"It may be true that not many will ever take it to their hearts; it is certain that those who do like it will like nothing very much better in the whole world of poetry or prose."
All that we know of Emily Brontë's nature is consistent, such as we would expect of the author of Wuthering Heights. The first stanza of her last poem, written but a short time before her death, reveals her strength of will and faith:
No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.
These lines evoked the following tribute from Matthew Arnold:
——she
(How shall I sing her?) whose soul
Knew no fellow for might,
Passion, vehemence, grief,
Daring, since Byron died,
That world-famed son of fire—she, who sank
Baffled, unknown, self-consumed;
Whose too bold dying song
Stirr'd, like a clarion-blast, my soul.
The great books of prose fiction have been for the most part the work of mature years. The lyric poets burst into rhapsody at the dawn of life; but the powers of the novelist have ripened more slowly. The novelists have done better work after thirty-five than at an earlier age but few of them have written a classic at the age of twenty-eight, as did Emily Brontë.
Anne Brontë's fame has been both augmented and dimmed by the greater genius of her two sisters. She is remembered principally as one of the Brontës, so that her books have been oftener reprinted and more extensively read than their actual merit would warrant. In comparison with the greater genius of Charlotte and Emily, her writings have been declared void of interest, and without any ray of the brilliancy which distinguishes their books. This latter statement is not true. Anne Brontë did not have their imaginative power, but she reproduced what she had seen and learned of life with conscientious devotion to truth. Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, Anne Brontë's first book, were published together in three volumes so as to meet the popular demand that novels, like the graces, should appear in threes. It is a photographic representation of the life of a governess in England during the forties. Agnes's courage in determining to augment the family income by seeking a position as governess; the high hopes with which she enters upon her first position; her conscientious resolve to do her full Christian duty to the spoiled children of the Bloomfields; her dismissal and sad return home; her second position in the family of Mr. Murray, a country squire; the two daughters, one determined to make a fine match for herself, the other a perfect hoyden without a thought beyond the horses and dogs; the disregard of the truth in both; Mr. Hatfield, the minister, who cared only for the county families among his parishioners; Miss Murray's marriage for position and the unhappiness that followed it—form a series of photographs, which only a sensitive, responsive nature could have produced. The contrast between the gentle, refined governess, and the coarse natures upon whom she is dependent, is well shown, although there is no attempt on the part of the author to assert any superiority of one over the other. We have many books in which the shrinking governess is described from the point of view of the family or one of their guests, but here the governess of an English fox-hunting squire has spoken for herself; she has described her trials and the constant self-sacrifice which is demanded of her without bitterness, and in a kindly spirit withal, and for that reason the book is a valuable addition to the history of the life and manners of the century.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, her second novel, was a peculiar book to have shaped itself in the brain of the gentle youngest daughter of the Vicar of Haworth. But Anne Brontë had seen phases of life which must have sorely wounded her pure spirit. She had been governess at Thorp Green, where her brother Branwell was tutor, and where he formed that unfortunate attachment for the wife of his employer, which, with the help of liquor and opium, deranged his mind. Anne wrote in her diary at this time, "I have had some very unpleasant and undreamt-of experience of human nature." As we picture Anne Brontë, with her light brown hair, violet-blue eyes, shaded by pencilled eyebrows, and transparent complexion, she seems a spirit of goodness and purity made to behold daily a depth of evil in the nature of one dear to her, which fills her with wonderment and horror.
Mr. Huntingdon of Wildfell Hall was drawn from personal observation of her brother. She wrote with minuteness, because she believed it her duty to hold up his life as a warning to others. The gradual change in Mr. Huntingdon from the happy confident lover to the ruined debauchee is well traced; the story of his infatuation for the wife of his friend, so reckless that he attempted no concealment, is realistic in the extreme. But what a change in the novel! A hundred years before, Huntingdon would have made a fine hero of romance, but here he is disgraced to the position of chief villain, and the reader feels for him only pity and loathing. Probably a man's pen would have touched his errors more lightly, but Anne Brontë painted him as he appeared to her. The author attributes such a character as Huntingdon's to false education, and makes her heroine say: