamed dimly on the gallery wall, and I heard his unshod feet tread the matting.... He re-entered, pale and very gloomy. ‘I have found it all out,’ said he, setting his candle down on the wash-stand; ‘it is as I thought.... You are no talking fool; say nothing about it. I will account for this state of affairs ‘(pointing to the bed): ‘and now retire to your own room. I shall do very well on the sofa in the library for the rest of the night.’... ‘Good-night, then, sir,’ said I, departing.... ‘What!’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you quitting me already, and in that way? Why, you have saved my life! — and you walk past me as if we were mutual strangers! At least shake hands.’ He held out his hand; I gave him mine: he took it first in one, then in both his. ‘I knew,’ he continued, ‘you would do me good, in some way, at some time; — I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not ‘ — (again he stopped)— ‘did not’ (he proceeded hastily) ‘strike delight to my inmost heart for nothing. People talk of mutual natural sympathies; I have heard of Good Genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, good-night.’ Strange energy was in his voice, strange fire was in his look. ‘I am glad I happened to be awake,’ I said, and then I was going. ‘What, will you go!’ ‘I am cold, sir.’ ‘Cold? Yes, and standing in a pool. Go, then, Jane, go! But he still retained my hand, and I could not free it. I bethought myself of an expedient. ‘I think I hear Mrs. Fairfax move, sir,’ said I. ‘Well, leave me,’ He relaxed his fingers and I was gone.”
V
Old-fashioned, I have suggested; but now, after reading this passage, I find that hardly the word. It is oldfashioned only in the sense of being very simple, and of a quaint sincerity. The fact is presented, the tremendous means are used, with almost childlike artlessness; but the result is of high novelty. Few would have had the courage to deal so frankly with the situation, to chance its turning ludicrous, or would have had the skill to unfold its fine implications of tenderness, and keep them undamaged by the matter-of-fact details. But Charlotte Bronte did all this, and did it out of the resources of her own unique experience of life, which never presented itself in the light of common day, but came to her through strange glooms, and in alternations of native solitude and alien multitude, at Haworth and in Brussels. The whole story, so deeply of nature, is steeped in the supernatural; and just as paradoxically the character of Jane Eyre lacks that final projection from the author which is the supreme effect of art, only because she feels it so intensely that she cannot detach it from herself.
THE TWO CATHARINES OF EMILY BRONTÈ
THE heroines of Charlotte Brontë’s other books made no such impression upon her public as Jane Eyre, but perhaps one heroine of the first rank is enough for one author; so many authors have invented no memorable heroine at all. “Jane Eyre “ was an epochal bo
ok, assembling in itself the elements of that electrical disturbance which had been gathering in the minds of women for a generation, and discharging them in a type, a character, which expressed their discontent with their helplessness, their protest against their conditions, their longing for equality with men, as from time to time some real or imaginary personality will. It is extremely interesting, viewed in this light, and if it expressed the weakness that is always seeking to be at rest in strength, or to be changed directly or indirectly into strength, then the fact has its own pathos, which every true man must respect.
Rochester is such a man as most women, or most girls, would like to be when they Oh to be men. They would like to be rough if they cannot be strong on other terms; they would even be wicked if they must, and would willingly suffer for their wickedness if only so they could be strong. But failing all this, they would at least like to be the sort of woman or sort of girl who is indispensable and vitally essential to strength, as Jane Eyre is in her relation to Rochester. The pity is that they should not see that Jane is really strong, and Rochester is really weak; but Jane does not see this herself, and it is doubtful whether her author saw it. What she and her lonely sisters worshipped in the dreary vicarage at Haworth was manly strength; but from the father and brother, who were the only men they knew, they could not imagine this apart from wilfulness and caprice and error; and so they gave us Rochester in “Jane Eyre,” and Heathcliff in “Wuthering Heights,” with women to suffer for them, and to illustrate or inspire their power. Charlotte Bronte created the impassioned heroine, as I have called Jane Eyre, and Emily Brontë created the lawless heroine, like the two Catharines; but all their heroines measurably shared in the fascination which brutality, the false image of strength, seems to have for weakness. In these characters they changed the ideal of fiction for many a long day, and established the bulked heroine in a supremacy which she held till the sinuous heroine began softly but effectually to displace her.
