Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

have reasoned with herself, situated as she was, in the manner here represented? So far as men may judge of female character, by considering it a reflection and counterpart of their own, this certainly is false and unnatural. Let any of our young gentlemen readers look fairly and honestly into their own hearts and ask themselves, whether they can fancy themselves to be in such a position with regard to two of what Hook calls the "opposing sex," that they could argue the question in their minds in this manner: "Here is one young lady whom I love as I do my own soul; I cannot live without her; nothing on earth shall separate us. But at the same time I cannot marry her, because we should be poor; I will, therefore, take this other rich one, who likes me well enough, in order that it may be better in a pecuniary point of view' for my real love!" We do not ask if any young man would act on such grounds, but only if he can fancy a state of mind, in which he could for an instant seriously propose to himself to act thus. If there be any who can, he does not and cannot know, what true manly affection for a woman is he may marry, and continue his species on the face of the earth, and leave a long epitaph behind him, but he will never have understood the love that Shakspeare could paint; Juliet and Desdemona will have died in vain for him. For the affection that our best English poets have sung, requires the soul to be so constituted as to be disgusted with the very idea of marriage with another, while it has an affection for one. We do not understand, thank Heaven, this gregarious love, that favors Julia with fear and Susan in pride. However it may be in Paris, in England, and, we hope, in the dominions of President Polk, our young gentlemen have not yet arrived at that pitch of refinement, where they can turn away from the flame that burns brightly on the altar of one propitious divinity, and sacrifice themselves upon the cold shrine of another. Nor will we be so uncharitable as to believe that our Anglo-Saxon damsels are yet so sophisticated as to require or admit more than one true love at a time; or that there are many among them, who, of their own accord, would debate with themselves and resolve to marry a rich man in order to benefit a poor sweetheart.

[ocr errors]

If it be so, it were well that our professional and literary young men, who are compelled to a life of celibacy, should be permitted to know a truth which would enable them to bear their enforced condition with perfect resignation.

We admit the facts are often seemingly against us. Fathers and mothers, with the aid of the family "Great Medicineman," viz., the priest, can often break down their daughters' wills, and sell or dispose of their domestic produce, according to the quality of the article and the state of the market; but the will, in such instances, is very apt to prove troublesome to the purchaser, and sometimes ends in a home consumption. These examples do not, therefore, affect the general truth.

But it will be urged, and the author, with a great deal of tact, endeavors to make it so appear, that poor Cathy was unconscious of the nature of her love for Heathcliff: she had been brought up with him; they had played together all their lives; a kind of sisterly feeling for him was all that she was actually conscious of.

This is more unnatural than the other. We can more easily fancy a girl marrying a man who merely pleases her, in order to benefit one whom she loves, than that being of a marriageable age, she should not know the nature of her feelings towards one man while on the point of uniting herself in wedlock with another. Can we suppose such a state of things as a young lady actually about to marry one man, resolving upon it, and all the while her sentiments in such divorcement from her passion, that she is innocently unconscious which of the two she would rather be for ever joined with, in the chaste and holy bond of wedded love, that

"Mysterious law, true source Of human offspring, sole propriety In Paradise of all things common else?"

This would be a condition of existence not admitting the virtue of chastity. But it is one which recent writers are so ofter in the habit of assuming, that it is time it should be said in the name of at least one half of the generation, upon whom has devolved the mighty task of peopling this vast continent, we hope that it never existed, or if it did, the subject was in a diseased condition. No writer has given

[ocr errors]

more exquisite pictures of female delicacy | read them with so little disgust. How and purity than Godwin, yet his Henrietta horribly overwrought is the passage where regards her Clifford with no such passion- Heathcliff finally embraces the dying less iciness. Indeed, were such damsels Catherine :possible, we see not why there should ever be any more denouements to love tales; all would be accomplished when the parties were brought within speaking distance of each other. And the course of love would run as smooth as the Dead Sea; each lover might say in the words of Marvell:"I would

Love you ten years before the flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should
grow
Vaster than empires and more slow."

