The Bronte Sisters (12 page)

Ten-year-old Jane is an unwanted child. Her widowed aunt, Mrs. Reed, resents being saddled with her care and treats her harshly. Jane is just a little girl, but she stands up for herself and for the truth. She speaks out when she is punished unfairly, in a way that bothers her aunt’s conscience: “My Uncle Reed is in heaven,
and can see all you do and think; and so can papa and mamma; they know how you shut me up all day long, and how you wish me dead.” Mrs. Reed solves the problem of this “passionate” child by sending her away to school.

Jane will spend the next nine years at Lowood Institution, as both pupil and teacher. In describing Lowood, Charlotte Brontë brought to life the Clergy Daughters’ School. The Reverend Mr. Brocklehurst, the headmaster, is another William Carus Wilson, “a black pillar”
of a man with a grim face “like a carved mask.” Brocklehurst uses religion to justify mistreating the girls. “When you put bread
and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children’s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies,” he says, “but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!”

Jane befriends a fellow pupil, Helen Burns, who is a bright girl and a good student. Like the oldest Brontë sister, Maria, Helen suffers constant abuse from a cruel teacher, whom Charlotte gave an ugly name, Miss Scatcherd.

Miss Scatcherd even interrupts a history lesson to shout at Helen, “You dirty, disagreeable girl!
you have never cleaned your nails this morning!” For this crime against cleanliness, Miss Scatcherd gives Helen a flogging. Helen accepts punishment without complaining as Jane, like Charlotte as a child, looks on powerlessly. “Love your enemies,”
Helen quotes from the Bible to Jane; “bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you.” Jane rejects such a passive faith, declaring, “I was no Helen Burns.”

Charlotte Brontë insisted that the brutality she described was real. What was more, the treatment Maria endured at school was worse than anything Helen Burns had to suffer. Some of it was so savage it defied belief. “I abstained from recording
much that I remembered respecting her, lest the narrative should sound incredible,” Charlotte wrote, recalling Maria.

With friends like Helen and a kind teacher, Miss Temple, Jane survives her years at Lowood and even flourishes. Once she has grown up, the desire to live in the wider world impels her to leave the school. She journeys to an estate called Thornfield Hall, to be governess to a young girl named Adèle Varens. Adèle has spent most of her life in France and speaks little English.

Even at Thornfield Hall, Jane longs for more. She tells her readers that
“women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men suffer.”

In
Jane Eyre,
Charlotte Brontë showed the awkward invisibility of a governess’s life. When well-to-do guests stay at Thornfield, Jane must sit alone in a shaded nook off the drawing room. Her gray dress contrasts with the silks and jewels of the fine ladies who discuss her openly, as if she lacks a mind and feelings. Jane’s employer sees her worth, however, and seeks her friendship. He is Edward Rochester, master of Thornfield. Rochester is a dark, brooding man, who describes himself as “heart-weary and soul-withered.”
Adèle is his ward. Rochester lets down his guard in Jane’s steady, intelligent presence. She learns to recognize his approach by the “warning fragrance”
of his cigar. Rochester mentions his past mistakes but advises her not to grow too curious about him. “Don’t long for poison,”
he cautions. “Encroach, presume, and the game is up.” Jane understands that he—and his house—harbor secrets. Strange things happen, and she cannot help but wonder: Who set fire to Rochester’s bed, perhaps trying to kill him? What is the source of the “demoniac laugh”
that rings out in the night?

Edward Rochester is older than Jane Eyre and worldly, yet he and the governess fall in love. As the two agree to marry, a violent storm erupts. Lightning strikes an old chestnut tree in Thornfield’s garden, leaving it split and broken, like the one near Ellen Nussey’s home. This is an ominous sign, and as the wedding is about to take place, Rochester’s dreadful secret is revealed. Jane learns that she cannot be Rochester’s wife.

Refusing to be his mistress, Jane runs away. She finds a measure of contentment teaching in a school, but another man has a purpose for her in mind. He is bound for India as a missionary and wants her to go with him as his wife. He makes no promise of love; instead he wants Jane to be his partner in work. She is close to surrendering when her heart hears Rochester crying out for her, as clearly as if his voice were traveling across the miles. She goes to him, to discover his fate and her own.

