The Gothic World of the Bronte Sisters:

 


The Bronte Sisters



Sir John Everett Millais - The Blind Girl (1854)




Romanticism had several faces, one was the kind of domestic sweetness local romantic dreams, the other was the exciting, daring, and often dark side of the romantic impulse - often expressed as "foreign, "  exotic.  There was a third, very unusual brand of Romanticism, one that can be illustrated in the work (and the lives) of the Bronte sisters.  Theirs was a romance of poverty, of deprivation, of work, of self-control, and of tragedy.  The strains of this unusual manifestation of Romanticism can be seen in both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.  Neither Charlotte, nor Emily, nor Anne would have thought of themselves as Romantics, however.  They were staunch and reserved Protestants, opposed to excess of all kinds - but in such a way that their style comes to represent an excess all of its own . . . . 

 



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The Bronte Sisters

 

Any study of the Bronte Sisters might well begin with the work of yet another famous unknown woman writer, Elizabeth Gaskell.  Her "Life of Charlotte Bronte" (1857) was one of the key elements in keeping alive the readership and enthusiasm for Charlotte's (and by association, Emily's) writing.  

This material is from the web collection

of Mitsuharu Matsuoka. As is the information on Elizabeth Gaskell.

Probably the best place to start with the actual life and work of the Bronte Sisters is with the work of Elizabeth Gaskell.  Gaskell wrote the Life of Charlotte Bronte shortly after Charlotte's death.  She had a chance to interview many of the people who knew the sisters, she knew Patrick Bronte, and she was knowledgeable about the landscape that produced their unusual work.  She had already "introduced" Charlotte into the literary world of the time, and her biography was one of the key factors that created a long-term interest in the work of the Brontes.

HERE LIE THE REMAINS OF MARIA BRONTĖ, WIFE OP THE REV. P. BRONTĖ, A.B., MINISTER OF HAWORTH. HER SOUL DEPARTED TO THE SAVIOUR, SEPT. 15TH, 1821, IN THE 39TH YEAR OF HER AGE.
"Be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh." - Matthew xxiv. 44.


ALSO HERE LIE THE REMAINS OF MARIA BRONTĖ, DAUGHTER OF THE AFORESAID; SHE DIED ON THE 6TH OF MAY, 1825, IN THE 12TH YEAR OF HER AGE, AND OF ELIZABETH BRONTĖ, HER SISTER, WHO DIED JUNE 15TH, 1825, IN THE 11TH YEAR OF HER AGE.
"Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." -
Matthew xviii. 3.


HERE ALSO LIE THE REMAINS OF PATRICK BRANWELL BRONTĖ,WHO DIED SEPT. 24TH, 1848, AGED 30 YEARS. AND OF EMILY JANE BRONTĖ, WHO DIED DEC. 19TH, 1848, AGED 29 YEARS, SON AND DAUGHTER OF THE REV. P. BRONTĖ., INCUMBENT THIS STONE IS ALSO DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF ANNE BRONTĖ YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF THE REV. P. BRONTĖ, A.B. SHE DIED, AGED 27 YEARS, MAY 28TH, 1849, AND WAS BURIED AT THE OLD CHURCH, SCARBORO'.

At the upper part of this tablet ample space is allowed between the lines of the inscription; when the first memorials were written down, the survivors, in their fond affection, thought little of the margin and verge they were leaving for those who were still living. But as one dead member of the household follows another fast to the grave, the lines are pressed together, and the letters become small and cramped. After the record of Anne's death, there is room for no other. 
But one more of that generation - the last of that nursery of six little motherless children - was yet to follow, before the survivor, the childless and widowed father, found his rest. On another tablet, below the first, the following record has been added to that mournful list: - 

ADJOINING LIE THE REMAINS OF CHARLOTTE, WIFE OF THE REV. ARTHUR BELL NICHOLLS, A.B., AND DAUGHTER OF THE REV. P. BRONTĖ, A.B., INCUMBENT SHE DIED MARCH 31ST, 1855, IN THE 39TH YEAR OF HER AGE.

The Text:

For a right understanding of the life of my dear friend, Charlotte Brontė, it appears to me more necessary in her case than in most others, that the reader should be made acquainted with the peculiar forms of population and society amidst which her earliest years were passed, and from which both her own and her sisters' first impressions of human life must have been received. I shall endeavour, therefore, before proceeding further with my work, to present some idea of the character of the people of Haworth, and the surrounding districts. 

