A Girl Walks Into a Book

by Miranda K. Pennington

  Charlotte’s voice in her letters is great—hearing it, I realize there is at least as much of Charlotte in Mr. Rochester as there is in Jane; they have the same ruthless wit and teasing sensibility. And for a twenty-four-year-old writer who’d never published anything she or her brother hadn’t stitched together with their own hands, she has a lot of moxie running down Dickens and Rousseau! I imagine it was eye-opening for Charlotte to see that Miss Brontë, clergyman’s daughter, got a sexist, dream-squashing reply from Southey, while the ambiguous “CT” received feedback on the quality of her writing and not her future family obligations. This version of the Brontës’ literary beginning is not terribly exciting—it’s practical. Charlotte consulted experts, learned to navigate rejection, built her confidence back up, revised her work, and then finally took the plunge: she began sending her work out to editors to solicit their opinions. It’s how most writers get started. If they’re lucky.

  The myth she cultivated in place of this pragmatic reality sounds straight out of a legend: Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, Helen being born with a ship-launching face, Atalanta scooping up a golden apple without breaking stride.

  In the autumn of 1845, the story goes, Charlotte discovered a notebook of Emily’s poetry, and was struck by how much progress Emily had made since their evenings of reading to one another in the dining room as teenagers. She wondered if they could possibly publish them.* This prompted Anne to proffer up some poems as well, and Charlotte added some verses of her own to complete the collection. And suddenly, they were writers! Novels just happened to follow! With their names on them! Could have happened to anyone! In the forewords to reissued editions of her sisters’ novels, Charlotte implied that they had occasionally thought of being authors as children but never expected anyone would want to read their work. I love Charlotte Brontë, but she was lying through her teeth. Charlotte had been soliciting feedback on her writing for six years by the time she “stumbled across” the work that would become their debut publication! This spun-sugar origin story was designed to do two things: relieve the Brontës from the “unwomanly” stigma of ambition, and conceal the very deliberate effort they put into developing their skills.

  It wasn’t ladylike to want to be “for ever known,” so the sisters decided to use pseudonyms (Currer, Ellis, and Acton, respectively) that would protect their identities and keep them from being dismissed as “women poets.” They kept their endeavor secret from their father, their brother, servants, and everyone else in the village. Only the paper sellers in Haworth and nearby Keighley found the volume and frequency of their purchases suspicious, though it seems impossible that neither Patrick, nor Branwell, nor any of the Brontës’ neighbors saw them correcting proofs or mailing large stacks of paper.

  Charlotte undertook the role of literary agent for herself and her sisters, sending the little bundle of poems from publisher to publisher and coping with the disinterest and rejection that followed. Because of the secrecy Charlotte had promised Emily, there aren’t any archives detailing this process, aside from the occasional submission or rejection letter. How I wish she had kept a journal, as she did at Roe Head!

  Finally, Aylott & Jones accepted Charlotte’s request to publish the work at the authors’ expense. Poems, by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, was paid for with 36 pounds, 10 shillings of Aunt Branwell’s legacy. The first copies arrived on the Brontës’ doorstep in May of 1846. Charlotte would come to look back on the earnest volumes with chagrin, and not just because they were a commercial failure. She thought the only verses worth reading were Emily’s, dismissing Anne’s as pleasant enough but lacking originality; Charlotte had never returned to poetry after leaving Brussels, so she felt like her contributions to Poems failed to reflect her maturation as a writer. Charlotte circulated review copies to a number of publications; W. A. Butler of Dublin University Magazine was one of the few who obliged with a review, saying, mildly, “Their verses are full of unobtrusive feeling; and their tone of thought seems unaffected and sincere,” while also speculating whether there were really three Bells, as opposed to one prolific individual.6

  Though Poems received a handful of other positive notices, only two copies were ever actually sold—one of the happy purchasers wrote to the Bells and asked for their autograph; in his estate, years later, was found the unique scrap of paper with the signatures of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell upon it. Today, you can buy a postcard facsimile at the Brontë Parsonage Museum and hang it by your desk and imagine you had the foresight to ask for it.

