Austen and Brontë: the great divide between observational realism and the empire of passion

“ Jane Austen with English village life, Charlotte Brontë with the element of passion in man and woman, while George Eliot’s works embrace many varieties of human nature and action. If her detractors are questioned, it will commonly be found that they do not deny her ability or her brain power, but her genius, which is of course a totally distinct thing. ”

“ It is an endless puzzle why, when her books so faithfully represent the society and manners of a time so unlike our own, they seem so natural to us. If you tell any half-dozen people, who have not made a special study of the subject, at what date these novels were written, you will find that they are all surprised to hear how many generations ago Jane Austen lived, and that they have always vaguely imagined her to be very little earlier than, if not contemporary with, Charlotte Brontë or George Eliot. ”

“ That is the only way to create “an agreeable illusion,” and by no other means can a novel do good while remaining a legitimate novel and not becoming a sermon, a treatise, or a polemic.
It may reasonably be inquired whether the prevailing and still growing taste for fiction expresses a new and enduring want of educated men and women. The novel, as we understand the word, is after all a very recent invention. ”

“ The novel, therefore, is an intellectual artistic luxury—a definition which can be made to include a good deal, but which is, in reality, a closer one than it appears to be at first sight. No one, I think, will deny that it covers the three principal essentials of the novel as it should be, of a story or romance, which in itself and in the manner of telling it shall appeal to the intellect, shall satisfy the requirements of art, and shall be a luxury, in that it can be of no use to a man when he is at work, but may conduce to peace of mind and delectation during his hours of idleness. ”

“ Where our men have not risen high, our women, though a surpassing voice may here and there be born, are not likely to soar. As for painting and the other plastic arts, well, one can only wait in hopes of something better from women than they have yet been able to give us. But our women can write, heaven knows, though many of them write too much, and where the passionate intensity and the transfiguring imagination of an Emily Brontë is present the result is unqualified greatness, as surely as the work is a masterpiece when the shrewd observation and the elegance of a Jane Austen illuminate it. ”

“ They read proper novels, knit wristlets, discuss fevers and their remedies, raise their eyebrows at gossip, connive at matrimony, and take tea. The workers of the world enter not here; neither do men of ideas, nor social rebels, nor the wicked, nor the happily unworthy poor; and the parish is blessed in having no reformers.
In this barren field, hopeless to romancers like Scott, there never was such another explorer as Jane Austen. Her demure observation is marvelously keen; sometimes it is mischievous, or even a bit malicious, but always sparkling with wit or running over with good humor. ”

“ Reality goes beyond the wildest imaginings of romance,—beyond the majestic sweep of human genius. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor imagination conceived, the wild extent to which the passions of man may go. The empire of passion is veiled, and its battle ground is secret Who beheld the interview in the library, which I have just described? Who saw him kneeling at his mother's feet at the midnight hour? Or who witnessed our scenes of agony and reconciliation in the palace walls of our winter home? Ah! the world sees only the surface of the great deep of the heart. ”

“ We have in them no heroes and heroines, no villains, but only men and women; and while the world lasts stories of real live flesh-and-blood characters will hold their own. The second characteristic, which is the salt of fiction, is the keen sense of humour that runs throughout. Jane Austen’s observation of the foibles of her fellow-creatures was unusually sharp, her remarks in her letters are not always kind, but in the novels this sharp and keen relish of what is absurd is softened down so as to be nowhere offensive. ”

“ She is unemotional, even for her setting; and it was after reading her placid history that Charlotte Brontë wrote the memorable depreciation of all Miss Austen’s novels.
But, though beset and environed by [Pg 209] dullness, Emma is not dull. On the contrary, she is remarkably engaging; less vivacious than Elizabeth Bennet, but infinitely more agreeable. She puts us into a good humour with ourselves, she “produces delight.” The secret of her potency is that she has grasped the essential things of life, and let the non-essentials go. ”

