The winter day, crisp and clear. Deep blue sky. A cloud scurries past, a shadow moves across the face of the moor.
He is waiting at the last stile.
On the bed, Keeper reared and looked around, confused. Then he began to howl.
18
Again a funeral. Keeper joined the procession to the church, walking with calm dignity at Patrick’s side before settling into the family pew. Afterward Patrick sent his surviving daughters home to the parsonage as he had done before, because of the cold, but also because he had one more task to perform.
He turned to John Brown, about to shove the coffin back into the vault beside Branwell’s.
“Is the coffin heavy?” Patrick asked.
The sexton looked surprised but said, “It is not. She wasted away terrible, you know.”
Patrick said. “John, I hope you shall not think me mad. But do you have a pickax?”
John Brown looked askance, but decided Mr. Brontë’s request was none of his business. No one should be surprised if the old man was a bit deranged.
When John Brown returned with the tool, Patrick took it from him and said, “Leave me, John. I will call you to close in a moment.”
When John Brown hesitated, Patrick put his hand upon the younger man’s shoulder and said, “Only a moment.”
The sexton nodded and left. Patrick heard his boots ring against the hard pavement toward Church Lane.
He bent to his work. He leaned over Weightman’s coffin and struck a sharp blow against its side. Twice more and a splintered opening appeared, large enough to stick a fist through. Then Patrick turned to Emily’s coffin. He swung the pickax; the fresher wood finally gave way.
Patrick Brontë pushed the coffins together, their breaches aligned.
Outside he found John Brown leaning against the Sunday school building, smoking his pipe.
“You may close now,” Patrick said, and climbed the stairs to his front door.
EPILOGUE
Anne tried to keep busy after Emily’s funeral, for her dead sister had bequeathed a trust. Emily just managed to finish her novel, Heaven and Earth, dictating the final sentences as she lay upon the sofa in the parlor, too weak to sit up. Anne had since been recopying the manuscript, polishing it and readying it for publication.
But Anne was forced to confront her own demise, her “asthma” now certainly consumption in its last stages. She handed on the manuscript to Charlotte for safekeeping, and prepared to die.
Thus Charlotte inherited the literary legacy of her sisters. She set about the task with all diligence. First she went through her sisters’ poems and rewrote them, striking lines she did not like and supplying what she considered more appropriate substitutions.
Then she considered the novels, reluctantly, for the task gave her a great deal of pain. Her publisher, Smith Elder, offered—too generously she thought—to reprint her sisters’ work. They expected, she knew, a positive reply, and so she considered. Agnes Grey was insignificant. The tenor of the reviews for Wuthering Heights proved the book to be offensive, but perhaps too noticed to be repressed. If she might write a preface that would explain Emily’s oddities and the narrowness of her circumstances, something of her sister’s reputation might be salvaged.
But she refused to allow her publisher to reprint Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Charlotte thought it out of the question that the tale of drunken depravity and wifely rebellion should be circulated further. Such an unpleasant book, she wrote, was an entire mistake that should be forgotten. And as for Heaven and Earth—
Charlotte lay awake at night. She prayed. At last she went to Mr. Nicholls, who would soon declare himself and ask for her hand in marriage. She said, “Dear Mr. Nicholls, I need advice which my father cannot give. If you loved someone, and yet thought they might come to great harm through information you possessed, what would you do? Might you find a way to suppress that information? Would censorship, in that case, be legitimate?”
Mr. Nicholls considered, stroking his mustache, and then said, “I suppose this is not a hypothetical situation?”
“That is correct.”
“You do not wish to be specific for good reason.”
Charlotte nodded in assent.
“Such a course might be justified,” Mr. Nicholls said. “You possess the good judgment to decide whether or not that is the case.”
Charlotte sighed and said, “Thank you, Mr. Nicholls.”
Upstairs in her bedroom she added a bucket of coal to the fire in the hearth. She sat in her rocking chair, studying the flames as they leapt up. Then she stood, resolute. One tragedy could be prevented.
“Emily,” she said, “I must protect you from yourself.”
She rifled through Emily’s chest, her drawers and portable writing desk. She set the poems aside, the rest she stacked upon the bed. The old notebooks detailing the adventures and love affairs of Alexandrina Zenobia and other denizens of Gondal. The drawing of William Weightman she found beneath Emily’s old nightgowns. Weightman’s letters to Emily in Brussels.
Charlotte kept the volume of Shelley’s poetry, but tore out the title page with its inscription and added it to the pile. On top she laid the manuscript pages of the novel Heaven and Earth.
Charlotte carried the papers into her bedroom. One by one, she fed them to the fire where they turned into thin curls of gold and brown, and then into black ash.
EMILY’S GHOST
Denise Giardina
READING GROUP GUIDE
EMILY’S GHOST
Denise Giardina
READING GROUP GUIDE
DENISE GIARDINA ON EMILY’S GHOST
The story of the Brontë family has been Charlotte’s story. Charlotte’s story because she survived her sisters and brother. Charlotte’s story because her juvenile writings were preserved where her sisters’ were not, because only Charlotte’s correspondence was saved.
