Her character and disposition are partially reflected in 'Jane Eyre.' The calm, clear mind, the brave, independent spirit are there. But a fuller and more accurate picture of her character may be found in Lucy Snowe, the heroine of 'Villette.' Here we find especially that note of hopelessness that predominated in Charlotte's character. Mrs. Gaskell, in her admirable biography of Charlotte Bronté, has called attention to this absence of hope in her nature. Charlotte indeed never allowed herself to look forward to happy issues. She had no confidence in the future. The pressure of grief apparently crushed all buoyancy of expectation. It was in this attitude that when literary success greeted her, she made little of it, scarcely allowing herself to believe that the world really set a high value on her work. Throughout all the excitement that her books produced, she was almost indifferent. Brought up as she had been to regard literary work as something beyond the proper limits of her sex, she never could quite rid herself of the belief that in writing successfully, she had made of herself not so much a literary figure as a sort of social curiosity. Nor was that idea wholly foreign to her time.
Personally Charlotte Bronté was not unattractive. Though somewhat too slender and pale, and plain of feature, she had a pleasant expression, and her homelier features were redeemed by a strong massive forehead, luxuriant glossy hair, and handsome eyes. Though she had little faith in her powers of inspiring affection, she attracted people strongly and was well beloved by her friends. That she could stir romantic sentiment too was attested by the fact that she received and rejected three proposals of marriage from as many suitors, before her acceptance of Mr. Nicholls.
Allusion has been made to the work of Charlotte's two sisters, Emily and Anne. Of the two Emily is by far the more remarkable, revealing in the single novel we have from her pen a genius as distinct and individual as that of her more celebrated sister. Had she lived, it is more than likely that her literary achievements would have rivaled Charlotte's.
Emily Bronté has always been something of a puzzle to biographers. She was eccentric, an odd mixture of bashful reserve and unexpected spells of frankness, sweet, gentle, and retiring in disposition, but possessed of great courage. She was two years younger than Charlotte, but taller. She was slender, though well formed, and was pale in complexion, with great gray eyes of remarkable beauty. Emily's literary work is to be found in the volume of "Poems" of her sisters, her share in that work being considered superior in imaginative quality and in finish to that of the others; and in the novel "Wuthering Heights," a weird, horrid story of astonishing power, written when she was twenty-eight years of age. Considered purely as an imaginative work, "Wuthering Heights" is one of the most remarkable stories in English literature, and is worthy to be ranked with the works of Edgar A. Poe. Many will say that it might better not have been written, so utterly repulsive is it, but others will value it as a striking, though distorted, expression of unmistakable genius. It is a ghastly and gruesome creation. Not one bright ray redeems it. It deals with the most evil characters and the most evil phases of human experience. But it fascinates. Heathcliff, the chief figure in the book, is one of the greatest villains in fiction,--an abhorrent creature,--strange, monstrous, Frankensteinesque.
Anne Bronté is known by her share in the book of "Poems" and by two novels, "Agnes Gray" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," both of which are disappointing. The former is based on the author's experiences as a governess, and is written in the usual placid style of romances of the time. "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" found its suggestion in the wretched career of Branwell Bronté, and presents a sad and depressing picture of a life of degradation. The book was not a success, and would no doubt have sunk long ago into oblivion but for its association with the novels of Emily and Charlotte.
In studying the work of Charlotte Bronté, the gifted older sister of the group, one of the first of the qualities that impress the reader is her actual creative power. To one of her imaginative power, the simplest life was sufficient, the smallest details a fund of material. Mr. Swinburne has called attention to the fact that Charlotte Bronté's characters are individual creations, not types constructed out of elements gathered from a wide observation of human nature, and that they are real creations; that they compel our interest and command our assent because they are true, inevitably true. Perhaps no better example of this individualism could be cited than Rochester. The character is unique. It is not a type, nor has it even a prototype, like so many of Charlotte Bronté's characters. Gossip insisted at one time that the author intended to picture Thackeray in Rochester, but this is groundless. Rochester is an original creation. The character of Jane Eyre, too, while reflecting something of the author's nature, was distinctly individual; and it is interesting to note here that with Jane Eyre came a new heroine into fiction, a woman of calm, clear reason, of firm positive character, and what was most novel, a plain woman, a homely heroine.
"Why is it," Charlotte had once said, "that heroines must always be beautiful?" The hero of romance was always noble and handsome, the heroine lovely and often insipid, and the scenes set in an atmosphere of exaggerated idealism. Against this idealism Charlotte Bronté revolted. Her effort was always toward realism.
In her realism she reveals a second characteristic scarcely less marked than her creative powers,--an extraordinary faculty of observation. She saw the essence, the spirit of things, and the simplest details of life revealed to her the secrets of human nature. What she had herself seen and felt--the plain rugged types of Yorkshire character, the wild scenery of the moorlands--she reflected with living truth. She got the real fact out of every bit of material in humanity and nature that her simple life afforded her. And where her experience could not afford her the necessary material, she drew upon some mysterious resources in her nature, which were apparently not less reliable than actual experience. On being asked once how she could describe so accurately the effects of opium as she does in 'Villette,' she replied that she knew nothing of opium, but that she had followed the process she always adopted in cases of this kind. She had thought intently on the matter for many a night before falling asleep; till at length, after some time, she waked in the morning with all clear before her, just as if she had actually gone through the experience, and then could describe it word for word as it happened.
Her sensitiveness to impressions of nature was exceedingly keen. She had what Swinburne calls "an instinct for the tragic use of landscape." By constant and close observation during her walks she had established a fellowship with nature in all her phases; learning her secrets from the voices of the night, from the whisper of the trees, and from the eerie moaning of the moorland blasts. She studied the cold sky, and had watched the "coming night-clouds trailing low like banners drooping."
Other qualities that distinguish her work are purity, depth and ardor of passion, and spiritual force and fervor. Her genius was lofty and noble, and an exalted moral quality predominates in her stories. She was ethical as sincerely as she was emotional.