Film fan or book buff? Elizabeth Gaskell's 'North and South'

Why not Both?

It always annoys me when people grumble about a film adaptation of a famous book.  They complain that the screen play differs from the original, that not every precious word uttered by their hero/heroine is included and search diligently and gleefully for any discrepancies in the historical settings.  What is not taken into account is that these are two quite different mediums of expression; the written word where elaborate descriptions can be included and conversations recorded in detail, and the visual, sounds and evocative expression of film.   A film is constrained by time and the producers demands and though many modern writers may feel equally constrained by their editors and publishers, most classical novels had liberty to ramble on at length.   Our educated ancestors desired long tomes and wordiness, lacking as they did the joys of television, cinema or dvd's to amuse themselves in spare moments. 

I recently re-read Mrs Gaskell's North and South as my literary tutor had set this book for our little group to study.  I agree with her, a first reading tends to be a little hurried, pages skipped in the desire to see how the story pans out.  Good books should always be read again when time has helped the contents to be mentally digested, the thrust of the story now half remembered with that delicious vagueness that time casts over it so that all appears as if new.  A second, even a third reading, will bring out passages missed or forgotten.  In Gaskell's novels, the central love story, on first reading so gripping, can then be seen in its context of the social turmoil of the times.  And her novels were certainly born in times of great turmoil in Britain.  We think we have divisiveness, poverty and problems now.  In the mid 19th century Britain had a great and rich industrial and colonial empire and yet the poverty and misery of the manufacturing towns was appalling, the contrast of rich and poor beyond belief.  The smugness of the idle rich and even the educated, who liked to shield themselves behind the idea that it was all God's will and a punishment on these wretches  - for some unexplained reason - is mind boggling to us now.

Charlotte Bronte

 The Chartist Movement had grown rapidly and there were problems such as the Luddite Riots which subject appears in Bronte' s book Shirley.  Her treatment of the strike and the manner in whcih her heroine saves her lover are simliar to that in North and South.  But Bronte had somewhat similiar heroines for whom love was their prevailing passion, the characters in Gaskell's novels are varied and though they fall in love, it is not the driving force of the story. 

Manchester in 19th century

Gaskell felt the unfairness of it all deeply and became a strong defender of the problems and sufferings of the Lancashire poor, spilling forth her feelings and compassion in her first novel, Mary Barton, published in 1848.   This appeared at about the same time as Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and the two became firm friends.  Both authors were amazed at the reaction to their books; the anger of Gaskell's circle of friends dismayed her and her attempts to remain incognito were easily flushed out as Milton was so obviously Manchester where she lived.  Some chose to think she parodied them in her exposure of the middle class and wealthy mill owners.  They felt she was being one sided in portraying only the misery of the poor as driven by circumstances and starvation and the 'gentlefolk', as tyrants who ignored their plight in the comfort of nice homes, laden tables, smart clothes on their backs and pleasurable pursuits.  Nothing indicated the problems faced by the manufacturers, managers and mill masters who had the rise and fall of markets to consider and all the worries of keeping their businesses afloat in uncertain times.  They had all the responsibility while the workers just had to work hard and accept the problems if things went wrong.   Gaskell realised that the two sides simply did not communicate their problems to one another and in North and South, she redressed this by showing both sides of the question through the characters of  Mr Thornton, the master of Marlborough mill, with Higgins, the intelligent and hard working Union man who strives to unite the workers in order to demand a fairer wage. The two men begin to listen one to the other and gain some middle ground of compromise and ways of working together instead of in enmity.

Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Gaskell was born on the 29th September 1810 in Chelsea, London.   Her parents were members of the Unitarian Church and she met and later married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister.  The couple moved to Manchester to take up duties there amongst the many Unitarian churches of that area.  Unitarianism was a radical breakaway from the Anglican Church and did not see Jesus as divine but rather as a prophet of God.  A somewhat arid belief system, lacking as it did in mystery and feeling, it believed in the power of reason, education and freedom to think and question while women were considered as equal as the men.  Elizabeth, as a minister's wife, was to see both the comfortable middle class side of Manchester and also move amongst the poor and downtrodden.   Like Dickens she wanted to write about the terrible conditions she saw and was better fitted to do so because she actually lived amongst them where he had only visited such areas.   Dickens had by then established his magazine Household Words and invited her to include her story. Along with Dicken's  Hard Times, a similar type of social indictment, it was published in monthly instalments, thus tending to have 'cliff hanger' chapters which certainly gave plenty of melodramatic excitement.  In some ways, this style suits particularly well an adaptation to television series.

Their relationship began well but ended in difficulty as both were strong minded characters.  Gaskell refused to let Dickens rule her to much, sticking to her own ideas of how North and South should appear in its serialised form.  However, she did take up his idea that it should be called by the far more appropriate and thematic title and not Margaret Hale as was her original intention.  Dickens could be demanding and did subject her to some editorship, pushing her to finish North and South, which he felt was becoming far too long.

To quote Gaskell's own preface to the published edition ". . . the author found it impossible to develop the story in the manner originally intended and more especially was compelled to hurry on events with an improbable rapidity towards the close. . ."  But she also admitted that the tale was obliged to conform to certain conditions required by a weekly publication.

