A Girl Walks Into a Book
Page 25
16. Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, Chapter XXIV.
17. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 2:179.
18. Allott, The Brontës, 117.
19. Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, Chapter XXXVI.
MEETING MR. ROCHESTER
1. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter XVIII.
2. Ibid., Chapter XV.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., Chapter XII.
5. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 1:198.
6. Ibid., 2:112–113.
7. Ibid., 2:655.
8. Ibid., 2:662.
9. Ibid., 2:680.
10. Ibid., 2:492.
11. Ibid., 2:699.
12. Ibid., 2:606.
13. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter XXXI.
HELEN GRAHAM AND BRANWELL BRONTË
1. Allott, The Brontës, 265.
2. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 2:745.
3. Barker, The Brontës (2012), 334.
4. Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Introduction.
5. Allot, The Brontës, 262.
6. Anne Brontë, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Chapter XLI.
7. Allott, The Brontës, 272.
8. Anne Brontë, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Chapter XLI.
9. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 2:77.
10. Ibid., 2:82.
WANDERING THE MOORS
1. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 2:139–140.
2. Ibid.
3. Patsy Stoneman, Jane Eyre on Stage, 1848–1898: An Illustrated Edition of Eight Plays with Contextual Notes (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2007), 33.
M. PAUL EMANUEL
1. Barker, The Brontës (1994), 723.
2. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 1:284.
3. Charlotte Brontë, Villette, Chapter XIV.
4. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 2:414.
5. Ibid., 2:516.
6. Charlotte Brontë, Villette, Chapter XXI.
7. Ibid., Chapter XXXIII.
8. Ibid., Chapter XXXVIII.
9. Ibid., Chapter XLI.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., Chapter XLII.
13. Charlotte Brontë, The Letters of Charlotte Brontë: With a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends, Vol. 3, 1852–1855, edited by Margaret Smith (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004), 142.
14. Allott, The Brontës, 177.
15. Ibid.
ARTHUR
1. Barker, The Brontës (1994), 752.
2. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 3:247.
3. Ibid., 3:265.
4. Barker, The Brontës (1994), 302.
5. Ibid.
6. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 2:557.
7. Barker, The Brontës: A Life in Letters, 392.
8. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 3:271.
9. Ibid., 3:248.
10. Ibid., 3:286.
11. Ibid., 3:295–297.
12. Ibid., 3:298.
13. Ibid., 3:325.
14. Ibid., 3:284.
HAWORTH
1. Lemon, Early Visitors to Haworth, 125.
2. Charlotte Brontë, Villette, Chapter VI.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Daphne Merkin, “Life on Moors,” New York Times Magazine, March 18, 2012, 37–38, 40.
6. Lemon, Early Visitors to Haworth, 73–85.
7. Ibid., 124.
8. Ibid., 126.
9. Brontë Society, Brontë Society Transactions, Vol. 1 (1895–2001).
10. Lemon, Early Visitors to Haworth, 99.
11. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 1:312.
* “Reader, I married him,” the introductory phrase that has launched a thousand wedding thank-you notes.
* And by “might,” I mean “would absolutely with no questions, hesitations, or second thoughts whatsoever, just please don’t leave me. I’ll send Adele a postcard from Monte Carlo.”
* The incomparable 2005 BBC adaptation of Jane Eyre nonsensically describes Jane and St. John as “half-cousins.” Maybe they hoped to make us all feel better about the idea of intermarriage, but it’s very strange. What would it take to be “full cousins”? Both sets of parents being siblings?
* I promise, we are not about to stumble into Eat, Pray, Brontë.
* I got an email from a reader complaining my column wasn’t as reflective and leisurely as what her friend studying in Paris was writing. Charlotte learned to stand by her work in the face of Heger’s critiques, which prepared her to face off with the critics who reviewed the Brontës’ poetry and novels.
* I always imagine this with a Lifetime movie-level of bad acting, akin to Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland putting on a show in the ol’ barn.
* It’s Lockwood, possibly the very dullest crayon in the box.
* Maybe simply, “Do Not Marry For Spite.”
* Oh, and call your child something other than its mother’s first or last name, just for clarity’s sake.
* Charlotte was nonplussed at the prospect. “They threaten to pay us a visit,” she wrote to Ellen Nussey, “they have written to ask if they can bring the carriage up to the house—we have told them ‘yes’, as we think if they bring it once through those breakneck turnings—they will not be in a hurry to try the experiment again.” And if you’d ever navigated those turns clinging to the door handle of a cab, you’d be inclined to agree. In any case, the daughters never visited a second time.
* Hussy!
* Door number two, obviously.
* The other roommate I only recently got up the nerve to contact after ten years of radio silence; one of the morals of Shirley is it’s never too late.
* The whisper came from Barb, my college mentor who had become a confidante and occasional dinner-and-a-play companion whenever she visited the city.
* George Henry Lewes, longtime paramour of George Eliot, who had been corresponding with “Currer Bell” for months.
* I have a strange track record with omens. My first date with a girl coincided with a tornado touching down in Brooklyn just blocks away from us; my first day teaching, I was almost late because of a track fire; friends suggested I get married in a bunker to reduce the risk of a tidal wave.
* Good work, Gilbert.
* One can only assume he had in mind the wretched older Eliot sister from Persuasion.
* I suspect the shilling was an allowance given him by his father or his sister.
* See, the Brontës are contagious. Much like consumption.
* I begin to feel less ridiculous about my middle school flirting habits.
* They have apparently resolved the centuries-old dispute between Catholics and Protestants—What was in those bonbons?!
* BUT WHY THOUGH?
* Charlotte was then twenty-three.
* I’m delighted to say she has since made a full recovery, and we are still trying to figure one another out.
* What a drama queen.
* Rest in peace, Oscar! He succumbed to advanced feline age just a month or so after our visit.