Charlotte Bronte occupies a position of great importance in the history of women’s literature in particular and in the history of the Victorian literature in general. She gave a female voice to fiction creating a new female as well as male consciousness in the novel genre. In doing so, she laid claim to unchartered territory, breaking silences, asserting truth previously unspoken and offering new perception of reality for both men and women in her novels. Charlotte Bronte is a landmark in the history of the English novel. Though resident in a remote district where education had made little progress, Charlotte Bronte pays a considerable amount in the novelty of the literary genre, novel. Though she wrote only four novels, Charlotte Bronte occupies a very vital place amongst the English novelists. This is because of her violent passion and unconventional approach to life and love. Such approach makes her quite different from Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Thackeray. Her works are mainly delineations of her actual experiences and the experiences of the Victorian women. She wrote in an age shaken by religious, scientific and social upheaval. Her novels offer not just a thematic exploration of the necessary union of thought and feeling, but an experience of that union as her poetic prose ensures that the reader is both intellectually and emotionally engaged at the same time. This poetic form marked a significant development in the literature of women.
Charlotte Bronte claimed a sexual identity for women. Contrary to the effacement and denial of woman’s sexual identity in the fiction and society of the Victorian England, Charlotte Bronte asserted that women not only sexual desire but have a right to expect sexual fulfilment. Her search for a sexual identity for women is dominant in her novels. Her novels are burdened with tension between a female independence of spirit and action and a feminine dependence in love relationships.
Charlotte Bronte found that women were treated as inferior specie in the Victorian England. Daughters were seen a burden on the family. Women were seen as fit only for the marriage market in England. If a woman loses this market, her life will be miserable. In the novels of Charlotte Bronte, the life of unmarried woman is depicted. The state of the Victorian woman was miserable since she was treated as inferior to man. The gender role of the Victorian woman is only a mother, cook, or everything related to the house. Charlotte Bronte is looking for a sexual identity for the Victorian woman. Charlotte Bronte would not tolerate this blot on her sex. So, she would appeal to fathers and guardians of society to take this critical situation of women as a theme worthy of thought and request them to bring about improvement. Charlotte Bronte felt very strong about the dilemma of women who, though no fault of their own, were forced to this position. In general, Victorian women could only gain recognition through marriage and were expected to content themselves with domesticity. Charlotte Bronte expresses herself through Jane Eyre’s voice when she declares “women feel just as men feel: they need exercise for their faculties” Jane Eyre (p.93). Charlotte Bronte wants equality to both genders. Both men and women have the same feelings. So, it makes no difference between the gender roles of men and women. This is the equality that most eighteenth and nineteenth century novelists, like Jane Austen, Dickens, George Eliot, and Charlotte Bronte, struggled for.
Charlotte Bronte is considered as a feminist and social revolutionary of the Victorian period in the realm of the English novel. She has been quite radical and untraditional in the English fiction unlike Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. She opens to the readers of the English novel the very bosom of the suffering heroines with a note of intimacy. Charlotte Bronte talks of women’s love from women’s point of view. “Love was the breath of life to Charlotte Bronte; the be-all and end-all of human life”. Frances, Jane, Caroline and Lucy have all the aching, naked heart throbbing with a maximum of intensity of passion for love and marriage.
Charlotte Bronte is a prominent figure in the English novel. This is because she lived in a literary atmosphere. She describes her home when she was twenty five, Charlotte wrote:
My home is humble and attractive to strangers, but to me it contains what I shall find nowhere else in the world – the profound, the intense affection which brothers and sisters feel for each other when their minds are cast in the same mould, their ideas drawn from the same source – when they have clung to each other from childhood and when disputes have never sprung to divide them.
This house is the source for affections for Charlotte Bronte. It is the best literary atmosphere for her. It is the microcosm for Charlotte. This microcosm includes a family of writers. Their father Patrick Bronte – from whom the Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne and Branwell the only brother – seem to have developed literary aspirations, had a cluster of publications to his credit. He published two volumes of poems and prose tales. Her mother, Maria Bronte also wrote an essay entitled On the Advantage of Poverty in the religious concerns.