The physical condition of our bodies, the changes which take place on arriving at an age proper for marriage, do not allow of the ignorance which our author requires us to suppose in his heroine, not only in this place, but especially after Heathcliff's absence and return, when she is the wife of Linton and about to become a mother. We desire to put it to the common sense of discriminating readers, whether this is not a radical error in the delineation of these ideal characters. Are they real beings, or impossible combinations of quali ties? Could Mrs. Linton, after Heathcliff's return, desire his presence without being conscious that her feelings towards him were such as his presence would only render more intolerable, unless, as the author leaves us no room to suppose, she meant to be untrue to her husband? We think that when any one considers the matter, he will find in what we have said above, a very plain explanation of what has been talked of as a puzzling character. Making all allowance for the influence of education, and giving the fullest weight to that natural maidenly reserve, which in the early growth of affection teaches love to hide itself and affect indifference; there is in these characters an absence of all that natural desire which should accompany love. They are abstract and bodiless. Their love is feline; it is tigerish.

Yet the work is carried on with such power that it excites a sense of shame to turn back to many of its most "thrilling" scenes, and reflect that we were able to

"In her eagerness, she rose and supported herself on the arm of the chair. At that earnest appeal, he turned to her, looking absolutely desperate. His eyes wide, and wet at last, flashed fiercely on her; his breath heaved convulsively. An instant they held asunder; and then how they met I hardly saw, but Catherine made a spring, and he caught her, and they were locked in an embrace from which I thought my mistress would never be released alive. In fact, to my eyes, she seemed directly insensible. He flung himself into the nearest seat, and on my approaching hurriedly to ascertain if she had fainted, he gnashed at me, and foamed like a mad dog, and gathered her to him with greedy jealousy. I did not feel as if I were in the company of a creature of my own species; it spoke to him; so I stood off and held my appeared that he would not understand, though tongue in great perplexity."

I

We will not inquire into the possibility or naturalness of Heathcliff's treatment of his son. That there are fathers, however, in the real world who are capable of murdering their children to gratify their selfish passions, there can be no shadow of doubt.

The explanation already given of the character of Catherine will apply in a more general form to all-to the whole design and scope of the story. The characters are drawn with dramatic force and made to seem alive, yet when we lay the book aside, they collapse, they die, they vanish; and we see that we have been cheated with illusory semblances. The children know too much about their minds and too little about their bodies; they understand at a very early age all the intellectual and sentimental part of love, but the "bloom of young desire" does not warm their cheeks. The grown-up characters are the mere tools of fixed passions. Their actions and sayings are like those of monomaniacs or persons who have breathed nitrous oxide. When they hate, they swear and fight and pull out each other's hair. When they are grieved they drink themselves to madness. When they love-we have seen how they behave in the extract just given. Agony is heaped on agony, till the deficient mass topples down headlong. The fancy gives out, and like a tired hound, rushes reeling to the conclusion.

[ocr errors]

Yet with all this faultiness, Wuthering Heights is, undoubtedly, a work of many singular merits. In the first place it is not a novel which deals with the shows of society, the surfaces and conventionalities of life. It does not depict men and women guided merely by motives intelligible to simplest observers. It lifts the veil and shows boldly the dark side of our depraved nature. It teaches how little the ends of life in the young are rough hewn by experience and benevolence in the old. It goes into the under-current of passion, and the rapid hold it has taken of the public shows how much truth there is hidden under its coarse extravagance.

Very young persons are prone to fancy that the march of life, especially in our own free country, is now, by the enlightenment of the age, all perfectly uniform and regular. But as soon as they fall fairly into the ranks, they begin to perceive that there is still some hurly-burly and jostling, and that it requires resolution to keep from turning into characters resembling Heathcliffs. With a very limited experience, the proportion of honest men is seen to lessen. In a short time we begin to find that men with gray hairs are guided often by the weakest and most childish passions. There are plenty of such who will sell the very souls of their own offspring merely to keep up their dignity. There are plenty also who will treat boys and girls in the most overbearing manner, and then go into a great rage and persecute them inveterately on the least show of youthful anger. Boys often suppose that the old, especially those of some character and station, will regard them with kindness; but they soon learn to make proper distinctions, and to cheat and flatter the right sort, thereby preparing themselves to be proceeded with in the same manner when their own time comes. soon find out, though it takes strong proof, that there is a large proportion among old as well as young who do actually regard nothing but money. And so it is with a thousand other truths which, in early life, had only the force of rhetorical maxims; they gradually, like the storms of the tropics, at first no bigger than a man's hand, but rising and expanding, cloud over the sky of youthful hope, and leave us more and more in the gloom of despondence.

