On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    NOTICES OF BOOKS. 419

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    ^».Reprints Hall. . B Mrs Y Ac . Graskel...

    native for noting faculty and achieving _grasj ) _Ing 1 wider character and , hi many gher fli authors ghts , but have how an few imag have i-

    both in like _j _3 roportion to Currer Bell . Her plots have little in them , to commend ; they are not artistically

    evolved or carefully perfected , nor are they very true to nature-That of " Shirley" is perhaps the most complete . In " Villette , " as

    the authoress confesses , the interest changes from one set of characters to another . The " Professor" has no plot . The Thorniield

    portion of " Jane Eyre " stands out wonderfully from the other books for its most erfect elaboration ; but this cannot be said of it

    as a whole . Still there p is one grand link of unity between , the first and the succeding portion , which has always struck us forcibly . In

    her separation from Rochester , Jane Eyre undergoes a fearful struggle with her erring heart ; in tlie final scene with St . John she

    undergoes an analogous struggle with her erring judgment . In both cases she is victorious : as rig-lit judgment or principle comes

    to her aid in the first need , so her heart comes to her aid in the second . " I was almost as hard beset by him now as I had been

    once before in a different way by another . I was a fool both times . To have yielded then would have been an error of principle ; to have

    yielded now would have been an error of judgment . " Much might be made of this by any one metaphysically inclined , but it is wiser

    to leave it without further comment . Authors are too often made answerable by their commentators for hidden meanings of which they

    never dreamed . The intricacies of her plots , such as coincidences and discoveries , are managed with but little delicacy . For instance ,

    we feel a glaring improbability in the manner in which Jane Eyre becomes introduced to her unknown cousins , and in the

    transformation of Mrs . Pryor into Caroline Iielstone ' s mother . The truth is that Miss Bronte regarded the plot as a very secondary matter in a

    work of fiction '; as merely the frame of the picture , -which , so long as it is of due dimensions and of harmonious style possesses all

    needful qualifications . The estimate formed of the importance of construction varies according as fiction is looked upon in the light of

    a copy of nature , or as an absolute art . The daguerreotypists cannot consistently allow of any plot , and whenever they do

    inconsistently manufacture one it is wanting in the requisite art , and so , to speak Two paradoxicall years after the y , is _apj unnatur _^ earance al of . " Jane Eyre , " " Shirley" was

    published . A weight of sorrows fell upon Miss Bronte during the writing of it . It was commenced soon after tlie completion of her

    former novel , and she took great pains with it . The characters and the incidents and the scenery are all imitated very closely from

    reality . TheLuddite riots and the attempted destruction of Hollow ' s Mill she had heard narrated by the mistress of the school at Koe

    Head . How attentively she listened to the story may be inferred from the fact that Mr . Cartwright , the owner of the attacked mill

    ¦ w as a gentleman " having some foreign blood in him . " Field Head

    Notices Of Books. 419

    NOTICES OF BOOKS . 419

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Feb. 1, 1860, page 419, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01021860/page/59/