On March 31, 1855, Charlotte Bronte Died

Today is the 150th anniversary of her death.

Here’s perhaps the most famous image of the Bronte sisters – a portrait done by their dissipated (and, some say, more of a genius than all of them) brother Branwell:

In honor of Charlotte Bronte, a writer I have always adored, here are a couple of excerpts from her letters, and quotes about her work, etc:

I love this one. This is a letter Charlotte wrote to a good friend. The friend had written to her, asking her for a recommended reading list. Here is Charlotte’s reply. For some reason, this letter completely delights me. I have it copied out and up on my bulletin board at home. I just love it:

“You ask me to recommend you some books for your perusal. I will do so in as few words as I can. If you like poetry, let it be first-rate; Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (if you will, though I don’t admire him), Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth, and Southey. Now don’t be startled at the names of Shakespeare and Byron. Both these were great men, and their works are like themselves. You will know how to choose the good, and to avoid the evil; the finest passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting; you will never wish to read them over twice. Omit the comedies of Shakespeare and the Don Juan, perhaps the Cain, of Byron, though the latter is a magnificent poem, and read the rest fearlessly; that must indeed be a depraved mind which can gather evil from Henry VIII, from Richard III, from Macbeth, and Hamlet, and Julius Caesar. Scott’s sweet, wild, romantic poetry can do you no harm. Nor can Wordsworth’s, nor Campbell’s, nor Southey’s — the greatest part at least of his; some is certainly objectionable. For history, read Hume, Rollin, and the Universal History, if you can; I never did. For fiction, read Scott alone; all novels after his are worthless. For biography, read Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Southey’s Life of Nelson, Lockhart’s Life of Burns, Moore’s Life of Sheridan, Moore’s Life of Byron, Wolfe’s Remains. For natural history, read Bewick and Audobon, and Goldsmith, and White’s History of Selborne. For divinity, your brother will advise you there. I can only say, adhere to standard authors, and avoid novelty.”

Absolutely marvelous.

Here is what one of my favorite authors, Lucy Maud Montgomery, wrote about Charlotte Bronte in her journal – I think this is an awesome analysis:

It is customary to regret Charlotte Bronte’s death as premature. I doubt it. I doubt if she would have added to her literary fame. Resplendent as her genius was, it had a narrow range. I think she reached its limit. She could not have gone on forever writing ‘Jane Eyres’ and ‘Villette’s’ and there was nothing in her life and experience to fit her for writing anything else…

There was a marked masochistic strain in Charlotte Bronte — revealing itself mentally, not physically. This accounts for Rochester. He was exactly the tyrant a woman with such a strain in her would have loved, delighting in the pain he inflicted in on her. And this same tendency was the cause of her cruelty to Lucy Snowe — who was herself. She persecutes Lucy Snowe all through ‘Villette’ and drowns her lover rather than let the poor soul have a chance at happiness. I can’t forgive Charlotte Bronte for killing off Paul Emmanuel. I don’t know whether I like Lucy Snowe or not — but I am always consumed with pity for and sympathy with her, whereas Charlotte delights in tormenting her — a sort of spiritual vicarous self-flagellation.

Here is another excerpt from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s journal. She loved the Bronte sisters’ books, and wrote out her impressions through many re-readings over her lifetime.

Charlotte Bronte only made about 7,000 by her books … It seems unfair and unjust. What I admire most in Charlotte Bronte is her absolute clear-sightedness regarding shams and sentimentalities. Nothing of the sort could impose on her. And she always hewed straight to the line. I have been asking myself, ‘If I had known Charlotte Bronte in life – how would we have reacted upon each other? Would I have liked her? Would she have liked me?’ I answer, ‘No.’ She was absolutely without a sense of humor. She would not have approved of me at all. I could have done her whole heaps of good. A few jokes would have leavened the gloom and tragedy of that Haworth Parsonage amazingly.

People have spoken of Charlotte Bronte’s ‘creative genius’. Charlotte Bronte had no creative genius. Her genius was one of amazing ability to describe and interpret the people and surroundings she knew. All the people in her books who impress us with such a wonderful sense of reality were drawn from life. She herself is Jane Eyre, Lucy Snowe. Emily was Shirley. Rochester, whom she did create, was unnatural and unreal. Blanche Ingram was unreal. St. John was unreal. Most of her men are unreal. She knew nothing of men except her father and brother and the Belgian professor of her intense unhappy love. Emmanuel was drawn from him, and therefore is one of the few men in her books who is real.

Yet another entry in LM Montgomery’s journal. In it, she writes about a biography of Charlotte Bronte she just finished, written by EF Benson. The issues of the “Bronte myth” were alive and well even back then.

I do not think Charlotte was in the least like the domineering little shrew he pictures her, anymore perhaps than she was like the rather too saintly heroine of Mrs. Gaskell’s biography. I do not put any faith in Beson’s theory that Branwell wrote parts of ‘Wuthering Heights’ and inspired the whole. There is no foundation in the world for it beyond the assertion of two of Branwell’s cronies that he read the first few chapters of it to them and told them it was his own. They may have been telling the truth, but I would not put the least confidence in any statement of Branwell’s. He was entirely capable of reading someone else’s manuscript and trying to pass it off as his own. No doubt he was more in Emily’s confidence than Charlotte ever knew and had got possession of her manuscript in some way. Benson blames Charlotte for her unsympathetic attitude to Branwell. I imagine that an angel would have found it rather difficult to be sympathetic. Benson cannot understand a proud sensitive woman’s heart. I love Charlotte Bronte so much that I am angry when anyone tries to belittle her. But I will admit that she seemed to have an unenviable talent for disliking almost everyone she met … And the things she says about the man she afterwards married!

And finally, some compiled quotes from Charlotte Bronte herself:

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.

Good Lord, truer words.

And

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

I like this one:

Look twice before you leap.

And:

There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.

And finally: the opening paragraphs of Jane Eyre:

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.

I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.

Her books have always been a grand comfort to me, comforting in various stages of my development, because her insights are so wise, she seems to light the way ahead. But they are also exciting books, because so unexpected. You can’t get any more unexpected than Jane Eyre. Nothing can prepare you for Mr. Rochester. And the plot that intertwines Jane Eyre’s fortunes with his. No matter how many times I have read Jane Eyre, I am still startled by it. The final chapter, where Jane Eyre has that unexplained moment of what could be called astral travel, or ESP, or communication across many miles – she hears him cry out to her – remains one of the most moving chapters of a book I have ever read. And until that moment, it is not clear how things will go. You have given up, you have given up hope, as a reader … It is quite quite sad. But then, this strange midnight miracle occurs … The heart lifts up out of the chest in response.

Charlotte Bronte was a good writer. Of course she was. She didn’t have the Jane Austen impeccability with language. No, Charlotte’s writing is messier, more passionate, more urgent. People behave in incomprehensible ways in her books. Life is very very dark. People are cruel, they are vicious, they are barely civilized. (Her sister Emily went way further in this regard with Wuthering Heights. In Wuthering Heights it is not apparent that civilization or society has ANY bearing on people whatsoever. A terrifying vision of chaos. Charlotte had some overlay of civilization, but not too much. Not too much.) And so over and over again, my heart responds to her books. They do not become predictable, even at the 4th or 5th reading.

Cheers, Charlotte. Thanks for the books you managed to complete before you died. A good life indeed.