Note 63 — Chapter XIII

This artifice of presenting more than one phase of a character in the same work is equivalent to that practised by the portrait-painter who uses mirror effects to reveal some feature of his subject not in the ordinary line of vision. It was as difficult for M. Sue to present a complete portrait of the successful, fêted Miss Brontë in poor Lagrange as it was for Charlotte Brontë to present a complete portrait of herself in the unhappy Lucy Snowe of Villette. So M. Sue also used the phase of Miss Mary, and Charlotte Brontë that of Paulina—just as she gave us M. Héger as Crimsworth and occasionally as M. Pelet of The Professor, and just as she gave us herself in Shirley as Caroline Helstone and again (in regard only to her relations with M. Héger) as Shirley Keeldar. Methods which were responsible for her first portraying herself as the elder Catherine of Wuthering Heights and then as the younger Catherine, in which work M. Héger was portrayed by her often as Heathcliffe and finally as Hareton Earnshaw. With Charlotte Brontë, however, her secondary adaptations as portrayals, perhaps on account of their improvization, frequently give evidence of being unprepared. Thus the childhood of Paulina of Villette is scarcely Charlotte Brontë's; and Hareton Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights, save for the lover and pupil phase, was never M. Héger.