| | | | SINCE the publication of of "Grantley Manor," no novel has | created so much sensation as "Jane Eyre". Indeed, the public | taste seems to have outstripped its guides in appreciating the | remarkable power which this book displays. For no leading | review has yet noticed it, and here we have before us the second | edition. The name and sex of the writer are still a mystery. | Currer Bell (which by a curious Hibernicism appears in the | title-page as the name of a female autobiographer) is a mere | | ~~ perhaps an anagram. However, we, for our | part, cannot doubt that the book is written by a female, and, as | certain provincialisms indicate, by one from the North of | England. Who, indeed, but a woman could have ventured, with | the smallest prospect of success, to fill three octave volumes | with the history of a woman's heart? The hand which drew Juliet | and Miranda would have shrunk from such a task. That the book | is readable, is to us almost proof enough of the truth of our | hypothesis. But we could accumulate evidences to the same | effect. Mr. Rochester, the hero of the story, is as clearly the | vision of a woman's fancy, as the heroine is the image of a | woman's heart. Besides, there are many minor indications of a | familiarity with all the mysteries of female life which no man | can possess, or would dare to counterfeit. Those who have read | Miss Edgeworth's Monte, and know how a lady paints the social | nature of boys and the doings of boys' schools, may judge | | what work a man would have made of the girls' school in | the first volume of Jane Eyre. Yet we cannot wonder that the | hypothesis of a male author should have been started, or that | ladies especially should still be rather determined to uphold it. | For a book more unfeminine, both in its excellences and defects, | it would be hard to find in the annals of female authorship. | Throughout there is masculine power, breadth and shrewdness, | combined with masculine power, breadth and shrewdness, | combined with masculine hardness, coarseness, and freedom of | expression. Slang is not rare. The humour is frequently | produced by a use of Scripture, at which one is rather sorry to | have smiled. The love-scenes glow with a fire as fierce as that of | Sappho, and somewhat more fuliginous. There is an intimate | acquaintance with the worst parts of human nature, a practised | sagacity in discovering the latent ulcer, and a ruthless rigour in | exposing it, which | | must command our admiration, but are almost startling in one of | the softer sex. Jane Eyre professes to be an autobiography, and | we think it likely that in some essential respects it is so. If the | authoress has not been, like her heroine, an oppressed orphan, a | starved and bullied charity-school girl, and a despised and | slighted governess (and the intensity of feeling which she shows | in speaking of the wrongs of this last class seems to prove that | they have been her own), at all events we fear she is one to | whom the world has not been kind. And, assuredly, never was | unkindness more cordially repaid. Never was there a better | hater. Every page burns with moral Jacobinism. "Unjust, | unjust", is the burden of every reflection upon the things and | powers that be. All virtue is but well masked vice, all religious | profession and conduct is but the whitening of the sepulchre, all | self-denial is but deeper selfishness. In the preface to the second | edition, this temper rises to the transcendental pitch. There our | authoress is Micaiah, and her generation Ahab; and the Ramoth | Gilead, which is to be the reward of disregarding her | denunciations, is looked forward to with at least as much of | unction as of sorrow: although we think that even the doomed | King of Israel might have stood excused for his blindness, if the | prophet had opened his message of wrath with a self-laudatory | preface and eight closely-printed pages of panegyrical | quotations, culled with omnivorous vanity from every kind of | newspaper. | | We select the following extract as illustration of our remarks ~~ | a specimen at once of extraordinary powers of analyzing | character and moral painting, and of a certain want of feeling in | their exercise which defeats the moral object, and causes a | reaction in the mind of the reader like that of a barbarous | execution in the mind of the beholder. To render the passage | intelligible, it is only necessary to premise that Jane Eyre, the | heroine of the tale, is an orphan committed to the care of Mrs. | Reed, her aunt, who after maltreating the child till she breaks out | into a wild rebellion, sends her to a charity school to live or die | as she may. Jane Eyre lives. Aunt Reed is dying, and Jane Eyre | is at her bedside. | | | | | Here we have a deathbed of unrepentant sin described with as | deliberate a minuteness and as serene a tranquillity as a | naturalist