Villette

No doubt this gift was an act of justice without the conclusive evidence these letters afford there would have been no means of rectifying the arbitrary false and inadequate criticism of the personality and thus indirectly of the writings of a great novelist misjudged especially in her own country but whilst for these reasons the publication of these letters was a duty to english literature the son of the late director and directress of the brussels pincegnat unwarrantedly supposed to have their literal counterparts in the interesting professor paul emanuel and the abominable madame beck might well in view of the unintelligent and ungenerous criticism of his parents by english readers have refused to recognize any obligation on his side to concern himself with the rectification of the dull laudatory or the malicious condemnatory judgments passed from a false standpoint on the authoress of we find dr paul heger able to rise entirely above all personal rancor and to recognize that charlotte bront herself is not to be made responsible because a good many of her critics have blundered.

Indeed, the conduct of the whole Hager family since the publication of Villette and the death of Charlotte Bronte has been distinguished by this fine spirit of disinterestedness, and by a dignified indifference to undeserved reproaches.

The answer to all charges of unkindness to Charlotte on Madame Hager's part, or of injudicious kindness first followed by heartless indifference on m heger's side was in their hands and they had only to publish the present letters to establish the facts as they really were but this could not have been done in the time when villette appeared nor even immediately after charlotte's death without wounding others villette appeared in eighteen fifty three in eighteen fifty four then in her fortieth year, married the Reverend A.

B. Nichols, and she died less than a year after this marriage.

No, one realizes perfectly that, as with mrs gaskell fifty-seven years ago so with this modern conscientious and generous critic to-day there exists an entirely noble and from a given point of view justifiable reason for refusing to handle or examine a matter with which so it is alleged historical and literary criticism has no concern a purely personal and intimate secret sorrow in the life of an admirable woman of genius the sanctuary of whose inner feelings it is by no means necessary to explore and still less necessary to throw open to the vulgar curiosity and malevolent insinuations of a generation of critics infected with hero phobia and the unwholesome delight of discovering a good deal to reprobate and even more to laugh at in the sensibility of men and women of genius who have honored the human race and enriched the world because they have possessed through power of feeling power also of doing fine work that the critics who find much in them to reprobate and more to laugh at have not the power even to appreciate Now, if the point of view of Mrs. Gaskell and Mr. Clement Shorter were a correct one, with all my heart and soul,

I,

for my part, should approve of their action in slamming the door in the face of invading facts that threaten to leave the way open for scandal-hunters and hero-phobists to enter with them, and to deal with the honored reputation of Charlotte Bronte in the same way that, more to the discredit of english letters than to that of two french writers of genius recent critics have dealt with the love-letters of madame de stal and this point of view however is a mistaken one in the present case because to commence with charlotte bront's romantic love for m heger affords no game to the scandal-hunter but on the contrary it is serviceable to the just appreciation of her character as well as of her genius, that is, her true sentiment for her professor, that explains her attitude of mind when writing Villette, should be rightly understood.

Then also, whilst Madame de Stael's infatuation for Benjamin Constant neither adds to nor diminishes her claims as the authoress of Corinne and d'Alemont to the rank of a fine writer and a great critic, and while Georges Sand's tormenting and tormented love for the ill-fated, irresistible, unstable child of his century, Demuset, is a poignant revelation of the passing weakness, through immense tenderness of a splendidly strong and independent spirit, that one is almost ashamed to be made the spectator of, Charlotte Bronte's various martyrdom undergone secretly and silently and rewarded openly fills one with an extraordinary sentiment of respect for her and justifies mr clement shorter's own fine and generous utterances upon the impression that the letters that betray the anguish she endured and overcome

FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO VOLUNTEER, PLEASE VISIT LIBERVOX.ORG THE SECRET OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE BY FREDERICA RICHARDSON MCDONALD PART 1 CHAPTER 1 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE CREATED BY A FALSE CRITICAL METHOD we live in an epoch when impressionist methods of criticism admissible and often illuminative in the domains of art and of imaginative literature have invaded the once jealously guarded paths of historical criticism to the detriment of correct standards of judgment leading critics whose literary accomplishments powers of persuasive argument and unquestionable good faith lend great influence to their decisions show no sort of hesitation in undertaking to interpret the characters and careers of famous men and women independently of any examination of evidence by purely psychological methods i am not denying that as literary exercises some of these impressionist portraits of men and women of genius seen through the temperament of writers who are sometimes endowed with genius themselves are very interesting but what has to be remembered and what is constantly forgotten is that if these psychological interpretations of people who once really existed are to be accorded any authority as historical judgments they must have been preceded by an attentive inquiry enabling the future interpreter before he begins to employ psychology to feel perfectly certain that he has clearly in view the particular soul he is undertaking to penetrate with its own special qualities and placed amongst and acted upon by the real circumstances of its earthly career where the preliminary precaution of this inquiry into the true facts that have to be penetrated and explained has been neglected no psychological subtlety no pathological science no sympathetic insight can protect the most accomplished literary impressionist from forming and fostering false opinions about the historical personages he is judging from a standpoint of assumptions that do not allow him to exercise the true function of criticism defined by matthew arnold as an impartial endeavour to see the thing as in itself it really is in the case of charlotte bront her first and still classical biographer mrs gaskell carried through now fifty-seven years ago with great literary skill and also with historical exactitude the study of her parentage and youth of her experiences in england as a governess of her family trials and losses of the sudden development of her talent or rather of her genius as a writer that at one bound after the publication of her first novel made her famous throughout england and soon famous throughout europe and that proved her since charlotte has been dead as people use the phrase more than half a century and since her books are still living spirits we may be allowed to affirm this one of the immortals there was one epic in her heroine's career that this elsewhere conscientious biographer neglected to study at all in the sense of subjecting facts and events and personages belonging to its history to careful examination Here, on the contrary, we find that Mrs. Gaskell left exact methods of inquiry behind her.

