grateful for his tender love for me.... Providence offers me this
destiny. Doubtless then it is the best for me."

These are not the words, nor is this the behaviour of Mrs. Oliphant's
Charlotte Brontë, the forlorn and desperate victim of the obsession of
matrimony.

I do not say that Charlotte Brontë had not what is called a
"temperament"; her genius would not have been what it was without it;
she herself would have been incomplete; but there never was a woman of
genius who had her temperament in more complete subjection to her
character; and it is her character that you have to reckon with at every
turn.

The little legends and the little theories have gone far enough. And had
they gone no farther they would not have mattered much. They would at
least have left Charlotte Brontë's genius to its own mystery.

But her genius was the thing that irritated, the enigmatic, inexplicable
thing. Talent in a woman you can understand, there's a formula for
it--_tout talent de femme est un bonheur manqué_. So when a woman's
talent baffles you, your course is plain, _cherchez l'homme_.
Charlotte's critics argued that if you could put your finger on the man
you would have the key to the mystery. This, of course, was arguing that
her genius was, after all, only a superior kind of talent; but some of
them had already begun to ask themselves, Was it, after all, anything
more? So they began to look for the man. They were certain by this time
that there was one.

The search was difficult; for Charlotte had concealed him well. But they