Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

I did it! I finished all the books I committed myself to when signing up for the All About The Brontes Challenge last year. Fortunately, Agnes Grey proved a much quicker read than the other novels, allowing me to complete the challenge. How little I perceived the life events that would hinder my attempts to finish the challenge on time when I signed up last fall! How happy I am to have reached my goal in spite of those life events! I thoroughly enjoyed rediscovering Anne and Charlotte's lesser known novels but, in the future, I will think twice before committing myself to any similar challenges, as it has proven rather stressful.

Though Agnes Grey is Anne Bronte's best known novel, I think The Tenant of Wildfell Hall a far better read. The story of Agnes Grey, while it contains some romance to hold the plot together, is more a documentary on the life of a governess than a novel. It is, therefore, a perfect companion piece to Jane Eyre, and that is probably why it is so much better known than The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. However, Anne indulges in none of the Gothic extravagances of her sisters. Though her books are marked by female suffering, born out of social limitations, they are always relieved by a happy ending in the form of a loving marriage. In this way, her books are far more akin to Jane Austen's than to her sisters'. Both writers are concerned with marriage as the one true haven for the educated lady of the19th century and the anguish that ensues when it is entered into lightly. Of course, Anne is a Bronte, so we cannot expect anything light, bright, and sparkling (as is Austen's style) from her. Still, I like to imagine that she both read and loved Austen. There are moments in the book that seem to be direct parallels to Austen's work. For instance, one of Agnes' charges is a spoiled and flirtatious young woman named Miss Murray. Let's look at a scene in which she rejects the proposal of a pompous clergyman:

‘I proudly drew myself up, and with the greatest coolness expressed my astonishment at such an occurrence, and hoped he had seen nothing in my conduct to justify his expectations.  You should have seen how his countenance fell!  He went perfectly white in the face.  I assured him that I esteemed him and all that, but could not possibly accede to his proposals; and if I did, papa and mamma could never be brought to give their consent.’

‘“But if they could,” said he, “would yours be wanting?”

‘“Certainly, Mr. Hatfield,” I replied, with a cool decision which quelled all hope at once.  Oh, if you had seen how dreadfully mortified he was - how crushed to the earth by his disappointment! really, I almost pitied him myself.

‘One more desperate attempt, however, he made.  After a silence of considerable duration, during which he struggled to be calm, and I to be grave - for I felt a strong propensity to laugh - which would have ruined all - he said, with the ghost of a smile - “But tell me plainly, Miss Murray, if I had the wealth of Sir Hugh Meltham, or the prospects of his eldest son, would you still refuse me?  Answer me truly, upon your honour.”

‘“Certainly,” said I.  “That would make no difference whatever.”

‘It was a great lie, but he looked so confident in his own attractions still, that I determined not to leave him one stone upon another.  He looked me full in the face; but I kept my countenance so well that he could not imagine I was saying anything more than the actual truth.

‘“Then it’s all over, I suppose,” he said, looking as if he could have died on the spot with vexation and the intensity of his despair.  But he was angry as well as disappointed.  There was he, suffering so unspeakably, and there was I, the pitiless cause of it all, so utterly impenetrable to all the artillery of his looks and words, so calmly cold and proud, he could not but feel some resentment; and with singular bitterness he began - “I certainly did not expect this, Miss Murray.  I might say something about your past conduct, and the hopes you have led me to foster, but I forbear, on condition - ”

‘“No conditions, Mr. Hatfield!” said I, now truly indignant at his insolence.

‘“Then let me beg it as a favour,” he replied, lowering his voice at once, and taking a humbler tone: “let me entreat that you will not mention this affair to anyone whatever.  If you will keep silence about it, there need be no unpleasantness on either side - nothing, I mean, beyond what is quite unavoidable: for my own feelings I will endeavour to keep to myself, if I cannot annihilate them - I will try to forgive, if I cannot forget the cause of my sufferings.  I will not suppose, Miss Murray, that you know how deeply you have injured me.  I would not have you aware of it; but if, in addition to the injury you have already done me - pardon me, but, whether innocently or not, you have done it - and if you add to it by giving publicity to this unfortunate affair, or naming it at all, you will find that I too can speak, and though you scorned my love, you will hardly scorn my - ”

‘He stopped, but he bit his bloodless lip, and looked so terribly fierce that I was quite frightened.  However, my pride upheld me still, and I answered disdainfully; “I do not know what motive you suppose I could have for naming it to anyone, Mr. Hatfield; but if I were disposed to do so, you would not deter me by threats; and it is scarcely the part of a gentleman to attempt it.”

‘“Pardon me, Miss Murray,” said he, “I have loved you so intensely - I do still adore you so deeply, that I would not willingly offend you; but though I never have loved, and never can love any woman as I have loved you, it is equally certain that I never was so ill-treated by any.  On the contrary, I have always found your sex the kindest and most tender and obliging of God’s creation, till now.”  (Think of the conceited fellow saying that!)  “And the novelty and harshness of the lesson you have taught me to-day, and the bitterness of being disappointed in the only quarter on which the happiness of my life depended, must excuse any appearance of asperity.  If my presence is disagreeable to you, Miss Murray,” he said (for I was looking about me to show how little I cared for him, so he thought I was tired of him, I suppose) - “if my presence is disagreeable to you, Miss Murray, you have only to promise me the favour I named, and I will relieve you at once.  There are many ladies - some even in this parish - who would be delighted to accept what you have so scornfully trampled under your feet.  They would be naturally inclined to hate one whose surpassing loveliness has so completely estranged my heart from them and blinded me to their attractions; and a single hint of the truth from me to one of these would be sufficient to raise such a talk against you as would seriously injure your prospects, and diminish your chance of success with any other gentleman you or your mamma might design to entangle.”