and adopted arbitrary psychological methods of arguments and assumptions where not only no effort was made to consult the testimony of facts but where this testimony was ignored or contradicted when it stood in the way of preconceived theories and this period thus inadequately or rather thus mischievously dealt with happened to be precisely the one where the key must be found to the right interpretations of charlotte's personality and of the emotions and experiences she had undergone and that called her genius forth to life and stamped it with the seal and quality that made her amongst our great english novelists the only representative prose writer in our literature of the european literary movement that french critics praise and attack under the name of le romantisme the period in charlotte's life that i am speaking of is of course the interval of two years from february eighteen forty two to january eighteen forty four that she spent at bruxelles in the school in the rue d'isabelle whose director and directress m and madame heger are supposed to have been painted in the characters of paul emanuel and of madame beck in the famous novel of villette how far that supposition is justified and to what extent villette is an autobiographical reminiscence thinly disguised as a novel can be now but has never been up to this date satisfactorily decided by an attentive historical inquiry what is established securely to-day and cannot be removed from the foundation of documentary evidence that serves as the basis upon which all future theories must rest is that it is in this period that charlotte bront not as an enthusiastic and half-formed school-girl as some reckless modern impressionist critics careless of the evidence of facts would have us believe but as a woman profoundly sincere impassioned exalted unstained and unstainable who between twenty-six and twenty-eight years of age had long left girlish extravagance behind her underwent experiences and emotions that were not transient feelings nor sensational excitements but they were transforming and formative spiritual influences causing no doubt bitter anguish and intolerable regrets that broke her heart in the sense that they destroyed personal hope or belief in happiness and even the personal capacity for happiness yet that from this grave of buried hope called her genius forth to life and stamped and sealed it with its special quality and gift the gift that made her a romantic so that at this hour one has not to deplore any longer for charlotte's sake this tragical sentiment of predestined hopeless and unrequited love that broke her heart but that gave her immortality for whilst the broken heart is healed now or at any rate has slept in peace for more than half a century the genius born from its sorrow is still a living spirit and will probably continue to live on from age to age whilst the english tongue endures at the present hour all this can be positively affirmed but even before the final settlement for every critic who respects historical evidence of the now incontrovertible fact mrs gaskell's method of dealing with this momentous period could not satisfy an attentive student who compared her account with charlotte's correspondence and also with eloquent impassioned passages in villette and the professor where the authoress is plainly painting emotions and impressions she has herself undergone and the effect that was left upon thoughtful readers of the life of charlotte bront was that the biographer was not negligently but deliberately altering the true significance by underrating the importance of charlotte's experiences in bruxelles and of her relationships with m and madame heger this biographer's theory was and the doctrine has been vehemently defended by a certain clique of devotees of charlotte bront down to the present day that charlotte obtained certainly great intellectual stimulus as well as literary culture from the lessons of m heger as an accomplished professor but that outside of these influences her relationships with m heger were of an entirely ordinary and tranquil character and that she carried back with her to haworth after her two years residence in bruxelles no other sentiments than those of the grateful regard and esteem a good pupil necessarily retains for a professor whose lessons she has turned to excellent account how far mrs gaskell did believe or was able to make herself believe what she professed it is difficult to determine now my own opinion is she did not believe it but that she esteemed it a duty to respect the secret that had not been confided to her and to pass by in silence and with averted eyes the place where forsaken by hope charlotte had fought out bravely and all alone this battle with a hopeless passion that after all when it comes across any woman's path she must fight out alone because nowhere outside of her own soul is there any help and then having won her battle had gone on leaving her broken heart buried in that silent secret place to face her altered destiny and to write stories as a method of salvation from despair but to return now and again to visit that silent secret grave and to gather the magical flowers that grew there and breathe their bitter sweet perfume and to take large handfuls of these flowers home with her and in the air saturated with the bitter-sweet perfume of these magical flowers to write her stories so that the stories themselves come to us not like other stories but steeped in this strange perfume thrilled through with the magical life belonging to flowers of remembrance gathered from the grave of a tragical romance and this explains why the stories are themselves romantic and why as harriet martineau complained villette especially has this quality which to the authoress of illustrations in political economy appeared a defect that all events and personages are regarded through the medium of one passion only the passion of unrequited love to return to mrs gaskell and her criticism of charlotte bront the question of whether she like harriet martineau committed a critical blunder as a result of studying charlotte's character and genius by wrong methods or whether out of loyalty she endeavored to cover in her friend's life the secret romance that charlotte herself never revealed does not need to trouble us much because the answer does not greatly matter however laudatory mrs gaskell's motive may have been the fact remains that as a result of her endeavour rather to turn attention away from than to examine the true circumstances of charlotte's relationships with m and madame heger an inadequate or else a false criticism was inaugurated by her influence of the most popular in europe of our distinguished women novelists and who outside of england is judged by right standards as a romantic but who in her own country has been criticised from eighteen fifty seven down to nineteen thirteen in the light of one of two contradictory impressions both of which we now know were historical mistakes the first of these impressions is that charlotte bront has painted not only her own emotions but her own actual experiences in villette and that lucy snow paul emanuel and madame beck are pseudonyms under which we ought to recognize charlotte herself and the director and directress of the pensionnat in the rue d'isabelle the second and almost equally mischievous impression is that no romantic nor tragical sentiment whatever characterizes the relationships between charlotte bront and her bruxelles professor in literature and that she derived her inspirations as a writer solely from the drab dreariness and the desolation of disease and death of her life in the shadow of haworth churchyard it is impossible from the standpoint of either of these impressions to form right opinions about charlotte bront either as a distinguished personality or as a writer of genius whose place in english literature is that amongst our prose writers she is the representative romantic who counts with george sand but differs from her as an english and not a french exponent of the sentiment of romantic love judged both as a distinguished personality and as a writer of genius from the standpoint of the impression that villette is an autobiographical story charlotte bront suffers injustice both as a woman of fine character and as an imaginative painter of emotions rather than an observer of events or a critic of manners accepted as a realistic picture of her own adventures in brussels the book does not testify to her accuracy or skill in portraiture from the purely literary point of view and from the moral and personal standpoint she remains convicted if she be held to be telling her own story of the baseness of a half confession and of a dishonorable and a successful not a romantic and tragical love for a married man and of the treacherous wrong done a sister woman who threw open her home to her when she was a friendless alien in a foreign city and if this were so this traitress would have further aggravated the dishonest betrayal of her protectress by holding up the woman she had wronged to the world's detestation, either as the contemptible and scheming Mademoiselle Zoraida Reuter of the Professor, or the less contemptible but more hateful Madame Beck in Villette.

