Moral Influence of Charlotte Bronte's Writings [pp. 113-119]

THE LADIES' RI?EPOSITOR Y.
woman when her sad life has been revealet[ to us, and so have forgiven the
authors faults.
Surely few human lives that have ever
found a biographer are fuller of pathos
than that of Charlotte Bront6. When a
great modern preacher,* after telling of
the " men and women waiting in the
miarket-places in all sorts of ways, watching for the coming of the master to set
them to work," casts about him for an
illustration, he can find none more fitting
than this " shrinking, timid, near-sighted
woman, among the Yorkshire hills, saying to herself, WVhat shall I do?" He
has spoken of the "weary, patient eyes,"
"the hungry look," "the tingle and beat
in nerve and brain," "the eager wistfulness and readiness in the faces of the
waiters," and in none of those he selects
as typical of this weary, expectant waiting, do we find all the signs meet as in
her. "It has been a long sore trial to
wait and watch as she has done. In her
life-time she has known not a few of her
own age who have already solved that
problem; some are wedded and happy
in their honmes; others have found their
true places, as teachers, writers, or artists,
and are already crowned with honor. This
woman has had great sorrows and sore
losses, and her day is wearing on into
the afternoon; still she has heard no
voice bidding her go work in the vineyard. There is a letter written to Wordsworth t while she stands there in the
market-place waiting for the master,
that is, in my opinion, the most pathetic
cry ever heard in our life-time.'Sir,'
she says,'I earnestly entreat you to read
and judge what I have sent you. From
the day of my birth to this day I have
lived in seclusion here among the hills,
where I could neither know what I was
nor what I could do. I have read, for the
reason that I have eaten bread, because
it was a real craving of nature, and have
written on the same principle. But now
*Robert Collier, of Chicago, in "The Life That
Now Is."
t Was not the letter addressed to Southey?
I have arrived at an age when I must do
something. The powers I possess must
be used to a certain end, and, as I do not
know them myself, I must ask others
what they are worth; there is no one here
to tell me if they are worthy; and if they
are worthless, there is none to tell me
that. I beseech you to help me.' What
she sends to Wordsworth then is poor;
she has written many volumes, all poor;
has waited in the market-place and done
no work; but at last the master walking
there, sees her wistful face turned toward
him, and says,'Go into my vineyard.'
Then she bends over some small folded
sheets of coarse paper till her face almost
touches them, and in one book she storms
the heart of England and America, and
in the one hour that was left her she
won her penny.'"
Following this strange life, we forget
to ask the value of the "penny" she won.
We see the crotchety father, who, from
principle, feeds his children exclusively
on potatoes; who, horrified at what seems
to him the sinfulness of worldly conformity burns "the pretty red shoes of the
baby," and cuts his wife's silk dresses to
pieces; we follow the little motherless
group at their strangely precocious occupations, grow so indignant at the account
of the Cowan Bridge School that we can
almost forgive any exaggeration in the
caricature to which she afterwards subjects
it under the title of Lowood Institution;
we grieve for the survivors after Maria's
happy release; strive in vain to fathom
the character of the enigmatical Emily;
but our feelings rise to something akin to
horror when the only brother, the talented and idolized Branwell, shows himself as an incarnate fienld. We no longer
wonder at the strange knowledge of evil
which Jane Eyre reveals when we hear
of the infamous confessions which Branwell pours into his sister's ears,-confessions which the biographer but hints at,
but which reappear in Charlotte's writings in all their prurient details. Vre
find that the foul blasphemies they hear,
are supposed by these girls, living a life
of isolation, unused to the world's ways,
I
I18
[August,