The Brontës, Charlotte Brontë
and her Family by Rebecca Fraser
I did not imagine that when I
picked this book up that it would lead me to reread Charlotte and Emily Brontë’s books, which I
had read so long ago. I also waded through Charlotte’s Villette, luckily on my Kindle so
I could translate the endless conversations in French. I am planning on reading
Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey, and Shirley by Charlotte. I have also skimmed the poetry by
Anne, Emily and Charlotte—who published as Acton, Ellis and Currer Bell.
Their Methodist father’s church was situated in an isolated area of Yorkshire, among the uneducated and struggling poor. The five sisters and one brother were
dependent on each other’s company. Their mother died when they were young, and their father
oversaw their education, teaching Classical languages, current affairs, poetry,
and philosophy.
Charlotte and her younger
brother Branwell were deeply enmeshed in an imaginary world they created, as if
today’s Gamemasters and alternate reality players never left the world of the
game to resume normal life. Even when Charlotte
went away to school, her thoughts were in that other world.
Elizabeth and Maria
contracted tuberculosis while away at school. Charlotte was also brought home. It was too late; the two older
girls died, leaving Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell.
Branwell was highly sensitive
and passionate, and frustrated by his inability to find the recognition the
whole family felt was due him. In his late teens he began drinking and taking
opium. He found a position as a tutor, fell in love with the wife of his charges, and was
dismissed. His was a life of, addiction, failure and early death.
Emily shunned society,
preferring to stay at home and tend their father while Anne and Charlotte went
to school in Brussels
to prepare to be governesses. The girls excelled in their studies, but after a
year were called home when their father needed cataract surgery. Only Charlotte returned for
further education.
Charlotte, having lived in such a limited society, fell in love
with the school master, the first man to give her attention apart from her
family. Later, after publishing her book Jane Eyre, she fell in love with her
publisher George Smith. Her suffering, knowing neither man was attainable, was chronicled in her novels.
Emily and Anne both died
of Tuberculosis. Charlotte
suffered great loneliness, and felt she was doomed to be alone. She was
vilified and lionized for Jane Eyre, and did form some friendships. But she was
limited by keeping her books a secret from her father, and hid behind her persona of Currer Bell.
Arthur Bell, who had
been her father’s curate, reappeared announcing he could not get over his love
for Charlotte.
After great inner questioning, and with great fear, Charlotte accepted Arthur. He proved to be a
perfect companion. Charlotte’s
health had never been good, and she died within a year of marriage. Surely, had Charlotte lived, her
writing, which she said rose out of her experiences, would have reflected a
different kind of woman than the lonely and alienated creatures of her
novels.
Reading Wuthering Heights after Jane Eyre, I was struck by the vast differences in style. Jane
Eyre has passion and high emotion, and a strong but submissive heroine who
stays true to her ideals. But Charlotte
also seems to be working hard to preach the Christian Women’s duty and to adhere
to constrained Victorian standards. Emily, on the other hand, has a distinctly
modern style of writing, direct, clean, and fresh. Her characters are as
twisted as the wind-driven trees on the Yorkshire
moors. They are no role models!
I could not help but to
compare the Brontës to Jane Austen. Jane was born at the end of the Age of
Reason, while the Brontes were products of the Romantic Era. Both were clergy children, growing up in a parsonage and endeavored to adhere to the standard of the Christian woman of her time. Both wrote in childhood. Jane, like Charlotte, turned down several proposals, but she never found her man. At least Charlotte did marry, and had some months of
wedded happiness with a companion who put her needs first. Both women died in their thirties. Both women had
close ties to siblings and father, and an absent or alienated mother. And both
wrote only what they knew, and were diligent in their adherence to Truth.
Jane Austen is most loved for
her bright and sparkling novels, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility,
and Emma. These books are alive with wit and irony, pithy insight, and
unexpected turns of events leading to happy marriages. Mansfield Park
and Persuasion are darker, their heroines victimized by situation, poverty, and powerlessness. Their heroines are more like Charlotte’s characters Jane Eyre and Lucy
Snowe. And in the end, a happy marriage is the ultimate goal of the novels of both writers.
Emily, on the other hand,
dared to show what can happen if convention puts asunder two souls who nature
intended to become one. Readers may not like Marianne married to ‘old’ Brandon,
or Jane taking care of the crippled and blind Rochester, but the characters at least have
found their proper mates. Catherine and Heathcliff, Linton and Isabella,
brought on their own unhappiness by not following their true natures to embrace
their proper partners. And consequently, every family member suffers and is
blighted.
The cover of Fraser's book said it was 'enthralling," and I have been enthralled by the blasted lives of the Bronte family.