Thus we understand Charlotte Brontë was anxious that her autobiographical-self in Villette should be called Snowe. While, in mentioning the matter to her publishers, she endeavoured to show a superficial and commonplace reason for her singular choice, the truth underlies her words wherein she says she "can hardly express what subtlety of thought" made her decide upon "a cold name."
The subtlety of thought that dictated the choice of the "cold name" Snowe had, we shall see, a connection with the old Scottish ballad, "Puir Mary Lee," which evidence shows was responsible at the dark season to which I have referred for Charlotte Brontë's choice of the title of Wuthering Heights—for her identifying her own bitterness with that of "Puir Mary Lee."
It is in Shirley, Chapter VII., that Charlotte Brontë writes:—
Nature ... is an excellent friend, sealing the lips, interdicting utterance, commanding a placid dissimulation; a dissimulation often wearing an easy and gay mien at first, settling down to sorrow and paleness in time, then passing away, and leaving a convenient stoicism, not the less fortifying because half-bitter. [As Lucy Snowe, Charlotte Brontë writes in Villette in perfect sympathy with this: "If I feel, may I never express? I groaned under her (Reason's) bitter sternness ... she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and broken-down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece of bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all life to despond. Reason might be right.">[ Who has read the ballad of 'Puir Mary Lee'?—that old Scotch ballad, written I know not in what generation nor by what hand. Mary had been ill-used—probably in being made to believe that truth which is falsehood; she is not complaining, but she is sitting alone in the snow-storm, and you hear her thoughts ... those of a deeply feeling, strongly resentful peasant girl. Anguish has driven her from the ingle-nook of home, to the white-shrouded and icy hills: crouched under the 'cauld drift,' she recalls every image of horror, ... she hates these, but 'waur' she hates 'Robin-a-Ree!'
"Oh! ance I lived happily by yon bonny burn—
The warld was in love wi' me;
But now I maun sit 'neath the cauld drift and mourn,
And curse black Robin-a-Ree!
"Then whudder awa' thou bitter biting blast,
And sough through the scrunty tree,
And smoor me up in the snaw fu' fast
And ne'er let the sun me see!
"Oh, never melt awa' thou wreath o' snaw,
That's sae kind in graving me;
But hide me frae the scorn and guffaw
O' villains like Robin-a-Ree!"
Thus internal evidence proves that the name of Wuthering Heights for the abode of the "deeply feeling, strongly resentful peasant girl," Catherine Earnshaw, was primarily chosen by Charlotte Brontë because of its special appeal to her own mood at a given period, in relation to the ballad of "Puir Mary Lee," and proves that the choice of the name of Snowe for her "cold and altered" autobiographical self in Villette was dictated by its connection therewith.
In this light glance at Charlotte Brontë's poem "Mementos," and at the following verses from her "Frances":—
"And when thy opening eyes shall see
Mementos, on the chamber wall,
Of one who has forgotten thee,
Shed not the tear of acrid gall.