‘“What do your mean, sir?” said I, ready to stamp with passion.

‘“I mean that this affair from beginning to end appears to me like a case of arrant flirtation, to say the least of it - such a case as you would find it rather inconvenient to have blazoned through the world: especially with the additions and exaggerations of your female rivals, who would be too glad to publish the matter, if I only gave them a handle to it.  But I promise you, on the faith of a gentleman, that no word or syllable that could tend to your prejudice shall ever escape my lips, provided you will - ”

‘“Well, well, I won’t mention it,” said I.  “You may rely upon my silence, if that can afford you any consolation.”

‘“You promise it?”

‘“Yes,” I answered; for I wanted to get rid of him now.

‘“Farewell, then!” said he, in a most doleful, heart-sick tone; and with a look where pride vainly struggled against despair, he turned and went away: longing, no doubt, to get home, that he might shut himself up in his study and cry - if he doesn’t burst into tears before he gets there.’

‘But you have broken your promise already,’ said I, truly horrified at her perfidy.

‘Oh! it’s only to you; I know you won’t repeat it.’

That was rather long, I know, but there is a bit of a point to this. Miss Murray is precisely the kind of young lady who aspires "to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man", which no Austen heroine would ever do, but it feels like there are several parallels in this scene to both Mr. Collins' proposal to Elizabeth and even more so to Mr. Elton's proposal to Emma. Mr. Hatfield's situation is very much like Mr. Elton's in that he has good reason to believe he has been given encouragement. His anger and disappointment, too, remind me of "Mr. E". He too is quick to marry another lady of less distinction than his first aspiring choice. 

Anne Bronte's tale is far from a lighthearted romance, but like Austen she is a studier of character and her books teach their readers to judge people by their actions, not their words. Perhaps Agnes is the type of heroine who would laugh, along side Lizzy and Emma, at the foibles of her neighbors, but as life has put her in the power of characters like Caroline Bingley, Lady Catherine, and Mrs. Elton, her circumstances are no laughing matter. Agnes Grey might be seen as a companion piece to Jane Eyre, but I also find it a valuable supplement to Austen's work, reminding us that while many characters are unpleasant to interact with socially, they must be far more intolerable to work for.

Read my other All About The Brontes Challenge reviews:

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
The Professor
Villette
Shirley

Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen: Rediscovering Shirley

I'm supposed to be posting the second part of Persuasion Janeicillin today - for those who are fiending, I will try to make good tomorrow - but I am "all alive" with Shirley, as Lady Bertram might phrase it, and with the All About the Brontes challenge wrapping up in two weeks (while Agnes Grey remains unread - it will be a small miracle if I get to it in time!), I must spend the day with Charlotte, rather than my dear Jane. My apologies for the diversion, but there really is no help for it.

I first read Shirley in eleventh grade, and all I remembered about it when I picked it up again a month ago (lesson learned: never begin a long, serious read while moving) was that it wasn't until the second volume that the title character is introduced. The book made very little impression on me and, consequently, reading Shirley now was like discovering a whole new Bronte book. And what a discovery it was! I did not know (or remember, as the case may be) that Charlotte could write with so little perversity (excuse the word use - as Miss Bronte herself might say, "Find me an English word as good, reader," and I will gladly adopt it). Nor did I know she was funny! In summation, nothing at all prepared me to discover in Shirley that Charlotte Bronte could be so very much like and owe such a vast debt to Jane Austen.

I understand that what I just said flies in the face of all common perception about these beloved authoresses. It is, after all, a truth universally acknowledged that Bronte disdained Austen's "ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses." Yet I could not help but wonder as I read Shirley, so remarkably unlike Bronte's other novels, if the book wasn't a response to Austen, an attempt to adopt and improve on her themes, with a good dose of Charlotte's vaunted "Passion" thrown into the mix. We know for certain that Bronte had read both Pride and Prejudice and Emma, as she specifically commented on them in her letters. I would argue that she had, at least, also read Sense and Sensibility, but more on that in a moment. Let us first turn our attention to Pride and Prejudice. Bronte made the following famous comments on January 12th, 1848, in a letter to George Lewes:

Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would rather have written Pride and Prejudice or  Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley novels?


I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I had read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerrotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses. These observations will probably irritate you, but I shall run the risk.

This correspondence took place at the beginning of the year in which she began writing Shirley. It is also the year that ended with the tragic deaths of her brother, Branwell, in September and Emily in December. The following March of 1849, a letter to her publisher tells us that she had already submitted the majority of the first volume but put it aside when death struck her family. Though May brought the death of Anne, she still finished the book by the end of August. Yet despite these horrible events, Charlotte produced her very happiest of novels. Don't get me wrong, there is still plenty of angst and despair to delight even the most morbid devotees of Jane Eyre (how could there not be?), but here is a novel about a small community - "three or four families in a country village", painted on a "bit (two inches wide) of ivory", worked "with so fine a brush" - that takes place in the same year as Pride and Prejudice, about two ladies crossed in love, in which the heroines are not introduced until the narrative is well underway, that is in Austen's third person style (as opposed to the first person, favored by the Brontes), that concludes summarily, just like Austen ends all of her novels, and which includes characters and circumstances that highly resemble Austen's. Let's have a look, shall we?