The Book: Full of Contrasts

 There is no doubt that this is a long book by modern standards but it never drags for me.  The characters in Gaskell's stories come alive through the keeness of her observation, the style and language is colloquial for she was interested in the Lancashire dialect, but easy to read.  There is drama but somehow more down to earth and less overwrought than Jane Eyre, a story which Gaskell found puzzling.  Her life and nature were very different to that of Charlotte, happy as she was in her husband's love, her children and pleasant home life.    Gaskell was a born storyteller, loved by many friends and admirers, socially in demand for the ease and interest of her conversation.  She loved to quote anecdotes, enjoyed gossip and stored up memories and ideas in many short stories which at first she wrote to amuse herself and escape from the demands of her busy life as a mother and minister's wife.   Though there is plenty of drama in her stories, they never seem unreal or impossible.  

North and South is a book where one feels Gaskell achieved a balance in her self and in her own mind.   She was a Libran, sign of the scales and lover of fairness equality and reason. It's title and the chapter headings are all a contrast of opposites.  The characters too are all in contrast to one another. We have Margaret Hale, a gentleman's daughter, reduced to lesser circumstances purely because her father feels it necessary to leave his calling as a Vicar. Mr Hale is thus an educated, thinking man with the luxury of a conscience, he has choices and the ability to survive despite a lowered income and expectations.  In contrast to educated, gentrified Margaret with her southern manners and notions we have a straight talking northern lass, Bessie Higgins, the daughter of an intelligent man but whose only choice in his life is to work like a slave in the mills and keep his motherless children.  Yet he too can be proud and refuse charity.  Bessie is nineteen, the same age as Margaret, but already sick and dying of a terrible lung disease (pneumoconiosis - which can be contacted even now by those working in the textile industries).   Margaret is struck by the contrast in their lives and attitudes.  The two girls form a deep, loving friendship and understanding.  In the book Bessie, constantly yearns for her death, believing fervently that she will be going to Heaven and a happier afterlife while her father is agnostic.  Higgins is thus opposite to Mr Hale who tussles with his beliefs but does not lose his faith in God. 

Then there are the contrasts of Mr Thornton's proud, strong, stately mother to the weak, complaining, dissatisfied mother of Margaret, his silly idle sister, Fanny, to the industrious and dutiful Margaret Hale.  And, of course, the whole contrasting change from the beautiful fields, lanes, cottages, roses and fresh air of Helston, the southern home of the Hales, uprooted as they are to the dark, dirty, smoky, greyness of Milton.   Thomas Hardy spoke of the feudal attitudes and agricultural problems, but this book addresses a different set of people, the rise of the modern industrial, manufacturing man, proud, unyielding, equally harsh in the treatment of his workers though he may himself have risen from their ranks as Thornton did. There is also the contrast of the noise of the mills and the constant whirring of the machinery, the busy crowded streets of the city to the peace of the countryside which the Hales have left behind them.  It is so beautifully done.

The book has often been compared to Austen's Pride and Prejudice and it does indeed contain similar themes such as Margaret's hostile, proud attitude and repressed dour character of Thornton.  But he is a self made man, not from landed gentry as Darcy is and frankly, I prefer his character and the struggle he has had to undergo to rise in the world.   He is allowed pride in his achievements where Darcy's are merely inherited.  Margaret is a less cheerful and vivacious character than Elizabeth Bennett, her life much harder.   But again, there is much to admire in her tenacity and strength in misfortune.  The pride between the lovers is on both sides as well as the prejudice. Both novels have two proposals and in both the hero is rejected before his truth worth really impresses itself on our heroine.   Both heroines have ineffectual mothers and somewhat absent fathers. Thornton's mother opposes the union as much as Darcy's aunt, Lady de Burgh.   But whereas Pride and Prejudice is a comedy of manners, witty and charming, North and South is dramatic, passionate, intense and explores deeper themes of inequality and social injustices.   It is a novel that is physical, brutal in parts, the sexuality unusually clear for a Victorian novel,  depicted through subtle moods, Margaret's physically saving of Thornton from the striking mob, scenes of anger, jealousy.  Intriguingly there is also a constant reference to hands and handshakes or the refusal of touch (hands are mentioned 237 times!) and the touching scene when Thornton watches Margaret pouring out tea and is fascinated by a bracelet that falls down her soft, white arm as she moves and which is constantly pushed back again only to fall back once more.  

TV Adaptation: Amazing scenic effects

Television is generally the best means to adapt a famous classical novel.  It can span four, six or more parts and the story can be more inclusive of the dialogue of the original book.  However, it is still time limited.  So how to adapt successfully without losing the force, feeling and cohesion of the original?   It is wonderful to be transported visually into the days of yore, to see one's favourite characters spring to life before one's eyes.   If this is well done, the book becomes even more compelling to the mind and heart, fixed in one's consciousness. The BBC adaptation which I watched was made in 2004, the screen play by Sandy Welch and directed by Brian Percival.  The cast were superb.  

In both the film and the book it is the characters of Thornton and his mother, Higgins the worker that remained with me.

Sinead Cusack as Mrs Thornton stayed in my mind perhaps more than any other actor.  She conveyed pride and dignity, strength and devotion and her attitude towards Margaret isn't too surprising in the circumstances.  She and her daughter, Fanny, see her as aloof and haughty, misunderstanding her southern attitudes.   Richard Armitage as Thornton, the mill owner, was handsome, brooding, dark, a little Heathcliffe-ish.  He is not so fierce and cruel in the book.  But the scenes which depict him as harsh and unyielding to poor, weak, Boucher are far more likely to have been acted by such a man in truth.  Plus, we have to recall the Mrs Gaskell upset her friends greatly in her first book Mary Barton where she showed the misery and plight of the downtrodden workers and attacked her own class by so doing.  In N and S she was careful to show both sides of the question and tamed Thornton's attitude somewhat.

Margaret Hale is well played by Daniela Denby Ashe though I felt she wasn't quite my image of the character - but that's personal.   The actress conveyed her sadness, intelligence, inner strength and feeling beautifully.  And Brendan Coyle as Higgins gives a magnificent portrayal of that kind, proud, strong man, one of the noblest characters in the book.  We see all the characters in the novel change and grow from their Pride and Prejudice attitudes to become softened, more feeling, more open and inclusive of each other's views. This change of feeling has to be shown in four one hour shows.  Thus it has to be condensed into visually striking scenes that can say a great deal more than whole passages in the book.  I feel it was admirably done.

"I believe I've seen Hell: it's white.  It's snow white"

This TV adaptation excels in the visual above all and this can be dramatic and immensely moving in a direct manner which may elude one through mere words.  The opening shots of the titles...which in themselves are very visual with the North in sturdy, block like, dark letters, the South in gentle, curling scripts, already begin to introduce us to the contrasts of the two areas.  We open with evocative music and a scene of the mill interior, the grinding of the machines, the monotonous, steady mechanical movements of the workers, working in unison, in and out, in and out with the long weaving engines.  They have in essence become a part of the iron monster they wield, individuality lost as they move in monotonous rhythm with it.  The air is like a snowstorm as cotton flies around them everywhere, settling on clothes, machines, floor, and entering their lungs. This scene is not in the book, in fact we never enter the mills at all and I doubt Mrs Gaskell ever did do so.  But she knew of the effects of such work.  It is a stunning scene and the sight of the little children employed to crawl beneath the machines to retrieve cotton, then hastily moving out before the machines clank their way back again is deeply moving as well as horrifying.  It sets the tone for the whole story.

True, the TV adaptation doesn't stick totally to the book, how could it?  It's a long and detailed book, some say overly long.  For instance, Mr Bell,  Mr Hale's Oxford friend and the owner of the mill properties, has to physically appear early on and plays a bigger part than he does in the book which I think works well.  The film shows plot movement through brief scenes, snatches of conversation and expressions indicating how the characters feel.  Much is conveyed between the lovers in long, throbbing looks, between all the varied characters in facial expressions of haughtiness, disgust, pain, gladness (I love Fanny's curling lip and sneering face).  Little shots here and there contrast the teeming, busy streets of the city, the rich and poor houses, the ragged participants with their starving children during the strike, the groaning banquet at the Thornton's home where the masters discuss how to squash the strikers and keep the mills grinding.

 

The ending of this four part series is the one most talked about.  In Gaskells story, as I have said, the ending was a little hurried and to my mind out of character.  Suddenly Margaret Hale, our brave, sensible heroine, who usually spurns men's sexual admiration and advances, becomes coy and quite daft, hiding her face in her hands and acting like any Victorian maiden.  The film ending, while keeping her a little shy and charmingly apologetic for the fact that she was, in essence, saving her man again, was far more visually dramatic, romantic and delightful.  This is after all a romantic story as well as a social one.  I feel sure Mrs Gaskell would have approved.   We ladies loved it!

The Poetic Soul and the Dark Lover: the Haunted Bronte Women

The Bronte Parsonage

The Bronte family are perhaps one of the most outstanding literary families of all times. The sentimental myths that have grown around them and their lives since Mrs Elisabeth Gaskell published her famous, though somewhat biased biography , can now be perceived with more honesty through the work of modern biographers with more material to hand and less prejudice in favour of Charlotte.  Yet none of the fascination is lost for having a spotlight turned upon the darker corners. We can still read such works as Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and ask ourselves, as did their contemporaries, how on earth did these three young women, living fairly sheltered and parochial lives in a little Yorkshire town, write such passionate and feeling masterpieces.  I invite you to look at this from a Jungian psychological perspective in which we explore the animus figure of these women.

