The life of Charlotte Brontë

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  5 (p. 325) “I send you a couple of reviews:” The reviews are: [A. W Fonblanque], Examiner, November 3, 1849. and [W H. Howitt], Standard of Freedom, November 10, 1849 (see Allot, pp. 125-129, 133-135).

  6 (p. 328) Miss Martineau: The versatile writer and thinker Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) addressed a wide range of subjects including women’s education, religion, and political economy. Her novel Deerbrook (1839) influenced Brontë.

  7 (p. 329) in came a young-looking lady, almost child-like in stature: In her Autobiography (3 vols., London: Smith, Elder and Company, 1877), Martineau describes Brontë as “the smallest creature I had ever seen (except at a fair)” (vol. 2, p. 326).

  CHAPTER V

  1 (pp. 332-333) “friends have sent me books lately... ‘Nemesis of Faith’ ”: The books mentioned are Harriet Martineau’s Eastern Life, Present and Past (1848), Francis Newman’s The Soul, Its Sorrows and Its Aspirations (1849), and James Froude’s The Nemesis of Faith (1849).

  2 (p. 333) “Mr.—.. Mr. R—... John—s wife”: Both Mr.—and Mr. R—are references to Arthur Bell Nicholls, Brontë’s future husband, on whom the one flattering portrait of a curate in Shirley is based. Brontë tells Nussey in another part of this letter that Nicholls “triumphed in his own character.” The wife of John Brown, the Haworth sexton, was Nicholls’s landlady.

  3 (p. 333) “When they got the volumes at the Mechanics’ Institute”: Mechanics Institutes were cultural centers established for the use of the working classes. The one in Keighley hosted concerts, lectures, and classes, and offered a circulating library that the Brontës could use. Brontë refers in this letter to the Haworth Mechanics Institute, which was founded in 1849 with support from Brontë and her father.

  4 (p. 337) “Nella Miseria—”: From Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, canto 5, lines 121-123, which reads in full: “There is no greater grief than remembering happy times in misery” (my translation).

  5 (p. 338) Sir James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth: James Kay Shuttleworth was a philanthropist and social reformer who was knighted for his services. Trained as a medical doctor, he worked to improve sanitary conditions among the poor and working classes in order to combat disease. He was also an early champion of national education. Sir James’s avocation was entertaining celebrated authors. It was at his estate near Windermere that Gaskell and Brontë met.

  6 (p. 340) “Unprotected Female’ ”: The “Unprotected Female” was a series of sketches that appeared in the periodical Punch (founded in 1841) from 1849 to 1850. Punch, established by social reformer Henry May-hew (1812-1887) and journalists Joseph Stirling Coyne and Mark Lemon, blended political commentary and humorous cartoons.

  7 (p. 341) “that, too, I read, and with unalloyed pleasure”: The most recent collection of essays by William Hazlitt would have been Winterslow: Essays and Characters Written There (1850). The other titles are Charles Cuthbert Southey’s edition of The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey (1849-1850); Julia Kavanagh, Woman in France During the Eighteenth Century (1850); Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men: Seven Lectures (1850); and A. J. Scott, Suggestions on Female Education (1849).

  CHAPTER VI

  1 (p. 344) “I had thought to bring the ‘Leader’: The Leader (1850) was a radical literary periodical founded by G. H. Lewes.

  2 (p. 347) to join the friends with whom she had been staying in town: Gaskell skims over the unorthodox nature of Brontë’s trip to Scotland with George Smith, an unmarried man, and his sister. Both Smith’s mother and Ellen Nussey urged against it. Brontë reassures Ellen: “My six or eight years of seniority not to say nothing of lack of all pretension to beauty &c. are a perfect safeguard—I should not in the least fear to go with him to China” (Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, June 20, 1850; in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 2, p. 419).

  3 (p. 349) “Papa had worked himself up to a sad pitch... obviously joining him”: The letter continues: “I can’t deny but I was annoyed.... Papa’s great discomposure had its origin in ... the vague fear of my being somehow about to be married to somebody.” In editing out this portion of the letter Gaskell suppresses Patrick’s fear that Brontë and George Smith had formed a romantic attachment.

  CHAPTER VII

  1 (p. 352) I shall probably convey my first impressions... a longer description: The text that follows is extracted from two of Gaskell’s letters. One is to Catherine Winkworth, on August 25, 1850, and another, written on the same date, is to an unknown correspondent.

