31 March: Boreham on Charlotte Bronte

The Valour of a Bronte
It was on the last day of March, in the year 1855, that Charlotte Bronte’s brief life came to its close. Charlotte reaped her rich reward as she went along. No writer ever owed more to her work than did she. Even in the early stages of her authorship, when the chances of finding a publisher were extremely remote, the manuscript over which she pored so diligently, night after night, rendered her an invaluable service. It gave her a second world in which to live; and nobody needed such an escape more than she did. Her mother was dead; her father was rapidly becoming blind; her sisters were fading away in various stages of consumption; whilst her only brother kept the stricken parsonage in a turmoil of agitation and terror by his wild and dissolute behaviour. In such dispiriting conditions, everything depended on the ability of Charlotte to manage the household, and, at the same time, to earn enough money to keep the wolf from the door.

The only chance that she saw lay in her literary inspiration. She would put it to the test. In such morsels of time as she could snatch from the kitchen and the sickroom, she abandoned herself to her manuscript; and, instead of finding it an additional strain, it became an exciting relaxation, an unfailing source of comfort, an inexpressible relief. Her friends begged her, for the sake of her health, which was never robust, to desist from this additional task. She would not. "In this vital matter," she wrote, "I must have my own way. The power of imagination lifted me when I was sinking; its active exercise has kept my head above water ever since. I am thankful to God Who gave me this faculty; it is a part of my religion to defend this gift and to profit by its possession."

Triumph Of A Girl Who Knew Her Own Mind
The story of the publication of "Jane Eyre" is, as Miss Flora Masson puts it, one of the priceless nuggets of our literary history. Having completed one novel, "The Professor," Charlotte had sent it to London, but not a publisher would look at it. On the very morning on which she was setting out for Manchester, taking her father to be operated upon, in the hope of curing or mitigating his blindness, the oft-rejected manuscript came back to her once more. "My book finds acceptance nowhere," she says, "nor do I hear any acknowledgment of merit; the chill of despair begins to invade my heart." Yet all this time, Charlotte was working ceaselessly at "Jane Eyre." At long last "The Professor" was sent to Messrs Smith and Elder. They, too, returned the work, which was never published until after the death of the authoress, but, in returning it, they wrote a letter so full of generous appreciation and shrewd counsel that it entirely neutralised the mortification of still another rejection. If, they said, the author of "The Professor" would send them a three volume novel, they would give it their most careful consideration. By this time, "Jane Eyre" was half-finished, and, under the inspiration of the publishers' encouragement, the remaining half was soon written.

In several respects, the new novel took a new line. Novelists are all wrong, Charlotte declared, in making their heroines beautiful as a matter of course. "They are wrong; they are even morally wrong; and I will prove that they are wrong. I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself, who shall be as interesting as any of theirs." This was saying much, for Charlotte was very plain and very small. Writing as Currer Bell, she some months later sought an interview with Harriet Martineau. Miss Martineau invited her to tea the next day at six. In doing so, she was tortured with conjectures as to the sort of person that Currer Bell would turn out to be, a tall moustached man, an elderly lady, or a girl? But when the hands of the clock pointed to five minutes past six, the door was thrown open, "and in came a neat little woman, a very little sprite of a creature, nicely-dressed and with tidy bright hair. Everybody was charmed with her." On this diminutive self of hers Charlotte modelled her heroine, and the result amply vindicated her contention.

Romance Viewed From The Feminine Angle
"Jane Eyre" was published in 1847 and took the world by storm. The reviewers did their best to stem the flood. The "Quarterly" hazarded the judgment that, if the work was the work of a woman, it must be a woman who, for some sufficient reason, had long forfeited the society of her sex! Another critic referred to the new author as an alien from society and amenable to none of its laws! But, running into edition after edition, the book won its own way and soon took its place as an English classic. In one respect it is unique. It is the portrayal of the passion of a woman for a man. In almost all other novels, the love of the man is the active element; the sentiment of the woman is passive. The hero hungers for the heroine; her feelings towards him are scarcely revealed until towards the climax of the story. In "Jane Eyre" the position is reversed. The consuming passion of Jane throbs through every page; it is the attitude of Edward Rochester towards her that remains veiled in obscurity and mystery.

"Jane Eyre" was followed by "Shirley" in 1849; and by "Vilette"—the most autobiographical of all the novels —in 1853. "There is something almost prenatural in the power of 'Vilette,'" wrote George Eliot. It was Miss Bronte's last book. In the following year she married, and, a few months later, she died. Her brave struggle against circumstances that would have crushed a less gallant spirit, combined with the purity and excellence of her writings, had the effect of weaving her memory into an exalted and almost sacred tradition. To mention her name was to awaken a choice and beautiful legend. Every thought of her was charged with an exquisite magic. In normal times, a day never dawns on which some party of tourists does not motor across those northern moors to pay a pilgrimage to the little village of Haworth. The visitor forgets its real ugliness in the beauty of the associations that Charlotte Bronte and her two brilliant sisters, Emily and Anne have woven about it. That ceaseless procession of admiring pilgrims is but one of the many evidences of the genuine and deathless affection in which the Bronte tradition is prized and cherished.

F W Boreham

Image: Charlotte Bronte