Patrick Bronte

This was a family with a literary soul.  Patrick Brunty, their father, came from a labouring family in Ireland and changed his name to Bronte as a young man.  He achieved a great deal, studied theology at St. John's College, Cambridge, receiving his BA in 1806 and eventually was given the living at a small Church in Howarth, Yorkshire.  Patrick wrote varied articles and books on serious topics and encouraged his children to read literature and talk politics with him.  He wasn't the Victorian ogre painted by Gaskell but neither was he a tender or demonstrative father.  He left the child rearing to his wife's spinster sister, Lizzie, who came from Cornwall during the fatal illness of his wife, Maria Bronte, in order to care for his six children.  This wasn't at all strange for the times; men seldom had much to do with their children.  And certainly the children saw little of him for Patrick Bronte preferred to be left alone in his study, writing poetry, articles, organising sermons and other parish matters. There is no doubt that he was so wrapped in his own activities that he lacked sensitive care and attention to their welfare.  He meant well enough when he sent his eldest two girls, Elizabeth and Maria, to Cowan Bridge School (an institution that was to be made famous by Charlotte as the dreaded Lowood).  They were not wealthy and thus the girls needed an education in order to survive later in life as there was no guarantee they would marry.  However, the Clergy Daughters School was poorly run at the time, the food so bad that the children ate little.  First Maria died of consumption followed by Elizabeth shortly after.  It seemed to take Patrick some time to realise he would lose all his girls. His first daughter, Maria, was said to be precocious beyond her ten years and with a brilliant imagination; we can only speculate about the books she too might have written.he bitterly mourned her loss.

  Patrick hastily brought back Emily and Charlotte from Cowan Bridge and thus the remaining four children were educated at home.  Branwell, Charlotte, Emily and Anne were now left to create their own amusements and entertainments and read extensively thanks to their father's liberality and encouragement, writing vast reams of material in their childhood, making up journals and tiny little books in which they recorded the adventures of their imaginary as well as heroes and heroines who were surprisingly sophisticated and worldly.

But in the main the characters in their imaginative play reflected inner characters, portions of their own nature brought to life. There is an emotional intensity to their work from an early age.  Later we still see this intensity mixed with a down to earth Yorkshire quality which makes the male characters of the Bronte stories deeply fascinating for men and women alike.  They are real and yet unreal, passionate, insistent, wild and in the case of Heathcliffe, untamed

Anne Bronte

There is no doubt that the early death of a mother creates a trauma in the lives of children, leaving a sense of loss and abandonment. Even though Anne was too small to remember her mother, this loss is still observable in her writings.  In all the Bronte ouevre, there is seldom a warm, caring mother figure.  There is also no doubt that a mother's unlived creative and spiritual character lives on in the children she has brought to birth.  If she has not fulfilled her own creative yearnings, it is likely to be left to those who come after to try to contain her frustrated, enraged spirit it or live it out in some way.  Maria Branwell Bronte, their mother, was herself an intelligent and educated woman but an early death with uterine cancer left her no time for development of her gifts.

Jung coined the term 'animus' for the 'masculine' part of a woman's psyche and Branwell in many ways took on the role of this figure and became a scapegoat for the family.  He was too weak to sustain the greatness they wished upon him and his early talents led to nothing but drink, drugs, despair and an early death.  The unlived animus of the mother instead percolated through her daughters  in the form of those amazing  creations, Rochester, Heathcliffe and Arthur Huntingdon (who is said to be based to some extent on Branwell Bronte)  The dark animus is a part of the unlived, unconscious Shadow side which we all have.  Men and women alike have written, painted and been fascinated by the Dark Lover aspect of their souls. We have 'The Dark Lady' of Shakespeare's sonnets, the innumerable 'fallen women' of painters and writers like Zola, D H Lawrence, Rider Haggard's 'She' - as well as the paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's beloved Jane Morris and his obsession with the image of Persephone, the Goddess of the Underworld. And even now this archetype has taken form as a vampire image, devouring and yet fascinating in his deadliness.

Charlotte Bronte

Thus for the Bronte children, their dead mother became the mother who had been taken by Hades, living on in her children's psyches as something unknown, unlived, consuming yet also transformative. The archetype of the Dark Lover became Rochester and Heathcliffe and Arthur Huntingdon for the girls and a devouring, destructive reality for Branwell who actually lived it all out for them - a fate which often befalls the one who is a weak sensitive link in the family wiring and blows the family fuse. As children, the Brontes invented imaginary characters that inhabited their inner worlds and imagination; war, powerful men and women figures, strange islands and countries with peculiar people. Later these figures and pent up sexual and dark images were to explode upon us as the strong male characters of their books.

Emily Bronte

In Emily's Heathcliff, we come closest to the archetype. The characters of Catherine and Heathcliff, despite their wild, dramatic passion are oddly sexless; their union is on some other plane entirely ---a cosmic union of great archetypal forces beyond our understanding.  Emily was never close to people but lived in a world of her own, a sexless free spirit, roaming the moors and at one with Nature and God.  In Rochester, we have a warmer more human element but still Jane flees from his forcefulness, pathos, despair and can only possess him when he is humbled, maimed, half blinded. Charlotte was far more dependant on warmth and contact than that of Emily.  Yet even when she at last describes in Villette the real man whom she loved and lost, she cannot be dishonest, she cannot possess him and Paul Emmanuel has to die at sea in the end.  Of them all however, Charlotte it was who married in the end and had a brief moment of happiness and normality before death claimed her also.  In Anne's Arthur Huntingdown we find a far more human character again.  Huntingdon is almost redeemable at the end and has some contrition over his evil past.