We

The world has no confidence in the courage and strengh of youth. It gives no credit. It stands before the rising race like a bristling rampart. Let no young man fancy what he might or could accomplish if circumstances were otherwise with him than they happen to be, if he had capital to start with, or if nothing ailed his heart. The weakest vagrant in the street can quiet his conscience with such apologies. Neither let any young man expect the fruition of any of his early hopes. They are all mere fictions of the fancy. He may change and change, and realize something resembling the dream; but the apple of knowledge must be first eaten, and ever after there is a flaming sword turned every way before the original Eden. Or he may have pride enough to render him indomitable; he gains nothing by it. Sooner or later he must succumb to wrong, or to disease, or age. But there is a noble satisfaction in holding out to the very last, and one may do this without being a misanthrope, without turning his back to the world, or treating it with discourtesy or indifference.

A president of one of our colleges once said to a graduate at parting:-"My son, as this may be the last time I shall see you, and I shall never have another oppor tunity of doing you any good, (he had never improved any previous one during four years,) I want to advise you: Never oppose public opinion. The great world will stave right on!"

Whether the graduate has ever opposed public opinion is of no consequence; what we would particularly call attention to is the wisdom of the advice. Of course, if one is to go by public opinion, he must first ascertain, as well as he can, what public opinion is, and must then cut out and fashion his individual opinion to conform thereto. This process must be the constant habit of his soul; he must, in fact, turn himself wrongside out. He must sacrifice himself to gain what the very sacrifice renders it impossible that he should enjoy. The advice is so sound and may be of so much service, especially to the aspiring among those whose occupations force them before the public, that it deserved to b printed.

But at the same time, there is a certar class of well-meaning characters, who, w

are well aware, can never act upon it. They will have their own way, or, if not, at least the way of no one else. They will think and speak for the truth, or what they deem such, as long as they can; and the world may stave on as much as it pleases -it owes them nothing. They know very well what will be the result of the conflict; they know that the world asks of every man to spread his soul and body on its terrible rack, and permits him no rest but in his grave. They know that life is accursed, that what it promises it never performs, that it wears out first the heart, then the mind, beginning with its subtlest virtues, and at last the body.

Notwithstanding this, these stubborn people are so invincibly obstinate, many of them, that they wilfully keep up a cheerful countenance, and persevere in being good-natured under all the whips and scorns of time. The mean gain victories over them, but the consciousness of their meanness poisons the luxury of the triumph-or if it does not, the vanquished do not mind. For they set great store upon animal comforts, and on the various sensual and sensible delights. They take a pride in a good digestion; and lo! when the crafty and envious think they have now overpowered them, they are making merry one with another, in a wholesome and proper manner. Their motto is, not "never say die!" but, "never say die!" or, as the Samoeid proverb has it, "Grinandbearit!" It is to help such weakly constituted persons as these that Providence has given domestic and social affections, and, growing out of them, the sweets of contemplation, and the sure pleasures of literature and the arts. These are immortal and unchangeable. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever."

But we need not dwell longer on these old and well-known truths. Our object in recalling them, has been simply to warn the young, whom these ideal personages of Wuthering Heights are now so strongly impressing, against the infection of unconsciously imitating them. Let no hopeess young gentleman persevere in a contancy like Heathcliff's, nor any forlorn wives in an attachment to others than their >wn bosom partners-if they can help it. f they must preserve their just revenges, et them endeavor to do it without injuring

[ocr errors]

their bodily or mental health, calmly awaiting the proper opportunity to strike the blow. It were well also if they could keep their purposes profoundly secret; for so they may forget them: "there is no grief,” says Sancho, "that time cannot assuage."

Is there not, moreover, a great comfort in the faith and hope of Christianity? For this teaches us that we are not to undertake to right all wrongs, but to live them down, and leave their punishment to Heaven. The chivalry of youthful affection should yield before the eternal wisdom; and, laying down the little things of today, we should nourish that greater revenge which has stomach for all eternitywhich is the love of right and hatred of wrong.

Next to the merit of this novel as a work of thought and subtle insight, is its great power as a work of the imagination. In this respect it must take rank very high, if not among the highest. It is not flowingly written; the author can hardly be an easy writer. Yet he has the power, with all his faults of style, of sometimes flashing a picture upon the eye, and the feeling with it, in a few sentences. The snow-storm which occurs in the second and third chapters of the first volume, is an example. But the effect of the description is often marred by consciously chosen fine words; as for instance, the word "shimmering" in one of the extracts first quoted.