  I know I said that I’d been touched by everything the Brontë sisters wrote in some way, but their poetry leaves me cold. Reading it feels like wading through knee-deep wet sand, though the nature descriptions are lovely. The restrained introspection of Emily Dickinson or the heat of Pablo Neruda are more my speed. The Brontë poetry lacks the sense of human immediacy that pervades their prose, and it’s beset by the formal Victorian Englishness their novels are so notable for transcending. The acidic critic of The Literary Gazette who reviewed Poems called it “the kind of poetry which is not endured by gods, men, or bookstalls.”7 I hate to agree with any criticism formed in prudishness over what is “appropriate” in literature, but I think the broader success of the Brontës’ narrative efforts speaks for itself. Once they escaped the stricture of verse, their careers took off.

  WHILE Poems was still in production, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne were hard at work on novels. It may have been Emily’s and Anne’s first efforts at writing longer prose, but Charlotte had already set aside at least two novella drafts. Their plan was to each include a contribution to a three-volume novel. Charlotte sent The Professor, based on her time in Brussels, along with Wuthering Heights, Emily’s Gothic tale of doomed love and passion run riot, and Agnes Grey, Anne’s story of a quietly moral governess, off to seek their fortunes. Charlotte was aware of The Professor’s flaws—its overly sarcastic protagonist and emotionally distant narrative—and already planned to develop elements of her juvenile Zamorna stories into a more marketable work if this first effort didn’t pan out. I’m not a big fan of The Professor. Nobody in it feels particularly real or compelling, and the narrator is terribly moody. It has yet to provoke any significant life alterations for me, but that may be just an issue of timing.

  The novels were considered (and rejected) separately by various editors, rather than as a unit, possibly because Wuthering Heights was already double its intended length. After sending them out a fifth time, in August of 1846, Charlotte accompanied Patrick Brontë to Manchester for a cataract operation. As she attended him during his recovery, she began Jane Eyre.

  Finally, in July of 1847, an unscrupulous publisher named T. C. Newby agreed to publish Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. The terms were not very favorable—the authors were to advance the sum of £50 and be repaid from the novels’ profits.

  Discouraged but persistent, Charlotte crossed out the address of the previous publisher, wrote “Smith, Elder & Co.” on the battered wrapping of The Professor, and gave it another go.

  William Smith Williams, the head reader at Smith, Elder & Co., didn’t care for The Professor, but he recognized the strength of its author. Along with the publisher, George Smith, he wrote Charlotte such a thoughtful and well-considered rejection letter that she wrote back, as Currer Bell, to thank them. She shrewdly suggested that The Professor might make up for its “want of varied interest” if it were “speedily followed up by another work from the same pen,” mentioning another novel in three volumes that was nearly finished.8 They accepted the new work (soon to be for ever known as Jane Eyre) two weeks later. Charlotte’s elation at their acceptance was brief, as they also enclosed several suggestions for further revision (evidently they thought parts of the opening at Lowood too shocking for a contemporary audience). She promptly rejected their proposed revisions: “Perhaps too the first part of ‘Jane Eyre’ may suit the public taste better than you anticipate—for it is true and Truth has a severe charm of its own. Had
I told all the truth, I might indeed have made it far more exquisitely painful.”9

  They must have decided to trust Currer Bell’s instincts, because English literary society was introduced to Jane, Mr. Rochester, and the rest on October 19, 1847. Critics had varying responses—“The whole is unnatural, and only critically interesting,” wrote The Spectator. “No woman could have penned ‘The Autobiography of Jane Eyre.’… The apt, eloquent, elegant, and yet easy mode by which the writer engages you, is something altogether out of the common way,” said The Era. My personal favorite is from Atlas: “It is a book to make the pulses gallop and the heart beat, and to fill the eyes with tears.… The action of the tale is sometimes unnatural—the passion is always true.”10

  William Makepeace Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair, loved it, writing to Williams,

