The Brontës V

I'm still moving along very slowly in the book and am about halfway through it at this point. It took one-hundred pages to cover 1840-1843: this isn't an action thriller. In 1840, Branwell found a new job as a railway clerk and was promoted to assistant clerk in 1841. However, he was fired in 1842. Others have identified this period as the beginning of his decline and drinking too much. However, Barker reexamines the facts and attempts to defend him in a manner similar to her defense of his father. Branwell continued with his literary interests and published a poem in the Halifax Guardian in 1841. That year, Charlotte came up with a plan to move to Brussels for six months, financed by Aunt Branwell, who had never moved from Haworth.

The Brussels plan emerged from Charlotte's idea of starting a school in Yorkshire. Her friend, Mary Taylor, was living in Brussels and attending a finishing school. Charlotte arranged for Emily and herself to study at Pensionnat Heger, run by Constantin Heger. They intended to learn French, German, music and drawing. Their father escorted them there in 1842. Heger was astounded by Emily's musical and writing talents, and she later became a piano teacher there.  After six months as students, they were offered a six-month extension, during which they would teach. However, Emily increasingly disliked the other students and seemed anxious to leave. Charlotte loved it there and developed a crush on Heger. It is unclear whether he reciprocated, but it seems that he didn't. In Haworth, the charismatic assistant curate, William Weightman, died that year of cholera at the age of 26, and there is speculation regarding which of the Brontë sisters may or may not have been attracted to him. Later, in October, 1842, Aunt Branwell died from a bowel obstruction. This caused Charlotte and Emily to return home immediately. Charlotte returned to Brussels in January 1843 to be an English teacher at Pensionnat Heger. Emily remained in Haworth and became the main housekeeper while also engaging in writing. She never returned to Brussels. During this period, Anne was a governess at Thorp Green Hall, near York, and apparently liked the job. In 1843, Branwell became a tutor at Thorp Green Hall.

I'm trying not to get too far ahead of myself in commenting on this book, but that doesn't stop me from having ideas. One of the thoughts I have is that the Brontë children had a somewhat belated infatuation with Romanticism. While Ralph Waldo Emerson was fourteen years older than Branwell, he seemed to have the same kind of dated enthusiasm for the Romantic poets when he met Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1833. The Brontë children idolized Napoleon and Wellington, so, like Emerson, they were enmeshed in the "great man" theory, which, as I wrote, I think is pure idiocy. To some extent, I am sympathetic with Emerson, because he was living in the U.S. at a time when it was conspicuously unsophisticated compared to Europe. But in the case of the Brontës, Patrick had chosen to live in a sub-optimal part of England, and his artistic children, were, in my opinion, artistically handicapped by living far from the cultural center in London. My frame of reference, George Eliot, may not be a fair comparison, but I find it useful. She was three years younger than Charlotte Brontë and, like Charlotte, loved Sir Walter Scott when she was growing up. However, just by living in Warwickshire, George Eliot was able to expand her intellectual horizons significantly compared to the Brontës. While it is possible that one of the Brontës might have written a Middlemarch equivalent if they had lived longer, my impression is that they got hooked on Romanticism and never completely broke away from it. They disliked Jane Austen, but George Eliot's later work emerged in part from the addition of an intellectual dimension not present in Austen's novels. That intellectual dimension does not seem to be readily apparent in any of the Brontë novels. Similarly, the entire Brontë family seemed to be unified in its religious beliefs, whereas George Eliot had a major rift with her father over her divergent religious views. For this reason, I think that the Brontës may have been even better writers if they had expanded their intellectual horizons at an earlier age.

I am also beginning to compare Emily Brontë to Emily Dickinson but will save that for later.