These stories all seem to show that all this family had a lack of faith that anyone could find love, be sexual and human, and not have to die because of that love- as their mother had died - as many women at that time died from the exhaustion brought about by the sexual and procreative act.  Branwell searched for love, falling for a woman much older than himself who cruelly betrayed his trust and naivete.  Emily, caught by her archetypal animus did not even search for love, her soul filled with something more mystical and divine.  The Dark Lover for her was a shadow side of God Himself.  Charlotte married at last but even then seemed at some unconscious level to feel unworthy of happiness and love. She was expecting her first child but died before she could bring into this world a real human being.  Perhaps the only one who died in peace was Anne, for unlike her character, Huntingdon, she firmly believed in her soul's redemption through the love of God and went gently into that good night.

The Changing Vision of the Bronte Legend

Lately I had a fit of tidying and sorting my bookshelves and came across three little volumes called The Story of English Literature  published as Murray's Literature Series in 1908.  These were only a few of the original series intended for use at colleges and in schools.  (Children learned about real literature in those days.)  My three volumes spanned the Elizabethan era to the nineteenth century.

I sat down to read them knowing that many of the views and attitudes of 1908, a period of Edwardian history, would influence and colour these worthy commentaries on our gems of English Literature – nor was I wrong.  The writers and compilers of these volumes had the usual moralistic and religious tone of the time which now seems so outmoded.  So much research has since been done, many biographies written and meticulously researched with more detachment than was possible then, plus letters and other data have come to light.  We can now view the great ones with modern allowances for drug taking, romantic and sexual misadventures, political extravaganzas.  We can view things through psychological interpretations and deeper understanding of the flaws of human nature that go to colour and instil a man or woman with the genius of creativity.  We can wonder at their brilliance but not feel we must whitewash their character to suit the sensibilities of the times.  But is that really true?  Works once hailed as the best are coloured by a new sense of morality.  Rudyard Kipling has lost much of his one time popularity because he is now seen as a relic of the jingoistic, outmoded attitudes of the British Empire.  However, he still holds his own because stories like Kim and The Jungle Book are philosophic and great imaginative creations.

Tim Dalton and Zelah Clarke were for me the best interpreters of the story

This shift in attitude certainly applies to the work of the three Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne.  At the time that Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights were published in 1846, the works were regarded with some astonishment and even much disfavour at first.  The unmistakable power of the novels was recognised and made them instant successes.  But they soon began to receive condemnation from the moral brigade who declared these stories were too outspoken. In one unkind review, Jane Eyre was reviled as 'if written by a woman it was one who for some reason had long forfeited the society of her sex.'  Women were meant to be 'the angel in the house,' quiet, decorous, unseen,  The boldness with which, for instance, Jane raises herself above her 'station' and dares to declare her love for Rochester, so much her social superior, was anaethema in those days.  You knew your place.  A governess declaring her love so passionately and boldly to her master!  How awful!  How unwomanly!  But Jane refuses to accept his superiority.  Where, after all, does it lie, she wonders?  His may be superiority of education, rank, sex but she is far superior to him morally and in the purity and innocence of her heart and mind.  And she is not afraid to declare it.

my very favourite Rochester, Tim Dalton

 Let us suppose the synopsis of Jane Eyre was to be sent to a modern publisher; they would surely refuse it outright.  The story now seems slightly ludicrous; the mad wife in the attic, the unlikely coincidence of Jane falling by chance amongst her unknown but loving cousins and being restored to her own rank and status.  Then there is the fire, the blinding of Rochester, all the melodrama and operatic tragedy of the ending.  Written thus, it sounds quite barmy.  But so great is the writing, the passion of feeling, the atmosphere and working up of the story to its climax that we are swept along with it and we believe it to be possible.  That's the Bronte genius.

I remember walking with my children along a darkening beach in Northumberland many years ago and telling them the story of Jane wandering and lost on the moors, begging for food and eating the scraps left for the pigs.  How apt a tale to tell, a picture to paint, in the deepening loaming, the empty loneliness of a windswept seashore with rain beginning to soak us as we walked home.  How we enjoyed being scared and thrilled by these scenes of Jane's life.

To me, this will be a favourite book of all times.  Charlotte put all her deepest feelings, pain and longings into this book.  Something in her practical Yorkshire nature never allowed her characters Jane or Lucy to have the man they loved; just as in real life she was unable to have her beloved master, Mr Heger.  Jane is allowed to have Rochester at last, though he has to be a cripple and dependent on her at first until at last she can say with triumph ... 'Reader I married him'.  Though this was not to be in Villette or The Professor.  Rochester arises from Charlotte's deepest, inner world; he is her animus figure, a figure she transposed onto Heger with his difficult but brilliant intellectual nature when she met the real man.  But the archetypal character she paints in Jane Eyre belongs to her youth, the heroes of her earlier childish works.  However, by the time she was to write Jane Eyre, she had already known real love and a real man and so Rochester becomes more than an archetype.  He is that but flavoured with real feeling now and this is what gives him such mysterious and compelling fascination.  Jane was Charlotte become a great deal more human and real because she had been scalded by real feeling and love by then. Her heart knew better.