  2 (p. 353) “liking ‘Modern Painters’... Father Newman’s Lectures”: John Ruskin (1819-1900) wrote Modern Painters (1843-1860) and The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849). Father Newman, later a cardinal, is John Henry Newman (1801-1890), a leader of the Oxford Movement within the Anglican Church. He later converted to Roman Catholicism.

  3 (p. 353) “invitation to drink tea quietly at Fox How”: Fox How was the home of the widow and children of Dr. Thomas Arnold (1795-1842), moralist, social reformer and educational theorist. The curricular innovations Arnold instituted as headmaster of Rugby School influenced the course of British education. He was the father of poet and critic Matthew Arnold (1822-1888).

  4 (p. 356) ‘Westminster Review’: The Westminster Review was a reform-minded periodical acquired by John Stuart Mill in 1836.

  5 (p. 357) “I have read Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’ ”: On Gaskell’s recommendation Brontë read, or rather, attempted to read Alfred Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1850), an elegy to his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. Presumably to educate her new friend in her own aesthetic preferences, Brontë sends Gaskell the final edition of Wordsworth’s autobiographical The Prelude, which was published posthumously in 1850.

  6 (p. 359) “I should be glad if you would include... ‘Life of Dr. Arnold’”: Brontë wanted to read Arthur Penrhyn Stanley’s Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold (1844).

  CHAPTER VIII

  1 (p. 360) task of editing them: Brontë wrote a “Biographical Notice” of her sisters for this edition, published by Smith, Elder and Company, and she appended a heavily edited selection of their poetry.

  2 (p. 361) That gentleman says:—: G. H. Lewes, writing to George Smith. Gaskell wanted input from Lewes but, unlike Brontë, would not correspond with him directly because of his reputed immorality (The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, letter 314). In 1854 he dissolved his open marriage to live with writer George Eliot.

  3 (p. 362) “I lent her some of Balzac’s and George Sand’s novels”: The novels of Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) that G. H. Lewes is talking about are Modeste Mignon (1844) and Illusions Perdues (1837-1843). Gaskell is quick to give anecdotal evidence of Brontë’s “disgust” for Balzac, who was not considered proper reading for a lady. George Sand’s Lettres d’un Voyageur (Letters of a Traveler), part autobiography, part travel narrative, appeared in 1837.

  4 (p. 366) “ ‘The Roman’ ”: The Roman (1850) was a poem by Sydney Dobell, the critic who had endeared himself to Brontë with his praise of Wuthering Heights.

  CHAPTER IX

  1 (p. 372) “You ask me whether Miss Martineau made me convert to mesmerism”: Mesmerism, a form of hypnotism thought to cure disease, was first practiced by Franz Mesmer (1734-1815), a Viennese physician. Harriet Martineau was a believer.

  2 (p. 373) Your account of Mr. A—”: Henry Atkinson and Martineau coauthored Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development (1851).

  3 (p. 377) great Exhibition: The Great Exhibition of 1851, held at the Crystal Palace in London, was an international industrial show intendedto showcase British ascendancy. Brontë visited it five tim“under coercion.” On a subsequent trip to London, Brontë made her own itinerary and “selected the real in preference to the decorative side of life” (see the Introduction).

  4 (p. 386) “‘Phrenological Character’” : Phrenology was a pseudo-science in which a person’s character was analyzed by examining his or her skull structure. Brontë and George Smith posed as brother and sister and had a phrenological reading done by a ph
ysician in London. See Gérin, Appendix B, for his report.

  CHAPTER X

  1 (p. 389) “I have read the ‘Saint’s Tragedy’ ”: Brontë is referring to The Saint’s Tragedy: or, The True Story of Elizabeth of Hungary (1848) , by Charles Kingsley (1819-1875).

  2 (p. 391) “James Martineau’s sermons”: James Martineau (1805-1900), brother of Harriet Martineau, was a Unitarian minister and moral philosopher.

  3 (p. 391) “I have seen none, except ... Emancipation of Women”: The article is “The Enfranchisement of Women,” which appeared in the Westminster Review 55 (July 1851): 289-311. Although J. S. Mill is given authorial credit, Harriet Taylor (1807-1858), Mill’s collaborator, companion, and eventually his wife, is believed to have been the primary author.