if then charlotte did mean or even suppose that others could be induced to believe that she meant to paint her own relationships to monsieur and madame heger in the story she would stand convicted not only as a woman of bad character but as one who had a wicked and vindictive heart nor yet does the second impression patronized by devotees of charlotte bront who seem to imagine that the revelation of an entirely innocent and indeed beautiful though tragical romantic attachment in the life of this romantic writer is the disclosure of a sin help us to find any solution of the problem as psychological critics present it to us of the dissonance between her personality and dull existence and her literary distinction as our chief english romantic and the authoress of those amazing masterpieces jane eyre and villette what a contrast in effect between the characteristics of these masterpieces and the characteristics of her circumstances at haworth and of the circle of her familiar acquaintances the characteristics of charlotte's books are emotional force the exaltation of passion over all the commonplace proprieties the low-toned feelings the semi educated pedantries that are the characteristics of the people who surround charlotte who are her correspondents and her friends and whose mediocrity weighs on the poor original woman's spirit and even on her literary style like lead so that the letters she writes to them are really nearly as dull as the letters they write to her and one finds it hard to believe that some of the letters to ellen nussie for instance come from the same pen that wrote villette or even that wrote from broussel some of her letters to emily and again if we leave out of account the tragical romantic sentiment for m heger how are we to solve the problem as these psychologists presented to us and that states itself in this conviction that the creator of rochester and paul emanuel found her own romance only at forty years of age in her marriage with the rev a b nicholls an event she announces thus i trust the demands of both feeling and duty will be in some measure reconciled by the step in contemplation adding on to this the following description of the future bridegroom mr nicholls is a kind considerate fellow with all his masculine faults he enters into my wishes about having the thing done quietly from the standpoint of the impression that the romance in charlotte's life was the marriage she speaks of as the thing that she wishes may be done quietly and that the highest pitch of personal emotion she attained to is expressed by her in the temperate confidence that by the step in contemplation the demands of both feeling and duty may in some measure be reconciled only in some measure poor charlotte but she died within a year from this standpoint i say one really cannot solve the problem of the dissonance between charlotte's personality and her books but there is one conclusion we are bound to reach the influences of haworth no doubt the drab dreariness of everything and then the desolation after bramwell's death and emily's death and anne's death and the father threatened with blindness and also the mediocrity of all those dull dull people who represented her familiar friends and correspondents so satisfied with themselves all of them so dissatisfied with life and who saw it through the medium not of a romantic tragical sentiment not of one great passion but through the medium of small grievances of superior nursery governesses the sort of people who dislike children and want over-driven mothers to be always occupied with their governess's sentiments instead of with a baby who is cutting its teeth no doubt the influences of haworth and of charlotte bront's circle there before she became famous did help to plant in her the immense depression and fatigue of a spirit that had known the stress of great emotions and could bear no more expressed in the letter announcing her decision to marry one of the curates she had laughed at in shirley who with all his masculine faults she says is a kind considerate fellow who doesn't expect her to pretend she thinks this marriage the thing a festival well but the conclusion we must form is this that if it be at haworth and after eighteen forty six that we must find the causes of the depression that brought about charlotte's marriage with mr nicholl it is not here that we must seek the secret of charlotte bront the romance that broke her heart true but made her an immortal whose claim to live forever is based upon no moderate well-balanced sentiment where the demands of both feeling and duty will be in some measure reconciled but upon passionate emotions compelling expression and forming a new language almost as m jules le maitre has said introducing new ways of feeling and as it were a new vibration into literature and in the place where the romance in charlotte's life is found must we seek also the source of this power of emotion creating powers of expression to which much more accomplished literary artists than charlotte jane austen and mrs gaskell for instance never reached and to an intimate knowledge of moods and ecstasies and raptures that rule and torture and exalt human souls that much more subtle and scientific psychologists than herself george eliot for instance and mrs humphry ward never discovered the supreme gift of the authoress of villette and jane eyre as a painter of emotions an interpreter of intimate moods a witness in the cause of ideal sentiments an incessant rebel against vulgarity and common worldliness and the stupid tyranny of custom an upholder of the sovereignty of romance cannot be weighed against nor judged by the same standards as the accomplished literary gift of such finished artists as the authors of pride and prejudice and cranford such subtle students of character as the authors of middlemarch and robert elsmere such vigorous fighters for intellectual and moral ends as are represented by the author of the illustrations upon political economy and the atkinson letters and it is because as a result of judging her genius and her personality from the standpoint of false impressions charlotte bront has not been recognized in england as a painter of personal emotions a romantic in short but has been judged as the advocate of a general doctrine one very agreeable to the convictions of the average man but especially exasperating to the aspirations and principles of the superior woman i mean the doctrine that to obtain the love of a man whom she feels to be and rejoices to recognize as her master is the supreme desire and dream of every truly feminine heart it is because i say of this mistake that charlotte has become the idol of a class of critics least qualified perhaps to appreciate the merits of a romantic rebel against conventional domesticity whilst among more naturally sympathetic judges the peculiar perfume and power of these novels steeped in and saturated with the passionate essence of a personal romance has not been recognized either for what it really is-the magic of charlotte bront the special quality in her work that gives it originality and distinction but this very quality the personal note that makes her our only english romantic novelist has been signalized by many sincere admirers of her books as a defect i have already mentioned the judgment passed upon villette by an admirable woman of letters charlotte bront's personal friend and a critic whose good faith and honest desire to serve the interests of this sister authoress with whom she found fault it is quite impossible to doubt when villette appeared charlotte bront had been for some little time on very friendly terms with harriet martineau and she did not fear to incur the risk always a perilous one to friendship of asking harriet to tell her quite frankly what she thought of her book harriet responded with perfect frankness to the invitation and the almost inevitable result followed the event wrecked their friendship and no one was to blame harriet martineau without disguise but without malice said what she thought was true but neither was charlotte in the wrong for she felt herself unjustly judged and her feeling was right because harriet used false standards as for the matter which you so desire to know wrote the frank harriet i have but one thing to say but it is not a small one i do not like the love either the kind or the degree of it and its prevalence in the book and effect on the action of it help to explain the passages in the reviews which you consulted me about and seem to afford some foundation for the criticism they afford Charlotte was deeply offended.

