On reading the Brontës
I have recently (defined here as during the last few months of 2010) been seized with a passion for reading The Brontës. It’s hard to remember what kicked it off – I think an urge to revisit Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in the wake of reading one of those books that takes a classic as its theme and then riffs on it. The book may, in fact, have been Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair. But, whatever it was, it has faded in importance compared with the project it started.
A re-read of Jane Eyre was, then, the first of them. This is a book that I first encountered at around age 18, and did not appreciate much. I read it again at least once in the following decade or two, liked it better, but still did not rate it all that highly compared to, say, Wuthering Heights or Pride and Prejudice. But now I seem to have grown into it and can appreciate far more keenly both the good and bad things about it, from Jane’s passionate attempts to assert her worth and identity in a patriarchal society to the discomfort caused by Bertha Rochester’s treatment and situation. It’s hard to overstate the drama that comes of witnessing the monstrous character of St John Rivers and his effects on Jane at such close quarters, or the satisfactions of revisiting the section of the novel where Jane first encounters the Rivers clan as a psychological narrative of the kind that reached its apotheosis in Charlotte Brontë’s writing with Villette – of which, more later.
Whereas Jane Eyre has grown in my estimation, Wuthering Heights has perhaps receded a little. I loved it on first read but this time remarked a little unkindly to someone that it was irresistible to regard it as a kind of early episode of Shameless with Hindley Earnshaw as a Frank Gallagher prototype. But, despite the wit, the drama, the romance and the delightful writing, all of which serve to delineate the ambition and the undeniable greatness of this powerful and yet painful novel, it is still a challenge to spend time in the company of people who routinely practice such extremes of behaviour without attracting a whit of pressure from any other character to modify them. You feel that the anti-social behaviour order might have proved a powerful weapon in the hands of Gimmerton Parish Council, had it been available then.
Also, there is the peculiar problem caused by sex. The theme of powerful sexual attraction and overwhelming sexual charisma is handled by a young, isolated and unmarried Victorian clergyman’s daughter presumably forbidden from knowing about the existence of such a subject, never mind having any direct experience of the business in hand. This leaves curious and unsatisfying lacunae in the story, and in the relationship between Heathcliff and the elder Catherine. Certainly platonic friends or soulmates don’t carry on in the fashion that those two do, destroying the other’s marriage and humiliating their spouse, or taking to one’s sickbed in the face of romantic rivals. But the pair’s obsessive regard for each other is also far removed from a straightforward physical attraction, requited or otherwise. The lack of an easy or comfortable resolution to this question can make the novel feel problematic, especially alongside the cruelty and amorality (especially to the young and vulnerable) that people such as Lockwood and Ellen Dean do little or nothing to challenge or alleviate. Had it been edited, by Charlotte’s hand or some other’s, to make it more socially acceptable? Who can say – certainly not me. However, no question but that it’s a vital, coruscating work of art and a must-read for anyone aiming to understand the development of the novel in English. It’s just that it’s problematic too.
So, the two Titans of the Brontë oeuvre overcome, I moved on to the lesser-known works – Anne’s two novels (or a novel and a novella, perhaps) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey; and Charlotte’s Villette and Shirley. I had excused myself from the task of re-reading The Professor, having last done so only a small number of years ago, and having decided that it would be more profitable to move on to fresh pastures. Anne was a revelation and I was struck by the editor who wrote the preface to my edition pointing out that her talent for observation and exploring her subject through the subtle nuances of a social or domestic situation has arguably far more in common with Austen than with her sisters. This editor also expressed the view that, had she lived longer, Anne might have developed into a major literary talent instead of the minor novelist she now is.
Certainly, Wildfell Hall is a powerful piece of literature. I was taken by the author’s preparedness to tackle the story through the person of a narrator quite unlike herself, the young gentleman farmer Gilbert Markham – who shows himself capable of behaving with immaturity and pardonable violence when crossed in the matter of the affections of the heroine. The novel is also written as a retrospective, expressed throught the media of letters and of diary extracts to a friend of the narrator. It contains a shockingly modern and believable psychological portrayal of two people (the heroine Helen Huntingdon and her alcoholic husband Arthur) caught in an abusive relationship, and exposes truths that must have been quite contrary to the idealised narrative of Victorian marriage. It does have significant flaws, the most obviously-mentioned being the inability of this rural clergyman’s daughter to imagine how a pack of drunken, dissolute and predatory men might behave with no-one to restrain their behaviour. But this becomes almost insignificant in a series of scenes that manage the feat of communicating real tension and fear for the safety of the female protagonists and their children who have the misfortune to be trapped in the company of the libertines. It’s a minor masterpiece, and certainly a book that deserves to have a wider currency than it presently enjoys.
