CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S CHILD APPARITION IN "THE PROFESSOR," "WUTHERING
HEIGHTS," AND "JANE EYRE."
Mrs. Gaskell, the Brontë biographer, relates that a friend of Charlotte
Brontë said Charlotte had told her "a misfortune was often preceded by
the dream which she gives to Jane Eyre of carrying a wailing child. She,
Charlotte Brontë, described herself as having the most painful sense of
pity for the little thing.... The misfortunes she mentioned were not
always to herself. She thought such sensitiveness to omens was ...
present to susceptible people...." This in the main explains the origin
of the child-apparition as an omen of disaster in Charlotte Brontë's
works.
It would seem by Charlotte's statement in _Jane Eyre_ that Tabitha
Aykroyd, as "Bessie," was responsible for the origin of this little
superstition; and it is instructive to find the child-apparition as an
ill-omen in connection with Tabitha Aykroyd as Mrs. Dean in _Wuthering
Heights_. I have shown John Reed and Hindley Earnshaw represent Branwell
Brontë; we may notice, therefore, that the child-apparition is given
equally in _Wuthering Heights_ and in _Jane Eyre_ as coming before
disaster or disgrace to Branwell Brontë.
_Wuthering Heights._ _Jane Eyre._
Chapter XI. Chapter XXI.
Tabitha Aykroyd's child-apparition Tabitha Aykroyd's child-apparition
as a token of calamity to Branwell as a token of calamity to Branwell
Brontë. Brontë.
-------- --------
Says Mrs. Dean [Tabitha]: "I Presentiments are strange
came to a stone which serves as things! ... and so are signs....
a guide-post to ... the Heights Sympathies I believe exist (for
and the village.... Hindley instance, between far-distant
[Branwell Brontë] and I held it ... wholly estranged relatives).
a favourite spot twenty years When I was a ... girl I heard
before, ... and ... it appeared Bessie [Tabitha Aykroyd] say
that I beheld my ... playmate that to dream of children was a
seated on the ... turf, ... his sure sign of trouble.... During
little hand scooping out the the last week scarcely a night
earth."[27] had gone ... that had not
brought ... the dream of an
"Poor Hindley!" [Branwell infant which I ... watched
Brontë] I exclaimed playing with daisies on a lawn
involuntarily. I started--my or ... dabbling its hands in
bodily eye was cheated in the running water.[27] It was a
belief that the child lifted its wailing child this night, ... a
face and stared straight into laughing one the next, ... but
mine! It vanished in a whatever mood the apparition
twinkling; but immediately I evinced ... it failed not ... to
felt an irresistible yearning to meet me.... I grew nervous....
be at the Heights. Superstition It was from companionship with
urged me to comply with this this baby-phantom I had been
impulse--"Suppose he were dead! roused ... when I heard the cry:
... supposing it were a sign of and on the ... day following ...
death!" I found a man [Bessie's husband]
waiting for me; ... he was ...
in deep mourning, and the hat in
his hand was surrounded with a
crape band.
"I hope no one is dead," I said.
And the man replies that John
Reed [Branwell Brontë] had got
into great trouble and was dead.
Branwell Brontë was not dead when Charlotte Brontë wrote those two
versions, but it seems certain that an apparition of a child in some
period of Charlotte's life preceded a further debasement of Branwell,
the original of Hindley Earnshaw and John Reed. We may note Charlotte
Brontë's Method II., in regard to Hindley.
In Charlotte Brontë's _The Professor_ we find reference to her
child-phantom wailing outside, and to the eerie, premonitory signal made
against a lattice, as in her _Wuthering Heights_:--
_Wuthering Heights._ _The Professor._
Chapter III. Chapter XVI.
Scene: An isolated homestead on Scene: An isolated homestead on
a winter's night, snow-wind a winter's night, snow-wind
blowing, storm threatening. blowing, storm threatening.