From rarely requiring the assistance of others, he comes to doubt the power of bestowing it: from the general success of his efforts, he grows to depend upon them, and to over-esteem his own energy and power. He belongs to that keen, yet short-sighted class, who consider suspicion of all whose honesty is not proved as a sign of wisdom. The practical qualities of a man are held in great respect; but the want of faith in strangers and untried modes of action, extends itself even to the manner in which the virtues are regarded; and if they produce no immediate and tangible result, they are rather put aside as unfit for this busy, striving world; especially if they are more of a passive than an active character. The affections are strong, and their foundations lie deep: but they are not - such affections seldom are - wide-spreading; nor do they show themselves on the surface. Indeed, there is little display of any of
the amenities of life among this wild, rough population. Their accost is curt; their accent and tone of speech blunt and harsh. Something of this may, probably, be attributed to the freedom of mountain air and of isolated hill-side life; something be derived from their rough Norse ancestry. They have a quick perception of character, and a keen sense of humour; the dwellers among them must be prepared for certain uncomplimentary, though most likely true, observations, pithily expressed. Their feelings are not easily roused, but their duration is lasting. Hence there is much close friendship and faithful service; and for a correct exemplification of the form in which the latter frequently appears, I need only refer the reader of Wuthering Heights to the character of " Joseph."  From the same cause come also enduring grudges, in some cases amounting to hatred, which occasionally has been bequeathed from generation to generation. I remember Miss Brontė once telling me that it was a saying round about Haworth, "Keep a stone in thy pocket seven year; turn it, and keep it seven year longer, that it may be ever ready to thine hand when thine enemy draws near." 


Gaskell's  example of  the boy bleeding to death is a case in point about the character of the Lancaster woolen-mongers.

They were grave and silent beyond their years; subdued, probably, by the presence of serious illness in the house; for, at the time which my informant speaks of, Mrs. Brontė was confined to the bed-room from which she never came forth alive. "You would not have known there was a child in the house, they were such still, noiseless, good little creatures. Maria would shut herself up (Maria, but seven!) in the 'children's study' with a newspaper, and be able to tell one everything when she came out; debates in parliament, and I don't know what all. She was as good as a mother to her sisters and brother. But there never were such good children. I used to think them spiritless, they were so different to any children I had ever seen. In part, I set it down to a fancy Mr. Brontė had of not letting them have flesh-meat to eat. It was from no wish for saving, for there was plenty and even waste in the house, with young servants and no mistress to see after them; but he thought that children should be brought up simply and hardily: so they had nothing but potatoes for their dinner; but they never seemed to wish for anything else; they were good little creatures. Emily was the prettiest." 
Mr. Brontė wished to make his children hardy, and indifferent to the pleasures of eating and dress. In the latter he succeeded, as far as regarded his daughters; but he went at his object with unsparing earnestness of purpose. Mrs. Brontė's nurse told me that one day when the children had been out on the moors, and rain had come on, she thought their feet would be wet, and accordingly she rummaged out some coloured boots which had been given to them by a friend - the Mr. Morgan, who marriedCousin Jane," she believes. These little pairs she ranged round the kitchen fire to warm; but, when the children came back, the boots were nowhere to be found; only a very strong odour of burnt leather was perceived. Mr. Brontė had come in and seen them; they were too gay and luxurious for his children, and would foster a love of dress; so he had put them into the fire. He spared nothing that offended his antique simplicity. Long before this, some one had given Mrs. Brontė a silk gown; either the make, the colour, or the material, was not according to his notions of consistent propriety, and Mrs. Brontė in consequence never wore it. But, for all that, she kept it treasured up in her drawers, which were generally locked. One day, however, while in the kitchen, she remembered that she had left the key in her drawer, and, hearing Mr. Brontė up-stairs, she augured some ill to her dress, and, running up in haste, she found it cut into shreds. 

another incident: friends of Charlotte's from Haworth:


They had a large family; and one of the elder daughters was married to a wealthy manufacturer "beyond Keighley;" she was near her confinement, when she begged that a favourite young sister might go and pay her a visit, and remain with her till her baby was born. The request was complied with; the young girl - fifteen or sixteen years of age - went. She came home, after some weeks spent in her brother-in-law's house, ill and dispirited. Inquiries were made of her by her parents, and it was discovered that she had been seduced by her sister's wealthy husband; and that the consequences of this wickedness would soon become apparent. Her angry and indignant father shut her up in her room, until he
could decide how to act; her elder sisters flouted at and scorned her. Only her mother, and she was reported to be a stern woman, had some pity on her. The tale went, that passers along the high-road at night time saw the mother and young daughter walking in the garden, weeping, long after the household were gone to bed. Nay, more; it was whispered that they walked and wept there still, when Miss Brontė told me the tale - though both had long mouldered in their graves. The wild whisperers of this story added, that the cruel father, maddened perhaps by the disgrace which had fallen upon a "religious family, offered a sum of money to any one who would marry his poor fallen daughter; that a husband was found, who bore her away from Haworth, and broke her heart, so that she died while even yet a child. 

Such deep passionate resentment would have seemed not unnatural in a man who took a stern pride in his character for religious morality; but the degrading part, after all, was this. The remaining members of the family, elder sisters even, went on paying visits at their wealthy brother-in-law's house, as if his sin was not a hundred-fold more scarlet than the poor young girl's, whose evil-doing had been so hardly resented, and so coarsely hidden. The strong feeling of the country-side still holds the descendants of this family as accursed. They fail in business, or they fail in health. 
At this house, I believe, the little Brontės paid their only visits; and these visits ceased before long. 

The Food at Cowan Bridge:

Oatmeal porridge for breakfast; a piece of oat-cake for those who required luncheon; baked and boiled beef, and mutton, potato-pie, and plain homely puddings of different kinds for dinner. At five o'clock, bread and milk for the younger ones; and one piece of bread (this was the only time at which the food was limited) for the elder pupils, who sat up till a later meal of the same description. Mr. Wilson himself ordered in the food, and was anxious that it should be of good quality. But the cook, who had much of his confidence, and against whom for a long time no one durst utter a complaint, was careless, dirty, and wasteful. To some children oatmeal porridge is distasteful, and consequently unwholesome, even when properly made; at Cowan Bridge School it was too often sent up, not merely burnt, but
with offensive fragments of other substances discoverable in it. The beef, that should have been carefully salted before it was dressed, had often become tainted from neglect; and girls, who were schoolfellows with the Brontės, during the reign of the cook of whom I am speaking, tell me that the house seemed to be pervaded, morning, noon, and night, by the odour of rancid fat that steamed out of the oven in which much of their food was prepared. There was the same carelessness in making the puddings; one of those ordered was rice boiled in water, and eaten with a sauce of treacle and sugar; but it was often uneatable, because the water had been taken out of the rain-tub, and was strongly impregnated with the dust lodging on the roof, whence it had trickled down into the old wooden cask, which also added its own flavour to that of the original rain water. The milk, too, was often " bingy," to use a country expression for a kind of taint that is far worse than sourness, and suggests the idea that it is caused by want of cleanliness about the milk pans, rather than by the heat of the weather. On Saturdays, a kind of pie, or mixture of potatoes and meat, was served up, which was made of all the fragments accumulated during the week. Scraps of meat from a dirty and disorderly larder, could never be very appetising; and, I believe, that this dinner was more loathed than any in the early days of Cowan Bridge School.

Advice by Robert Southey:

"But it is not with a view to distinction that you should cultivate this talent, if you consult your own happiness. I, who have made literature my profession, and devoted my life to it, and have never for a moment repented of the deliberate choice, think myself, nevertheless, bound in duty to caution every young man who applies as an aspirant to me for encouragement and advice, against taking so perilous a course. You will say that a woman has no need of such a caution; there can be no peril in it for her. In a certain sense this is true; but there is a danger of which I would, with all kindness and all earnestness, warn you. The day dreams in which you habitually indulge are likely to induce a distempered state of mind; and in proportion as all the ordinary uses of the world seem to you flat and unprofitable, you will be unfitted for them without becoming fitted for anything else. Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it even as proper an accomplishment and a recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are
you will be less eager for celebrity. You will not seek in imagination for excitement, of which the vicissitudes of this life, and the anxieties from which you must not hope to be exempted, be your state what it may, will bring with them but too much. 