I
The heroines of Emily Brontë have not the artistic completeness of Charlotte Brontë’s. They are blocked out with hysterical force, and in their character there is something elemental, as if, like the man who beat and browbeat them, they too were close to the savagery of nature. The sort of supernaturalism which appears here and there in their story wants the refinement of the telepathy and presentiment which play a part in Jane Eyre, but it is still more effectual in the ruder clutch which it lays upon the fancy.
In her dealing with the wild passion of Heathcliff for the first Catharine, Emily Brontë does not keep even such slight terms with convention as Charlotte does in the love of Rochester and Jane Eyre; but this fierce longing, stated as it were in its own language, is still farther from anything that corrupts or tempts; it is as wholesome and decent as a thunder-storm, in the consciousness of the witness. The perversities of the mutual attraction of the lovers are rendered without apparent sense on the part of the author that they can seem out of nature, so deeply does she feel them to be in nature, and there is no hint from her that they need any sort of proof. It is vouchsafed us to know that Heathcliff is a foundling of unknown origin, early fixed in his hereditary evils by the cruelty of Hindley Earnshaw, whose father has adopted him; but it is not explained why he should have his malign power upon Catharine. Perhaps it is enough that she is shown a wilful, impetuous, undisciplined girl, whose pity has been moved for the outcast before her fancy is taken. After that we are told what happens and are left to account for it as we may.
We are very badly told, in terms of autobiography thrice involved. First, we have the narrative of Heathcliff’s tenant, then within his the narrative of the tenant’s housekeeper, as she explains the situation she has witnessed at Heathcliff’s house, and then within hers the several narratives of the actors in the tragedy. Seldom has a great romance been worse contrived, both as to generals and particulars, but the essentials are all there, and the book has a tremendous vitality. If it were of the fashion of any other book, it might have passed away, but it is of its own fashion solely, and it endures like a piece of the country in which its scenes are laid, enveloped in a lurid light and tempestuous atmosphere of its own. Its people are all of extreme types, and yet they do not seem unreal, like the extravagant creations of Dickens’s fancy; they have an intense and convincing reality, the weak ones, such as Heathcliff’s wife and son, equally with’ the powerful, such as Heathcliff himself and the Catharines, mother and daughter. A weird malevolence broods over the gloomy drama, and through all plays a force truly demoniacal, with scarcely the relief of a moment’s kindliness. The facts are simply conceived, and stated without shadow of apology or extenuation; and the imagination from which they sprang cannot adequately be called morbid, for it deals with the brute motives employed without a taint of sickly subjectiveness. The author remains throughout superior to her material; her creations have all a distinct projection, and in this Emily Brontë shows herself a greater talent than Charlotte, who is never quite detached from her heroine, but is always trammelled in sympathy with Jane Eyre, with whom she is united by ties of a like vocation and experience, as governess. You feel that she is present in all Jane’s sufferings, small and great, if not in her raptures; but Emily Brontë keeps as sternly aloof from both her Catharines as from Heathcliff himself. She bequeathed the world at her early death a single book of as singular power as any in fiction; and proved herself, in spite of its defective technique, a great artist, of as realistic motive and ideal as any who have followed her.
II
It is not easy to gather up the thread of the story from the several narratives within narratives and find one’s way by the tangled clew to the close. But after Earnshaw brings home from Liverpool the gypsy foundling whom his son hates and misuses he dies, and as this son sinks more and more into drunkenness, it is natural and fated that his wilful sister Catharine should pity the dark, silent boy, who repays her pity with all the passion of his turbulent heart When they are no longer girl and boy, and it is a question of her loving Heathcliff, she marries if she does not love Edgar Linton, of her own rank and kind, and Heathcliff, returning from years of self-exile, marries Isabella Linton, against her brother’s will and without the pretence of love. His brute force fascinates the slight, romantic coquette, and she dies of his cruelty, leaving a son in whose feeble soul her folly centres, with an infusion of the father’s malevolence. Catharine dies, and her daughter Catharine inherits her waywardness without her powerful will, which could bend even Heathcliff’s. He, by his ruthless cleverness, comes to dominate Hindley Earnshaw through Earnshaw’s besetting sin, and gathers the estate into his own control, pushing aside the heir, Hareton Earnshaw, whom he has imbruted, as Hareton’s father imbruted him in his time, and kept ignorant as a peasant and even more savage. After Catharine’s death he schemes to marry her daughter to his son, and so come into the Linton property as well. In spite of Edgar Linton, the broken and dying father, he succeeds in enticing the girl to his house again and again, and he does finally effect the union of the children, while they are yet scarcely more than children. His son dies, and then Cathy lives with Heathcliff, a terrorized torment, till Heathcliff dies too, hated as he has been by all except the hapless Hareton Earnshaw, whom he has abused and defrauded, but who truly laments him. The reader is left to forecast a marriage between Hareton and Cathy, whom he has always loved, but who has outrageously mocked and insulted him.
