After
reading the post "Why the passion is pure in Charlotte Bronte" by
Caroline Helstone in her blog "The Briarfield Chronicles" I had some
objections that were so lengthy I thought they deserved a whole new
post. I had noticed too that after "Τhe Professor" and "Jane Eyre" that
Charlotte's writing was less prone to descriptions of erotic scenes
than before, but I disagree that it is because - as Caroline thinks -
she was becoming more mature and stopped imitating what she had read.
For me there were three possible reasons that this change took place.
First and foremost was all that accusation from a bunch of reviewers of
her being "coarse" (a word which has many meanings from immoral to raw
and uncivilized) that offended and puzzled Charlotte Bronte, who was a
moral and educated woman. Whether she was so out of touch with her era
(as she mostly admired the Romantics) not to foresee the reaction or she
simply wrote the way she saw things and would like literature to be, I
don't know, but having sexual feelings for a person does not make you
immoral and sexual attraction for your partner/husband/other half is
something healthy, important and nothing to be ashamed of. In that
respect, I really salute Charlotte Bronte every single time I read the
part where Jane Eyre sits on Rochester's lap because it proves to me
that human nature has always been the same and does not promote that
fake and distorted image where people in the past only wore prudish
dresses and expressed their love only by holding hands. Someone has said
that she vindicates in his eyes the sexuality of all her era. So, the
fact is that Charlotte wrote for an adult audience and that is why she
wrote all this stuff in her preface about hypocrisy. Was it so wrong or
unusual for people who are in love to kiss or desire one another? But if
that would cost her her reputation as a woman and writer she must have
thought it was better to avoid provoking them. Let alone the fact that
despite being poor, she struggled to be thought of as an accomplished
lady. This all explain her anguish whether the reviewers would think her
novels coarse again and that is why she asked the opinion of her female
novelists, especially Miss Martineau's. Things became worse when her
identity was known. She had already told Mrs Gaskell that she dreaded it
lest she lose the power of writing the truth. Because it is different
to be judged for your work and different to be insulted as a person who
has to live in a certain society.
Another
reason of why her subsequent novels are different is because Charlotte
didn't want to repeat herself. Some themes are unavoidably the same, but
their treatment is very different. For example "Shirley" is a social
novel and Charlotte had clearly stated she did not
want to write another "Jane Eyre". "Villette" on the other hand is a
story
about a woman going mad with isolation right in the middle of a crowd.
Love saves her in a way in the instance of Graham in showing her that
she really didn't want to be the shadow of a bright lady anymore (so she
realized some things about herself and became more assertive) and in
the case of Paul that there are people who will love you for who you are
and will support you. But "Jane Eyre" was really a novel of
growth: personal growth, spiritual, ethical and (why not?) sexual. It is
the transit of a girl ecoming a full grown woman and also having to
balance her moral beliefs and her passions. Now if her passion were
mild, that would not be a big deal, but as it is desire takes tragic
dimensions. And then when your heroes have such a great age discrepancy,
then you really have to put that fatal attraction in order to make all
that fuss of being together believable.
And
the third reason is the fact that after the loss of her siblings
Charlotte was more depressed than ever. And we know that sexuality and
depression do not get along. I believe in "Jane Eyre" she may have been
frustrated, but she had at least some family support and she finally let
herself live the story and be in a certain point carried away by it.
For me it is in "Jane Eyre" where she spoke most openly about her love.
She took that feeling that anybody would disapprove of and made it
immortal having two safety guards, the disguise of the actual
relationship (the master-pupil is now master-servant) and the anonymity.
With "Villette" things were different. She was a lonely woman for too
long with not the brightest prospects of a good change. The situation
was too complicated to write straight enough about Smith and she was too
close in describing Heger, so there were things omitted to be written
and in a way unnecessary because the main theme was Lucy's anguish. I
agree with Caroline, thought, that the reversed order of love is put
there to show the greater one and that is what must have annoyed Smith
too, but what mostly "Villette" says to me is that you can love people
for different qualities and that the love you have doesn't necessarily
end, when another starts. It is something that the Victorians thought
shocking and blamed her that her heroine was in love with two men
simultaneously.
As
for her purity of her love for Heger and the sexual attraction to him,
it is clear that he was not her ideal of masculine beauty. She made fun
of him at the beginning, she also called another one of her suitors "the
little man" and in "Shirley" she writes that one of the curators who
was very little in body chose to marry, as she says usually happens in
those circumstances, the most robust girl of a neighbour family.
Ironically Nicholls was the one closer to Rochester's image. But what
Heger lacked in physical attraction he made up for intellectual and of
course Charlotte, who felt ugly could sympathize with him, because she too hoped one man would love her for her character and mind at least.
Personally I think that Charlotte was a sexually aware being. What may
have stopped her from realizing her feelings for him was her moral
inhibitions. Since in her mind there was no possibility of them becoming
lovers, she would avoid to think of it. In Shirley Caroline too was
avoiding to face it. She writes about Robert "friendship she called the
feeling" and perhaps since Heger proposed a friendship with his
ambiguous way, Charlotte too "envied no girl her lover, no bride her
bridegroom, no wife her husband" since she felt for the time being that
the relationship was fulfilling for her too. I understand what Caroline
in her blog means when she says her love for him was pure and I agree
that she was more attracted to his intellectual side, but for me ever if
she had sexual feelings or fantasies about him, I still would have a
bad opinion about her, because she was human after all and because we
may condemn people for their acts, but to condemn them for their
thoughts too, is too severe.