  4 (p. 396) “Melville seemed to me... Maurice whose ministry I should frequent”: The Evangelical Henry Melville (1798-1871) was considered one of the greatest preachers of his day. F. D. Maurice (1805-1872), a Christian Socialist, believed the church should be an instrument of social equality.

  5 (p. 403) “the close seemed to me scarcely equal to ’Rose Douglas’ ”: Sarah R. Whitehead wrote Rose Douglas; or, Sketches of a Country Parish, Being the Autobiography of a Scotch Minister’s Daughter (1851) and Two Families (1852).

  6 (p. 403) “I read Miss Kavanagh’s ‘Women of Christianity’ ”: The full title of Julia Kavanagh’s book is Women of Christianity: Exemplary for Acts of Piety and Charity (1852).

  7 (p. 416) “I called her ’Lucy Snowe’ ... ‘lucus a non lucendo’ principle”: The principle is an etymological contradiction. The word lucus means “dark grove” in Latin, but it is derived from the verb lucere, “to shine,” based on the absence of light. Similarly, Lucy Snowe’s “external coldness” belies her inner fire.

  8 (p. 418) some word or act of hers had given offence: Gaskell minimizes Brontë’s fears here to gloss over her true cause for concern—the fact that she had represented George Smith and his mother in Villette as Mrs. Bretton and her son Dr. John. Smith later owned that the portraits were based on his mother and him.

  CHAPTER XII

  1 (p. 421) put aside all consideration of how she should reply, excepting as he wished!: Brontë had her own reservations about marrying Nicholls, independent of her father’s objections. See the Introduction.

  2 (p. 424) Miss Martineau... wounded her to the quick... merely artistic fault: In her review of Villette in the Daily News, February 3, 1853 (Allot, pp. 171-174), Martineau faulted Brontë for making love too central to the lives of her female characters, insisting that there “are substantial, heartfelt interests for women of all ages, and under ordinary circumstances, quite apart from love.”

  3 (p. 426) “I read attentively all you say about Miss Martineau... hundreds have forsaken her”: Martineau objected to this characterization, and to Gaskell’s account of her rift with Brontë. In the third edition Gaskell included a footnote and additional material in the body of the text to represent Martineau’s side of the story, which was, in the main, a reiteration of the fact that Brontë urged her to be frank with her criticism.

  4 (p. 438) Mrs. Marsh’s story ... Miss Bremer’s story: Anne Marsh-Caldwell wrote “The Deformed,” published in Two Old Men’s Tales (1834); Fredrika Bremer wrote The Neighbours (translated in 1842).

  5 (p. 440) Mr. Brontë became reconciled to the idea of his daughter’s marriage: Gaskell may have directly contributed to this change of heart by asking Richard Monckton Milnes to use his influence to secure a pension that would increase Nicholls’s income. Gaskell urged secrecy: “If my well-meant treachery becomes known I will lose her friendship, which I prize most highly” (The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, letter 168).

  6 (p. 443) “my father’s sympathies... are all with Justice and Europe, against Tyranny and Russia”: Brontë refers here to the diplomatic prelude to the Crimean War.

  7 (p. 451) natural cause for her miserable indisposition: Brontë’s letters to Nussey indicate that she was pregnant. It is unclear whether her death was caused by a complication of pregnancy or by an infectious disease.

  THE LEGACY OF THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË

  Throughout The Life of Charlotte Brontë Elizabeth Gaskell claims Brontë as her “dear friend.” Their status as leading Victorian novelists initially brought the two women to each other’s notice, and as they embarked upon their friendship, professional appreciation quickly translated into a deep personal connection. In the mid-nineteenth century, Gaskell was the more popular novelist, but her renown gradually faded after her death, while Brontë’s fame grew after she died. Brontë’s continued popularity owes much to Gaskell’s Life, and Gaskell’s enduring reputation has been earned as much from her only attempt at biography as from her novels. This mutual benefit to two authors—subject and biographer—echoes that which resulted following James Boswell’s publication in 1791 of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.; widely considered the greatest biography in the English language, it enhanced the reputation of both men.

