The Bronte Sisters

by Catherine Reef

  Patrick Brontë’s well-used copy of Modern Domestic Medicine contained many handwritten notes about ailments that afflicted his family.

  Sitting near her father’s bed, Charlotte had little to do except bear with her aching tooth. To pass the time, she began to write another novel. It featured a tiny woman without money and lacking beauty, a person few were likely to notice—“a heroine as small and as plain as myself.”

  six

  “It Is Soul Speaking to Soul”

  CHARLOTTE wrote steadily, holding her face close to her pencil and paper, while her father slowly improved. After five days, the doctor removed the Reverend Brontë’s bandage. After two weeks, he let the patient sit up. After three weeks, Charlotte dismissed the nurse, whose too-polite servility she distrusted. At the end of the fifth week, she took her father home. Sight returned gradually to Patrick Brontë’s left eye; he was writing sermons and reading newspapers without his daughters’ help before many more weeks had passed. He felt so confident about resuming his old activities that he sent his curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, off to Ireland for three weeks, to visit his family.

  While the Reverend Brontë healed, his son worsened. Branwell spent most of his time drinking in Halifax and mailing strange letters to his friends. He sent one to the sculptor Joseph Bentley Leyland that read:

  Constant and unavoidable depression of mind and body sadly shackle me in even trying to go on with any mental effort which might rescue me from the fate of a dry toast soaked six hours in a glass of cold water, and intended to be given to an old Maid’s squeamish Cat.

  Branwell’s debts piled up. In December 1846, his father and sisters had to settle his accounts to keep him out of jail.

  The winter of 1846–47 was discouraging and cold. It was so frigid that Charlotte imagined England had slid north into the Arctic. “The sky looks like ice—the earth is frozen, the wind is as keen as a two-edged blade,” she wrote to Ellen Nussey. Everyone in the parsonage caught colds. Anne’s developed into asthma, and Patrick Brontë came down with influenza. In the village below, rising prices for bread and potatoes forced many weavers’ families to do without. Hunger, dangerous conditions in textile mills, and contaminated water led to poorer health and climbing death rates.

  Through the winter and spring, one publishing house after another rejected the sisters’ novels. Then, at last, in July 1847, a year after they first posted their manuscripts, the publisher T. C. Newby agreed to print Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights as a three-volume set, if the authors put up fifty pounds. (Wuthering Heights would take up two volumes, and Agnes Grey would fill a third.) Anne and Emily would get their money back when—and if—their novels earned a big enough profit. Whether T. C. Newby rejected The Professor or its author refused to pay for publication is unknown. But Charlotte continued to send out her novel every time it came back, crossing out one publisher’s address on the wrapping and scribbling in a new one.

  The seventh firm to receive the manuscript responded with a long letter. Smith, Elder and Company was rejecting The Professor, like all the others, but the gentlemen wondered if Currer Bell had a longer work to submit. If so, they promised to give it close attention. Publishers preferred longer novels that could be printed in three-volume sets, as a book that could be purchased in installments was easy for many readers to afford. Also, the circulating libraries that served cities and towns liked the three-volume system because three patrons could read one novel at the same time.

  It just so happened that Currer Bell had a longer novel. Charlotte spent the next month finishing the book with the small, plain heroine. She packaged it and mailed it to Smith, Elder and Company, 65, Cornhill, London. Its title was Jane Eyre.

  George Smith, who managed the company, started reading Currer Bell’s book on a Sunday. Smith was twenty-three and had taken over Smith, Elder and Company in 1846, after his father died. The novel intrigued him so much that he canceled plans to go horseback riding. He gulped down his dinner so he could return to Jane Eyre’s story, and he stayed up late that night, unwilling to sleep until he had read every word. The next day, Smith wrote to Currer Bell again, to offer one hundred pounds for the right to publish Jane Eyre. If the novel proved popular enough to be reprinted or published in other countries, then Currer Bell might earn as much as five hundred pounds.

  Just twenty-four years old when Charlotte Brontë first sent him her work, George Smith would become the foremost publisher in Victorian England. As an older man he recalled his friendships with Brontë and other great writers as “the happiest and most characteristic feature of my business life.”

  Charlotte Brontë understood that she could never support herself for life on a hundred pounds, but it thrilled her to know that a publisher had spotted her talent. She agreed to the terms that Smith offered, but she put her foot down when he asked her to rewrite parts of her book. Some scenes in Jane Eyre were too brutal, Smith thought.

  The author explained that while writing she had immersed herself in the spirit of the work. She had lived every sorrow and joy along with her main character. “Were I to retrench, to alter and add now when I am uninterested and cold,” she wrote, “I know I should only further injure what may be already defective.” She urged Smith to have confidence in his fellow Victorians. Jane Eyre “might suit the public taste better than you anticipate—for it is true and Truth has a severe charm of its own,” she stated.

