Juliet Gael 2010A fascinating rendition of what the Bronte family's life would have been, based on both fact (Charlotte's letters) and fiction (the authors' exquisite imagination). It accurately describes Charlotte, Emily and Anne's perseverance and triumphs as they start their careers as authors, initially under the male pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. It gives a dramatic depiction of their short lives, as Emily, Anne and their brother Branwell all die of consumption. And it successfully renders an intimate and tender portrayal of how Charlotte's love blossomed for Arthur Bell Nicholls as she finally accepts his marriage proposal.
'He rode in the back of a wagon loaded with crates of chickens and bales of hay, driven by a brutish farmer who had not uttered a word throughout the journey except to curse his horse. Arthur would have enjoyed a bit of conversation as the wagon lurched along the muddy ruts, but the natural world was a thing of splendor and inspiration to him, and he was content to gaze upon the vistas opening up before his eyes.'(opening lines)
'Literature cannot be a business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will be less eager for celebrity. Write poetry for its own sake; not with a view to celebrity. So written, it is wholesome both for the heart and soul.'(43)
'Your feelings are peculiar, Emily. Peculiar in a rare, beautiful way that very few people see-- because you don't want to be seen,' she said. 'And your poetry is very much like you. I read the verses aloud to myself and I fancied I could hear a sort of wild melancholy and musicality. It was your love of nature and music, all of it wrapped in this clear, condensed, and very powerful language.'(47)
'That summer, throughout the long, warm evenings as she sat near the open window darning her father's socks or mending one of Emily's petticoats, her thoughts returned to images that had always given her so much pleasure: a grand Gothic hall in an isolated place, a subservient young woman and a master. But as the ideas gave birth to a story, a new kind of heroine emerged. This young woman would have passion and soul-- she would be a governess perhaps, poor and plain like herself, but neither slavish nor meek in spirit. She would be inferior in rank to her master, but in every other way his equal. She would name her Jane Eyre.'(73)
'Although scarcely articulate, Mrs. Rochester would embody all the darkness of Charlotte's psyche: fire, fear, blood, sensuality, the foreign and the exotic-- all these things trapped and enclosed in a room in an attic in the past.'(81)
'I regret to say that Wuthering Heights has provoked the harshest condemnations. The reviews have wounded Emily to the quick.'(102)
'Our bonds of affection are so deeply rooted that we feel each other's heartaches as if it were our own, and I can not take the same pleasure anymore in my own success.'(102)
'He saw Charlotte in the light of a dutiful and highly conscientious clergyman's daughter. A peculiar woman from a peculiar family, intellectual, argumentative, and overly inclined to all things perhaps, but certainly not a passionate little Jane Eyre. The girls were all shy and reticent, hiding in the parlor and kitchen, appearing only when their father wished or when duty required. He could not imagine any of them writing those words.'(145)
'A year ago, had a prophet warned me how I should stand in June 1849-- how stripped and bereaved-- had he foretold that autumn, the winter, the spring of sickness and suffering to be gone through, I should have thought-- this can never be endured. It is over, Branwell-- Emily-- Anne are gone like dreams, gone as Maria and Elizabeth went twenty years ago. I have buried them one by one, and thus God has upheld me. The fact is, my work is my best companion-- hereafter I look for no great earthly comfort except what congenial occupation can give.'(191)
'Come, come now, Miss Bronte, I cannot believe that you would have our literature with vulgar and coarse heroines!'
'But there is my point, sir-- that you confuse coarseness with honesty. Why, I have never-- even from childhood-- believed your heroines to be natural or true. You good woman is a queer cross between a painted doll and an angel, and your bad woman is always a temptress. If I should be obliged to copy these characters, I would simple not write at all.'(208)
"Father, look at me," Charlotte said with heated determination. "I'm not a girl, not even a young woman anymore. I never was pretty and now I'm ugly. What is there to attract a man? It certainly isn't money. At your death I shall have three hundred pounds along with the little I've earned myself-- do you honestly think there are other men who would want me? Men who would serve eight long years in a place like this for a stunted spinsterish clergyman's daughter?"(320)
'I often find it difficult that a delicate creature like you might ever want any part of a great whiskered fellow like myself. I know you are a brilliant woman, with great intellectual gifts-- and I admire you all the more for these talents. But when I think of you-- and I think of you every moment- I never see you in the light of genius and fame. I think of you as fragile and vulnerable, and easily wounded. I cannot bear the thought of seeing you harmed, in any way, by any person.'(325)
'What I taste of happiness is of the soberest order. I trust to love my husband-- I am grateful for his tender love to me-- I believe him to be an affectionate, a conscientious, a high-principled man-- and if with all this, I should yield to regrets that fine talents, congenial tastes, and thoughts are not added, it seems to me I should be most presumptuous and thankless.'(339)
'As for Arthur, by the end of their honeymoon he had gained twelve pounds and reclaimed his hale and hearty physique. That she should be the cause of this transformation was a subject of quiet wonder to Charlotte.'(381)
'But Charlotte's allegiances had shifted-- fully, irrevocably. She had once written of her desire for a master, "one in whose presence I shall feel obliged and disposed to be good. One whose control my impatient temper must acknowledge. a man whose approbation can reward-- whose displeasure punish me. A man I shall feel it impossible not to love, and very possibly to fear."(388)
"She writes of a "faithful love that refused to abandon its object, love that disaster could not shake, love that in calamity, waxed fonder, in poverty clung closer"...'(406)
Ballantine Books, First Edition, 2010
407 pages
Book borrowed from the library
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