might display in recording the mortal orgasms of a | jelly-fish. It is the despair of Beaufort ~~ the | without the response, | All | the expressions of tenderness and forgiveness, on the part of the | injured Jane, are skilfully thrown in so as to set off to the utmost | the unconquerable hardness of the dying sinner's heart. They are | the pleadings of the good angel, made audible, and rejected to | the last. We are compelled to see and acknowledge beyond the | possibility o doubt, that Mrs. Reed dies without remorse, | without excuse, and without hope. | | The plot is most extravagantly improbable, verging all along | upon the supernatural, and at last running fairly into it. All the | power is shown and all the interest lies in the characters. We | have before intimated our belief, that in Jane Eyre, the heroine | of the piece, we have, in some measure, a portrait of the writer. | If not, it is a most skilful imitation of autobiography. The | character embodied in it is precisely the same as that which | pervades the whole book, and breaks out most signally in the | Preface ~~ a temper naturally harsh, made harsher by ill usage, | and visiting both its defect and its wrongs upon the world ~~ an | understanding disturbed and perverted by cynicism, but still | strong and penetrating ~~ fierce love and fiercer hate ~~ all this | | viewed from within and coloured by self-love. We only wish we | could carry our hypothesis a step further, and suppose that the | triumph which the loving and loveable element finally obtains | over the unloving and unloveable in the fictitious character had | also its parallel in the true. But we fear that few readers will rise | from the book with that impression. | | The character of Mr. Rochester, the hero, the lover, and | eventually the husband, of Jane Eyre, we have already noticed as | being, to our minds, the characteristic production of a female | pen. Not an Adonis, but a Hercules in mind and body, with a | frame of adamant, a brow of thunder and a lightning eye, a look | and voice of command, all-knowing and all-discerning, fierce in | love and hatred, rough in manner, rude in courtship, with a | shade of Byronic gloom and appetizing mystery ~~ add to this | that when loved he is past middle age, and when wedded he is | blind and fire-scarred, and you have such an Acis as no male | writer would have given his Galatea, and yet what commends | itself as a true embodiment of the visions of a female | imagination. The subordinate characters almost all show | proportionate power. Mr Brocklehurst, the patron and bashaw of | Lowood, a female orphan school, in which he practises | self-denial, | and exercises a vicarious humility, is a | sort of compound of Squeers and Pecksniff, but more probable | than either, and drawn with as strong a hand. His first interview | with Jane Eyre, in which he appears to the eye of the child | | and a scene at Lowood in which, from the midst | of a galaxy of smartly dressed daughters, he lectures the | half-starved and half-clothed orphans on his favourite virtues, would | be well worth quoting, but that their humour borders on the | profane. His love of miracles of destruction is a true hit. | Those miracles are still credible. So is | the inscription on the wall of Lowood. | Mrs. Reed is a good type of the "strong-minded" | and odious woman. Excellent too, in an artistic point of | view, is the character of St. John Rivers, the Calvanist | clergyman and missionary, with all its complex attributes and | iridescent hues ~~ self-denial strangely shot with selfishness ~~ | earthly pride and restless ambition blending and alternating with | heaven-directed zeal, and resignation to the duties of a heavenly | mission. The feeblest character in the book is that of Helen | Burns, who is meant to be a perfect Christian, and is a simple | seraph, conscious moreover of her own perfection. She dies | early in the first volume, and our authoress might say of her | saint, as Shakspeare said of his Mercutio, "If I | | had not killed her, she would have killed me". In her, | however, the Christianity of Jane Eyre is concentrated, and with her it | expires, leaving the moral world in a kind of Scandinavian | gloom, which is hardly broken by the faint glimmerings of a | "doctrine of the equality of souls", | and some questionable | streaks of that "world-redeeming creed | of Christ", which being | emancipated from "narrow human doctrines, | that only tend to elate and magnify a few", | is seldom invoked but for the purpose | of showing that all Christian practice is hypocrisy. | | In imaginative painting Jane Eyre is very good. Take the | following ~~ probably from the threshold of the lake country ~~ | the neighbourhood of Kirby Lonsdale. | | The rather ambitious descriptions of manners and social life | which the book contains are, we are bound to say, a most | decided failure. Their