Twelve Types | Page 2

the whole aim and purport and meaning of the work of the

Brontës is that the most futile thing in the whole universe is fact. Such
a story as 'Jane Eyre' is in itself so monstrous a fable that it ought to be
excluded from a book of fairy tales. The characters do not do what they
ought to do, nor what they would do, nor, it might be said, such is the
insanity of the atmosphere, not even what they intend to do. The
conduct of Rochester is so primevally and superhumanly caddish that
Bret Harte in his admirable travesty scarcely exaggerated it. 'Then,
resuming his usual manner, he threw his boots at my head and
withdrew,' does perhaps reach to something resembling caricature. The
scene in which Rochester dresses up as an old gipsy has something in it
which is really not to be found in any other branch of art, except in the
end of the pantomime, where the Emperor turns into a pantaloon. Yet,
despite this vast nightmare of illusion and morbidity and ignorance of
the world, 'Jane Eyre' is perhaps the truest book that was ever written.
Its essential truth to life sometimes makes one catch one's breath. For it
is not true to manners, which are constantly false, or to facts, which are
almost always false; it is true to the only existing thing which is true,
emotion, the irreducible minimum, the indestructible germ. It would
not matter a single straw if a Brontë story were a hundred times more
moonstruck and improbable than 'Jane Eyre,' or a hundred times more
moonstruck and improbable than 'Wuthering Heights.' It would not
matter if George Read stood on his head, and Mrs Read rode on a
dragon, if Fairfax Rochester had four eyes and St John Rivers three legs,
the story would still remain the truest story in the world. The typical
Brontë character is, indeed, a kind of monster. Everything in him
except the essential is dislocated. His hands are on his legs and his feet
on his arms, his nose is above his eyes, but his heart is in the right
place.
The great and abiding truth for which the Brontë cycle of fiction stands
is a certain most important truth about the enduring spirit of youth, the
truth of the near kinship between terror and joy. The Brontë heroine,
dingily dressed, badly educated, hampered by a humiliating
inexperience, a kind of ugly innocence, is yet, by the very fact of her
solitude and her gaucherie, full of the greatest delight that is possible to
a human being, the delight of expectation, the delight of an ardent and
flamboyant ignorance. She serves to show how futile it is of humanity

to suppose that pleasure can be attained chiefly by putting on evening
dress every evening, and having a box at the theatre every first night. It
is not the man of pleasure who has pleasure; it is not the man of the
world who appreciates the world. The man who has learnt to do all
conventional things perfectly has at the same time learnt to do them
prosaically. It is the awkward man, whose evening dress does not fit
him, whose gloves will not go on, whose compliments will not come
off, who is really full of the ancient ecstasies of youth. He is frightened
enough of society actually to enjoy his triumphs. He has that element of
fear which is one of the eternal ingredients of joy. This spirit is the
central spirit of the Brontë novel. It is the epic of the exhilaration of the
shy man. As such it is of incalculable value in our time, of which the
curse is that it does not take joy reverently because it does not take it
fearfully. The shabby and inconspicuous governess of Charlotte Brontë,
with the small outlook and the small creed, had more commerce with
the awful and elemental forces which drive the world than a legion of
lawless minor poets. She approached the universe with real simplicity,
and, consequently, with real fear and delight. She was, so to speak, shy
before the multitude of the stars, and in this she had possessed herself
of the only force which can prevent enjoyment being as black and
barren as routine. The faculty of being shy is the first and the most
delicate of the powers of enjoyment. The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of pleasure.
Upon the whole, therefore, I think it may justifiably be said that the
dark wild youth of the Brontës in their dark wild Yorkshire home has
been somewhat exaggerated as a necessary factor in their work and
their conception. The emotions with which they dealt were universal
emotions, emotions of the morning of existence, the springtide joy