"Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit
impediment," said Shakespeare; but who experiments in such ways, who
dares to write of them? We are still hopelessly feudal and fastidious.
"Such unions do not do," we say; "they land people in such awkward
situations." Hazlitt's _Liber Amoris_ is read with disgust, because the
girl was a lodging-house servant; but if Hazlitt had abandoned himself
to a passion for a girl of noble birth, the story would have been
deemed romantic enough. Thus it would seem that below the
transcendentalism of modern love lies a rich vein of snobbishness. With
Charlotte Bronte the triumph over social conditions in _Jane Eyre_, and
even in _Shirley_, is one of the things that makes the story glow and
thrill; but the glow of the peerage has to be cast in _Prisoners_ over
the detestable Lossiemouth, that one may feel that after all the
heroine has done well for herself from a social point of view. If
social conditions are indeed a barrier, let them be treated with a sort
of noble shame, as the love of the keeper Tregarva for the squire's
daughter Honoria is treated in _Yeast_; let them not be fastidiously
ignored over the tea-cups at the Hall.
Love is a mighty thing, a deep secret; but if we dare to write of it,
let us face the truth about it; let us confess boldly that it is
limited by physical and social conditions, even though that involves a
loss of its transcendent might.
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