satire falls back with accumulated force | upon the head of the satirist. It is | "high life below stairs" with a | vengeance; the fashionable world seen through the area railings, | and drawn with the black end of the kitchen poker. Listen to the | polite badinage of Mr. Rochester's drawing room. | | | Or the following playful coquetry between the said lily-flower | and Mr. Rochester: ~~ | | The Novelist is now completely lord of the domain of Fiction. | Whatever good or evil is to be done in the present day through | that medium, must be done by him. He is the only dramatist | whose plays can now command an audience. He is the only | troubadour who finds admittance into the carpeted and | cushioned halls of our modern chivalry, and arrests the ear of the | lords and ladies of the nineteenth century. His work is the mirror | of our life. It is the Odyssey and the Niebelungen Lied under a | strange form: but still it is them indeed. Man's appetites do not | change, nor his faculties, but only the external conditions under | which they act; and the same appetites, the same faculties, which | under one set of external conditions gave birth to Achilles, under | another set give birth to Waverley or Pelham; who is to the | reading gentleman what the son of Thetis was to the listening | Greek ~~ himself made perfect. | | In the infancy of nations ~~ in the age of bodily prowess, war, | | adventure, chivalry, when the mind is always turned outwards to | great deeds and never inwards to itself, the Romance, be it in the | prose form specifically so called, or in the ballad, or that higher | form of ballad which is termed the Epic, holds undivided sway. | The Iliad and Odyssey ought to be classed, not with the Aeneid, | Paradise Lost and the Henriade, but with Amadis de Gaul and | the Cid. Virgil, Milton, and Voltaire have obscured the idea of | the Epic, as the perfection of ballad poetry, by trying to write | after the Epic model in an unepic age. The consequence of this | error to themselves (a consequence which Virgil and Milton | seem to have felt) is, that Virgil is redeemed from failure by | certain non-epic passages, such as the history of Dido's love, and | the splendid Inferno and Paradiso in the Sixth Book; Voltaire | fails utterly; and Milton, thanks to that immortal force of genius | which his original fault of judgment could not force from its true | bent, produces a great spiritual poem ~~ the poem of Puritanism. | | To another age of civilization belongs the drama. This too has | its time ~~ a time which does not return. Homer's heroes hurl | stones ten times as large as his audience could hurl; but his | audience too hurled stones, or they would not have heard of it | with interest. In Shakspeare's plays action may be ten times | more intense and rapid, language ten times more vehement, and | character ten times more marked than in the real men of his day; | but still in the real men of his day action was intense and rapid, | language was vehement, and character was marked. The | Sidneys, Raleighs, and Southamptons saw in the heroes of the | stage what they themselves aimed at being, and, in some | measure, were. It was their own age which they saw imaged | there, with all its grandeur and its grotesqueness, its free and | swelling speech, its fierce and open passion, its strong and | sudden hand. The wildest Utopia which the brain of an Idealist | ever conceived, was only an exaggeration of the type of his own | age. Plato's Republic is but a Greek polity after all. And so, we | may be sure, the eye of the great poet, when rolling in its finest | phrensy, saw the men of his own day, though he saw them | through and through, to the very core of their humanity, and | therefore was the poet of all ages while he was the dramatist of | one. The essence of the drama is the development of character | through action. When character is no longer developed in action | ~~ that is in visible action ~~ the drama ceases. And that is the | case in the period of civilization at which we are now arrived. | You can no longer tell what a man is by what you see him do. | The essence of action is driven inward; and what little does | remain outward and visible, so as to be available for the | purposes of the drama, is spread over so wide an expanse of | mere conventionality | | and commonplace, that it cannot be eliminated and presented | with dramatic rapidity without outraging all sense of probability. | The perpetual tendency of civilization is to rub down all that is | salient and prominent ~~ all that of which the dramatist takes | hold. The life of an individual of the higher classes in the present | day is a perpetual | ~~ a polite dissimulation. Good breeding prevents the | transpiration of character in manner; and language is seldom | used to reveal the heart, though scoundrels only use it to conceal | their thoughts. You might as well