Jane Eyre, an orphan, is abused and mistreated in childhood, first in the family of Mrs. Reed, where she is brought up, and afterwards at the Lowood charity school, where she is first a pupil and then becomes a teacher. She seeks a situation as governess, and finds employment at Thornfield Hall, the residence of a Mr. Rochester, who, after a wild, dissipated, wandering life, has come, some time before, into possession of this splendid property. Here she has the charge of Adele, his ward.
There is a certain uncanny secret about Thornfield which the governess finds herself unable to fathom. She hears wild laughter and inarticulate sounds in a distant part of the Hall. One night Rochester’s bed is mysteriously set on fire, and Jane Eyre saves his life. On another occasion, while the house is full of guests, a horrible shriek comes from the upper floor and a murder is well nigh committed by some unknown creature who is hidden there.
In the meantime Mr. Rochester has become greatly interested in his little governess, who, although quiet and plain in appearance, is warm-hearted and high-spirited, with a strong sense of duty, great courage, and an indomitable will. And she on her side becomes fascinated and at last utterly devoted to her master, a man of brilliant parts, strong, brusque, proud and autocratic. He offers her his hand, and she accepts him, to learn, however, in the very presence of the altar and during the wedding ceremony, that he has another wife! It seems that in his early years he had been beguiled into a marriage in the West Indies with a woman whose dissolute courses had wrecked his life, and had terminated in her own madness, and that this was the maniac who had occasioned the strange scenes at the Hall.
Jane Eyre now flees from Thornfield, concealing all traces of her whereabouts. She wanders amid incredible hardships and destitution, and at last finds shelter at Moor House, the home of St. John Rivers and his two sisters, who are afterwards discovered to be her relatives, and with whom she divides a legacy which she receives from a deceased uncle. St. John is a country clergyman of high character, full of zeal, ambition, and fanaticism, and determined to devote his life to missionary service in India. He seeks her hand, but she realizes that it is not from love but to make her his fellow laborer in the work of the Gospel. He has sought to inspire her with his own enthusiasm, and she is on the point of yielding, when she seems to hear the voice of Rochester calling to her in pain and anguish. She returns to Thornfield, and finds that the Hall has been consumed in a conflagration kindled by the maniac, and that Rochester, who had sought in vain to save the life of the wretched creature, has been himself rescued, blind and a cripple, from the ruins. She seeks him and becomes his wife.
But the bare recital of these leading events gives very little idea of the characters in this somber and tragic tale, or the feelings which control their actions. The book must be read through to be understood. From the very beginning the author strikes a resounding chord in human nature. Brutality to children stirs us to fury, and no one, not even Dickens or Victor Hugo, has painted this form of tyranny in livelier colors than Charlotte Brontë. The conduct of Mrs. Reed and of Rev. Mr. Brocklehurst, the sanctified and inhuman director of Lowood school, arouses our hot resentment.
Of course there are blemishes in the book. Sometimes the conversation is too carefully written to be natural. Then there is an intrinsic improbability in the plot. Why should a young woman so self-sufficient as the heroine consent to marry Rochester before she had solved the secret of Thornfield? But these defects in the novel are trifling by the side of its abounding excellences. At nearly every point the heroine awakens our admiration; we feel (sometimes, perhaps, in spite of our better judgment) that she is doing right; and so masterly is the author’s portraiture that, in spite of many repulsive features, she awakens a stronger sympathy for the seared and blighted Rochester than for the pure and devoted yet inexorable St. John Rivers. Jane Eyre is an eloquent novel. It is emphatically a work of genius.
CARMEN
PROSPER MERIMÉE
It has always seemed to me that “Carmen” was a story of great power and told with wonderful skill. I know not whether it be fact, nor whether the author has learned it in the way he says; but so convincing is the narrative, it seems to me impossible that it is a mere product of the imagination. Yet the leading characters are so abnormal that I sometimes wonder why I believe this story so thoroughly. It must be because it is true.
The author, in pursuing certain archæological researches to discover the site of the ancient battle of Munda, comes with his guide upon a secluded amphitheatre among the rocks, where he suddenly encounters an outlaw, José Navarro, whom he makes his friend by the exchange of some simple courtesies and by warning him at the humble venta where they lodge together, of the approach of the officers of justice.
Some days afterwards, while the author was leaning upon the parapet of the quay at Cordova, Carmen, a young gipsy girl of a strange and savage beauty, comes and sits near him. After some conversation he accompanies her to her residence to have his fortune told. Suddenly the door opens, and Navarro, in a very bad humor, enters the room. A quarrel ensues between him and Carmen in the gipsy language, and it appears from the gestures that the young girl is urging the bandit to cut the stranger’s throat. He refuses, takes the author by the arm, leads him into the street, and directs him home.