Шарлотта Бронте – The Professor (страница 2)

The Brontë sisters were all seemingly preoccupied with thoughts of tortuous relationships and uncertain endings. It was as if they knew they were destined for lives cut short by illness – understandable, given the early deaths of their two elder sisters and the death of their mother, Maria, in 1821, all by the time the three sisters were teenagers. Charlotte died at the age of 38 from complications in pregnancy, having married only the year before. Emily and Anne died of consumption at the ages of 30 and 29, respectively. And even their brother Branwell died young, at the age of 31, also from consumption. In the absence of children of their own, their novels became the Brontë offspring, living on in perpetuity. Patrick outlived his entire family, dying at the impressive age of 84, in 1861.

Like Jane Austen before them, the Brontës existed on the fringes of polite society, where they could observe people and capture their personalities in prose. This made them well suited to writing, but unattractive as potential spouses for eligible young men or inclusion in certain social circles. That marginalization, in itself, gave rise to frustrations, desires and needs that must have fuelled their creative drive. Their novels act as vehicles for self-expression, alluding to their misgivings about life and providing them with strong voices for the plight of females in the 19th century.

The Brontë Legacy

For the three sisters, writing was clearly a way of living vicariously. Their social environment was such that they had rather limited experience of the outside world. Their father was a teacher and clergyman, who kept a tight rein on his daughters and one son, for fear of also losing them. Tragically, he did lose them all before any had reached the age of 40, but not before his three daughters had tasted success as published novelists.

Charlotte and Emily used their novels to effectively live other lives, and they are often described as romanticists as a result. Anne did the same, but in a less imaginative frame, so that her scenarios were less removed from reality. The year 1847 was the most eventful period of time for the Brontë sisters, as it saw all three of their aforementioned novels published – Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey.

The fictitious Jane Eyre could easily be translated as Charlotte imagining herself in a scenario where she comes from a background far worse than her own, but ends up living a life that is more rounded and fulfilled than the one she leads, reinventing herself in prose. Emily goes even further, with Wuthering Heights. She imagines different versions of herself living through an epic story of tragedy. It seems she was able to act out longed-for adventure in the theatre of her imagination. Anne’s Agnes Grey shows an obvious overlap between Anne and Agnes, so that a blend of fact and fiction is evident. Anne was more concerned with using her prose to express the real trials and tribulations of her life as a governess, as opposed to using them as a form of escapism, like her sisters.

In a way, the cumulative result of the Brontës’ work is to demonstrate the depths to which fictional prose can be used as a form of self-expression. All three sisters transported themselves into their imagined worlds, but to differing extremes. However, because of their early deaths, it is impossible to know how their individual preferences might have adapted and matured over time.

The social impact and legacy of the Brontës’ work was that it dared to be truthful and self-indulgent in an age when polite society was reserved and reticent about emotions and desires. While Jane Austen’s work described the lives of people somewhat removed from an environment most people would consider familiar, the Brontës described the lives of people who were more human, in that they were not as bound by rules of etiquette and prescribed behaviour. It wasn’t necessary to read between the lines to understand the allegory, because the Brontës wrote from the heart in a new and honest way, heightening people’s idea of the very purpose of literature as an art form.

PREFACE

This little book was written before either Jane Eyre or Shirley, and yet no indulgence can be solicited for it on the plea of a first attempt. A first attempt it certainly was not, as the pen which wrote it had been previously worn a good deal in a practice of some years. I had not indeed published anything before I commenced The Professor, but in many a crude effort, destroyed almost as soon as composed, I had got over any such taste as I might once have had for ornamented and redundant composition, and come to prefer what was plain and homely. At the same time I had adopted a set of principles on the subject of incident, &c., such as would be generally approved in theory, but the result of which, when carried out into practice, often procures for an author more surprise than pleasure.

I said to myself that my hero should work his way through life as I had seen real living men work theirs – that he should never get a shilling he had not earned – that no sudden turns should lift him in a moment to wealth and high station; that whatever small competency he might gain, should be won by the sweat of his brow; that, before he could find so much as an arbour to sit down in, he should master at least half the ascent of ‘the Hill of Difficulty’; that he should not even marry a beautiful girl or a lady of rank. As Adam’s son he should share Adam’s doom, and drain throughout life a mixed and moderate cup of enjoyment.

In the sequel, however, I find that publishers in general scarcely approved of this system, but would have liked something more imaginative and poetical – something more consonant with a highly wrought fancy, with a taste for pathos, with sentiments more tender, elevated, unworldly. Indeed, until an author has tried to dispose of a manuscript of this kind, he can never know what stores of romance and sensibility lie hidden in breasts he would not have suspected of casketing such treasures. Men in business are usually thought to prefer the real; on trial the idea will be often found fallacious: a passionate preference for the wild, wonderful, and thrilling – the strange, startling, and harrowing – agitates divers souls that show a calm and sober surface.

Such being the case, the reader will comprehend that to have reached him in the form of a printed book, this brief narrative must have gone through some struggles – which indeed it has. And after all, its worst struggle and strongest ordeal is yet to come but it takes comfort – subdues fear – leans on the staff of a moderate expectation – and mutters under its breath, while lifting its eye to that of the public.

He that is low need fear no fall.

CURRER BELL

The foregoing preface was written by my wife with a view to the publication of The Professor, shortly after the appearance of Shirley. Being dissuaded from her intention, the authoress made some use of the materials in a subsequent work – Villette. As, however, these two stories are in most respects unlike, it has been represented to me that I ought not to withhold The Professor from the public. I have therefore consented to its publication.

A. B. NICHOLLS

Haworth Parsonage,

September 22nd, 1856.

CHAPTER 1

Introductory

The other day, in looking over my papers, I found in my desk the following copy of a letter, sent by me a year since to an old school acquaintance: –

DEAR CHARLES,

I think when you and I were at Eton together, we were neither of us what could be called popular characters: you were a sarcastic, observant, shrewd, cold-blooded creature; my own portrait I will not attempt to draw, but I cannot recollect that it was a strikingly attractive one – can you? What animal magnetism drew thee and me together I know not; certainly I never experienced anything of the Pylades and Orestes sentiment for you, and I have reason to believe that you, on your part, were equally free from all romantic regard to me. Still, out of school hours we walked and talked continually together; when the theme of conversation was our companions or our masters we understood each other, and when I recurred to some sentiment of affection, some vague love of an excellent or beautiful object, whether in animate or inanimate nature, your sardonic coldness did not move me. I felt myself superior to that check then as I do now.

It is a long time since I wrote to you, and a still longer time since I saw you. Chancing to take up a newspaper of your county the other day, my eye fell upon your name. I began to think of old times; to run over the events which have transpired since we separated; and I sat down and commenced this letter. What you have been doing I know not; but you shall hear, if you choose to listen, how the world has wagged with me.

First, after leaving Eton, I had an interview with my maternal uncles, Lord Tynedale and the Hon. John Seacombe. They asked me if I would enter the Church, and my uncle the nobleman offered me the living of Seacombe, which is in his gift, if I would; then my other uncle, Mr Seacombe, hinted that when I became rector of Seacombe-cum-Scaife, I might perhaps be allowed to take, as mistress of my house and head of my parish, one of my six cousins, his daughters, all of whom I greatly dislike.