produce your hero on the stage | in a state of physical nudity, as in the state of moral nudity | which the drama requires. The spectre of Clio does indeed still | walk the earth. We have tragedies of two kinds ~~ the | intolerable, which are meant to the acted, and the tolerable, | which are not meant to be acted, but only read; that is, | undramatic dramas ~~ poems on moral subjects thrown into the | form of dialogue and divided into acts and scenes. Three of this | latter kind stand distinguished by acknowledged merit ~~ | "Edwin the Fair", "Philip van Artevelde", and Mr. Kingsley's | "Saint's Tragedy". In all these the scene is laid really ~~ not | formally only, as in the case of many of the plays of Shakspeare | ~~ in a far distant age: and in all, the thing principally aimed at | and effected is not so much the development of character by | action, as the embodiment of one predominent idea ~~ an idea | suggested in the case of "The Saint's Tragedy", and perhaps in | that of "Edwin the Fair" also, by the theological controversies of | our day, and which the poet takes occasion to express as it were | from a vantage ground and with an appearance of impartiality, | by putting it into the lips of other men, and throwing it back into | other times. "Philip van Artevelde" is but an expansion of the | simple moral of Wordsworth's Dion. | And each of | these three productions has something in it essentially artificial | and unreal. They are beautiful dramatic exercises ~~ no more | the genuine and spontaneous growth of the present age than any | copy of Greek or Latin verses. | | Comedy shows more life. But it is not the comedy of Shakspeare | ~~ the counterpart of tragedy ~~ the embodiment of the | humorous and grotesque. That appears | no more in its proper shape, except when its spectre is raised by | Mr. Taylor and Mr Kingsley. The comedy which does keep | possession of the stage, is the comedy of manners, of the witty | and the ridiculous. No other is any longer credible. A Falstaff or | a Malvolio has become an impossible monster. The tailor and | the schoolmaster, and the restraints and influences of polite | society, have made | | your fool, in all external things, very difficult to distinguish from | your hero. | | Still the spirit lives, though the form has passed away. The | ground once covered by the Epic and the Drama is now | occupied by the multiform and multitudinous Novel in all its | various phases, from "Ellen Middleton" to "Pickwick". That is to | say, the novel has absorbed the strictly dramatic and epic | element; for the lyric element which the Drama and Epic held, | as it were, in solution, is concentrated and crystalized under | another form. We use the work "lyric" for want of a better, to | include all poetry not narrative, descriptive, dramatic, or didactic | ~~ all the poetry of abstract feeling, sentiment, passion; without | any reference to the "lyres" and "wires" with which such poetry, | or a large division of it, was once associated, and of which it | still, unfortunately, babbles. Byron presents disembodied and in | its essence the life which Bulwer has embodied in Pelham and | Ernest Maltravers; and the antagonists of Byron in poetry stand | in a similar relation to the antagonists of Bulwer in prose. All | those difficulties which oppose themselves with insuperable | force to any attempt to epicize or dramatize the life of one day, | the novelist, by means of his peculiar privileges and immunities, | completely overcomes. Those long threads of commonplace | doing and suffering which now make up the web of the most | varied and eventful existence ~~ which it is impossible to | ignore, because, taken together, they are everything ~~ | impossible to narrate, because in their particulars they are mean | ~~ impossible to exhibit on the stage, because their length and | complexity is infinite ~~ are summed up and reduced to unity | and significance. Between the rapidity and intensity of real and | fictitious action a proportion is preserved, and the sense of | probability is not outraged. The essence of action is followed | into the recesses of the heart, without the fatal necessity of | perpetual soliloquies and "asides". The gesture which would be | indescribable in the epic, and invisible or unmeaning on the | stage, is to the reader described, made visible, and rendered | significant, by the exercise of an unlimited power of | interpretation. The want of outward symbols and drapery is | completely supplied by moral description; the integuments of | social form and etiquette are stripped off, and we see that the | tragic and the comic, the heroic and the base, the Hamlet and the | Polonius, the Achilles and the Thersites, have not departed from | life, but are only hidden from the eye ~~ that it is true, as Carlyle | says, that there is the fifth act of a tragedy in every peasant's | death-bed, if you can only