  On October 19, 1847, Jane Eyre: An Autobiography (“Edited by Currer Bell”) became the first novel by a Brontë to be published. Its pages introduced the world to a new kind of female character. Society easily overlooked women like Jane Eyre, drably dressed and lacking beauty and wealth. Yet as they followed Jane from childhood to maturity, readers found her to be a person of deep feeling and the equal of any man. Outspoken and courageous, she stood in contrast to the passive woman who was the Victorian ideal.

  “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.” A cold winter wind blows around the great house called Gateshead as Jane Eyre begins. Clouds block the sky, and a heavy rain hammers the ground. The bleakness outdoors matches the leaden mood within, where the orphaned Jane has taken refuge with a book. She tries to distract herself with its pictures, but even these are dreary: a lone rock emerging from the sea, a headstone in a moonlit graveyard, a demon besetting a thief.

  Young Jane Eyre was reading A History of British Birds, a book the Brontës owned that had peculiar illustrations. On one page a rock stands alone, battered by a winter sea. It symbolizes Jane’s isolation.

  Ten-year-old Jane is an unwanted child. Her widowed aunt, Mrs. Reed, resents being saddled with her care and treats her harshly. Jane is just a little girl, but she stands up for herself and for the truth. She speaks out when she is punished unfairly, in a way that bothers her aunt’s conscience: “My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and can see all you do and think; and so can papa and mamma; they know how you shut me up all day long, and how you wish me dead.” Mrs. Reed solves the problem of this “passionate” child by sending her away to school.

  Jane will spend the next nine years at Lowood Institution, as both pupil and teacher. In describing Lowood, Charlotte Brontë brought to life the Clergy Daughters’ School. The Reverend Mr. Brocklehurst, the headmaster, is another William Carus Wilson, “a black pillar” of a man with a grim face “like a carved mask.” Brocklehurst uses religion to justify mistreating the girls. “When you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children’s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies,” he says, “but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!”

  Jane befriends a fellow pupil, Helen Burns, who is a bright girl and a good student. Like the oldest Brontë sister, Maria, Helen suffers constant abuse from a cruel teacher, whom Charlotte gave an ugly name, Miss Scatcherd.

  Miss Scatcherd even interrupts a history lesson to shout at Helen, “You dirty, disagreeable girl! you have never cleaned your nails this morning!” For this crime against cleanliness, Miss Scat
cherd gives Helen a flogging. Helen accepts punishment without complaining as Jane, like Charlotte as a child, looks on powerlessly. “Love your enemies,” Helen quotes from the Bible to Jane; “bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you.” Jane rejects such a passive faith, declaring, “I was no Helen Burns.”

  Wrongly labeled a liar, Jane Eyre is forced to stand before the rest of Lowood School, humiliated. Peggy Ann Garner played young Jane in the 1944 film version of Charlotte Brontë’s first novel.

  Charlotte Brontë insisted that the brutality she described was real. What was more, the treatment Maria endured at school was worse than anything Helen Burns had to suffer. Some of it was so savage it defied belief. “I abstained from recording much that I remembered respecting her, lest the narrative should sound incredible,” Charlotte wrote, recalling Maria.

  With friends like Helen and a kind teacher, Miss Temple, Jane survives her years at Lowood and even flourishes. Once she has grown up, the desire to live in the wider world impels her to leave the school. She journeys to an estate called Thornfield Hall, to be governess to a young girl named Adèle Varens. Adèle has spent most of her life in France and speaks little English.

  Even at Thornfield Hall, Jane longs for more. She tells her readers that “women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men suffer.”

  In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë showed the awkward invisibility of a governess’s life. When well-to-do guests stay at Thornfield, Jane must sit alone in a shaded nook off the drawing room. Her gray dress contrasts with the silks and jewels of the fine ladies who discuss her openly, as if she lacks a mind and feelings. Jane’s employer sees her worth, however, and seeks her friendship. He is Edward Rochester, master of Thornfield. Rochester is a dark, brooding man, who describes himself as “heart-weary and soul-withered.” Adèle is his ward. Rochester lets down his guard in Jane’s steady, intelligent presence. She learns to recognize his approach by the “warning fragrance” of his cigar. Rochester mentions his past mistakes but advises her not to grow too curious about him. “Don’t long for poison,” he cautions. “Encroach, presume, and the game is up.” Jane understands that he—and his house—harbor secrets. Strange things happen, and she cannot help but wonder: Who set fire to Rochester’s bed, perhaps trying to kill him? What is the source of the “demoniac laugh” that rings out in the night?

  Edward Rochester is older than Jane Eyre and worldly, yet he and the governess fall in love. As the two agree to marry, a violent storm erupts. Lightning strikes an old chestnut tree in Thornfield’s garden, leaving it split and broken, like the one near Ellen Nussey’s home. This is an ominous sign, and as the wedding is about to take place, Rochester’s dreadful secret is revealed. Jane learns that she cannot be Rochester’s wife.

  Refusing to be his mistress, Jane runs away. She finds a measure of contentment teaching in a school, but another man has a purpose for her in mind. He is bound for India as a missionary and wants her to go with him as his wife. He makes no promise of love; instead he wants Jane to be his partner in work. She is close to surrendering when her heart hears Rochester crying out for her, as clearly as if his voice were traveling across the miles. She goes to him, to discover his fate and her own.

  Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester, portrayed by Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, find love in the 2011 motion picture Jane Eyre.

  The published book thrilled its first readers. Among them was the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, who almost wished that he had never read 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.” Thackeray admitted, “Some of the love passages made me cry.”

  Edward Rochester reveals to Jane Eyre the shocking secret of Thornfield Hall on what would have been their wedding day. This illustration is from a 1922 edition of Jane Eyre.

  The critic George Henry Lewes was quick to recognize the greatness of Jane Eyre. “It is soul speaking to soul,” he wrote excitedly; “it is an utterance from the depths of a struggling, suffering, much-enduring spirit.” He found in it “perception of character and power of delineating it; picturesqueness; passion; and knowledge of life.” Lewes noted that Jane Eyre is one of those rare novels that stay with the reader once the final words have been read. This is because “reality—deep, significant reality—is the great characteristic of the book.”

  “The writer is evidently a woman,” he decided. Lewes could make fun of women novelists, but Jane Eyre was so good that he was willing to overlook Currer Bell’s sex. “Man or woman, young or old, be that as it may,” he wrote, because “no such book has gladdened our eyes for a long while.”

  Praise from the influential critic George Henry Lewes brought many readers to Currer Bell’s novel. The book’s greatness made the author’s sex unimportant, Lewes wrote.

  Another critic called Jane Eyre “a novel of remarkable power and beauty.” He believed that “many of the scenes through which the author has passed, as well as the feelings which she describes, are real.” This reviewer, too, guessed that Bell was a woman. He praised the main character, Jane Eyre, stating that she “is drawn by one whose pen is cunning to describe every nook and turning in the female heart.” He found the descriptions of Rochester less than perfect, though. This was no surprise, given his view that “a female pen is inadequate to pourtray the character and the passions of a man.”

  People were clamoring to read Currer Bell’s novel. Smith, Elder and Company published a second edition in England, which Charlotte dedicated to Thackeray, and then a third and a fourth. In January 1848, the first American edition appeared. Soon, people in the towns around Haworth were starting to read Jane Eyre. Charlotte even overheard a local clergyman remark on elements in the book that seemed familiar: “Why, they have got Cowan Bridge School, and Mr Carus Wilson here, I declare!”

  “He did not recognize Currer Bell,” Charlotte noted in a letter to Smith, Elder and Company. Clearly, she enjoyed her secret. “What author would be without the advantage of being able to walk invisible?” she asked. She kept the news of her authorship from Ellen Nussey, who might have disapproved, but she sent Jane Eyre to Mary Taylor in New Zealand. It surprised Mary to discover that her friend had created a novel that was “so perfect as a work of art.” Socially conscious Mary wanted to know how Charlotte could write a whole book without once preaching to her readers about society’s wrongs.

  Emily and Anne convinced Charlotte that the time had come to tell their father about her novel. Charlotte chose a morning when he was reading in his study to knock on his door and say, “Papa, I have been writing a book.” He looked up to scold, “I hope you have not been involving yourself in any such silly expense.” Charlotte replied to the contrary: “I think I shall gain some money by it.” She read him some reviews and left him with a copy of Jane Eyre.

  Patrick Brontë almost always ate alone, but that afternoon he asked his daughters to join him for tea. When they were seated, he announced, “Children, Charlotte has been writing a book—and I think it is a better one than I expected.”

  Charlotte Brontë had taken the art of fiction to a new level. She had written frankly about a woman’s feelings at a depth no other writer had yet explored. Her frankness bothered some readers, and after the first flurry of praise, unfriendly reviews began to appear. “In ‘Jane Eyre’ the immorality is peculiar”; “Religion is stabbed in the dark—our social distinctions attempted to be leveled, and all absurdly moral notions done away with”; “It would be no credit to any one to be the author of ‘Jane Eyre.’”

  The angriest criticism came from a woman named Elizabeth Rigby, who condemned the main character, Jane Eyre, as “the personification of an unregenerate and undisciplined spirit.” Jane’s moral strength “is the strength of a mere heathen mind which is a law unto itself,” she
wrote. The entire novel was “an anti-Christian composition.” And even though she recognized the high quality of Brontë’s writing, she dismissed the novel as a failure.

  Rigby decided that Currer Bell had to be a man, “for if we ascribe the book to a woman at all, we have no alternative but to ascribe it to one who has, for some sufficient reason, long forfeited the society of her own sex.” She could not resist adding that “if by no woman, it is certainly also by no artist.” This review made Charlotte Brontë furious. She kept it—and others like it—from her father, but she responded to their authors in the preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre. She reminded those “in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong” that “conventionality is not morality.”

  This might have been true, but Jane Eyre was becoming a dangerous book, one that decent mothers forbade their daughters to read. What caused this shift in public opinion? Could it have been the appearance of another novel, an even more disturbing one, written by a different Bell? Some readers struggled with Jane Eyre. But hardly anyone knew what to make of Wuthering Heights.