"But do not suppose that I disparage the gift which you possess; nor that I would discourage you from exercising it. I only exhort you so to think of it, and so to use it, as to render it conducive to your own permanent good. Write poetry for its own sake; not in a spirit of emulation, and not with a view to celebrity; the less you aim at that the more likely you will be to deserve and finally to obtain it. So written, it is wholesome both for the heart and soul; it may be made the surest means, next to religion, of soothing the mind and elevating it. You may embody in it your best thoughts and your wisest feelings, and in so doing discipline and strengthen them. 

"Farewell, madam. It is not because I have forgotten that I was once young myself, that I write to you in this strain; but because I remember it. You will neither doubt my sincerity nor my good will; and however ill what has here been said may accord with your present views and temper, the longer you live the more reasonable it will appear to you. Though I may be but an ungracious adviser, you will allow me, therefore, to subscribe myself, with the best wishes for your happiness here and hereafter, your true friend, 
ROBERT SOUTHEY." 

the following material is from the first lecture, but we did not cover it that night in much depth.  Now, of course, these details are more relevant to us, in any case.  If we thought that Jane Austen's life situation was restricted, much the moreso in the case of the Bronte sisters.  Not only were they pretty much restricted to a couple of houses over the course of their years (except for one trip to the Continent), they also lived in a remote area, were confined to the life of a very small village and the even more circumscribed social circle of daughters of a local pastor.

Bronte Birthplace at Thornton

Charlotte Bronte - born here 1816 
Patrick Branwell Bronte - born here 1817 
Emily Jane Bronte - born here 1818 
Anne Bronte - born here 1820 

One of the salient facts about the Brontes is the poverty, or penury if you like, of the family situation.  As children of a man of the cloth, they lived a simple life--Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote the definitive biography of Charlotte Bronte, tell us that Reverend Bronte allowed only potatoes at most meals, as a way of conserving resources.  This one fact, though, begins to tell us much about women and writing.  Isolated from society, kept to the house except when tending to duties of the parish, and living largely in a world of their own making, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne nevertheless were able to write.  It is an activity, one of the very few, that one can do almost anywhere, with or without means, equipment, support, or formal training.  And so, for women, it was one of the few ways to engage the world if one were without status. 

In 1824, the four eldest daughters were sent to Cowan Bridge School, a school for daughters of impoverished clergymen. The conditions were harsh and an epidemic soon broke out, taking the lives of Maria and Elizabeth. Charlotte became very ill as well, and she and Emily were sent home to Haworth. In 1835, Charlotte became a teacher at Roe Head school and Emily joined her as a student. Emily, however, could not stand being away from her beloved moors, and became violently homesick. She returned home and her younger sister, Anne, took her place.

Emily began writing poems at an early age and published twenty-one of them, together with poems by Anne and Charlotte, in 1846. The slim volume was titled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Only two copies were sold, and the failure led all three to begin work on novels: Emily on Wuthering Heights, Charlotte on Jane Eyre, and Anne on Agnes Grey. 

The town of Haworth, near Bradford, where Rev. Bronte was parson.

the following photograph is from a postcard from the Bronte County site.  There are lots of other post cards there relating to the Bronte's life and works.

And why should this be so?

The ththe The Moors Near Stanbury.  Model for Wuthering Heights.

What is most notable about these images of the country in which the Bronte sisters lived and walked and wrote, is the loneliness of it, the remote quality of an outpost of sorts, the place where we would least expect the "famous family" of English literature to originate.  Literature, we are tempted to imagine, comes from learned and sophisticated individuals, raised in cities, nurtured by universities, and steeped in the classics.  The Bronte children did, indeed, read widely, but in almost every other requirement for great writers, they rank near the bottom.  And yet, it would seem, the quality of the literature we cherish is some species of inner truth, a plumbing of the soul that speaks to people throughout the ages, across culture, and regardless of station in life. 

So it is that we are fortunate to study women writers this semester.  Good literature does appeal to us in a universal sense.  We will be looking at a kind of survey of the major British and American writers of the last five centuries--and we will also be reading from women writers of other cultures and times--Ancient Chinese women poets, Japanese poets, Persian writers, African novelists, and South American short story writers.  All of these women worked, in one way or another, under conditions unfavorable to the creation of great literature: they wrote in isolation, they went unread, they struggled with poverty and unfortunate circumstance, their works were burned or vilified.  And yet, somehow, women have gone on writing, and have left us a magnificent heritage.

Continue with Lecture 9

Literature 45  - Women in Literature :  

Marjorie C. Luesebrink, MFA

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