Charlotte Bronte

by Jessica Cox

  Though critical of Wuthering Heights, Charlotte reserved her harshest criticism for Anne’s second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. She declared that her sister’s ‘choice of subject was an entire mistake’ – the result, she proposed, of a tendency towards religious melancholy Her criticism of Anne’s second novel suggests again the extent to which she was influenced by reviewers: though she sought to defend her own work in the face of unfavourable reviews, her response to criticism of her sisters’ work seems to have been to agree with those criticisms. However, while she clearly disapproved of Anne’s focus in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, a brief passage at the conclusion of The Professor suggests that she nevertheless might have sympathised with the plight of her sister’s heroine. William Crimsworth, the eponymous professor, asks his wife, Frances, ‘what she would have been had she married a harsh, envious, careless man – a profligate, a prodigal, a drunkard, or a tyrant’ – a description that anticipates the character of Arthur Huntingdon in Anne’s second novel. The exchange between the couple is significant in light of Charlotte’s later criticism of her sister’s novel, and indeed the parallels with The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are such that the scene may even have influenced Anne’s work. Frances replies:

  ‘I should have tried to endure the evil or cure it for awhile; and when I found it intolerable and incurable, I should have left my torturer suddenly and silently.’

  ‘And if law or might had forced you back again?’

  ‘What, to a drunkard, a profligate, a selfish spendthrift, and unjust fool?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I would have gone back; again assured myself whether or not his vice and my misery were capable of remedy; and if not, have left him again.’

  While Charlotte thus appears to have sympathised with the figure of the abused wife, the subject is merely a footnote in her novel, and her later criticism of Anne’s work suggests she did not consider it a suitable topic for further exploration.

  Charlotte’s criticism of her sisters’ work, so soon after their deaths when the pain of their loss was still raw, seems extraordinary. The motivation for this is suggested by the opening of her Preface, in which she alludes to the fact that, despite numerous assertions to the contrary, there remained a popular belief that Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell were one and the same person. Given the critical response to Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Charlotte’s tendency to take criticism of her work to heart, it is perhaps not surprising that she sought to distance herself from her sisters’ work. In a sense, the Preface marks the clashing of the public and private worlds of Charlotte Brontë, the collision of her personal and public selves. Seeking to protect her own reputation as a writer, she publicly disparages her sisters’ works, despite the grief she still suffered at their loss. Her denunciation of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has led to speculation that, motivated by a similar desire to avoid association with work that she considered unwise in its choice of subject, she may have destroyed Emily’s second novel. There is little direct evidence to support this, although there exists a letter from Thomas Newby to Ellis Bell that alludes to her second novel, and a letter from Charlotte to her own publishers, written shortly before Emily’s death, in which she seeks to dispel the rumour that Newby is to publish a further work by Ellis and Acton Bell. While, as some scholars have suggested, this may have been an error on Newby’s part and his letter may in fact have been intended for Anne Brontë, it nevertheless seems strange that Emily should have ceased to write at the time when her sisters were busy working on their next novels. Further, in light of Charlotte’s criticism of her sisters’ works, there can be little doubt that if she discovered her sister’s unpublished work following her death and deemed it unfit, for whatever reason, for public consumption, she would have suppressed it, perhaps in an attempt to protect her sister’s reputation.

  The new edition of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey was published in December 1850. Shortly after, Charlotte made a short trip to the Lake District to visit the writer Harriet Martineau, whom she had initially met on her visit to London in 1849. This was followed by a visit to Ellen Nussey at Birstall, which had the effect of significantly improving her spirits. Over the course of the year 1851, she received various visitors at the parsonage, including, in April, James Taylor, who worked for her publishers, Smith, Elder and Co. Charlotte’s correspondence with Ellen Nussey suggests that Taylor may have proposed, or at the very least hinted at the possibility of marriage. Charlotte was at this time thirty-five years old, and she had long ago accepted that she would probably never marry. She refused to consider James Taylor as a potential husband, in spite of the fact that her father, who had appeared distinctly averse to the idea of a marriage, seemed to welcome the prospect (as long as it was sufficiently delayed). Charlotte, however, found him neither physically attractive nor her intellectual equal. The notion that she was better off single than married to a man she could not respect thus appears to have continued to hold sway for her.

