In that crude, ingenuous book _The Professor_, the
hero, who is a good instance of how Charlotte Bronte confused rigidity
of nature with manliness, surprised by an outbreak of passionate
emotion on the part of his quiet and self-contained wife, and still
more surprised by its sudden quiescence, asks her what has become of
her emotion and where it is gone. "I do not know where it is gone,"
says the girl, "but I know that whenever it is wanted it will come
back." That is a noble touch. It may be true that Paul Emmanuel and
Robert Moore cling too closely to the idea of rewarding their humble
mistresses, after testing them harshly and even brutally, with the gift
of their love--though even this humility has a touching quality of
beauty; but the supreme lover, Mr. Rochester, who, in spite of his
ridiculous affectations, his grotesque _hauteurs_, his impossible
theatricality, is a figure of flesh and blood, is absorbed in his
passion in a way that shows the fire leaping on the innermost altar.
The irresistible appeal of the book to the heart is due to the fact
that Jane Eyre never seems conscious of what she is giving, but only of
what she is receiving; and it is this that makes her gift so regal, so
splendid a thing.
Side by side with this book I would set a recent work, Miss
Cholmondeley's _Prisoners_. Fine and noble as the book is in many ways,
it is yet vitiated by the sense of the value of the gift of love from
the woman's point of view.
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