get it on the stage. The curtain of the | novelist rises. The scene is a drawing room, where all the | company are dressed alike; all have been drilled into a sort of | Prussian discipline of | | manners, and a marked trait of character scarcely escapes once | an hour. The worst dressed man there is perhaps the man of | rank, the best dressed is the nobody. We penetrate at once | through all the outworks of Stultz and Chesterfield into the | depths of every breast ~~ we know the royal nature from the | slavish, the hero from the knave. The grouping of the guests, | their conversation, their attention or inattention, their every look | and gesture, has its true significance ~~ a significance which no | Garrick could impart. We discern the secret of the heart which | causes a slight embarrassment of manner, a slight absence and | wandering in discourse in the most polite and self-possessed of | diners-out. We mark the plot or the intrigue which lurks in the | arrangement of the party round the dinner table. We hear the | bitter or passionate things which are said in soft words and with | calm faces. The noise of the piano hides nothing from us. We | know that the faint sigh which good breeding hushes on the lip | would be, but for good breeding, an Othello's groan. We see that | the empty coffee cup is raised to the lip to conceal a smile of | triumph, or the face buried in a book of prints to hide the pallor | of despair. In this respect, indeed, the Novel has the advantage | of the Drama, not only with reference to the necessities imposed | by its particular subject matter, but in the abstract. When | Johnson objects to Iago's long soliloquy, that he is telling | himself what he knows already, he is guilty of almost as great a | platitude as in saying, that | Iago is not telling | himself anything; he is telling his audience what is passing | through his mind. It is necessary to do so in order to give them a | clue to his designs; but it is an awkward necessity, and one with | which the genius of Shakspeare alone has dealt successfully. | | Our object in this somewhat rambling digression has been to | show what responsibility rests upon the novelists of our day ~~ a | reflection which we beg to suggest to the authoress of Jane Eyre. | With them it rests to determine, each for himself and according | to the measure of his gifts, whether so powerful an instrument | of moving men, as fiction is, shall be used to move them for | good or evil. Are the poetic and artistic faculties given to man | purely for his amusement? Are they alone of all his powers not | subject in their exercise to the legislative or judicial conscience. | Curiously enough, we believe no moral philosopher has yet | given a complete scientific answer to this question. A | philosophical account of that part of man's essence which is | neither moral nor intellectual, but lies midway between the two, | | both in itself and in its relation to the moral and intellectual | parts, would we believe still be an addition to Moral Science. | Neither in the fragments which remain to us of the Poetics, nor | in the psychology of the Sixth Book of the Ethics, can Aristotle | be said to have approached this subject. Plato in his Republic | makes the same mistake regarding poetry which he makes with | regard to rhetoric in the Gorgias ~~ the same with the Patristic | writer who calls poetry | ~~ that of confounding the faculty with | its abuse ~~ and the beautiful | of the Ion, | though it vindicates his | instincts, does not mend his system. However this may be, the | position that the poetic and artistic faculties are subject to | conscience, is a truism in theory which seems to be | metamorphosed into a paradox in practice. We suppose, for | example, that Mrs. Marcet considered herself to be uttering an | acknowledged truth in saying that Goldsmith's "Deserted | Village", being poetry, is none the worse for being bad political | economy. Yet if this is so, neither is Don Juan, being also | poetry, the worse for being bad religion. Goldsmith intended, or | at least he foresaw that the effect of his poem would be, to raise | certain sentiments and impressions relative to certain social | questions; and if those sentiments were morbid and those | impressions wrong, his poem is as plainly vicious as the most | rigorous scientific treatise, embodying the same fallacies, would | have been. This may seem an exaggerated instance. It is an | | certainly ~~ but where is the line of | demarcation to be drawn? The rule of truth-telling is, to convey | a right impression; and therefore, unless a poet is to be absolved | from the rule of truth-telling, his sentiments, as distinguished | from his facts, must all be true. Deny this, and the realms of | poetry and fiction become, what poor Charles Lambe pretended | to think they were, a sort of refuge from the sense of moral | responsibility ~~ a region