“Intelligent companionship and intense family affection” allowed Charlotte Bronte to thrive as a woman and an author, concluded Ellen Nussey in her 1871 “Reminiscence of Charlotte Bronte” . Biographers have widely recognized the importance of the family atmosphere to the formation of the Bronte sisters as mid-Victorian writers and various critics have seen the family a precondition and motive for the Brontes’ writing. Ernest A. Baker in the History of the English Novel (1950) sees Charlotte Bronte’s novels as the late expression of the Romantic Movement in fiction. She has the Romantic spirit in her feeling of nature, in her touches of the supernatural.
The Bronte sisters are of literary origin. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne created fantasy worlds which created the starting point of their ventures into fiction. Anne Bronte teamed up with Emily Bronte and developed the idea of imaginary country called Gondol. Charlotte and her brother Branwell created an imaginary country called Angria.
Charlotte Bronte struggled to prove herself and to prove woman’s identity during the Victorian period. It was strange to find a woman writer during that period. So, Charlotte Bronte wrote under the pen name Currer Bell. Charlotte Bronte’s choice of Currer Bell enabled her to generalize her authorial power in a way that she thought her name could not. The female authorship was difficult to recognize. Charlotte Bronte indicates in describing her and her sisters’ decision to adopt pen names:
Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Elis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names, positively masculine, while we did not like to decline ourselves, women, because we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice.
By choosing ambiguous names the Brontes concealed their identity whether masculine or feminine. This is because of the nineteenth century’s more attitudes towards women writers. The Brontes’ decision to use pen names was validated. James Lorimer published a review of their novels asserting if they are the production of a woman, she must be a woman pretty unsexed. It was something unusual to find a woman writing in such a way. Up to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the domain of writing as a craftsmanship was men dominated. The Brontes have collaborated and successfully participated in the production of novel as a new literary genre especially as a landmark of the Victorian period.
Charlotte Bronte sent Robert Southey some of her poems hoping for his feedback and advice. Unfortunately, his reply was:
Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will be less eager for celebrity.
This reply portrays the masculine dominance of the Victorian society. Literature, according to Southey is the business of man’s life only. The reply is not encouraging. However, Charlotte Bronte was up to challenge this duty at the nineteenth century till literature became a business of women and allowed them to dominate the fiction market. Southey’s response indicates that there were political hurdles women faced as they tried to enter the literary field in Victorian England. Domestic responsibilities were expected to require all their energy, leaving no time for creative quest. Despite a lack of support from the outside world, Charlotte Bronte found sufficient internal motivation and enthusiasm from her sisters to become a successful writer and author.
Many critics agreed with the poet Robert Southey that literature is the business of men. George Lewes is with this view especially before his relation with George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). George Lewes asked “Does it never strike these delightful creatures that their little fingers were meant to be kissed, not to be inked” . George Lewes is with the opinion that woman is an angel in the house. So, the hands of these delightful creatures – women – must be kissed rather than inked. The Victorian society was against woman in all the fields of life. It was dominated by men even those educated critics were patriarchal in their behaviour. Patriarchy was not only social but also literary. Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, George Eliot and many other female writers fought against the oppression of men in a society which was mainly male dominated. Such novelists were the harbingers of the feminist movement which flourished during the twentieth century.
However, George Lewes , the critic, has a very significant effect on Charlotte Bronte. After publishing Jane Eyre he sent a letter to Currer Bell telling [her] “the delight with which her book filled me [Lewes] and seemed to have ‘sermonized’ her; to judge from her reply”. She replied that she really appreciated his letter since it had been rejected several times. Gaskell argues that this is the first letter of homage which Charlotte Bronte received from a literary critic, and the correspondence which it began, had considerable effect on her later novels, Shirley and Villette. George Lewes has a positive effect on Charlotte Bronte in spite of his view ‘that their little fingers were meant to be kissed, not to be inked. Charlotte Bronte wanted to hide her identity; however it is George Lewes who discovered the identity of Currer Bell as a woman.
George Lewes incurred Charlotte Bronte’s wrath by intimating that she might profit by writing less melodramatically and gave her Jane Austen as an exemplar and inspiration. George Lewes was an admirer of Jane Austen. He has written in Frazer Magazine that “Fielding and Miss Austen are the greatest novelists in our language”. It was this review that inspired Charlotte Bronte to read Pride and Prejudice. In his article The Lady Novelists he wrote that:
“Jane Austen was the greatest artist that has ever written, using the term to signify the most perfect mastery over the means to her end…., and to read one of her books is like an actual experience of life”.
