CHAPTER VI.

CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S CHILD APPARITION IN "THE PROFESSOR," "WUTHERING HEIGHTS," AND "JANE EYRE."

Mrs. Gaskell, the Brontë biographer, relates that a friend of Charlotte Brontë said Charlotte had told her "a misfortune was often preceded by the dream which she gives to Jane Eyre of carrying a wailing child. She, Charlotte Brontë, described herself as having the most painful sense of pity for the little thing.... The misfortunes she mentioned were not always to herself. She thought such sensitiveness to omens was ... present to susceptible people...." This in the main explains the origin of the child-apparition as an omen of disaster in Charlotte Brontë's works.

It would seem by Charlotte's statement in _Jane Eyre_ that Tabitha Aykroyd, as "Bessie," was responsible for the origin of this little superstition; and it is instructive to find the child-apparition as an ill-omen in connection with Tabitha Aykroyd as Mrs. Dean in _Wuthering Heights_. I have shown John Reed and Hindley Earnshaw represent Branwell Brontë; we may notice, therefore, that the child-apparition is given equally in _Wuthering Heights_ and in _Jane Eyre_ as coming before disaster or disgrace to Branwell Brontë.

_Wuthering Heights._ _Jane Eyre._