I protest against this passage, she wrote.

constantin

hager within two years of her return to england no doubt this gift was an act of justice without the conclusive evidence these letters afford there would have been no means of rectifying the arbitrary, false, and inadequate criticism of the personality, and thus, indirectly, of the writings of a great novelist misjudged especially in her own country.

But whilst, for these reasons, the publication of these letters was a duty to English literature, the son of the late director and directress of the Brussels Pinsoniette unwarrantedly supposed to have their literal counterparts in the interesting Professor Paul Emmanuel and the abominable Madame Beck, might well, in view of the unintelligent and ungenerous criticism of his parents by English readers, have refused to recognize any obligation on his side to concern himself with the rectification of the dull laudatory or the malicious condemnatory judgments passed from a false standpoint on the authoress of villette we find dr paul heger able to rise entirely above all personal rancor and to recognize that charlotte bront herself is not to be made responsible because a good many of her critics have blundered Indeed, the conduct of the whole Heger family since the publication of Villette and the death of Charlotte Brontë has been distinguished by this fine spirit of disinterestedness, and by a dignified indifference to undeserved reproaches.

The answer to all charges of unkindness to Charlotte on Madame Heger's part, or of injudicious kindness first, followed by heartless indifference on Monsieur Heger's side, was in their hands, and they had only to publish the present letters to establish the facts, as they really were.