“ Emma and Pride and Prejudice. They are “pieces of life imaginatively realised.” We laugh with the eccentricities, not at them. Properly speaking, Miss Austen is no satirist. She can amuse us without killing emotion.
As hinted already, Charlotte Brontë has neither humour nor wit. She takes life most seriously; and, in attempting a comic relief, becomes lumping or savage. The fact of her “Shirley” curates recognising, and enjoying, their own portraits may serve to measure the limit of her success. Such men could only enjoy the second-rate. ”

“ It is not very encouraging to see a bright little girl of ten making believe she enjoys Miss Austen’s novels, and to hear her mother’s complacent103 comments thereon, when we realize how exclusively the fine, thin perfection of Miss Austen’s work appeals to the mature observation of men and women, and how utterly out of harmony it must be with the crude judgment and expansive ideality of a child. ”

“ She covers the whole ground, as none of her predecessors had attempted; she makes the last final addition of subject by discovering, and facing, social problems; she applies the last word in literary professionalism; but inasmuch as her characters are more typical and more studied than Jane Austen’s, they are, in a sense, less modern and less universal. We may learn more from her about women, and women’s opinions; but these are the women of one age only—fast awakening, indeed, and conscious of many troubling possibilities, but not free. ”

“ We may not even consider “The Newcomes” and “Henry Esmond” as illustrating the degeneracy of modern fiction; yet nevertheless we may enjoy some fair half-hours in the company of Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Elton, of Catherine Morland and Elizabeth Bennet. Only, when we are searching for a shibboleth by which to test our neighbor’s intellectual worth, let not Jane Austen’s be the name, lest we be rewarded for our trouble by hearing the faint, clear ripple of her amused laughter—that gentle, feminine, merciless laughter—echoing softly from the dwelling-place of the immortals. ”

“ In this frame of mind one longs for a new Miss Austen more than for a new symphony of Beethoven, or a play of Shakespeare, and much more than for the lost books of Livy, which, indeed, I, for one, do not desire at all.
The power of endlessly re-reading the novels of Miss Austen is the only advantage conferred by a bad memory. ”

“ Yet we are aware that to a class of readers Miss Austen's novels must ever remain sealed books. So be it. While the English language is read, the world will always be provided with souls who can enjoy the rare excellence of that rich legacy left to them by her genius. ”

“ It is a matter of experience that in our moments of deep emotion, transitory though they be, we plunge deeper into the reality of things than we can hope to do in hours of the most brilliant argument. At the touch of passion doors fly open which logic has battered on in vain: for passion rouses to activity not merely the mind, but the whole vitality of man. It is the lover, the poet, the mourner, the convert, who shares for a moment the mystic’s privilege of lifting that Veil of Isis which science handles so helplessly, leaving only her dirty fingermarks behind. ”

“ But whereas in persuasion we aim at getting opinion from passion; here, the end is, to raise passion from opinion. And as in raising an opinion from passion, any premises are good enough to enforce the desired conclusion; so, in raising passion from opinion, it is no matter whether the opinion be true or false, or the narration historical or fabulous; for, not the truth, but the image, maketh passion: and a tragedy, well acted, affecteth no less than a murder. ”

“ Proofs, it is true, make the judges presume that our cause is the better, but passion makes them wish it to be such, and as they wish it, they are not far from believing it to be so. For as soon as they begin to absorb from us [Pg 121] our passions of anger, favor, hatred, or pity, they make the affair their own. As lovers can not be competent judges of beauty, because love blinds them, so here a judge attentive to the tumultuous working of a passion, loses sight of the way by which he should proceed to inquire after the truth. ”

“ It enhances our consciousness of the blessing, by making us sensible of the magnitude of the loss. The storm of passion lays bare and shews us the rich depths of the human soul: the whole of our existence, the sum total of our passions and pursuits, of that which we desire and that which we dread, is brought before us by contrast; the action and re-action are equal; the keenness of immediate suffering only gives us a more intense aspiration after, and a more intimate participation with the antagonist world of good; makes us drink deeper of the cup of human life ”