  While some readers now consider Gaskell’s fiction overly sentimental, others continue to enjoy her novels of manners Cranford (1853) and Wives and Daughters (1866), and to read and study her “condition of England” novels Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1854), which prove particularly enduring as they shed light on the social history of their time. As for The Life of Charlotte Brontë, it is the depth of the work and the sympathy the writer obviously felt for her subject that make it compelling to readers today. Much of the book’s immediate and continued success derives from Gaskell’s talent for, as Eneas Sweetland Dallas put it in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, “personal discourse and familiar narrative,” novelistic touches that were enthusiastically received by a reading public thirsty for confidences and scandal.

  Most dramatically, Gaskell describes the plight of Charlotte’s feckless brother, Branwell, who, she alleges, engaged in a sexual liaison with Lydia Robinson, the wife of the man who had hired him as a tutor. The present text of The Life of Charlotte Brontë is that of the first 479 edition, which includes Gaskell’s original and full “account of Branwell Brontë’s wretched fate,” as William Caldwell Roscoe described it in the National Review, adding that it was “recorded with unnecessary detail.” Here is what Gaskell wrote:[Branwell’s] case presents the reverse of the usual features; the man became the victim; the man’s life was blighted, and crushed out of him by suffering, and guilt entailed by guilt; the man’s family were stung by keenest shame. The woman—to think of her father’s pious name—the blood of honourable families mixed in her veins—her early home, underneath whose rooftree sat those whose names are held saintlike for their good deeds,—she goes flaunting about to this day in respectable society; a showy woman for her age; kept afloat by her reputed wealth. I see her name in county papers, as one of those who patronize the Christmas balls; and I hear of her in London drawing-rooms (p. 223 in this edition).

  As Gaskell prepares to quote from some of Charlotte’s letters to bolster her case against Robinson, she continues, “Now let us read, not merely of the suffering of her guilty accomplice but of the misery she caused to innocent victims, whose premature deaths may, in part, be laid at her door.”

  Gaskell’s version of Branwell’s affair with Robinson provoked a strong reaction in the press. James Fitzjames Stephen, writing in the Edinburgh Review, railed against Gaskell: “No doubt, from mistaken information and mistaken motives... she appears to have entirely misconceived the duties and the rights of her position as an authoress.” Stephen continued, “A man’s honour, a woman’s virtue, are not to be blown to the winds merely because it suits the humour of a romancer to rake up some imaginary or forgotten transgression—to dress it in colours of fiction, heightened by the mischievous attraction of personal slander.”

  Not only was Lydia Robinson still living when the Life was published, she was a prominent member of London society (she had remarried and become Lady Scott). Upon publication of the book, she immediately filed a libel s
uit against Gaskell; as a result, all unsold copies of The Life of Charlotte Brontë were pulled from the shelves. In a letter from Mrs. Gaskell’s solicitor that appeared in the London Times, the author endeavored “to retract every statement contained in that work which imputes to a widowed lady, referred to, but not named therein, any breach of her conjugal, of her maternal, and of her social duties, &c.” All subsequent editions of the Life were issued as “revised,” to indicate that all passages deemed incriminating to Lady Scott had been removed.

  To the advantage of both Brontë and Gaskell, the Life has outlived the topical scandal that plagued its initial publication to become one of the most widely read biographies written in English.

  COMMENTS & QUESTIONS

  In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the work’s history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.

  Comments

  HENRY FOTHERGILL CHORLEY

  The story of a woman’s life unfolded in this book is calculated to make the old feel young and the young old. Persons who have been conversant with society and manners as they existed in the remote corners of England within the century will feel themselves strangely recalled to the narrow homes, the grim prejudices, the few pleasures and privileges belonging to a period of heavy taxation, costly literature, and limited intercourse, by the picture of a provincial parsonage and its inmates here set before them. Some of those, on the other hand, who are bursting with life, and brimming with creative power, may feel palsied (as it were by some cold prophecy) while they follow the record of a career of self-denial and struggle, sustained to the last with courage, principle, and genius, but without hope. Nevertheless, a true tale of what may be achieved in spite of disabilities, be the facts ever so cheerless, let the pilgrim’s lot have been cast on ever so rugged a road, let his cup have been ever so full of the waters of bitterness, can hardly be followed to its close without some strength being gained for the reader. By all, this book will be read with interest. As a work of Art, we do not recollect a life of a woman by a woman so well executed....