The Brontes

122 THE BRONTES
snatching at life as her simple friends saw it rather
than, because of her shyness, go without seeing it
at all. Hence she could not easily create in writing
any form of experience except the one she was
familiar with, could not write a story otherwise
than as if she had been told it. There is a duality
of outlook in the book : the one seemingly akin to
Mrs. Dean's, yet in reality not so much akin as
dependent on Mrs, Dean's vision ; the other,
much more essentially Emily's own, vaguely ex-
pressed and unanalysed, would-be understanding
and forgiving, yet debarred from clear under-
standing by lack of experience and so able to dis-
sociate itself from the crude, black and white judg-
ments of those through whose eyes Emily peered
at life only by an intensely felt conviction of an
understanding, forgiving God. That strong, but
unanalysed conviction of hers answers to the more
scientific understanding of modern readers who do
not find Heathcliff monstrous or diabolical hi the
literal sense any more than Emily did, only in her
case it was religious or charitable feeling which
moved her to that conclusion and in modern
readers it is a greater knowledge than Emily had
of the psychological springs of action and a con-
sequent realisation of how naturally, without any
need to bring in a supernatural agency, Heath-
cliff's cruel behaviour and strange personal ob-
session can be explained.
In tragic life, God wot,
jVb villain need be ! Passions spin the plot.
We are betrayed by what is false within.