  I wish you had not sent me Jane Eyre. It interested me so much that I have lost (or won if you like) a whole day in reading it at the busiest period, with the printers I know waiting for copy.… Some of the love passages made me cry—to the astonishment of John who came in with the coals. St. John the Missionary is a failure I think but a good failure there are parts excellent I don’t know why I tell you this but that I have been exceedingly moved & pleased by Jane Eyre. It is a womans writing, but whose?11

  The success of Jane Eyre laid the groundwork for Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey when they were released a few months later, and eventually the sisters began receiving the occasional royalty check for their literary debuts. Perhaps even more important than the financial support, Charlotte had found a lifeline to the outside world in the form of letters and loaned books from her publishers. Though at first she was brisk and professional with Williams and Smith behind the mask of Currer Bell, gradually she became friendly, warming enough to write sarcastic letters about critics and reviews she found irritating and new novels she appreciated.

  What’s most inspiring to me about this part of the Brontë story is how deliberate their success was. I know she wanted us all to believe it was an accident, but Charlotte was an involved businesswoman—she gave printers and editors precise specifications for what sort of paper to use, how to spend their budget on distribution, and later on, what could and could not be reprinted. Having spent years making her own tiny bound books, it’s natural she had strong opinions, though often tempered with a self-deprecating “… or whatever you think best.” Even her decision to self-publish their volume of poetry shows moxie.

  I’ve started to view Poems as more of a test balloon than a real first effort. It was material they already had so it didn’t need more time for writing or revision; it gave them a chance to learn the publishing ropes; and following it promptly with novels gave critics and journalists a narrative to deploy in their coverage of the mysterious Bells. Were they three women? Were they one man? How could a man write women so well? How could three women be so coarse?

  Charlotte was a hardy soul. After she became successful, her letters to her publishers included gems like, “It would take a great deal to crush me,” in response to some critical notices, and, “The hard-wrung praise extorted reluctantly from a foe is the most precious praise of all—you are sure that this, at least, has no admixture of flattery,” in response to some grudging admiration.12 I have both of these quotes pinned up by my desk, and I look at them often.

  My earnest efforts to join the editorial side of publishing might have been the initial steps I needed to take in order to find my feet as a writer. Writing may still be “that single absorbing exquisite gratification,” as Charlotte wrote to Southey, but logistically, it’s intimidating. It’s a different world for writers now; we are often told to be happy with “exposure” for our essays and that we provide “content,” rather than something so essential as storytelling. It would have required more self-assurance than I possessed (not to mention a source of independent wealth and something to say) to label myself a writer straight out of college. It was easier to believe myself an editor, eager to support the work of others, until I really found something of my own.

  Wearying Heights

  It should have been called Withering Heights, for any thing from which the mind and body would more instinctively shrink, than the mansion and its tenants, cannot be easily imagined.

  —Unsigned notice, New Monthly Magazine1

  The first time I read Wuthering Heights I was sixteen and full of a hearty dose of Jane Austen’s persuasive sensibilities. Miss Austen (standing in for the Lintons) had shown me polite society and good breeding, and I wanted the gracious and civilized ending she had promised. Emily Brontë cares nothing for polite society, good breeding, or gracious and civilized anything, and neither does anyone (well, anyone remotely interesting) in her book. Everything is a mess and everyone is awful and I hate it.

  Cathy Earnshaw: Anti-Heroine

  Wuthering Heights is a strange sort of book,—baffling all regular criticism; yet, it is impossible to begin and not finish it; and quite as impossible to lay it aside afterwards and say nothing about it.