Charlotte Bronte was outraged by Lewes’ suggestion. She was astonished asking him in a reply: “Why do you like Jane Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. … What induced you to say that you would rather have written Pride and Prejudice or Tom Jones than any of the Waverly Novels?.. I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book”. She told him that she could not find any poetic sense in Miss Austen’s writing. She excused him that it was nothing than the ‘fine eyes’ of Miss Austen.
Extravagant comparisons and claims for Bronte’s status as a novelist accompanied the notice of her work. For example, the Era of November 1847 declared that “all serious novel writers of the day lose comparison with Currer Bell”. The Era review asserts that Jane Eyre must be written by a man. This reflects the reviewer’s perception that it is unlike the novels of the contemporary women writers. This view highly appreciates the works of Charlotte Bronte since it was thought of a man or ‘unsexed’. After the disclosure of her pen name as a woman, there was a marked increase in the negative criticism on Charlotte Bronte’s work. This reflects the nature of the patriarchal society of the Victorian period. Charlotte Bronte wrote to George Lewes after disclosing her identity:
I wish you did not think me a woman. I wish all reviewers believed ‘Currer Bell’ to be a man; they would be more just to him. You will, I know, keep measuring me by some standard of what you deem becoming to my sex; where I am not what you consider graceful, you will condemn me. … Come what will, I cannot, when I write, think always of myself and of what is elegant and charming in femininity; it is not on those terms, or with such ideas, I ever took pen in hand: and if it is only on such terms my writing will be tolerated, I shall pass away from the public and trouble it no more. Out of obscurity I came, to obscurity I can easily return.
Charlotte Bronte wished that the critics would not know her identity because they would value her works positively as a man. Charlotte Bronte has this opinion that “they would have “praised the book [Jane Eyre] if written by a man, and pronounced it ‘odious’ if the work of a woman.” Charlotte Bronte is aware that the critics are busy with gender assessment rather than the topic of the novel itself. She is struggling for a woman identity, though firstly disguised under the pen name Currer Bell. This pen name makes the critics recognise her skill as a novelist. The gender role of a woman cannot be of a writer. This is the real state of women during the Victorian era. They cannot afford even any identity even if they were literary women like that of the male writers and novelists.
Charlotte Bronte was viewed positively by some critics like William Thackeray and Elizabeth Gaskell. Charlotte Bronte admired some male writers like Thackeray for his novel attacks on the follies and weaknesses of the English society during the Victorian period. She dictated Jane Eyre to Thackeray saying:
There is a man in our own days whose words are not famed to tickle ears; who, to my thinking, come before the great ones of society. She adds – I feel honoured in being approved by Mr. Thackeray because I approve Mr. Thackeray. One good word from such a man is worth pages of praise from ordinary judges.
Charlotte Bronte found a critic who is able to appreciate the value of her works. Thackeray compared to other nineteenth century critics positively valued the works of Charlotte Bronte. So, she felt that one good word from such a man is worth pages of praise from ordinary judges. She was disappointed by George Lewes and Robert Southey that literature is only the business of men. Thackeray in a letter to Smith, the publisher of Charlotte Bronte, expressed his praise of Jane Eyre saying that the novel “interested me so much that I have lost a whole day in reading it… Give my respect and thanks to the author whose novel is the first English one”. Charlotte Bronte informed her publisher that she was particularly pleased by Thackeray’s comment because she found that Thackeray was able to distinguish the dross from ore, the real from the counterfeit.
In the literary career of Charlotte Bronte, we find her as a novelist rejecting the Victorian concept of the ideal woman who had no intrinsic worth:
The woman is the priestess of the home, and she put herself into it and its affairs and conditions. Her talents and tastes have given her a natural ordination to this holy office. She is most herself and most satisfied, and useful when the affairs of her home occupy chiefly her mind and heart. If she goes out into the world to engage in of its affairs, she does it for the benefit in honour and love of her home. What she does for the world is done at arm’s length and from her home as her office – headquarters – fortress. Men will wander half their lives without a home and seem happy, but women are seldom without a home of some sort …Woman’ worth to man comes partly from her strong home instincts.