The first chapter of the book introduces us to the curates of the area in which we are concerned: Mr. Malone of Briarfield (where our main characters reside), Mr Donne of Whinbury, and Mr. Sweeting of Nunnely, all of whom are minor character and provide comic relief to the book. In both of the Austen books we know Bronte read, members of the clergy (Mr. Collins and Mr. Elton) are held up as examples of the ridiculous. Of course, as Bronte is nothing if not devout, there are several other clergymen in Shirley to represent the virtues of the race, but on the three curates she has little mercy. The best example of this is when Mr. Malone and Mr. Donne pay a visit to Shirley Keeler (our second heroine, and the hieress of the neighborhood). After her dog, Tartar, chases both men through the house, in an almost slapstick scene, Mr. Malone tries to be charming:

He talked to the ladies by fits and starts, choosing for topics whatever was most intensely commonplace; he sighed deeply, significantly, at the close of every sentence; he sighed in each pause; he sighed ere he opened his mouth. At last, finding it desirable to add ease to his other charms, he drew forth to aid him an ample silk pocket-handkerchief. This was to be the graceful toy with which his unoccupied hands were to trifle. He went to work with a certain energy: he folded the red and yellow square cornerwise; he whipped it open with a waft: again he folded it in narrower compass: he made of it a handsome band. To what purpose would he proceed to apply that ligature? Would he wrap it around his throat - his head? Should it be a comforter or a turban? Neither. Peter Augustus had an inventive - an original genius: he was about to show the ladies graces of action possessing at least the charm of novelty. He sat on the chair with his athletic Irish legs crossed, and these legs, in that attitude, he circled with the bandanna and bound firmly together.

Would not Mr. Bennet have a field day with him? Meanwhile, Mr. Donne attempts to collect money for a church project from Shirley:

"Wretched place - this Yorkshire," he went on. "I could never have formed an idear of the country had I not seen it; and the people - rich and poor - what a set! How corse and uncultivated! They would be scouted in the south."


Shirley leaned forwards on the table, her nostrils dilating a little, her taper fingers interlaced and compressed each other hard.

"The rich," pursued the infatuated and unconscious Donne, "are a parcel of misers - never living as persons with their incomes ought to live: you scarsley - (you must excuse Mr Donne's pronunciation, reader; it was very choice; he considered it genteel, and prided himself on his southern accent; northern ears received with singular sensations his utterance of certain words); you scarsley eversee a fam'ly where a propa carriage or a reg'la butla is kep; and as to the poor - just look at them when they come crowding about the church-doors on the occasion of a marriage or a funeral, clattering in clogs; the men in their shirt-sleeves and wool-combers' aprons, the women in mob-caps and bed-gowns. They pos'tively deserve that one should turn a mad cow in amongst them to rout their rabble-ranks - he! he! What fun it would be!"

A sure method of loosening the purse-strings, undoubtedly! About as appropriate as Mr. Darcy's first proposal (Shirley, by the way, can boast of its own botched proposal scene). In none of her other books would I categorize the caricatures Bronte paints as humorous.

Another character that reminds me of one of Austen's is Hortense Moore, the unmarried sister of the novel's two heroes. The Moores have returned to England after having been raised in Belgium, where their family were highly respected and successful merchants. The younger generation has inherited a bankrupt company from their parents and Robert Moore, the elder brother, is determined to repay his debt and renew his fortune. For this reason he has come to Yorkshire, where he runs a mill while Hortense keeps house. It is in this proud lady, officious and indomitable even in reduced circumstances, that I see a likeness to Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Now, one must imagine what Lady Catherine would be like without her title, position, Rosings Park, and as an alien in a foreign land. Listen to this speech of Hortense's, regarding her cousin Caroline Helstone (the first heroine of the novel, though not its namesake), to whom she teaches French:

"She does not, she appreciates me better than any one else here; but then she has more intimate opportunities of knowing me: she sees that I have education, intelligence, manner, principles; all, in short, which belongs to a person well born and well bred."


"Are you fond of her?"


"For fond - I cannot say: I am not one who is prone to take violent fancies, and, consequently, my friendship is the more to be depended on. I have a regard for her as my relative; her position also inspired my interest, and her conduct as my pupil has hitherto been such as rather to enhance than diminish the attachment that springs from other causes."


"She behaves pretty well at lessons?"


"To me she behaves very well; but you are conscious, brother, that I have a manner calculated to repel over-familiarity, to win esteem, and to command respect. Yet, possessed of penetration, I perceive clearly that Caroline is not perfect; that there is much to be desired in her."


"Give me a last cup of coffee, and while I am drinking it amuse me with an account of her faults."


"Dear brother, I am happy to see you eat your breakfast with relish, after the fatiguing night you have passed. Caroline, then, is defective; but, with my forming hand and almost motherly care, she may improve. There is about her an occasional something - a reserve, I think - which I do not quite like, because it is not sufficiently girlish and submissive; and there are glimpses of an unsettled hurry in her nature, which put me out. Yet she is usually most tranquil, too dejected and thoughtful indeed sometimes. In time, I doubt not, I shall make her uniformly sedate and decorous, without being unaccountably pensive. I ever disapprove of what is unintelligible."

