genius no wrong, on which account it seems to me preferable
to any other. It is really no argument against it to say that Charlotte
never acknowledged her sister's influence, that she was indeed unaware
of it; for, in the first place, the stronger the spiritual tie between
them, the less likely was she to have been aware. In the second place,
it is not claimed that _Wuthering Heights_ was such an influence as the
"sojourn in Brussels" is said to have been--that it "made Miss Bronte an
author". It is not claimed that if there had been no _Wuthering Heights_
and no Emily Bronte, there would have been no _Jane Eyre_; for to me
nothing can be more certain that whatever had, or had not happened,
Charlotte's genius would have found its way.

Charlotte's genius indeed was so profoundly akin to Charlotte's nature
that its way, the way of its upward progress, was by violent impetus and
recoil.

In _Shirley_ she revolts from the passion of _Jane Eyre_. She seems to
have written it to prove that there are other things. She had been stung
by _The Quarterly's_ attack, stung by rumour, stung by every adverse
thing that had been said. And yet not for a moment was she "influenced"
by her reviewers. It was more in defiance than in submission that she
answered them with _Shirley_. _Shirley_ was an answer to every criticism
that had yet been made. In _Shirley_ she forsook the one poor play of
hearts insurgent for the vast and varied movement of the world; social
upheavals, the clash of sects and castes, the first grim hand-to-hand
struggle between capital and labour, all are there. The book opens with
a drama, not of hearts but of artisans insurgent; frame-breakers, not
breakers of the marriage law. In sheer defiance she essays to render the
whole real world, the complex, many-threaded, many-coloured world; where
the tragic warp is woven with the bright comedy of curates. It is the
world of the beginnings; the world of the early nineteenth century that
she paints. A world with the immensity, the profundity, the darkness of
the brooding sea; where the spirit of a woman moves, troubling the
waters; for Charlotte Bronte has before her the stupendous vision of the
world as it was, as it yet is, and as it is to be.

That world, as it existed from eighteen-twelve to Charlotte's own time,
eighteen-fifty, was not a place for a woman with a brain and a soul.
There was no career for any woman but marriage. If she missed it she
missed her place i