  In addition to receiving guests in Haworth, Charlotte made a number of trips, to Manchester and London among other places, the latter provoking rumours that she was to be married there, which she laughingly dismissed. During her stay in London she visited the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace a number of times (describing it as ‘a marvellous, stirring, bewildering sight’), and attended several lectures by Thackeray. The effect of this activity seems to have been to keep at bay, to some extent at least, the bouts of depression she had increasingly suffered following her siblings’ deaths (particularly around the time of the anniversary of their passing), though it also contributed to the delay in completing Villette; indeed when alone at Haworth she continued to suffer from bouts of melancholy – writing in one letter to Ellen Nussey, ‘I endure life – but whether I enjoy it or not is another question.’ She continued to worry about her father’s health, and in a revealing letter to Ellen Nussey written in March 1851, their mutual friend Mary Taylor refers, in what seems now a terrible irony given that she was to predecease her father, to the possible effect of Patrick’s death on Charlotte’s ‘weakened painstruck mind’. In December of that year, however, Emily’s dog, Keeper, died, shortly before the anniversary of Emily’s death, and this, along with a series of minor health complaints, was partly responsible for the return of Charlotte’s feelings of melancholy and depression. Medical treatment only served to exacerbate the situation – resulting in mercury poisoning at the close of the year – all of which further delayed the completion of Villette.

  With the exception of the mercury poisoning, the minor complaints that Charlotte suffered at this time were ailments to which she was prone throughout her adult life. Her letters are punctuated with references to her apparently persistent ill health – to coughs, colds, nervous headaches, stomach problems and so forth – which has led to accusations of hypochondria being levelled at the author by biographers and scholars. While there may be some truth in this, the prolonged bouts of melancholy to which she was prone, along with symptoms such as sleeplessness and loss of appetite, which tended to manifest themselves particularly during times of solitude at Haworth, suggest she suffered from clinical depression, one of the symptoms of which was her tendency towards hypochondria. Such a tendency is hardly surprising given her earlier bereavements. Her concerns over tuberculosis, the disease that had claimed the lives of all five of her siblings, led her to speculate about her own condition whenever she suffered from bouts of ill health, and to worry that she too might succumb to the disease. Charlotte’s depression was exacerbated by her solitude: though she lived with her father and servants, she spent extended periods alone. Her father kept largely to his study, and the household kept early hours; consequently Charlotte frequently spent her evenings, when the light and her poor eyesight prevented her from reading, in quiet reflection, often dwelling on the past and contrasting her position with the time when her sisters were still alive: ‘memory’, she wrote to her publisher, ‘is both sad and relentless’.


  Evidence that Charlotte suffered from depression is to be found throughout her letters: as well as the frequent references to a depressed spirit and periods of melancholy, she refers to being ‘tormented’ by ‘erratic and vague instincts’ and declares ‘my life is a pale blank and often a very weary burden,’ ‘I feel fettered – incapable.’ It is clear that her grief at her sisters’ deaths remained raw, and any reminder of their passing plunged her further into despair. Receiving a letter from Mary Taylor, now resident in New Zealand, informing her of a cousin’s death, she wrote to Ellen, ‘It ripped up half-scarred wounds with terrible force – the death-bed was just the same – breath failing &c.’ Charlotte continued to battle with periods of severe depression for several years after her sisters’ deaths – only eventually finding relief, somewhat surprisingly given her earlier attitude, through her marriage.