I know I cannot prove a directly correlation, but when I read these lines I could almost see Lady Catherine. Perhaps I am just so Austen crazy that I see her everywhere. I admit it is possible, but I have yet to finish stating my case.

In April of 1850, admittedly after the completion of Shirley, Bronte commented on Emma in a letter to W.S. Williams. Though she does not say she only just read Emma, which she specifies in her comments on Pride and Prejudice, I think it is reasonable to argue that both books were quite possibly read around the same time. She writes:

I have likewise read one of Miss Austen's works, Emma - read it with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable -- anything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, or heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré and extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well; there is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy in the painting: she ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound: the Passions are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy Sisterhood; even to the Feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition; too frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth elegance of her progress.

I find this passage fascinating - mostly because it is such a fabulous illustration of Charlotte's obsession with personification, but also because it shows she has thought deeply about Austen's work, even if she finds it lacking. In fact, I believe Miss Bronte was amongst those who do not particularly care for Emma Woodhouse, largely based on chapter ten of Shirley, entitled "Old Maids".

Caroline Helstone - for her own reasons, which I will not disclose - has determined that she will never marry. She is not pleased with this decision; unlike another heroine, the single life holds no charms for her and inspires compassion for those who have long endured it:

"How wrong it is to neglect people because they are not pretty, and young, and merry! And I will certainly call to see Miss Mann, too: she may not be amiable; but what has made her unamiable? What has life been to her?"

Here is a young lady who would never dare scoff at Miss Bates. The entire chapter reads like a rebuke to Miss Woodhouse, consisting of visits to two ladies: the aforementioned Miss Mann and a Miss Ainley. Hear what the authoress says of Miss Mann:

Communicative on her own affairs she was usually not, because no one cared to listen to her; but to-day she became so, and her confidant shed tears as she heard her speak: for she told of cruel, slow-wasting, obstinate sufferings. Well might she be corpse-like; well might she look grim, and never smile; well might she wish to avoid excitement, to gain and retain composure! Caroline, when she knew all, acknowledged that Miss Mann was rather to be admired for fortitude than blamed for moroseness. Reader! when you behold an aspect for whose constant gloom and frown you cannot account, whose unvarying cloud exasperates you by its apparent causelessness, be sure that there is a canker somewhere, and a canker not the less deeply corroding because concealed.

And on Miss Ainley:

Miss Helstone studied well the mind and heart now revealed to her. She found no high intellect to admire: the old maid was merely sensible; but she discovered so much goodness, so much usefulness, so much mildness, patience, truth, that she bent her own mind before Miss Ainley's in reverence. What was her love of nature, what was her sense of beauty, what were her more varied and fervent emotions, what was her deeper power of thought, what her wider capacity to comprehend, compared to the practical excellence of this good woman? Momently, they seemed only beautiful forms of selfish delight; mentally, she trod them underfoot.

Charlotte Bronte must not have been satisfied with Mr. Knightley's rebuke: "It was badly done, indeed!" She seems to have felt the need to illustrate just how unjust and cruel Emma was; to let the world know just how little she values intelligence and superiority of mind when compared with unpretentious goodness.

I think the influence of Sense and Sensibility can also be found at the end of this chapter, but before examining why, lets return to that correspondence with George Lewes in January of 1848. On the 18th she wrote:

You say I must familiarise my mind with the fact that "Miss Austen is not a poetess, has no "sentiment" (you scornfully enclose the word in inverted commas), "has no eloquence, none of the ravishing enthusiasm of poetry"; and then you add, I must  "learn to acknowledge her as one of the greatest artists, of the greatest painters of human character, and one of the writers with the nicest sense of means to an end that ever lived". The last point only will I ever acknowledge. ... Miss Austen being, as you say, without "sentiment", without poetry, maybe is sensible (more real than true), but she cannot be great. 

She goes on to say:

With infinitely more relish can I sympathise with Miss Austen's clear common sense and subtle shrewdness. If you find no inspiration in Miss Austen's page, neither do you find mere windy wordiness; to use your words over again, she exquisitely adapts her means to her end; both are very subdued, a little contracted, but never absurd.

This argument over the semantics of sentiment verses the sentimental smacks too much of "sense and sensibility" to be coincidental, especially in reference to Austen. Furthermore, see what Caroline determines to do after her visits to Miss Mann and Miss Ainley:

Caroline went home, laid her plans, and took a resolve not to swerve from them. She allotted a certain portion of her time for her various studies, and a certain portion for doing anything Miss Ainley might direct her to do; the remainder was to be spent in exercise; not a moment was to be left for the indulgence of such fevered thoughts as had poisoned last Saturday evening. 

Sound familiar? Something like  Marianne Dashwood's "course of serious study"? However much Bronte might sneer at Austen's lack of sentiment, she seems happy to compliment her sense. It is sense that Miss Helstone has, without forsaking sensibility, as acknowledged in the following passage (spoiler alert!), which occurs after the man she loves greets her coldly, much like Willoughby does to Marianne when they meet at the party in London:

Now, what was she to do? - to give way to her feelings, or to vanquish them? To pursue him, or to turn upon herself? If she is weak, she will try the first expedient, - will lose his esteem and win his aversion: if she has sense, she will be her own governor, and resolve to subdue and bring under guidance the disturbed realm of her emotions. She will determine to look on life steadily, as it is; to begin to learn its severe truths seriously, and to study its knotty problems closely, conscientiously.


