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Charlotte
Bronte: A Brilliant and Tragic Life
by
Marilyn Green Faulkner
Reader,
if you have enjoyed the direct, fascinating style of Charlotte Bronte,
you may have wondered what kind of environment produced such an
intelligent, passionate author.
Picture a remote
parsonage on the lonely moors of Yorkshire, England. Within this
cold, austere home lives Patrick Bronte and his four surviving children:
Branwell, Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Their mother died soon after
the birth of the last child, and two older sisters died from tuberculosis
contracted at the boarding school they attended, a school that would
become the model for the dreaded Lowood Academy in Jane Eyre.
The Bronte children
are very bright, artistic and deeply curious about the world. They
read every book in the house along with the several newspapers their
father takes. Mr. Bronte is remote, severe, and largely ignores
his children, so they turn to each other for companionship and intellectual
stimulation. Over the years they invent elaborate fictional worlds,
about which they write stories to read to each other, and compile
these stories into books full of imaginative, heroic characters.
Branwell, in particular, seems to have great promise and expects
to enjoy a career as an artist or author.
Grim Reality
As the children grow to maturity, however, grim reality intervenes.
The girls must hire out as governesses since the family is not rich.
Branwell, as the son and heir, receives all the best education and
an opportunity to study in Europe. These opportunities are squandered
as he sinks lower and lower into debauchery and moves from job to
job, finally returning to Haworth in disgrace and ruin. Charlotte
attends school in Brussels and helps with the family of Mr. Heger,
who will become the inspiration for the dark heroes of both The
Professor and Jane Eyre. She becomes so enamored of
"her Master" that she draws the ire of his wife and eventually returns
home, disappointed and sad. Over the next few years she pens scores
of letters to her hero, who never responds, but tears up the letters
and throws them away. (Unbeknownst to him his jealous wife rescues
the letters from the trash and sews them back together, providing
material for generations of curious biographers.) Charlotte and
her sisters continue to write stories and poems, pacing around the
dining room table each evening as they read aloud their efforts
of the day.
Eventually the
three girls compile their collected poems into a volume and succeed
in having it published. The volume sells only two copies, but through
this exercise Charlotte, the bravest of the three, becomes determined
that they will support themselves by writing and thus be able to
live at home together. They each complete a novel: Charlotte's is
called The Professor, Emily's is called Wuthering Heights,
and Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Though
several publishers reject all three volumes, a final rejection letter
of Charlotte's novel is so thoughtful and constructive that she
gathers courage and hurries to put the finishing touches on a second
book begun while caring for her father after a surgery. Writing,
as she said later, like a woman possessed, she had completed most
of the story in one month, calling upon her writer's memory of places,
people and events, and interweaving scenes from her own life with
her fictional creation. On August 24, 1847, Jane Eyre was
in the mail, wrapped carelessly in the same paper used for the last
mailing of the The Professor, with the rejection notice
still stamped on it. George Smith received the manuscript, sat down
and began to read, missed all his appointments for the day and read
through the night until he finished. Within weeks his firm published
the first edition of Jane Eyre. The novel was an instant
success and Currer Bell was an overnight sensation. Who was he,
or was he a she? No one knew for sure.
A Life of
Isolation
Over the next few years the Bronte sisters published their novels
under pseudonyms and stayed hidden in their Yorkshire sanctuary.
They did not realize that their home was a breeding ground for the
disease that had taken their elder sisters. First Branwell, weakened
by dissipation, succumbed to tuberculosis, followed closely by Emily
and then Anne, all within one year. Charlotte was devastated. Though
financially secure and praised by the literary world, she lived
a life of isolation and continued servitude to her domineering father.
(Some idea of his personality is suggested by the fact that it took
Charlotte over three months after the publication of Jane Eyre
to show it to him.) He was eventually very proud of her success,
but continued to demand her constant attention.
Arthur Bell
Nichols, the curate of Haworth Parsonage, had for years been an
object of derision for the Bronte children. Now, as Charlotte faced
life without her siblings and the declining health of her father,
Nichols declared his long-held affection and asked for her hand.
Over her father's objections she accepted him and they were married.
Charlotte's letters over the next year seem tranquil and happy,
as she ceased to write and immersed herself in the duties of a curate's
wife. Happiness was not to last, however. A difficult pregnancy
weakened her and respiratory ailments afflicted her until finally,
just three weeks before her thirty-ninth birthday she died, her
unborn child with her. Her father survived her by another six years.
Almost immediately, curious fans of the Bronte's work began to throng
to Haworth to see the parsonage where such great works had been
written, and where so many tragic deaths had taken place. The Haworth
parsonage is a museum now and draws thousands of visitors every
year.
Charlotte Bronte
was small, pale and very plain, by every account. She resembled
her heroine Jane in both spirit and body, though her life did not
have the triumphant ending she could create in fiction. In the one
hundred and fifty-four years since the publication of Jane Eyre,
millions of readers have been grateful that, with all her tribulation,
Bronte found the courage to exercise her tremendous creative talent.
She said of her efforts to write amidst all her sufferings, "I am
thankful to God, who gave me the faculty; and it is for me a part
of my religion to defend this gift and to profit by its possession."
Readers
Comment on Jane Eyre
Jane
Eyre struck a chord with many Meridian readers. Here is a sampling
of comments about an enduring classic:
I greatly admire
& appreciate Charlotte Bronte's writing style. I am literally
reading with a dictionary next to me & have picked up some great
new words I'll try to weave into my everyday conversations (inanition,
indefatigable, benignant to name a few.) Every action explained
by the author is turned in to a flowing descriptive verse.