Charlotte’s story because she managed her sisters’ literary inheritance. Charlotte’s story because she burst the bounds of Haworth and became acquainted with London society and the literary elite of England. Charlotte’s story because she was befriended by Mrs. Gaskell, soon to be her biographer.
The people around Charlotte were first seen through Charlotte’s eyes as interpreted by Mrs. Gaskell. The uncivilized villagers of Haworth. (As one who grew up in the Appalachian Mountains, I am well acquainted with the way outsiders can condescend and misinterpret.) The eccentric, remote father and odd aunt. Branwell the depraved drunkard. Weak and insignificant Anne. Emily, unmanageable, solitary, and unfathomable. The fickle young curate who receives a few snide mentions in Mrs. Gaskell’s account as “Mr. W.” and whose death is not mentioned at all.
And Charlotte, the patient and dutiful daughter.
Both Branwell and Patrick Brontë deserve rehabilitation. We now understand alcoholism as a disease, rather than a question of willpower and moral character. Branwell deserves a second chance to be known. Charlotte’s relationship with her father was often problematic as well. Patrick opposed the marriage to his curate, Arthur Bell Nichols, in part because he feared a pregnancy would kill the diminutive Charlotte. (It did.) Charlotte resented her situation in Haworth and blamed her father. The portrait of Patrick drawn by Mrs. Gaskell has endured, and yet what we know from other sources discounts much of it entirely. I have tried to portray the Patrick Brontë who raised three strong, independent, inquiring daughters and allowed them their freedom at a time when women were expected to be hothouse plants in a parlor.
And I have tried to free Emily from Charlotte’s portrayal. Most of what we know of Emily comes from Charlotte. But now and then we get glimpses from elsewhere. For example, Charlotte’s friend Mary Taylor wrote after trying to imagine Emily socializing with English families during her stay in Brussels, “Imagine Emily turning over prints or ‘taking wine’ with any stupid fop and preserving her temper and politeness.” Mary Taylor also tells us that Emily “never took [Charlotte’s] opinion but
always had one to offer.”
And Charlotte’s words can be closely parsed. She wrote to her publisher of Emily that it was best “not to advocate the side you wish her to favour; if you do she is sure to lean in the opposite direction.” One might notice first that Charlotte assumes Emily’s positions are taken in automatic opposition to her own, rather than being assumed after serious consideration and for good reason. Then one might consider that Charlotte was a politically conservative, conventionally Victorian young woman who avidly sought to be married and escape Haworth to something like gentility.
One might then imagine Emily to be the opposite.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
When Anne wonders why it is so difficult to meet “the right man,” Emily responds, “Perhaps…God prefers tormented love. It is more interesting than contentment.” Do you agree? What makes a good love story?
Young Emily rejects the Reverend William Carus Wilson’s story of a young girl damned to eternal punishment because she doesn’t believe the girl is “real.” Later Emily thinks Mr. Wilson is also not “real.” What does Emily mean and why does she respond this way?
Is Charlotte right when she says that William Weightman is a flirt? Discuss the ways in which his sociability is both a positive and a negative quality.
Emily’s conception of a heaven close to earth is seen by the Reverend Dury as radical, even heretical. Why does Emily believe that the distance—far or near—between heaven and earth is significant?
When the sisters claim front row seats at Weightman’s lecture, Giardina writes, “Charlotte wanted knowledge more than she wanted a man, as did her sisters.” Do you think this is true? Why or why not?
From Emily’s solitary walks along the moors to the lively return from Weightman’s lecture, much of the drama in this novel takes place while the characters are walking somewhere. Why do you think these walks set the stage for conflict and connection between characters?
Why do you think Denise Giardina chose to focus on Emily Brontë? Imagine how the novel might have played out if it centered on Anne instead.
Emily’s Ghost depicts a time when the British government forbade churches to engage in charitable work. How should churches respond when their calls to mission conflict with government policy?
Do you think Emily and Weightman’s love could have existed more easily today, considering how drastically women’s roles in society have changed?
How did Giardina’s portrayal of the Brontës compare with your previous understanding?
Consider the Brontë sisters’ strong familial relationships. In their case and in general, do you think familial love is stronger than romantic love? Explain.
It is fascinating to listen in on the sisters’ late-night literary discussions. How do you suppose Emily, Charlotte, and Anne both helped and hindered one another creatively?
Was Charlotte right to burn Emily’s second novel? Is such post-humous censorship justified?
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Not Yet Drown’d
Nicole Krauss
The History of Love*
Don Lee
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Stiff
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Jessica Shattuck
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Frances Sherwood
The Book of Splendor
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*Available only on the Norton Web site: www.wwnorton.com/guides
*Available only on the Norton Web site: www.wwnorton.com/guides
*Available only on the Norton Web site: www.wwnorton.com/guides
*Available only on the Norton Web site: www.wwnorton.com/guides
*Available only on the Norton Web site: www.wwnorton.com/guides
*Available only on the Norton Web site: www.wwnorton.com/guides
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Emily's Ghost Page 31