It appeared she had a little sense, for she quitted Robert quietly, without complaint or question - without the alteration of a muscle or the shedding of a tear - betook herself to her studies under Hortense as usual, and at dinner-time went home without lingering.

Perhaps I am just obsessed with Austen, but this seems to me a clear discourse on the subject matter of Sense and Sensibility. In fact, her heroines, Caroline and Shirley, could be seen as parallel representatives of Elinor and Marianne - sense and sensibility - respectively. In the introduction to my Penguin Classics edition of this book, Andrew and Judith Hook see the two heroines as representations of Charlotte's recently departed sisters: "Charlotte poured her feelings for her sisters into the characters of Shirley Keeldar (Emily) and Caroline Helstone (Anne)." If so, my characterizing of each as "sense " and "sensibility" is strongly supported  by their respective writing styles.

All I'm really attempting to do here today is prove that there are more connections between these great authoresses than convention typically allows.  Perhaps I am grasping at straws. Still, I think Shirley is by far the most interesting Bronte book to read through an Austen tinged lens. In it, Charlotte writes, "every character in this book will be found to be more or less imperfect, my pen refusing to draw anything in the model line". Jane's, "Pictures of perfection, you know, make me sick and wicked," is awfully similar. If nothing else, the former quote, from early in the novel, was enough  to inspire this entire exercise. I found it enjoyable and hope my readers don't deem it futile.

For both the opinions of Charlotte Bronte and other notables on our dear Miss Austen, visit Pemberley.com.

Read my other All About The Brontes challenge reviews:

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
The Professor
Villette

Villette by Charlotte Bronte

It was with both joy and trepidation that I opened my very well-worn copy of Villette, the same one I first devoured in an eleventh grade English class. I have always written in my books, at least those I read in school, and the text is covered in enthusiastic exclamations, all made with the same black pen (it used to be my habit to use one pen, and one pen only, until it ran out of ink). To my teenage mind, Villette was the greatest book ever written. Ever since I have readily included it amongst my favorites, but I haven't read it in fifteen years, only now having the excuse to do so as part of the All About the Brontes Challenge, hosted by Laura's Reviews.


Since the age of sixteen, my tastes and habit have altered somewhat drastically. I often liken myself at the time to Marianne Dashwood - passionate, romantic, and prone to melodramatic displays.  Villette thrilled my teenage sensibilities, but I wondered if my adult sense could revel in such abject misery as I clearly remembered this book to contain. I think my anxiety reasonable, especially in light of my having already discovered that neither Jane Eyre nor Wuthering Heights move me as they once did, but it proved needless. While Villette no longer (thankfully) caused my emotions to plummet into those glorious depths of despair I once relished, it still awed me, perhaps more than ever, for it it one of the most beautifully written books it has ever been my privilege to read.


In many ways, Villette is a book of "sense and sensibility", here termed "Reason" and either "Feeling" or "Hope", which are at war within our heroine, Lucy Snowe. Like Marianne determines to "enter on a course of serious study", as a means of regulating her mind, Lucy employs similar methods to calm her fevered mind, doing her best to check her repressed, passionate nature, but to no avail:

I tried different expedients to sustain and fulfill existence: I commenced an elaborate piece of lace-work, I studied German pretty hard, I undertook a course of regular reading of the driest and thickest books in the library; in all my efforts I was as orthodox as I knew how to be. Was there error somewhere? Very likely. I only know the result was as if I had gnawed a file to satisfy hunger, or drank brine to quench thirst.

Similar to Jane Eyre, Lucy Snowe has a fiery personality that is forced into restraint by her extremely restricted circumstances. She mourns the loss of all her family (in a manner never detailed) with very few pleasures to ease her pain. The demands of existence, when most pressing, allow her to act as she must for survival, but when left without occupation her mind reveals how diseased it is. The modern reader instantly recognizes in Lucy a woman suffering from severe depression. Indeed, Bronte is remarkably current in her portrayal of mental illness, her depiction at times resembling that of Sylvia Plath's in The Bell Jar, and the symptoms corresponding precisely to those listed in the DSM (I could so easily turn this post into a very long essay on psychology, which would fit very well with my discussion of physiognomy in my review of The Professor, but as I didn't get much positive feedback on that diatribe, I will spare you further musing along such lines now):

Indeed there was no way to keep well under the circumstances. At last a day and night of peculiarly agonizing depression were succeeded by physical illness, I took perforce to my bed. About this time the Indian summer closed and the equinoctial storms began; and for nine dark and wet days, of which the Hours rushed on all turbulent, deaf, disheveled - bewildered with sounding hurricane - I lay in a strange fever of the nerves and blood. Sleep went quite away. I used to rise in the night, look round for her, beseech her earnestly to return. A rattle of the window, a cry of the blast only replied - Sleep never came!

Lucy suffers throughout this book, her difficult existence only lightened by small tastes of happiness, which are inevitably snatched from her. When we examine Bronte's biography, this dismal world view begins to make sense. Villette was written shortly after the loss of her almost her entire family, Branwell, Emily, and Anne, between September of 1848 and May of 1849. Like Lucy, Charlotte was left alone and isolated with her grief. It is easy to understand why such a morbid novel was written under these circumstances, and all I can conclude is that there is a great deal of merit to the notion that great suffering produces great art. Pain oozes from this book's pages, the emotion alive and raw. Rereading Villette has caused me to better understand Bronte's famous criticisms of Austen. Sneeringly she wrote:

I have likewise read one of Miss Austen's works, Emma -- read it with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable -- anything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, or heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré and extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well; there is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy in the painting: she ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound: the Passions are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy Sisterhood; even to the Feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition; too frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth elegance of her progress.