The published book thrilled its first readers. Among them was the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, who almost wished that he had never read
Jane Eyre:
“It interested me so much
that I have lost (or won if you like) a whole day in reading it at the busiest period.” Thackeray admitted, “Some of the love passages made me cry.”

The critic George Henry Lewes was quick to recognize the greatness of
Jane Eyre.
“It is soul
speaking to soul,” he wrote excitedly; “it is an utterance from the depths of a struggling, suffering, much-enduring spirit.” He found in it “perception of character and power of delineating it; picturesqueness; passion; and knowledge of life.” Lewes noted that
Jane Eyre
is one of those rare novels that stay with the reader once the final words have been read. This is because “reality—deep, significant reality—is the great characteristic of the book.”

“The writer is evidently a woman,”
he decided. Lewes could make fun of women novelists, but
Jane Eyre
was so good that he was willing to overlook Currer Bell’s sex. “Man or woman, young or old, be that as it may,” he wrote, because “no such book has gladdened our eyes for a long while.”

Another critic called
Jane Eyre
“a novel of remarkable power
and beauty.” He believed that “many of the scenes through which the author has passed, as well as the feelings which she describes, are real.” This reviewer, too, guessed that Bell was a woman. He praised the main character, Jane Eyre, stating that she “is drawn by one whose pen is cunning to describe every nook and turning in the female heart.” He found the descriptions of Rochester less than perfect, though. This was no surprise, given his view that “a female pen is inadequate to pourtray the character and the passions of a man.”

People were clamoring to read Currer Bell’s novel. Smith, Elder and Company published a second edition in England, which Charlotte dedicated to Thackeray, and then a third and a fourth. In January 1848, the first American edition appeared. Soon, people in the towns around Haworth were starting to read
Jane Eyre.
Charlotte even overheard a local clergyman remark on elements in the book that seemed familiar: “Why, they have got Cowan Bridge School,
and Mr Carus Wilson here, I declare!”

“He did not recognize Currer Bell,” Charlotte noted in a letter to Smith, Elder and Company. Clearly, she enjoyed her secret. “What author would be without the advantage of being able to walk invisible?” she asked. She kept the news of her authorship from Ellen Nussey, who might have disapproved, but she sent
Jane Eyre
to Mary Taylor in New Zealand. It surprised Mary to discover that her friend had created a novel that was “so perfect as a work of art.”
Socially conscious Mary wanted to know how Charlotte could write a whole book without once preaching to her readers about society’s wrongs.

Emily and Anne convinced Charlotte that the time had come to tell their father about her novel. Charlotte chose a morning when he was reading in his study to knock on his door and say, “Papa, I have been writing
a book.” He looked up to scold, “I hope you have not been
involving yourself in any such silly expense.” Charlotte replied to the contrary: “I think I shall gain
some money by it.” She read him some reviews and left him with a copy of
Jane Eyre.

Patrick Brontë almost always ate alone, but that afternoon he asked his daughters to join him for tea. When they were seated, he announced, “Children, Charlotte has been writing
a book—and I think it is a better one than I expected.”

Charlotte Brontë had taken the art of fiction to a new level. She had written frankly about a woman’s feelings at a depth no other writer had yet explored. Her frankness bothered some readers, and after the first flurry of praise, unfriendly reviews began to appear.
“In ‘Jane Eyre’ the immorality is peculiar”; “Religion is stabbed
in the dark—our social distinctions attempted to be leveled, and all absurdly moral notions done away with”; “It would be no credit
to any one to be the author of ‘Jane Eyre.’”

The angriest criticism came from a woman named Elizabeth Rigby, who condemned the main character, Jane Eyre, as “the personification of an unregenerate
and undisciplined spirit.” Jane’s moral strength “is the strength of a mere heathen mind which is a law unto itself,” she wrote. The entire novel was “an anti-Christian composition.” And even though she recognized the high quality of Brontë’s writing, she dismissed the novel as a failure.