So, modern attitudes?  We still have our critical standards but how they differ from Charlotte's Victorian ladies and gents!  I have heard a feminist writer declare that though she loved Jane Eyre when young (and to my mind untainted) having re-read it of late, decided that Rochester was a dreadful immoral bully and Jane a fool to put up with him.  Others would wonder why Jane agonised so much over becoming Rochester's mistress.  Who would care nowadays?  But, it is foolish for us to judge Jane Eyre's attitudes by modern standards of sexual equality and freedom.  We have to recall that in her day, Charlotte was being extremely bold and honest.  It was this honesty that caused the reviewer to say 'if this was written by a woman, she had no knowledge of her sex.'  Well, she did. And she wasn't afraid to admit that a woman could love and could declare that love with passion and feeling and not pretend to hide it, playing charm games and flirting as Genevra does in Villette.

My English Lit book was surprisingly admiring of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights saying it is 'an imperishable testimony to her genius.' It also recognised the strange, psychological power of the book, its force and darkness. 'It is not a beautiful story but a terrible one.'  People found then - and still to some extent find it difficult - to see that a young girl, brought up in a lonely Yorkshire parsonage could conceive such a peculiar forceful character as that of Heathcliffe.  But here again we speak of a dark animus figure within Emily Bronte, a woman who was known to have a tremendous strength of character and mind.  Emily, as far as we know, never fell in love with a real man.  She and her sister Anne continued with their Gondal games and writings into adult life, immersed always in this subterranean, unconscious world of their childhood full of its heroes and villains.  She wrote purely archetypal figures and images from within her soul untainted by the confusion and errors of normal human love encounters.  The loves and passions of her major characters are oddly sexless and unreal, in another world than the human one.  Only when we come to the growing feeling between the young Catherine Linton and Hindley Earnshaw do we approach a more natural human encounter and many of the minor characters are portraits drawn with real observation. 

In its day Wuthering Heights was acclaimed but not liked.  Now, of course, it is considered a work of great genius and the best of all the Bronte novels.

When it comes to Anne Bronte, my book dismisses her in a brief paragraph.  According to this writer, her two books Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 'ought probably never to have been published.  Their only interest lies in the contribution which they make to the fuller story of this remarkable family'.  Poor Anne to be thus dismissed!  Her works have now risen in status and though lacking the peculiar passion of her elder sisters' works are, in fact, the most down to earth and realistic of all the Bronte writings, holding up to view the life led by a governess who was a servant and yet not quite a servant, a person of genteel background but no real position in a household.  In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, she explores with feeling and much common sense the predicament of a married woman in her times when, no matter how she might be abused and used by a drunken, lout of a husband, she and all she had was considered as his property and he could claim her and her child back if he wished.  Thus Anne, of all the Bronte girls, was an early champion for women's rights and is seen as such nowadays.  Anne's books are the more true to life because of all the girls, Anne it was who went and became a governess, put up with many difficulties in the family with whom she lived, had to keep an eye on their unruly brother Branwell.  She also loved greatly and lost the man she loved to illness. Anne knew real life. 

When these English Lit books were compiled, much reliance was placed on the biography written by Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte.  But Mrs Gaskell is now known to have written this book in an attempt to make Charlotte's passion and temperament more acceptable to Victorian sensibilities; thus the dwelling on their supposedly hard and flinty father and the terrible life spent amongst the graveyards of the poor, miserable village of Haworth.  We now know Patrick Bronte was a well read, highly intelligent, good man, not especially aware of his children but few Victorian men were.  The child rearing was left to the women and the Brontes lost their mother young and were brought up by a preachy old aunt and a couple of servants. But this gave the youngsters great freedom and Patrick never prevented them from reading what they liked or discussing what they liked.  He allowed them to flourish in their own unique manner. 

How will we view the Brontes in another 100 years?  Who knows! 

Charlotte Bronte and the Tale of Unrequited Love

I am delighted to invite Kimberly Eve as a guest blogger this month.  Kimberly has her own very interesting blog at http://kimberlyevemusings.blogspot.co.uk/.  Her especial expertise is the sixteenth and nineteenth century in general but the Pre-Raphaelites are also of deep interest to her.

Thank you very much, Kimberly,  for this fascinating article on Charlotte Bronte and her letters to Constantin Heger. Some of these photos are new to me and I thought I knew most of the Bronte story!

Charlotte Bronte and the Tale of Unrequited Love

In February of 1842, Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels to enroll as students in the Rue d’Isabelle boarding school that was run by Madame and Monsieur Heger. The Bronte sisters were hoping to improve their skills in languages. Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music in return for board and tuition.