When compared to Bronte's masochistic suffering, Austen may indeed appear passionless. Is  this not an extension of the sense verses sensibility debate? Austen, just like Elinor Dashwood, would have smiled at Bronte's observations, content in her knowledge that she is very well-acquainted with "the stormy Sisterhood", but need not impose her internal, private torments on others. Bronte, like Marianne, would have railed against such stoicism: "Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise." Both authors confronted their fair share of life's torments and dealt with such trials according to their individual creeds: sense and reason on the one side, sensibility and feeling on the other. While I am overcome by admiration for Bronte's genius, I think Austen's approach a better prescription for happiness. In Persuasion, Anne Elliot observes that "it was the misfortune of poetry to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly." Villette is just such poetry, safest when admired from a distance.  If a teenage girl of similar disposition to myself asked me if I would recommend this book, I would hesitate before doing so. Austen is much safer reading for the Mariannes of the world.




Read my other All About the Brontes reviews:


The Tenent of Wildfell Hall


The Professor

The Professor by Charlotte Bronte

Rereading The Professor after all these years was fascinating, but I have been dawdling for three weeks now over this post and still feel uninspired. My first issue is that I have to somehow relate it all back to Jane Austen, as I declared I would upon accepting the All About the Brontes Challenge. Secondly, I don't want to engage in the rather boring exercise of critiquing a text that is blatantly stamped with all the hallmarks of "a first attempt", despite the authoress' protests to the contrary in her preface. Where does this leave me? After assuring you that this tale of a young man making his way in the world, finally finding his path at a Belgium boarding school, is very worthwhile reading in spite of its foibles (or, perhaps, because of them), I propose to write about some archaic nonsense, which I shall impose upon my reading and thereby color it . What kind of archaic nonsense did I have in mind? Have you ever heard of the noble Science of Physiognomy?

In brief, and according to Wikipedia, physiognomy "is the assessment of a person's character or personality from their outer appearance, especially the face." In essence, facial features are said to be measures of intelligence, kindness, stupidity, and madness. It belongs to the same school of thought as phrenology, but physiognomy has the added distinction of being highly subscribed to by the artists of the time. Its influence is easy to see in Victorian literature, writers often describing their characters' "physiognomies" in depth. The Brontes are no exception; indeed, Charlotte is the darling of feminist literary theorists exploring the implications of the physiognomy of madwomen. In The Professor, William Crimsworth judges everyone based upon such notions, from his estranged brother's wife ...

I sought her eye, desirous to read there the intelligence which I could not discern in her face or hear in her conversation; it was merry, rather small; by turns I saw vivacity, vanity, coquetry, look out through its irid, but I watched in vain for a glimpse of a soul.

... to the entire Flemish race (of whom I beg will take no offense at the following quote) ...

Flamands they certainly were, and both had the true Flamand physiognomy, where intellectual inferiority is marked in lines none can mistake; still they were men, and, in the main, honest men; and I could not see why their being aboriginals of the flat, dull soil should serve as a pretext for treating them with perpetual severity and contempt.

The novel even catalogs his students, in almost epic style, based upon such observances of their appearance and characters. Physiognomy is so much an assumption that we must conclude that, for Charlotte, it was a truth, as incontestable as God.

Here's where Jane, with a mischievous smile, chimes in with a witty set down, for well she knows that while "one [might have] all the goodness" another might have "all the appearance of it." Austen pays not the slightest heed to physiognomy, which was only just coming into prevalence during her lifetime. In fact, she emphatically warns us how deceptive appearances can be in the form of charming rascal after charming rascal: Willoughby, Wickham, Crawford, Churchill, and Elliot. The entire plots of Pride & Prejudice and Emma are based upon how one should never make assumptions based upon appearance. Austen barely even provides a basic description of her heroines' looks, drawing only the vaguest pictures of what these ladies look like (to the convenience of modern cinema).

On that note, I abruptly wrap up my musings on physiognomy and leave you with one last quote from and thought on The Professor, having absolutely no relevance to the previous subject. I find it remarkable that Charlotte Bronte, the orchestrator of all Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester's violent emotions, wrote the following:

Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, they would give us fewer pictures chequered with vivid contrasts of light and shade; they would seldom elevate their heroes and heroines to the heights of rapture - still seldomer sink them to the depths of despair; for if we rarely savour the acrid bitterness of hopeless anguish ...

Though this is the policy she employed in writing The Professor, we'll see how well she adheres to it in Villette, my favorite Bronte novel and the one which I am reading next.

Read my review of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Apologies and Plans

Many of you are aware that I am in the first trimester of pregnancy and those of you who have been here before will perfectly understand what I mean when I say my brain just isn't working right. The image to the left (snagged it from the Early Signs of Pregnancy website) is not me, but aptly demonstrates how I feel right now. I've started several posts this week but just can't finish them - my thoughts are incoherent and rambling. Plus, the doctors have been treating me like a pincushion, taking tons of blood and administering all kinds of injections. I have a lifelong phobia of needles, resulting in my feeling very out of sorts this week. I apologize for my current, totally unproductive state.