  Charlotte’s letters from 1851 contain almost no mention of the novel that she had begun in early 1850, and the difficulties in completing Villette continued well into the following year: writing to Margaret Wooler in March 1852, she informed her that it had been nearly four months since she had worked on the novel. In this respect, her sisters’ deaths had a profound effect not only on her personal life, but on her public life as a writer as well: a crucial effect of their deaths was the removal of the literary advice and support she had received as she strove to write Jane Eyre and a significant portion of Shirley. Her writer’s block was partly rooted in a sense of her reliance on her own judgment now that Emily and Anne were no longer there. Frustrated and disappointed by her failure to complete Villette, she resolved to refuse all invitations until after it was completed. This did not, however, prevent her from making a pilgrimage to Filey in East Yorkshire in the summer. She stayed in the guest house where she and Ellen had stayed following Anne Brontë’s death three years previously, and visited her sister’s grave at Scarborough, discovering a number of errors on the gravestone and ordering that they be rectified. Shortly after she returned to Haworth, her father fell seriously ill, and for a short time his life seemed threatened, further adding to Charlotte’s anxieties. Eventually, in October 1852, she sent the first two volumes of Villette to her publishers, and worked determinedly to finish the third, finally completing and submitting it towards the end of November.

  Now an established writer, whose identity was generally known, she remained anxious that her work be judged on its literary merits alone, and asked her publisher to consider anonymous publication – with no reference to Currer Bell, Charlotte Brontë or her previous works. This request was an attempt to ensure that Villette was not judged on the basis of or alongside her previous novels, but in its own right – undoubtedly partly influenced by the unfavourable comparisons reviewers had made between Shirley and Jane Eyre. However, Smith, Elder and Co. were, understandably, reluctant to agree to this request: the author of Jane Eyre was, after all, extremely marketable, whereas an anonymous novel would struggle to receive notice in the periodicals of the day. Charlotte was thus persuaded to abandon this idea, and the novel was published in January 1853, once again under the pseudonym of Currer Bell’, despite the fact that her true identity was now widely known. Further, the title page reminded the reader that Currer Bell’ was the Author of “Jane Eyre”, “Shirley”, etc.’, so Charlotte was unable to avoid comparisons with her earlier works.

  Villette, as many of her contemporaries agreed, is Charlotte Brontë’s most mature work. While she was relatively unsuccessful in negotiating the criticisms of Jane Eyre whilst constructing Shirley, the critical reviews of her second novel seem to have been used to better effect in improving her writing. Villette shifts from the historical setting of Shirley to a contemporary setting, whilst also shifting from the familiar landscape of Yorkshire to a less familiar European setting (in this respect, as well as in some of the plot details, Villette is a partial reworking of Charlotte’s first novel, The Professor, which remained unpublished). Perhaps in response to criticisms of her treatment of class and the woman question in Shirley, Charlotte sought to avoid offering any kind of social commentary in Villette, a fact made clear in a letter to her publishers, in which she declares, ‘I cannot write books handling the topics of the day – it is of no use trying.’ The focus of her final novel, then, is on the experiences of the heroine, although Lucy Snowe is perhaps the least likeable of all Brontë’s heroines: as her name suggests (and as Charlotte intended), she is a somewhat cold character, and frustrates the reader by withholding significant information from her narrative (the fact that Dr John and Graham Bretton are one and the same person, for instance). Though Dr John is more typical of the nineteenth-century hero, Brontë dismisses the possibility of the heroine’s union with him, and instead sets the scene for her marriage to Paul Emanuel – a character based on M. Heger, suggesting that she was still battling her feelings for him, despite having left Brussels almost a decade earlier.