  —Unsigned review, Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper, 18481

  Oh fine. When I initially read Wuthering Heights I was deep in my teen romance years, truly hoping to be swept away by a high-octane love affair. I’d taken the book with me on a trip to the mountains, where I curled up with it on the balcony overlooking rich forests and rolling hills. A romantic setting, I thought, for wild and sprawling love. But the book opens with Heathcliff setting his dogs on a stranger. The narrative then makes its way inside Cathy Earnshaw’s diary, which the main character actually nods off while reading. The book is even bored by itself, and requires Nelly Dean’s intervention to tell the story properly. I was similarly put off. But I did try. A few years later in college, again in my early twenties, and even in grad school, I looked for an anchor, a back door, or even so much as a toehold in Wuthering Heights. I would love to say that one of these rereadings finally gave me a revolutionary understanding of Heights’ power and relevance, or provided a crucial insight that reshaped the rest of my life, or changed me for the better in some way. But it didn’t. Or maybe it just hasn’t, not yet.

  Part of the problem is my track record of dating milquetoasts. Heathcliff is so uncouth. Difficult to take to the movies, or introduce to one’s friends and relations. But, once you get past a healthy resistance to the inhuman and profane, Wuthering Heights is damnably entertaining—even hard to put down. I once recited the whole plot for high school students in a creative writing workshop I was teaching, and they reacted to each Gothic twist with gasps of disbelief. Heights is driven by strength of feeling; its unbridled, fiendish nature is clearly part of the appeal. Fans of Wuthering Heights possess a fervor even Cathy Earnshaw would have to approve of.

  Heights is the story of a wild child of the moors, Catherine Earnshaw, and Heathcliff, an orphan gypsy child her father brings home from a business trip. Cathy and Heathcliff grow up together, never separated until Cathy runs afoul of their neighbors’ watchdog and is kept at the Lintons’ house to convalesce. For the first time, Cathy experiences the comforts of a well-bred household and the finer things in life—and she likes them. Mr. Earnshaw dies and Cathy’s brother Hindley returns to Wuthering Heights, banishing Heathcliff to the barn. Though she loves Heathcliff as dearly as she loves herself, Cathy decides to marry Edgar Linton, who is wealthy and kind but weak-willed. She hopes to be better placed to help Heathcliff once she’s married, but he takes her betrayal at face value and runs away to make his fortune.

  When Heathcliff returns, financially secure and better dressed, he swindles the now drunken and disreputable Hindley out of the Earnshaw fortune, takes over the estate, and marries Edgar Linton’s sister Isabella to avenge himself on Cathy. Some further unpleasantness ensues and time passes, and about half the cast dies of suspicious natural causes and/or grief. We are left with Catherine’s daughter (also named Cathy), raised by Edgar Linton; Heathcliff’s son Linton, initially raised by Isabella (who practically fled Wuther
ing Heights on her honeymoon), but reclaimed by Heathcliff when he reached adolescence; and Hindley’s son Hareton, who is abused by Heathcliff in retribution for the sins of his father. Retelling it all is Nelly Dean, a maidservant with an impeccable memory and the rare ability to survive for the duration of the book.

  This new generation of Heights inhabitants, Young Cathy, Linton, and Hareton, manage to salvage some happiness from the ruins of their forebears’ lives, after a fashion. To make certain he will inherit the Linton estate, Heathcliff forces Cathy to marry Linton, who is sickly and soon dies. Young Cathy then forms an attachment to Hareton, who is as rough as Heathcliff was as a boy, but with a gentler heart. They live as happily ever after as a pair of borderline inbred teenagers with seriously dysfunctional parents and an alarmingly small social circle could be expected to. I don’t think there are more than a dozen people in the Heights universe. Can you imagine this novel having either the intensity or the impact if they’d lived in a slightly larger town?

  Since Jane Eyre’s publication had made such a splash, the appearance of two more novels from the Bell family prompted numerous comparisons between the three. While Agnes Grey was nearly ignored, Wuthering Heights scandalized even the critics who had found something to approve of in Jane Eyre. The more charitable reviewers hoped for bigger and better things from Ellis Bell’s pen, but few could refrain from clucking over the rude unfinishedness of his debut effort. The Examiner said, “This is a strange book.… [I]t is wild, confused, disjointed, and improbable; and the people who make up the drama, which is tragic enough in its consequences, are savages ruder than those who lived before the days of Homer.”2