I just want to make a few announcements in hope that putting my intentions in writing will force me to act on them. I have several half written posts on Emma that I hope to finish, in particular a two parter on the function of letters in the story. I also have a few books in need of review - I have finished George Knightley, Esquire Volume One: Charity Envieth Not by Barbara Cornthwaite and Rainy Days by Lory Lillian, both of which I greatly enjoyed.

Yesterday I received a shipment from Amazon containing Relations Such as These by Sara O'Brien, A Noteworthy Courtship by Laura Sanchez, and Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler. It would behoove me to get busy reading. Observant followers will notice the accumulation of non-fiction titles in my "I'm Currently Reading" sidebar posting. Honestly, I just don't have the concentration right now to complete these books, so be prepared for them to sit there for a while. Be assured that I will, eventually, finish them.

I also have a few non-Austen reviews to complete. I am very excited to have joined the Classics Circuit's Georgette Heyer Tour, which will be taking place in March. Ms. Heyer will be here on March 9th for my review of Black Sheep. I have not yet read this book but my husband and I have read several of her novels out loud to each other over the past several months, laughing rather hysterically all the way through them, and I look forward to enjoying sharing this one with him as well. Here is the Amazon description:

Abigail Wendover, on the shelf at 28, is kept busy when her niece falls head over heels in love with a handsome fortune hunter and Abbie is forced into a confrontation with his scandalous uncle.

Miles Calvery is the black sheep of his family- enormously rich from a long sojourn in India, disconcertingly blunt and brash. But he turns out to be Abbie's most important ally in keeping her niece out of trouble.

But how can he possibly be considered eligible when she has worked so hard to rebuff his own nephew's suit for her niece? And how can she possibly detach from an ailing sister who needs her? This is a heroine who has to be, literally, swept off her feet . . .

My other non-Austen review will be for the All About the Bronte's Challenge I am participating in, hosted by Laura's Reviews. It has been my intention to complete one book a month and for February I plan to read The Professor by Charlotte Bronte. I first read this book in high school but barely recall it, so look forward to rediscovering Charlotte's least-known work.

Most exciting, from my perspective, is that I should shortly have a release date for my novel First Impressions: A Tale of Less Pride and Prejudice! If you are interested in reading the first three chapters, please refer the the listing in the sidebar.

February is a short month and I feel like I am dreadfully behind on all this. I'll keep praying for a burst of energy that will see me through it all but, in the meantime, I'm off to take a nap.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

I open the musty book and turn the yellowed pages to chapter one. As I commence to read, I experience a simultaneous emergence and decent. Slowly the happy, cloudy layers of Austen that typically clog my brain lift, allowing me a clear view of my fall into a the dark, twisted world of the Brontes. So here I am - wide awake to the cruelty of the world and honestly wanting to crawl back into my Austen dreamland.

So why am I speaking of Anne Bronte on what is clearly an Austen blog anyway? Because I talked myself into to joining the All About the Brontes Challenge on Laura's Reviews, rationalizing the decision by announcing that I will relate all Bronte postings back to Austen (read it here).

I absolutely adored the Bronte's when I first read all of their books in a high school English class devoted to the three ladies. The more tragic and horrifying, the more I gloried in their work. I feel rather differently as an adult: knowing first hand how cruel humans can be to each other, I no longer find anything thrilling about wallowing in such misery. I now have absolutely no patience for a characters like Cathy or Heathcliffe - who, the last time I read Wuthering Heights, seriously tempted me to jump into the novel's pages in order to deliver swift kick in the rear both thoroughly deserve - and fully believe that Mr. Rochester is totally unworthy of Jane's love. So why is that works that enthralled me as a sixteen year old fill me with impatience now? Because like Marianne Dashwood and Katherine Moreland, I have learned the value of regulating my emotions and the dangers of indulging in an excess of sensibility. This is why I have avoided beginning this challenge with Charlotte, in all her blustering passion, instead turning to the far more practical (and sadly overlooked) Anne.

Much has been made of Charlotte's criticism of Austen. In a letter from 1850, she made this famous assessment of her predecessor:

"I have likewise read one of Miss Austen's works, Emma -- read it with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable -- anything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, or heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré and extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well; there is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy in the painting: she ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound: the Passions are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy Sisterhood; even to the Feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition; too frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth elegance of her progress."

For more Charlotte Bronte quotes on Jane Austen, visit Pemberley.com.

This passage makes the blood of Janeites boil, but I am not here to defend our favorite authoress. Instead I'd like to highlight the fact that Charlotte was equally deprecating of her sister's book, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which she banished to near death by refusing to order a second edition after Anne's death. Here are her words on the subject, also from 1850: "... it hardly appears to me desirable to preserve. The choice of subject in that work is a mistake–it was too little consonant with the character–tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring inexperienced writer" (visit A Celebration of Women Writers to read more). Just like Cassandra Austen, Charlotte tried to manipulate her sister's image postmortem. Obviously, she did not feel that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was an appropriate work for her young, unmarried sister to have produced, presumably due to the horrific image of married life there portrayed.