Within this outline the author makes it not only possible but imperative for the reader to believe that in rural England of the mid-century savageries were of occurrence among people of not ungentle condition, and atrocious wrongs were perpetrated, such as would be incredible without her compelling magic, though things like them are well enough known to science Throughout there is a dumb ache in the witness for help against Heathcliff, whose infernal will fulfils itself in spite of everything, and whose cunning intrenches him so safely that he does not defy so much as boldly ignore the laws under which other men live. Once or twi
ce he is in danger of them, but chance as well as his own hardihood and subtlety befriend him; and when he dies successful in all his purposes, and dominant over all those he has put under him, a thrill of perverse sympathy with him softens the reader’s heart. Heathcliff is a great creation, but the women of the story are imagined with truth as great, and to hardly less tremendous effect. I am not sure indeed that the effect in the case of the first Catharine is less tremendous at all times, or at least I should be puzzled to match with any scene in which he rules certain passages where she is the chief figure. The reader will perhaps have in mind, as I have, their meeting when Catharine has been sick wellnigh to death from the quarrel between Heathcliff and her husband, and Heathcliff, always lurking about Linton’s house, makes his forbidden entrance, and finds his way to her room. It is Mrs. Dean, the housekeeper, who tells the tale in this part.
“He did not hit the right door directly; she motioned to me to admit him, but he found it ere I could reach the door, and in a stride or two he was at her side, and had grasped her in his arms. He neither spoke nor loosed his hold for some five minutes, during which period he bestowed more kisses than ever he gave in his life before, I dare say: but then my mistress had kissed him first, and I plainly saw that he could hardly bear, for downright agony, to look in her face.... ‘Oh, Cathy! Oh, my life! How can I bear it?’ was the first sentence he uttered, in a tone that did not seek to disguise his despair.... ‘What now?’ said Catharine, leaning back and returning his look with a suddenly clouded brow: her humor was a mere vane for constantly varying caprices. ‘You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff. And you both come to bewail the deed to me, as if were the people to be pitied! I shall not pity you, not I. You have killed me, and thriven on it, I think. How strong you are! How many years do you mean to live after I am gone?’ Heathcliff had knelt on one knee to support her; he attempted to rise, but she seized his hair and kept him down. ‘I wish I could hold you,’ she bitterly continued, ‘till we were both dead. I shouldn’t care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn’t you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say, twenty years hence, “That’s the grave of Catharine Earnshaw. I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her, but that’s past I’ve loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than she was; and at death I shall not rejoice that I am going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them.” Will you say that, Heathcliff?’ ‘Don’t torture me till I’m as mad as yourself,’ cried he, wrenching his head free and grinding his teeth..... While raising himself with one hand, he had taken her arm with the other; and so inadequate was his stock of gentleness to the requirements of her condition, that on his letting go I saw four distinct impressions left blue in the colorless skin. ‘Are you possessed with a devil?’ he pursued savagely, ‘to talk in that manner to me when you are dying? You know you lie When you say that I have killed you; and, Catharine, you know that I could as soon forget you as my own existence! Is it not sufficient for your infernal selfishness that while you are at peace I shall writhe in the torments of hell?” I shall not be at peace,’ moaned Catharine, recalled to a sense of physical weakness by the violent, unequal throbbing of her heart, which beat visibly and audibly under this excess of agitation. She said nothing farther till the paroxysm was over; then she continued more kindly— ‘I’m not wishing you greater torment than I have, Heathcliff. I only wish us never to be parted....
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 1565