I am really
enjoying the book. I appreciate the strength and dignity that Jane
has. I think her trials gave her a sort of quiet demeanor that is
sometimes rare to find in our noisy world. She seems very strong
for one who came from such difficult circumstances. I wonder if
the ease of our world does not give us as much opportunity to gain
that strength. Not that I am asking for life to be more difficult,
but it seems like that is the time we grow the most.
This is my first
time through Jane Eyre, although I do know the story line. I have
appreciated your insights as I've always hesitated reading this
book because of what I viewed as a depressing or dark story line.
But your comments on the kind of character Jane portrays, the mores
of the era, etc., has given me a fresh way of looking at it. I look
forward to reading more.
I read Jean
Eyre just recently and really like the book. It seems very well
composed, and even though the story takes place in traditional settings,
it keeps on surprising with new perspectives to the story and Jane's
life. The author must have been much ahead of her contemporary time,
and in some aspects it seems like she is still ahead of us. She
is really certain of women's ability to live an independent and
strong life. The book is such a tribute to love between people and
to the aspect of life that we find important among LDS people, that
above us is a mighty God protecting us all and watching out for
each and everyone of us and leading us home.
The thing I
related to most was the fact that everybody thought she was--maybe
not ugly, but certainly nothing to look at--except her true love
who liked her for her artistic talent first, then her good sense
and integrity, and eventually just developed an admiration for her
that turned into a for-real sexual attraction. She knew that he
actually did find her appearance appealing.
Ah!! The Barbra
Streisand complex is not new!
Bearing in
mind that all four children led isolated and loveless lives, and
in spite of this they were all gifted in different ways, I have
for sometime thought that there could be an underlying reason for
their obvious gifts. All the girls, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne,
wrote the same type of books, dark, romantic, with significant social
overtones. It is reasonable to suppose that they compared notes,
read together, and probably critiqued each other's writing. Dickens
was the social reformer of the Victorian era, and I believe he influenced
the girls to write the type of books for which they are known. Frankly,
I would have been surprised if they had written light romantic novels
against the background of social change so fully documented by the
well-known authors of the day. As an aside, it is interesting to
note that Branwell, a painter, painted in the same dark form; see
the portrait of the girls which now hangs in the National Gallery
in London.
I missed reading
Jane Eyre in high school, and came to it only later when I had just
returned from my mission in the Gulf States. I was captivated by
the sense of longing that is present in Jane -her great desire to
find spiritual companions to replace the family (mother and father)
she did not have as a child in her Aunt's house. That sense of seeking
for eternal compatriots seemed to touch me as I too was searching
for someone to accompany me in my life. I had always felt odd, different,
unaccepted, and I found in Jane someone with whom I could share.
It made no difference that she is fiction, and I real; that she
is woman and I man; that she is English and I American; that she
is Anglican and I Mormon. I fell in love with Jane quite as fully
as Rochester. There is something about the best of literature that
the academic discussion of technique totally misses (or at best
confuses) and that is the impact that it has upon the yearning soul.
I, too, find
and found Jane Eyre to be a wonderful book. An English teacher that
I had in college considered the book to be too, "adolescent" in
its depiction of love and he greatly preferred Wuthering Heights.
To me, Jane Eyre is truer and Wuthering Heights is filled with neurotics
intent on torturing each other.
I finished reading
Jane Eyre about a week ago. I was so excited to do it. I have never
written about a book, unless it was in grade school. There were
words in it I had never heard. My daughter read it many years ago
and I remember her telling me what a love story it was. I kept wondering,
where? Then when she left and ran into so many problems I almost
wanted to stop reading. Glad I didn't, the ending was so very loving
and real to me. I have an uncle that was in a mine blast. He was
totally blind and his body injured. His nurse married him and they
had a wonderful life. So I really liked the ending.
I was nearly
speechless as I read of Janet's struggle between "law given by God;
sanctioned by man" and the temptation she endured as her veins were
"running fire" for her first love, Mr. Rochester. I wonder how she
attained such a strong commitment to principles. Who taught her?
Were they the norm of the time, so that everyone knew of them? She
did not have the advantage of loving parents and a protective home
with the support of church and family to instill this dedication
to do what is right. Yet she has "preconceived opinions and forgone
determinations" which allow her to "plant her foot" on the platform
of personal purity. In the early 1960's when the judgment of law
changed from moral judgment to contingency judgment, America began
it's greatest movement from such integrity as Jane shows. When the
judgment of behavior is based not on those laws established by God,
but on "case law", which says in effect we decide what is right
and what is wrong based on what someone else did, the qualities
of honesty, purity, morality, and even righteousness are given variable
definitions. "If at my individual convenience I might break them,
what would be their worth?" asks Jane. We as individuals must make
that commitment to live the principles of God, even in our extremities.
Charlotte Bronte drives us to the depth of the extremity of feeling
by exposing us to our strongest emotion: love. Do we love God more
than man? Dear Janet does. Her example has given me a greater determination
to
Adhere to that
which I know to be true and right, to preconceive opinions and determine
to plant my foot at the right moment to avoid temptation.
Thanks to all
of you for your insights into a great work of literature. In March
we will take a look at the works of Anne Tyler. I ordered an early
novel, Celestial Navigation, as our club selection, but I
encourage you to take a trip to your favorite bookstore or local
library and browse through the works of this interesting novelist
to find one that suits your fancy. You may select The Ladder
of Years, about a housewife who walks out on the family vacation
one day and just keeps going, or St. Maybe, about a young
man converted to "The Church of the Second Chance," or perhaps "The
Accidental Tourist," about a man who falls in love with his
eccentric dog trainer. All Tyler's novels deal with the most ordinary
details of family life. Her characters are often fragile, odd people
who have trouble surviving in this difficult world of ours. Take
a look at Anne Tyler, and share your thoughts with the rest of us
by joining the Best Books Club at Meridian.
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Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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