Jane Austen tells stories of courtship, ending with marriage. Anne Bronte takes us past courtship into the harsh realities of the married state in the 19th century, when women were considered the property of their husbands and had little legal recourse to address any wrongs done to them by their "lord and masters", as Mrs. Elton might put it. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall tells the tale of a marriage gone horrifically wrong, a result of the young lady disregarding her own better judgment and the advice of her guardians in order to marry the rake who has secured her affections. In the marriage between Helen Lawrence and Arthur Huntingdon, we see the probable results of the marriage between Lydia and Wickham, or what Marianne might have looked forward to had she married Willoughby. Before leaving for London for her first season, Helen's Aunt tells her what to look for in a proper suitor, anticipating the disaster to come:

"Remember Peter, Helen! Don't boast, but watch. Keep a guard over your eyes and ears as the inlets of your heart, and over your lips as the outlet, lest they betray you in a moment of unwariness. Receive, coldly and dispassionately, every attention, till you have ascertained and duly considered the worth of the aspirant; and let your affections be consequent upon approbation alone. First study; then approve; then love. let your eyes be blind to all external attractions, your ears deaf to all the fascinations of flattery and light discourse. - These are nothing - and worse than nothing - snares and wiles of the tempter, to lure the thoughtless to their own destruction. Principle is the first thing, after all; and next to that, good sense, respectability, and moderate wealth. If you should marry the handsomest, and most accomplished and superficially agreeable man in the world, you little know the misery that would overwhelm you, if, after all, you should find him to be a worthless reprobate, or even an impracticable fool."

This scene reminds me so much of Austen's story Catharine, from her Juvenilia, in which a similarly loving aunt also frets about her niece's fate amongst men:

"Her aunt was most excessively fond of her, and miserable if she saw her a moment out of spirits; Yet she lived in such constant apprehension of her marrying imprudently if she were allowed the opportunity of choosing, and was so dissatisfied with her behavior when she saw her with Young Men, for it was, from her natural disposition remarkably open and unreserved, that though she frequently wished for her Neice's sake, that the Neighborhood were larger, and that She had used herself to mix more with it, yet the recollection of there being young Men in almost every Family in it, always conquered the Wish."

It is highly unlikely that Anne Bronte ever read this unfinished story, but the plot is remarkably similar to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: a young woman is raised by her aunt who warns her of the inconsistencies of men, nonetheless she falls for the first reprobate who seeks to seduce her. We only have the forebodings of this fate in Catharine. Anne Bronte explores this common failing of women to its unhappy conclusion, although she does provide her heroine (eventually) with the appropriate happy ending of finding her true love, the reward for her sufferings.

It seems obvious that Anne, like her sister, had read Austen's published works and in all probability enjoyed them a great deal more. There are several instances in the text in which she seems to echo Austen, at one point even touching on the sedate language of her style of novel, which Charlotte had so little use for: "...I saw too, or rather I felt, that, in spite of herself, 'I was not indifferent to her,' as the novel heroes modestly express it...."This is precisely the kind of language Austen uses. It may not be a direct reference to her work and the sarcastic tone of the line is not exactly flattering to such understated expressions of love, but I feel confident stating that Anne had far more respect for the kind of writing Austen did than her elder sister. Indeed, without Austen as a predecessor, it seems highly unlikely that such a book as The Tenant of Wildfell Hall could have been written.

Much has been made of this story's structure and feminism - very interesting topics, but not what particularly interests me. I enjoyed The Tenant of Wildfell Hall much more than I anticipated and look forward to rereading Agnes Gray. I will search for similar underpinnings of Austen in that book (based on the authoress' experience as a governess) of which Charlotte was far more approving. It is when I take on the works of that formidable lady that I fear this attempt to view the Bronte's through the lens of Austen will prove much more difficult. Next month I think I might jump right into that muddle with The Professor, her earliest adult work but the last published.

All About the Brontes Challenge 2010

Before there was Jane, there was Charlotte. Well, maybe not chronologically, just in my life. While as an adult my fixation has been everything Austen, as a teenager I was all about the Brontes. I read and reread Villette, dramatically relishing the heartbreak every time (very Marianne Dashwood-like, I was such a drama queen and loved to wallow). At sixteen, I could truly relish "the happiness of such misery, or the misery of such happiness." So after some deep reflection, I have decided to use this forum to join the All About the Brontes Challenge 2010 on Laura's Reviews. The thing is, this is supposed to be a place to exclusively contemplate Austen. In order to rationalize my participation I intend to tie all my Bronte postings back to Austen, somehow or other. This isn't strictly complying with the rules of the challenge but, as long as I still provide a review of the Bronte related items I consume, I don't think it's too out of line. Let's just pray this doesn't turn into a series of rants about passion.

This brings me to the question of what to read (or watch). I have read all the Bronte texts before, including the juvenilia, and have absolutely no interest in rereading either Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. I've never read any Bronte fan fiction (wait a minute - I did read The Wide Sargasso Sea years ago at the recommendation of a teacher - not repeating that one) so feel I would need to do quite a bit of research before learning what, in that genre, is most worthwhile. It's not like Austen, where I am willing to read almost everything: if I am to read Bronte fan fic I want it to be the best. At this stage, I am willing to commit to the following reviews, with the intention of adding in some fan fiction and maybe a movie or two later:

1) Villette (for old times sake)
2) Shirley
3) The Professor (which I had totally forgotten about)
4) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
5) Agnes Grey

So now I need to go find my copies of these books and hope against hope that they aren't completely filled with totally embarrassing notes and insights from my youth (which they most certainly are as I used to write incessantly in the margins). Maybe I need to go buy new copies to prevent this experience from being polluted by dismay at my childish scribblings.