ORIGIN OF THE FOUNDLING HEATHCLIFFE AND HIS NAME IN "WUTHERING
HEIGHTS"--ORIGIN OF THE INSANE LADY AND THE WHITE VEIL SCENE IN
"JANE EYRE."
We have now seen that Montagu's book provided Charlotte Brontë with the
idea for a lonely house of mystery--a mystery which should surround a
host with a peculiar, harsh-voiced, uncouth, north-country servant, and
I have shown how that idea was adopted by her for _Wuthering Heights_
and afterwards for _Jane Eyre_. At one time Charlotte Brontë wrote the
_Tale of a Foundling_, and she certainly read with interest a remarkable
story told by Montagu of a foundling who, he tells us in the letter next
before the Malham letter, was discovered by a shepherd on the top of a
craggy "mountain," a circumstance which perhaps led her in making use of
this foundling story to name the child Heathcliffe. I will place the
substance of the two stories side by side:--
MONTAGU. _Wuthering Heights._
On the top of a craggy height In a wild, hilly country, a male
a male infant "was found by a infant was brought home by a
shepherd, who took it to his farmer who had found it
home, and after feeding and homeless. He brought up the
clothing it he had the child child, and the rest of its
named Simon; being himself but career is the obvious "cuckoo
a poor man he was unable to story": the child ousts the poor
maintain the foundling," when farmer's family. It was called
was agreed to by his friends Heathcliffe.
that the child should be kept
"ameng 'em." The child was
called Simon Amenghem.
The cuckoo story derived obviously from the history Montagu gives of the
foundling became thus the backbone of _Wuthering Heights_; but it is
possible that the cuckoo story requiring the foundling should be painted
with all the viciousness and cruelty of character necessary to his part,
Charlotte Brontë found herself dissatisfied with the story. And
portraying herself in the narrative as Catherine Earnshaw, her hero
became M. Héger. This naturally led to an awkward clashing. Whether the
extreme "demonism" of Heathcliffe must be understood as being in the
main due to his rôle as the "cuckoo," who was to oust the poor farmer's
offspring "like unfledged dunnocks," to quote Mrs. Dean, I will not in
this chapter inquire.
Turning again to Montagu's book, Charlotte saw a further suggestion that
contained excellent "plot" possibilities. This was the question of
lunacy being an exception to the objection against the separation of
husband and wife, Montagu's relation being Barry Cornwall (to whom, by
the way, Thackeray dedicated _Vanity Fair_), who was a Metropolitan
Commissioner in Lunacy. To Charlotte Brontë, however, the subject came
simply as a useful suggestion. She had no views upon it, and she desired
only that her heroine would marry Rochester, the hero with an insane
wife. At heart Charlotte was indifferent as to the vital point, even
nullifying the very theme of the plot by making Rochester aver that if
Jane Eyre had been the mad wife, he would still have loved and cherished
her.
It would appear that in conjunction with Montagu's remarks on lunacy and
the separation of husband and wife, an extract he gives from Shelley is
also responsible for a wife's lunacy being the theme of the plot of
_Jane Eyre_. The extract which Montagu quotes in the Malham letter is
where the poet speaks of "The Waning Moon" as like--
"A ... lady lean and pale
Who totters forth wrapt in a gauzy veil
Out of her chamber led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain."
Thus was evidently suggested to Charlotte Brontë the hanging up in the
closet of the "vapoury veil" for the stage purposes of the "insane
lady"; and in _Jane Eyre_ Montagu's night-wandering, candle-bearing
hostess became a lady who passed, after the manner of the lines he
quoted,--
Out of her chamber led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain--
became Mrs. Rochester. Norton Conyers, a house near Ripon, it is said,
is associated with the story that a mad woman was once confined
there.[17] If Charlotte Brontë was familiar with this story, and we are
told the interior is somewhat similar to the descriptions of Thornfield,
we can understand that, perusing Montagu's book at the time when she was
utilizing his narrative of the candle-bearing, hideous-faced, white-clad
midnight visitant in a house of mystery, she would the more readily
appropriate the further suggestions his work contained in regard to a
wife's insanity, and the "veil-clad" apparition of a night-roaming
insane lady. It is important to note, however, that the evidence of my
preceding chapter proves indubitably the "mad woman" was but a secondary
suggestion--the primary suggestion responsible for the plot of _Jane
Eyre_ being that of Montagu's midnight apparition. And just as the
thick-set country-bred servant denotes in the question as to the origin
and author of the candle-bearing bedside visitant in _Wuthering Heights_
and _Jane Eyre_, the "gauzy veil" likewise denotes as to the origin of
the mad woman of _Jane Eyre_. So we read in the beginning of Chapter
XXV. of _Jane Eyre_, that Jane leaves the vapoury veil in the closet:--
To conceal the strange, wraith-like apparel it contained; which,
at this evening hour ... gave out certainly a most ghostly shimmer
through the shadow of my apartment. "I will leave you by yourself,
white dream," I said.
Then farther on we read that:--
The moon shut herself wholly within her chamber, and drew close
her curtain of cloud,
which is simply an antithetical paraphrase of Montagu's quoted verse on
"The Waning Moon" which, like
A ... lady ... pale ... totters forth wrapt in a gauzy veil, out
of her chamber.
And in the same chapter of _Jane Eyre_ we read finally that the insane
lady, who has come out of her chamber,
"... took my veil from its place; she held it up, gazed at it
long, and then she threw it over her head, and turned to the
mirror ... it removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two
parts, and flinging both on the floor, trampled on them."