where the speaker of lies or | blasphemies does no harm and the hearer takes none ~~ a place | where the Omnipresent is not, beyond "the uttermost parts of the | sea", to which the spirit of the Psalmist, borne on the wings of | morning, fled in vain ~~ a darkness which shall | not be turned into day. We do not mean to | say that the writer of fiction is called upon to play the part of the | preacher or the theologian. Far from it. What he is called upon to | do is to hold up a clear and faithful mirror to human nature ~~ a | mirror in which it shall see its good as good, its evil as evil. His | pages must give back the true reflection of a world of which | morality is the law, and into which Christianity has entered. | | The tendency of English novelists seems happily to be at present | in the right direction. Within the last fifteen years, common | sense, at any rate, has achieved some victories in our | | literature. Shakspeare has shone forth again, and Byron labours | in eclipse. No heads, we believe, but those of shopboys and | farmers' daughters, are now in danger of being turned by Lytton | Bulwer. That Upas tree is pretty well | withered up by contempt and ridicule in this country, though it | still flourishes with rank luxuriance in the congenial soil of | France. Dumas, Sue, and George Sand are, indeed, read by us, as | well as by their own countrymen; but then we read them for the | story, and laugh at the sentiment, which a Frenchman swallows | as the word of life. The belief that the pen of a west-end Adonis | could regenerate society, without the tedious process of | repentance and self-government, is passing away with the last | great men of that heroic age which produced the National | Gallery and the Reform Bill. The religion which teaches that to | sin is the indifferent-best way to save your soul, and that to | prostitution in the higher classes much will be forgiven, has day | by day fewer symbolical writings and fewer prophets in the land. | Whether another and a more fatal humbug may not succeed, and | whether a certain phase of the religious novel may not prove that | humbug, remains yet to be seen. But at present a better influence | reigns in the whole world of fiction, poetry, and art; and | everywhere men who work by the rules of sense and truth, the | Christian architect and the Christian writer, are slowly gaining | ground, and seem likely ~~ unless their course is crossed by | some convulsion of society such as the last month has taught us | to consider possible ~~ to make rubble of the chimney-potted | Parthenon and waste paper of the Satanic novel. | | What would be the fate of the authoress whose work we are now | reviewing, should that happy consummation be brought to pass, | must be considered as doubtful. To say that "Jane Eyre" is | positively immoral or antichristian, would be to do its writer an | injustice. Still it wears a questionable aspect. The choice is still | to be made, and he who should determine it aright would do | literature and society some service. The authoress of "Jane Eyre" | will have power in her generation, whether she choose to | exercise it for good or evil. She has depth and breadth of thought | ~~ she has something of that peculiar gift of genius, the faculty | of discerning the wonderful in and through the commonplace ~~ | she has a painter's eye and hand ~~ she has great satiric power, | and, in spite of some exaggerated and morbid cynicism, a good | fund of common sense. To this common sense we would appeal. | Let her take care that while she detects and exposes humbug in | other minds, she does not suffer it to gain dominion in her own. | Let her take warning, if she will, from Mr. Thackeray, to whom | she dedicates her second | edition, whom she thinks | and whose | and | she overwhelms with such | extravagant panegyric. Let her mark how, while looking every | where for "Snobs" to denounce, he has himself fallen into one, | and not the least vicious, phase of that very character which he | denounces. Or let her seek a more signal and ominous example | in the history of that far higher mind which, after demolishing | innumerable "shams", has itself, for want of a real faith of its | own, sunk into the mournfullest sham of all. Let her reconsider | her preface, and see how conventional may be the denouncer of | conventionality, how great an idol the iconoclast may leave | unbroken in himself. Let her cease, if she can, to think of herself | as Micaiah, and of society as Ahab. Let her be a little more | trustful of the reality of human goodness, and a little less | anxious to detect its alloy of evil. She will lose nothing in | piquancy, and gain something in healthiness and truth. We shall | look with some anxiety for that second effort which is | proverbially decisive of a writer's talent, and which, in this case, | will probably be decisive of the moral question also.