We find that no Bronte’s heroine ever began to follow this traditional model of the Victorian period, much less to aspire to it. Friendless and alone, Lucy Snowe, like Jane Eyre before her, is left to make her way alone in a friendless world. In all her novels, Charlotte Bronte removes her heroines from home just to give her heroines a kind of autonomy of the dominance of men. She wants to give them more power than those in the home considered as the ‘Angel of the House’. She revolts against the decorum of the ‘Angel of the House’. This is because it limits the liberty of woman kept in the boundaries of the man and left as an architect of his house. So, all the heroines of Charlotte Bronte ran away from home in order to prove themselves. They are no more than anther copy of their creator, i.e. they are autobiography of Charlotte Bronte.
There have been many biographers writing about Charlotte Bronte such as Winifred, Elizabeth Gaskell and Lyndall Gordon. However, Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Bronte has been regarded as the standard work. The relationship between Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Gaskell is one of the greatest literary friendships of nineteenth century. The two are viewed as intertwined and indistinguishable. It was Patrick who asked Gaskell to write a biography on Charlotte Bronte suggested by Ellen Nussey, Bronte’s friend. The letters of Charlotte Bronte were the main source for Gaskell to write the biography. Gaskell also used her letters and notes to write The Life of Charlotte Bronte which was published in 1857.
Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Bronte displays a distinguished form of a literary competition with Bronte. Gaskell’s biography illustrates how Charlotte Bronte rejected affiliation with womanish domesticity in order to embrace a masculine romantic ideal of genius. Gaskell has divided the life of Charlotte Bronte into two parts; the first part that of Currer Bell, the author, and the second part is that of Charlotte Bronte as a woman. Gaskell argues:
Henceforward Charlotte Bronte’ existence becomes divided into two parallel currents – her life as Currer Bell, the author; her life as Charlotte Bronte, the woman. There were separate duties belonging to each character – not opposing to each other.
This biography charges Bronte of ‘coarseness’ which was not because of Bronte’s nature but her environment that made her wild. The common perspective of Bronte’s life according to this biography is one of loss and grief. Charlotte Bronte’s uniqueness of her pain is the guarantee of her creative vision. To this, Elizabeth Gaskell attributes the features of Bronte’s writing and personality that were acceptable during the Victorian period. Gaskell writes:
Miss Bronte never dare to allow herself to look forward with hope; and I thought when I heard of the sorrowful years she had passed through, that it had been this pressure of grief which had crushed all the buoyancy of expectation out of her.
Charlotte Bronte was writing for a different age when women were to be seen and not heard. Gaskell views Bronte’s life as reflected in Jane Eyre; her passion is the result of her suffering and the society’s view towards woman. Lyndall Gordon in her book Charlotte Bronte: A Passionate Life, argues that Gaskell was aware of the Victorian ideal for women and herself and deplored an occasional coarseness in the novels. She adds that Gaskell presented “a life of desolation and the pathos of overwhelming grief, an excuse for Bronte’s excess passion”.
Only for five years, Gaskell has been in contact with charlotte Bronte between the years 1850 – 1855. Elizabeth Gaskell depicts Charlotte Bronte as Victim Supreme. This is because of the death of her family including her mother, her sisters Maria, Elizabeth, Anne and Emily and her brother Branwell. Charlotte Bronte’s sense of weariness and irritation of life is because of the loss of her dearest family members. Moreover, she was an old spinster. She worked as a teacher but hated to teach. She expressed this saying:
Must I from day to day sit chained to this chair prisoned with these four bars walls, while the glorious summer suns are burning in heaven and the year is resolving in its richest glow and declaring at the close of every summer day the time I am losing will never come again.
Charlotte Bronte was suffering in a society which cared only for men and their needs. The Victorian dogma was that women should be seen not heard. Charlotte Bronte was suffering from the passing of time without fulfilling her desires. She was not interested in teaching children. She was eager for men as a woman. Bronte tried to prove herself as a woman and to find an identity. Her search for identity is reflected in her novels. The study of her life is the study of her novels and the study of her novels reflects her life. Though she was rough in her treatment of social matters, it was because of the rough treatment of her society towards her.
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