-------- --------
While leading me upstairs she Take care, young man
[Zillah, the stout housewife] [recommended "the herdsman's
recommended that I should hide wife"], that you fasten the door
the candle and not make a noise, well, ... whatever sound you
... they had so many queer hear stir not and look not out.
goings-on. The night will soon fall, ...
strange noises are often heard
He sleeps and is awakened by-- ... you might chance to hear, as
it were, a child cry, and on
The branch of a fir that touched opening the door to give it
my lattice.... I listened succour ... a shadowy goblin dog
doubtingly, ... I heard the might rush over the threshold;
gusty wind and the driving of or more awful still, if
the snow;... I heard also the something flapped, as with
firbough repeat its teasing wings, against the lattice, and
sound.... I ... endeavoured to then a raven or a white dove
unhasp the casement, ... flew in and settled on the
knocking my knuckles through the hearth, such a visitor would be
glass, and stretching an arm out a sure sign of misfortune.
to seize the ... branch; instead
of which my fingers closed on The stranger, left alone,
the fingers of a little ice-cold listens awhile to the muffled
hand.[28]... I tried to draw snow-wind.
back my arm, but the hand clung
to it and a melancholy voice
sobbed--"Let me in--let me in!"
... As it spoke, I discerned
obscurely a child's face looking
through the window.... Still it
wailed "Let me in!" and it
maintained its tenacious gripe,
almost maddening me with fear.
"How can I?" I said.... "Let
_me_ go, if you want me to let
you in." I stopped my ears to
exclude the lamentable prayer,
... yet the instant I listened
again, there was the doleful cry
moaning on!
"Begone!" I shouted; "I'll never
let you in, not if you beg for
twenty years."
In _Wuthering Heights_ Charlotte Brontë has worked the child-phantom
into the story proper, setting it for the spirit of the departed
Catherine, who as a child again (Method II., altering age of the
character portrayed) seeks Heathcliffe. The building of the
child-phantom in the plot of _Wuthering Heights_ created a peculiar
state of affairs; but as we have seen by Charlotte Brontë's reference to
it in the extract from _The Professor_, she was impressed by its
possibilities of giving a weird spiritual atmosphere, and she did not
extend the idea in _The Professor_. The substance of Charlotte Brontë's
two versions of the child-phantom wailing outside a house for admittance
is identical:--
_The Professor._ _Wuthering Heights._
Scene: An isolated homestead on a Scene: An isolated homestead on a
winter's night, snow-wind blowing, winter's night, snow-wind blowing,
storm threatening. Young stranger storm threatening. Young stranger
admonished by the good housewife admonished by the good housewife
that there are queer goings-on that there are queer goings-on
thereabouts. thereabouts.
Subjunctive Mood. Indicative Mood.
Something might brush against Something brushes against the
the lattice, and a phantom-child lattice, and a phantom-child
might wail outside for succour. wails outside for succour.
On opening to admit it an awful, On opening to admit it an awful,
supernatural incident might occur. supernatural incident occurs.
Thus we perceive the famous child-phantom incident in Chapter III. of
_Wuthering Heights_ had its origin (1) in Montagu's lonely-house
incident; (2) in Charlotte Brontë's awe of a child-apparition; (3) in
Charlotte Brontë's Method II., alteration of age of character portrayed,
by which Catherine the woman becomes a child again; and (4) in Charlotte
Brontë's notion, as evidenced in _Shirley_, Chapter XXIV., that a loved
dead one can "revisit those they leave"; can "come in the elements";
that "wind" could give "a path to Moor(e)"--Heath(cliffe), "passing the
casement sobbing"; that the loved dead one could "haunt" the wind.
These, then, we see were the notions in Charlotte Brontë's head
responsible for Catherine's returning so sensationally to the abode of
her lover as a child-spectre. For Catherine's love for Wuthering Heights
was not simply because of the place and its moors, as so many writers
have wrongly contended, but because it was associated with
Heathcliffe.[29] Let my reader peruse again the "wailing child" passages
I quote from _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ in Chapter II. of _The
Key to the Brontë Works_.
Truly the testimony of Charlotte Brontë's child-phantom were alone the
sign-manual that she and none other wrote _Wuthering Heights_.