There are a few novels that stand alone, without ancestry,
without affinity in literature. One of the few is "Jane
Eyre", a book that has had innumerable descendants,
but no traceable descent.

Charlotte Brontë was not shaped by any influence that
we can discover among her predecessors and contem-
poraries. Out of her curious and varied reading she formed
a style exclusively and inimitably her own, and sent forth
from her remote Yorkshire village a book only less wonder-
ful than "Wuthering Heights".

To realise its unique and startling quality it should
be remembered that Jane Eyre was written in 1846-7,
and published in the same year as "Vanity Fair". Mrs.
Gaskell's "Mary Barton" had not then appeared. George
Eliot did not begin to write till about ten years later.
A great gulf divided Charlotte Brontë from Jane Austen.
Jane Austen would probably not have appreciated Charlotte
Brontë. We know that Charlotte did not appreciate Jane.
She asks George Henry Lewes, "Why do you like Miss
Austen so very much?" She cannot see why. She finds
her only "shrewd and observant," and asks again: "Can
there be a great artist without poetry?" There is some-
thing alien and unsympathetic to her in Jane Austen's
finish and reserve. She has no patience with her exquisite
art. For her it is finished because there is no more behind
it, and reserved because the best part of life is kept out
of it. For Charlotte Brontë the best part of life is the
passion that exalts and transfigures it. Passion is poetry:
poetry is passion. It is the truth of men and women.
Some people have none of this truth in them, such are
Jane Austen's ladies and gentlemen. To Charlotte they
were not real people.

To be sure there are in Jane Austen two exponents of
passion, Lydia Bennett and Mrs. Rushworth. She uses
her Lydia very effectively to show what a vulgar thing
passion is. Of Mrs. Rushworth she says less, intimating
that the less said the better.

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