Agnes Grey offers the reader an entirely different kind of pleasure. Rather than a gruelling narrative of marital breakdown coupled with spousal and child abuse, it is more of a social document that chronicles an important aspect of women’s history – the role of the governess in a wealthy family, and the privations and limitations suffered by those required by financial necessity to take up such roles. It is in this story, perhaps, that some of the comparisons with Jane Austen ring most true. (However, readers of Miss Austen’s works would surely recognise Wildfell Hall characters such as Annabella Wilmot, Eliza Millward and the latter’s pompous rector of a father as potentially coming straight out of the author’s pages.) It is short and relatively undemanding – unless you are the kind of person that becomes incensed at deliberate cruelty and social injustice – and therefore well worth the time and effort it requires to read.
I have said that Wildfell Hall was one of the biggest discoveries of this project so far. The other was Villette, and I think that if I had to state which novel I believed to be Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece, it would probably be this rather than Jane Eyre. I would go so far as to say that anyone interested in the developing form of the novel, and the craft of writing, should count this as essential reading – in much the same way that Austen’s Emma would be necessarily studied for its subjective narration of an objectively quite different plot. The paramount thing about Villette is not to try to read it for realism, judging the actions of the heroine on flesh-and-blood women of her time, or the events as things likely or otherwise to occur in the world outside the novel.
This is true, paradoxically, despite its grounding in real events that shaped Charlotte Brontë’s life and writing career (the Villette of the title is a place, not a person, a fictionalisation of Brussels). The whole thing is, rather, fashioned in order to illuminate the psychological condition of the heroine and in this I see many of the crucial themes of Jane Eyre developed and enlarged upon considerably. It’s an astonishing work, a searing indictment of the way that Victorian society treated its womenfolk, and an absolutely essential read. Only do, for goodness sake, get an edition with good editorial notes if you don’t read French since a large amount of it is written in that language and it will be otherwise be a chore to work out what is going on in every significant conversation that heroine Lucy Snowe undertakes.
And at last we come to Shirley, which is a strange, oddly-formed creature indeed. It is an examination of social conditions in the north of England some 40 years before its publication date; it is a Bildungsroman of sorts for the two young women who are its protagonists; it is beloved of those critics seeking out lesbian subtexts in works that could never possibly have tackled such issues if foregrounded. It has even been suggested that its strange, uneven character is due to posthumous editing by Charlotte of a manuscript written by Emily, with those subjects deemed unfit for contemporary society removed, or at least substantially toned down. It reflects some of the proto-feminist themes of earlier Brontë works but also has a slightly jarring tendency to try to imagine the kind of idealised man who could actually live up to the impossible standards of the patriarchal ideal imposed by Victorian society. And it mentions the Duke of Wellington a lot – a figure who Charlotte is known to have had a terrible crush on. It has a lot to say about clerical manners and mores and produces, in Shirley Keeldar, one of the most engaging heroines of the entire Regency, Georgian or Victorian oeuvre. It is dry, witty and delightfully-written and extremely entertaining to read; however it is probably in truth an also-ran of a novel and not a contention for masterpiece status like Jane Eyre or Villette.
Time for a long breath. Reading all these novels in sequence was a really interesting exercise and did help to reveal certain themes and commonalities of style and subject matter that may not have been apparent if they had been taken in smaller doses. It also opens the eyes to a refreshing amount of difference in the writing and preoccupations of these three extraordinary women. I have three more tasks to complete before this project is properly over. The first is to read Juliet Barker’s outstanding biography of the Brontë family. I have started it in the past but never completed it and, although a bit daunted by its length and depth, I am looking forward to doing this. The second is to read a slim volume that has been in my possession for some time – picked up in a second-hand shop somewhere, it is entitled The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë and is a biographic work by Daphne du Maurier. Of course, there’s a fine contrarian streak to that lady which makes her interest herself in the brother rather than his endlessly more famous sisters. And her view of the family may well be enlightening, since two of her own greatest novels bear the unmistakable stamp of the Brontë sisters – Rebecca (Jane Eyre) and Jamaica Inn (Wuthering Heights). Hmmm – may soon be time to re-read those, as well…
And finally, I feel inspired to literary tourism. There’s a footpath in the Bradford area which is known as the Brontë Way and which promises to take you as close as is feasible to such recognisable locations from the novels as have been found to exist. And then there’s the whole Haworth circus too. Yes, I think I may be venturing up to Yorkshire sometime soon.
Further reading
- Search for the Brontës at Project Gutenberg
- Long-Distance Walkers’ Association: Brontë Way
- The Brontë Parsonage Museum website
- Jasper Fforde
- Virginia Woolf: A room of one’s own
- When Daphne du Maurier met the Brontës
Tags: Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Haworth, The Brontë sisters