In January 1843 Charlotte Bronte started a teaching post at Rue d’Isabelle.  However, her stay there was not a happy one; she was homesick, lonely and became what could be termed a deep ‘attachment’ for Monsieur Heger.  Madame Heger thought that Charlotte had fallen in love with her husband, and therefore became very cold and distant towards her. Monsieur Heger taught her German, but otherwise, had little to do with her.  Early in 1844, Charlotte came home, but continued to write to Monsieur Heger, even though he allowed her to write to him only twice a year.  It was in May 1843 that Charlotte wrote to Emily complaining of Madame Heger, “Of late days, M. and Madame Heger rarely speak to me; and I really don’t pretend to care a fig for anybody else in the establishment. I am convinced she (Madame Heger) does not like me; why, I can’t tell. (O Charlotte!) Nor do I think she herself has any definite reason for this aversion.  (!)  M. Heger is wondrously influenced by Madame. He has already given me a brief lecture on universal bienveillance; and perceiving that I don’t improve in consequence, I fancy he has taken to considering me as a person to be let alone, left to the error of her ways, and consequently he has, in a great measure, withdrawn the light of his countenance; and I get on from day to day, in a Robinson Crusoe like condition, very lonely.”

In March 1843, writing to her friend Ellen Nussey, Charlotte Bronte complains of loneliness in the school, missing her sister Emily, she references the Heger’s kindess , “ As I told you before, M and Madame Heger are the only two persons in the house for whom I really experience regard and esteem; and of course I cannot be always with them, nor even very often. They told me, when I first returned, I was told to consider their sitting-room my sitting-room, and to go there whenever I was not engaged in the schoolroom. This, however, I cannot do. In the daytime it is a public room, where music-masters and mistresses are constantly passing in and out; and in the evening I will not, and ought not, to intrude on M.  And Madame Heger and their children. Thus I am a good deal by myself; but that does not signify. I now regularly give English lessons to M. Heger and his brother-in-law.”

In January 1844 Charlotte finally returned home to the Parsonage at Haworth. Of course, it is believed that she based some parts and characters of The Professor and Villette on her reminiscences of her years at Rue d’Isabelle.  It was in her novel Villette that the character of Paul Emanuel was based on Monsieur Heger and Madame Beck was Heger’s wife, Madame Heger.  In Villette, Bronte describes the feelings of protagonist, Lucy Snowe upon leaving, “Anguish of suspense; heart-sickness of hope deferred; despair, following on repeated disappointment; rage and indignation at the cruelty and injustice of this outrage done to a Love , that has wronged no one, robbed no one, that has no desire to inflict injury on others.”

The extent of Charlotte Brontë's feelings for Héger  were not fully understood until 1913, when her letters to him were published for the first time. Héger had first shown them to Mrs. Gaskell when she visited him in 1856 while researching her biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë, but she concealed their true significance. These letters, referred to as the 'Héger Letters', had been ripped up at some stage by Héger, but his wife had retrieved the pieces from the wastepaper bin and had meticulously sewn them back together. Paul Héger, Monsieur Heger’s son, and his sisters, gave these letters to the British Museum, and they were shortly after printed in The Times newspaper.
The first letter to Monsieur Heger Charlotte Bronte wrote on November 18^th,
“I may, then, write to you, without breaking my promise. The summer and winter have seemed very long to me; in truth, it has cost me painful efforts to endure up to now the privation I have imposed upon myself. You, for your part, cannot understand this! But, Monsieur, try to imagine, for one moment, that one of your children is a hundred and sixty leagues away from you; and that you are condemned to remain for six months, without writing to him; without receiving any news from him; without hearing anything about him; without knowing how he is; well, then you may be able to understand, perhaps, how hard is such an obligation imposed upon me.”
Monsieur Heger had not answered her November letter. She waited for a reply but when none came she wrote a second letter where she apologizes for it and tries to keep a temperate tone,
“Ah, Monsieur! I know I once wrote you a letter that was not a reasonable one, because my heart was chocked with grief; but I will not do it again! I will try not to be selfish; although I cannot but feel your letters the greatest happiness I know. I will wait patiently to receive one, until it pleases you, and it is convenient to write one. At the same time, I may write you a little letter from time to time; you authorized me to do that.”

No reply letters arrive to Charlotte Bronte but still in October she writes to him again convinced that his wife, Madame Heger will not allow him to receive her letters,
“October 24-Monsieur-I am quite joyous to-day. A thing that has not often happened during the last two years. The reason is that a gentleman amongst my friends is passing through Bruxelles, and he has offered to take charge of a letter for you, and to give this same letter into your hands; or else his sister will do this, so that I shall be quite certain that you receive it.”
Charlotte Bronte writes again, a longer final letter to Monsieur Heger on January 8, 1845 in an attempt to recapture the loss of his friendship,
“I  submit to all the reproaches you may make against me; if my master withdraws his friendship from me entirely, I shall remain without hope; if he keeps a little for me (never mind though it be very little) I shall have some motive for living, for working.
Monsieur, the poor do not need much to keep them alive; they ask only for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table, but if these crumbs are refused them, then they die of hunger! For me too, I make no claim either to great affection from those I love; I should hardly know how to understand an exclusive and perfect friendship, I have so little experience of it! But once upon a time, at Bruxelles, when I was your pupil, you did show me a little interest: and just this small amount of interest you gave me then, I hold to and I care for and prize, as I hold to and care for life itself . . .
. . . I will not re-read this letter, I must send it as it is written. And yet I know, by some secret instinct, that certain absolutely reasonable and cool-headed people reading it through will say: ‘She appears to have gone mad.’ By way of revenge on such judges, all I would wish them is that they too might endure, for one day only, the sufferings I have borne for eight months-then, one  would see, if they too did not ‘appear to have gone mad.’
One endures in silence whilst one has his strength to do it. But when this strength fails one, one speaks without weighing one’s words. I wish Monsieur all happiness and prosperity. “
HAWORTH, BRADFORD,YORKSHIRE,
8^th January.