The dialogue is also singularly effective and dramatic. The principal characters all talk alike; yet they stand before us as definite as so many individuals. In this respect the book reminds us of the Five Nights of St. Albans. It is like that also somewhat, in the tone of the fancy; the dream in the opening might have been conceived by the author of the Five Nights; the effect is so like some of his own. Yet this novel has none of the loftiness of that splendid romance; and whatever it may be as a work of genius and ability, is not worthy to be named with it as a work of art.

That it is original all who have read it need not be told. It is very original. And this is the reason of its popularity. It comes upon a sated public a new sensation. Nothing like it has ever been written before; it is to be hoped that in respect of

1

Fits faults, for the sake of good manners, nothing will be hereafter. Let it stand by itself, a coarse, original, powerful book,— one that does not give us true characters, but horridly striking and effective ones. It will live a short and brilliant life, and then die and be forgotten. For when the originality becomes familiarized, there will not be truth enough left to sustain it The public will not acknowledge its men and women to have the true immortal vitality. Poor Cathy's ghost will not walk the earth forever; and the insane Heathcliff will soon rest quietly in his coveted repose.

[ocr errors]

We are not aware that anything has been written upon the rank that ought to be assigned to such works as Wuthering Heights in fictitious literature. In conversation we have heard it spoken of by some as next in merit to Shakspeare for depth of insight and dramatic power; while others have confessed themselves unable to get through it. But all agree that it affects them somewhat unpleasantly. It is written in a morbid phase of the mind, and is sustained so admirably that it communicates this sickliness to the reader. It does in truth lay bare some of the secret springs of human action with wonderful clearness; but still it dissects character as with a broad-axe-chops out some of the great passions, sets them together and makes us almost believe the combinations to be real men and women. It abounds in effective description, is very individual, and preserves the unity of its peculiar gloomy phase of mind from first to last. Yet the reader rises from its conclusion with the feeling of one passing from a sick chamber to a comfortable parlor, or going forth after a melancholy rain, into a dry, clear day.

Now if the rank of a work of fiction is to depend solely on its naked imaginative power, then this is one of the greatest novels in the language. Not one of Walter Scott's resembles it in assuming a peculiar and remote mood of feeling, and carrying it through two volumes in spite of the most staring faults and extravagances. Scott takes every educated person at about the level of an after-dinner conversation and tells a long story, full of chivalry, antiquarian lore, splendid scenes, characters true as far as they go, excellent sense, and thought, which, if not deep, is free and

manly. We rise from reading Ivanhoe younger than when we sat down. Even after his most tragic novel, the Bride of Lammermuir, the regret which we feel is not of that uneasy kind which the soul struggles to shake off; we do not feel as if we had been reading a horrible murder in the Newgate Calendar. The characters are sublimed into the pure art-region; the imaginative power is not exerted through an unfortunate individual experience, but it passes out through curious knowledge and plain legal thinking. Scott did not deign to entertain the public with his private griefs; his ideal life had no connection with his actual one. He told his stories as stories, and kept himself so completely aloof from them that he was never known to be the author of them till circumstances forced him to confess it.

Yet few men are really more individual than he; few men have passed away from the world in the last century who have left a plainer impression of themselves behind them. Only he is never designedly or consciously individual. We feel the force of his character in reading his novels; the contact of his cheerful, resolute spirit, his true manly heart, quickens kindred quali ties in the reader; but it is not because the writer intends it, that they do. He is intent only on his tale; he studies how to carry on his incidents, develop his characters, throw them into perplexities and get them at last safely out of them. The world has long ago acknowledged his originality; but it was by nursing no singu larity that he was so. He meant only to tell his stories in a sensible, agreeable manner, such as should find him readers among gentlemen and ladies, and men of letters. Whenever he assumes a character, it is as unlike his own as he could make it. His originality, in fine, was simply the natural birth of his mind, which he no more controlled than he did the shape of his features.

It seems that here should be made a dis tinction in all works of the imagination. whether the imaginative power be simply the confessing oneself to the world, working under the sway of the will in region entirely removed from the soul's ac tual existence. One writer, stung by de appointment or mortified vanity, turns a the world and makes a face at it; contor

« AnteriorContinuar »