f
appearing at Lockwood's bedside, besides being M. Heger and Rochester,
is Rochester's mad wife. Heathcliff returning to Catherine is Jane
returning to Rochester, and so on. But however varied, however
apparently discriminated the characters, M. Heger is in all the men, and
Charlotte is in all the women, in the two Catherines, in Jane Eyre and
Frances Henri; in Caroline Helstone, in Pauline Bassompierre, and Lucy
Snowe.

Now there is a certain plausibility in this. With all their vividness
and individuality Charlotte Bronte's characters have a way of shading
off into each other. Jane has much in common with Frances and with Lucy,
and Lucy with Pauline. Her men incline rather to one type, that of the
masterful, arbitrary, instructive male; that is the type she likes best
to draw. Yorke Hunsden in _The Professor_ splits up into Rochester and
Robert Moore and Mr. Yorke; and there is a certain amount of Paul
Emanuel in all of them. But life gives us our types very much that way,
and there is a bit of somebody else in everybody. It is easy to suggest
identity by exaggerating small points of resemblance and suppressing
large and essential differences (which is what Mr. Malham-Dembleby does
all the time). But take each whole living man and woman as they have
been created for us, I don't care if Catherine Earnshaw and Jane Eyre
_did_ each have a fit of passion in a locked room, and if a servant
waited upon each with gruel; there is no earthly likeness between the
soul of Catherine and the soul of Jane. I don't care if there was
"hell-light" in Rochester's eyes and Heathcliff's too, if they both
swore by the "Deuce", and had both swarthy complexions like Paul
Emanuel; for there is a whole universe between Heathcliff and Rochester,
between Rochester and M. Paul. Beside Heathcliff, that Titan raging on a
mountain-top, M. Paul is merely a little man gesticulating on an
_estrade_.

So much for the identifications. Mr. Malham-Dembleby has been tempted to
force them thus, because they support his theory of M. Heger and of the
great tragic passion, as his theory, by a vicious circle, supports his
identifications. His procedure is to quote all the emotional passages he
can lay his hands on, from the _Poems_, from _Wuthering Heights_, from
_Jane Eyre_, from _Villette_ and _The Professor_, "... all her life's
hope was torn by the roots out of her own riven and outraged heart..."
(_Villette_) "... faith was blighted, confidence destroye