racter as we know it, or in her very voluminous private
correspondence. The facts of her life disprove it. Her letters to Ellen
Nussey (never meant for publication) reveal the workings of Charlotte's
feminine mind when applied to "the sex problem"; a mind singularly
wholesome and impersonal, and singularly detached. Charlotte is full of
lights upon this awful subject of matrimony, which, by the way, had
considerably more interest for Miss Nussey than it had for her. In fact,
if it had not been for Miss Nussey it would not have appeared so often
as it did in Charlotte's letters. If you pay attention to the context (a
thing that theorists never do) you see, what is indeed obvious, that a
large portion of Charlotte Bronte's time was taken up in advising and
controlling Ellen Nussey, that amiable and impulsive prototype of
Caroline Helstone. She is called upon in all Miss Nussey's hours of
crisis, and there seem to have been a great many of them. "Do not," she
writes, "be over-persuaded to marry a man you can never respect--I do
not say _love_, because I think if you can respect a person before
marriage, moderate love at least will come after; and as to intense
passion, I am convinced that that is no desirable feeling. In the first
place, it seldom or never meets with a requital; and in the second
place, if it did, the feeling would be only temporary; it would last the
honeymoon, and then, perhaps, give place to disgust, or indifference,
worse perhaps than disgust. Certainly this would be the case on the
man's part; and on the woman's--God help her if she is left to love
passionately and alone.

"I am tolerably well convinced that I shall never marry at all."

And again, to Miss Nussey, six months later: "Did you not once say to me
in all childlike simplicity, 'I thought, Charlotte, no young lady should
fall in love till the offer was actually made'? I forgot what answer I
made at the time, but I now reply, after due consideration, Right as a
glove, the maxim is just, and I hope you will always attend to it. I
will even extend and confirm it: no young lady should fall in love till
the offer has been made, accepted, the marriage ceremony performed, and
the first half-year of wedded life has passed away. A woman may then
begin to love, but with great precaution, very coolly, very moderately,
very rationally. If she ever loves so much that a harsh word or a cold
look cuts her to the heart, she is a fool. If she ever loves so m