Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/306

Rh but she is not coarse-minded and cold-hearted. A woman with a mission, you may call her; but she acts out the mission, not preaches it. A woman with a purpose; but to fulfil that purpose, she communes with her heart in her chamber and is still—she strives and cries, but is not heard in the streets—she is in earnest, but makes no exhibition of her earnestness in newspapers and mechanics' institutes. Not unwounded, not unscathed is she in that weary strife of frail humanity from which she comes out more than conqueror; self-respecting she is, but not self-absorbed; her life is the realising of the prayer, In this respect the tone of the book is more healthy and satisfactory than that of "Shirley," which has been rebuked as a pleading for passion—a denial of the power of duty and self-sacrifice to bless the human agent with a hopeful or serene spirit.

Readers, of Currer Bell's own sex, are said to admire the character of Mr. Rochester as wholly superior to that of Jane herself. This Mr. Rochester is one of the few heroes of contemporary romance whom we do not forget at the close of the third volume. His presence is not to be put by. Middle-aged, crippled, blind, morose, a poor and battered bankrupt—what a venture to make in a virgin novel! What a fluttering the descent of this grim, lawless eagle would have made among the dove-cots of the Minerva Press! How contrary to the æsthetics of novel-craft, to the etiquette of post-octavo and thirty-one-and-sixpence, to the antecedents and glorious constitution of fiction as by common law established, is this frowning, moody, impetuous master of Thornfield Hall! What could Rosa Matilda do with such a creature—unless to scream for the police, or destroy her manuscript? Whereas Currer Bell makes sweetness to come out from the strong, honey from the lion's carcase. Out of materials so cross-grained, so unshapely, to construct a "love of a man," hic labor hoc opus fuit. And verily, numbers of maidenly hearts have been strangely captivated by Mr. Rochester—awed by a certain mystic influence, susceptibility to which they have caught from the poor governess—fascinated by that steadfast, searching eye, and that tersely eloquent tongue, which look and speak things unutterable by the stereotyped handsome and unexceptionable heroes of ordinary fiction. The difference is felt to be that between eau sucrée and eau de vie—and the stimulant comes with infinite relief to the jaded and ennuyed. A Byronic corsair, with his one virtue linked to a thousand crimes, makes a sensation, and becomes the lion of the coteries; and so does Mr. Rochester. If Desdemona believes her black man to be "beautiful exceedingly," what marvel that a gruff, time-soured, heart-scared English squire should be à la mode? Hero-worship is, in women at least, indestructible: show them a superior nature, with a beard, and incontinently they are on their knees—none so proud not to do him reverence. Currer Bell satirises male novelists as being often, the cleverest and acutest of them, under an illusion about women: they do not read them, she holds, in a true light; they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, and half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend. Women—she affirms by the mouth of