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Varied Types by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
page 5 of 122 (04%)
insanity of the atmosphere, not even what they intend to do. The conduct
of Rochester is so primevally and superhumanly caddish that Bret Harte
in his admirable travesty scarcely exaggerated it. "Then, resuming his
usual manner, he threw his boots at my head and withdrew," does perhaps
reach to something resembling caricature. The scene in which Rochester
dresses up as an old gipsy has something in it which is really not to be
found in any other branch of art, except in the end of the pantomime,
where the Emperor turns into a pantaloon. Yet, despite this vast
nightmare of illusion and morbidity and ignorance of the world, "Jane
Eyre" is perhaps the truest book that was ever written. Its essential
truth to life sometimes makes one catch one's breath. For it is not true
to manners, which are constantly false, or to facts, which are almost
always false; it is true to the only existing thing which is true,
emotion, the irreducible minimum, the indestructible germ. It would not
matter a single straw if a Brontë story were a hundred times more
moonstruck and improbable than "Jane Eyre," or a hundred times more
moonstruck and improbable than "Wuthering Heights." It would not matter
if George Read stood on his head, and Mrs. Read rode on a dragon, if
Fairfax Rochester had four eyes and St. John Rivers three legs, the
story would still remain the truest story in the world. The typical
Brontë character is, indeed, a kind of monster. Everything in him except
the essential is dislocated. His hands are on his legs and his feet on
his arms, his nose is above his eyes, but his heart is in the right
place.

The great and abiding truth for which the Brontë cycle of fiction stands
is a certain most important truth about the enduring spirit of youth,
the truth of the near kinship between terror and joy. The Brontë
heroine, dingily dressed, badly educated, hampered by a humiliating
inexperience, a kind of ugly innocence, is yet, by the very fact of her
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