  However, perhaps influenced by her own single status, Charlotte refused to provide the typical happy-ever-after ending for her heroine. Instead, the novel concludes on a note of uncertainty which suggests the possibility that Paul Emanuel has been lost at sea, but leaves open the possibility of his rescue and subsequent marriage to the heroine. The ambiguous conclusion to Villette is in stark contrast to the typical Victorian novel, with its emphasis on ‘neat’ endings – usually through death or marriage. In offering both possibilities, Villette seems to anticipate modernist fiction, which emerged over half a century later and frequently defined itself in contradistinction to Victorian narrative forms. In reality, the conclusion to Villette, though representing in some respects an experiment in fiction, was partly the result of Patrick Brontë’s influence: her father had an aversion to works that concluded on a depressing note, and was keen that Charlotte provide a happy ending to her novel. Having already conceived the notion of Paul Emanuel’s death, Charlotte only partly conceded to her father’s wishes, by leaving open the possibility of the heroine’s marriage for those readers inclined to picture it. This ambiguity resulted in readers of the novel writing to the author to demand to know her hero’s fate, but she refused to provide any concrete answers. Writing to her publisher regarding the ending, her own preference is clear:

  Drowning and Matrimony are the fearful alternatives. The merciful […] will of course choose the former and milder doom – drown him to put him out of pain. The cruel-hearted will on the contrary pitilessly impale him on the second horn of the dilemma – marrying him without ruth or compunction.

  This letter, written in March 1853, makes it clear that Charlotte remained resigned to – even welcomed – her single status, and had no intention of marrying. It is somewhat surprising, then, that the following year, she would herself choose the path she appears to reject for her heroine, and marry her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls.

  Shortly before the publication of Villette, with the novel completed and her literary career back on track, Charlotte’s personal life took an unexpected turn. With her reputation as a writer assured, and having refused several earlier proposals of marriage, at the age of thirty-six it seemed as though Charlotte had chosen the professional life of a writer over the domestic life of a wife and mother. However, at the close of 1852, she received another proposal of marriage – from Arthur Bell Nicholls, whom by this time she had known for several years. Like her earlier would-be suitors, Nicholls was refused – hardly surprising given her earlier assessment of him as a ‘highly uninteresting, narrow and unattractive specimen of the “coarser sex”‘. Two years later, however, she was to reconsider her decision and to marry Nicholls. Though Charlotte professed to be content with her single status, she was undoubtedly pained by the loneliness of her existence, and her father’s continuing ill health must inevitably have rendered the future particularly bleak. ‘I am a lonely woman and likely to be lonely,’ she wrote to Ellen around this time: ‘this excessive solitude presses too heavily.’ Nevertheless, her initial inclination was to reje
ct Nicholls’ proposal, which appears to have been largely unexpected, despite several years’ acquaintance. Patrick Brontë reacted angrily to what he perceived as his curate’s presumption in proposing to his daughter. Indeed, though Charlotte informed Ellen that she did not love Nicholls, her rejection of him was at least partly influenced by her father’s reaction, which was such on her informing him of the proposal that she hastily agreed to refuse Nicholls. Though initially disinclined to marry him, she was nevertheless distressed by her father’s behaviour, which, along with Charlotte’s refusal, led Nicholls to make arrangements to leave Haworth, where he had resided for the last eight years. He left in May 1853, deeply distressed at the prospect of moving away from the woman he loved. Though Charlotte sympathised deeply with him, she could not offer him the consolation he sought, and resigned herself to the probability, with some relief admittedly, that she would never see him again.

  Life in Haworth continued much as before, with Charlotte suffering intermittent bouts of ill health, making various trips, and receiving the occasional visitor. In September 1853, Elizabeth Gaskell visited Haworth for the first time, and the impression the visit made on her was to have a great effect on her later portrayal of Charlotte and her home in The Life of Charlotte Brontë, first published four years later. She witnessed directly the solitary nature of Charlotte’s daily life, the beauty and desolation of the surrounding moors, and what she perceived as the eccentricity of Patrick Brontë’s character. Charlotte discussed Nicholls’ proposal and her father’s reaction to it with her friend, and on returning to Manchester, Gaskell, convinced that Patrick Brontë’s antipathy to Nicholls was rooted primarily in the latter’s lack of money, surreptitiously began to make enquiries about a possible pension for Charlotte’s would-be suitor, in the hope that her friend would reconsider his proposal.