“ As for the curates, they are perfect. No man's hand could have executed their portraits so skilfully. They have no more real use in the story than they seem to have had in their respective parishes. But this daughter of a country vicar, who knew nothing of the London cockney, who was then enlivening the books of Dickens, seized upon the funniest people she knew, the curates, and they have been immortalised.
There is often in Charlotte Brontë's novels a separation of plot and character, as if they formed themselves independently in her mind. This is especially true of Shirley. ”

“ The passion of LOVE is one of those affections, which bear great sway in the human nature. Its workings are violent. And its effects on the person, possessed by it, and in the train of events, to which it gives occasion, conspicuous to all observers. The power of this commanding affection hath triumphed at all times. It hath given birth to some of the greatest and most signal transactions in history; and hath furnished the most inchanting scenes of fiction. Poetry hath ever lived by it. The modern muse hath hardly any existence without it. ”

“ Yet there are several other passions: the passion of grief, the passion of avarice, the passion of pity, the passion of ambition, the passion of hate, the passion of envy, the passion of devotion, the passion of friendship; and all these have a greater part in the drama of life than the passion of love, and infinitely greater than the passion of guilty love. Wittingly or unwittingly, English fiction and American fiction have recognized this truth, not fully, not in the measure it merits, but in greater degree than most other fiction. ”

“ IT may fairly be claimed that humanity has, within the past hundred years, found a way of carrying a theatre in its pocket; and so long as humanity remains what it is, it will delight in taking out its pocket-stage and watching the antics of the actors, who are so like itself and yet so much more interesting. Perhaps that is, after all, the best answer to the question, “What is a novel?” ”

“ The foundation of good fiction and good poetry seems to be ethic rather than æsthetic. Everything in either which appeals to the taste, that is, to the æsthetic side, may ultimately perish as a mere matter of fashion; but that which speaks to man as man, independently of his fashions, his habits, and his tastes, must live and find a hearing with humanity so long as humanity is human. The right understanding of men and women leads to the right relations of men and women, and in this way, if in any, a novel may do good ”

“ The perfect novel must be clean and sweet, for it must tell its tale to all mankind, to saint and sinner, pure and defiled, just and unjust. It must have the magic to fascinate and the power to hold its reader from first to last. Its realism must be real, of three dimensions, not flat and photographic; its romance must be of the human heart and truly human, that is, of the earth as we all have found it; its idealism must be transcendent, not measured to man’s mind, but proportioned to man’s soul. ”

“ Fiction and poetry, in some supposititious instance, report for the Englishman the bashful truth about himself; and what English life thereby misses in vivacity, English literature gains in wealth, in tenderness, in a rambling veracity, and in preciousness to the people's heart. ”

“ Truth, in fact, demands a precision, and Passion a homeliness (the truly [183] passionate will comprehend me) which are absolutely antagonistic to that Beauty which, I maintain, is the excitement, or pleasurable elevation, of the soul. It by no means follows from anything here said, that passion, or even truth, may not be introduced, and even profitably introduced, into a poem—for they may serve in elucidation, or aid the general effect, as do discords in music, by contrast—but the true artist will always contrive, first, to tone them into proper subservience to the predominant aim ”

“ Jane Austen is as strong in her own way as Scott is in his. But she is, for all practical purposes, never weak in her own way--and Scott very often is. Charlotte Brontë dedicated _Jane Eyre_ to the author of _Vanity Fair_. I should hesitate to say that Charlotte Brontë's is a better book than Thackeray's, but I think it might well be maintained that it is a better story. All sorts of inquiring asses (equally ignorant of the old nature of woman and the new nature of the novel) whispered wisely that George Eliot's novels were really written by George Lewes. ”

“ And the English Novel, written by so many tentatively during these fifty years when the form was a-shaping, culminates at the turn of the century in two contrasted authors compared with whom all that went before seems but preparatory; one a man, the other a woman, who together express and illustrate most conveniently for this study the main movements of modern fiction,—romance and realism,—the instinct for truth and the instinct for beauty; not necessarily an antagonism, as we shall have ample occasion to see, since truth, rightly defined, is only "beauty seen from another side." ”