Charlotte Bronte’s letter went unanswered and no other letters were sent that we know about! What we do know for certain, is that when it came to writing novels, Charlotte Bronte’s life experiences and those she knew, were incorporated into her works.

SOURCES
The Secret of Charlotte Bronte by Federika MacDonald, London, TC &EC, Jack, 1914
The Brontes Life and Letters by Clement Shorter, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1908

The Pull of the Bronte Myth

Reading a book about the Brontes always has the effect of taking me out of a writer's block. Something about the life of this unusual and fated family has fascinated us all and has a hold on our imagination and feeling.  It was a family of highly intelligent and thoughtful people, shaped by intense passion, pain and tragedy.  Each member is a fascinating study in his or herself.

Currently, I'm reading a recent biography by Lyndall Gordon called The Passionate Life in which she examines Charlotte Bronte from the angle of her strong, fiery nature.  Popular ideas have for many years created a myth mainly based on the biography of Elisabeth Gaskell,  whose Life of Charlotte Bronte was published in 1857.   Gaskell painted a picture of  Charlotte and her sisters as prim, sober women, the product of their dreary environment, living as they did in the Rector's house, surrounded by a graveyard, in a small town where illness was rife due to insanitation and poverty and where few lived to old age.  The countryside, which inspired Emily with mystical reverence for Nature, was to her bleak and inhospitable, the wild Yorkshire moors. 

 Gaskell put a deal of blame upon the shoulders of their self -absorbed and difficult father, Patrick Bronte and one has to agree with this.  He seldom ate with the family, kept himself immured in his study when not about his parish business, leaving the children in the care of their aunt and later the servants.  He tried to get his daughters an education, knowing they would only ever be socially fit to work as governesses but failed to see his elder daughters dying of starvation and consumption at the terrible school at Cowan Bridge where he sent them.  And he had no idea that they were writing novels until Charlotte rather diffidently presented him with 'Jane Eyre' and said she hope he might read the book. 

'I can't be troubled to read manuscripts,'

'But it is printed.'

'I hope you have not been involving yourself in any such silly expense.'

'I rather think I shall gain money by it', she replied. 

He did read it and later at tea, the one meal he occasionally condescended to share with them, he announced, 'Children, Charlotte has been writing a book - and I think it is a better one than I expected.'  However, when his wastrel, alchoholic, opium-ridden son died, he was bereft.  He shared the prevailing belief that the boy was the important member of the family. But Branwell Bronte proved incapable of living up to his father and his sister's hopeful expectations.  He had talent and might have done well if he had submitted to training, but he had neither will, nor moral discipline as the girls did.                

                   

Lyndall Gordon explores the 'home' Charlotte, the real, inner character that she was when in her own environment or with those few friends she really trusted.  Her public image was totally different, silent, mousy, disliking to be noticed.   In other words, Charlotte cultivated a demure, protective persona and hid her passionate, angry, strong nature behind this.  It was a necessity.  Women were meant to be doll-like, biddable, sweet, angelic and considered brazen and bold if they attempted to enter public life. Charlotte's pride forbade being regarded in this light or being misunderstood.  The sisters all chose to publish their books under ambiguous pseudonyms that could be male or female, Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell.   Even then their books, especially 'Wuthering Heights', were deemed 'coarse' and 'insensitive'; brilliant if written by a man, scandalous if written by a woman. 

My daughter and I joined the Bronte Society many years ago and our first visit with them was to Brussels to see the places where Charlotte had studied French and met her destiny in the shape of her imperious master,  Monsieur Heger.  Reading between the lines, one feels that Heger delighted in exerting a powerful charismatic appeal over his pupils.  Perhaps it was the secret of his brilliance as a teacher. And there was much about him that conformed to Charlotte's own inner image of 'the dark lover'.  She found in him a mentor and a person who truly noticed her, recognised her talents and fostered them. He expressed her own anger, passion, vehemence and intellectual strength; qualities she was not allowed to express as a woman.  Her feelings grew too much for her but her real need was not so much about love as for this recognition by someone that was her equal. She expressed this in 'Jane Eyre' when she confronts Rochester.  'I speak to you as an equal.' Jane declares.  When Heger withdrew his letters to her in the face of her increasing anguish and need, the resultant sense of pain, rather than felling her, as Branwell was felled by the loss of his love, spurred Charlotte to sublimate the experience through her writings.  This is the true stuff of greatness.  To delve into the depths of one's own soul, to take one's bitter loss and rage and pain, and create rather than destroy or be destroyed.