The Three Brontës

by May Sinclair

This is all very well, but the question is: Did Charlotte come through a furnace? Did she suffer from a great and tragic passion? It may have been so. For all we know she may have been in fifty furnaces; she may have gone from one fit of tragic passion to another. Only (apart from gossip, and apart from the argument from the novels, which begs the question) we have no evidence to prove it. What we have points all the other way.

Gossip apart, believers in the tragic passion have nourished their theory chiefly on that celebrated passage in a letter of Charlotte's to Ellen Nussey: "I returned to Brussels after Aunt's death, prompted by what then seemed an irresistible impulse. I was punished for my selfish folly by a withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of mind."

Here we have the great disclosure. By "irresistible impulse" and "selfish folly", Charlotte could only mean indulgence in an illegitimate passion for M. Héger's society. Peace of mind bears but one interpretation.

Mr. Clement Shorter, to his infinite credit, will have none of this. He maintains very properly that the passage should be left to bear the simple construction that Miss Nussey and Mr. Nicholls put upon it. But I would go farther. I am convinced that not only does that passage bear that construction, but that it will not bear the weight of any other.

In eighteen-forty-two Charlotte's aunt died, and Charlotte became the head of her father's household. She left her father's house in a time of trouble, prompted by "an irresistible impulse" towards what we should now call self-development. Charlotte, more than two years later, in a moment of retrospective morbidity, called it "selfish folly". In that dark mid-Victorian age it was sin in any woman to leave her home if her home required her. And with her aunt dead, and her brother Branwell drowning his grief for his relative in drink, and her father going blind and beginning in his misery to drink a little too, Charlotte felt that her home did require her. Equally she felt that either Emily or she had got to turn out and make a living, and since it couldn't possibly be Emily it must be she. The problem would have been quite simple even for Charlotte—but she wanted to go. Therefore her tender conscience vacillated. When you remember that Charlotte Brontë's conscience was, next to her genius, the largest, and at the same time the most delicate part of her, and that her love for her own people was a sacred passion, her words are sufficiently charged with meaning. A passion for M. Héger is, psychologically speaking, superfluous. You can prove anything by detaching words from their context. The letter from which that passage has been torn is an answer to Ellen Nussey's suggestions of work for Charlotte. Charlotte says "any project which infers the necessity of my leaving home is impracticable to me. If I could leave home I should not be at Haworth now. I know life is passing away, and I am doing nothing, earning nothing—a very bitter knowledge it is at moments—but I see no way out of the mist"; and so on for another line or two, and then: "These ideas sting me keenly sometimes; but whenever I consult my conscience it affirms that I am doing right in staying at home, and bitter are its upbraidings when I yield to an eager desire for release." And then, the passage quoted ad nauseam, to support the legend of M. Héger.

A "total withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of mind". This letter is dated October 1846—more than two years since her return from Brussels in January, eighteen-forty-four. In those two years her father was threatened with total blindness, and her brother Branwell achieved his destiny. The passage refers unmistakably to events at Haworth. It is further illuminated by another passage from an earlier letter. Ellen Nussey is going through the same crisis—torn between duty to herself and duty to her people. She asks Charlotte's advice and Charlotte gives judgment: "The right path is that which necessitates the greatest sacrifice of self-interest." The sacrifice, observe, not of happiness, not of passion, but of self-interest, the development of self. It was self-development, and not passion, not happiness, that she went to Brussels for.

And Charlotte's letters from Brussels—from the scene of passion in the year of crisis, eighteen-forty-three—sufficiently reveal the nature of the trouble there. Charlotte was alone in the Pensionnat without Emily. Emily was alone at Haworth. The few friends she had in Brussels left soon after her arrival. She was alone in Brussels, and her homesickness was terrible. You can trace the malady in all its stages. In March she writes: "I ought to consider myself well off, and to be thankful for my good fortune. I hope I am thankful" (clearly she isn't thankful in the least!), "and if I could always keep up my spirits and never feel lonely or long for companionship or friendship, or whatever they call it, I should do very well." In the same letter you learn that she is giving English lessons to M. Héger and his brother-in-law, M. Chapelle. "If you could see and hear the efforts I make to teach them to pronounce like Englishmen, and their unavailing attempts to imitate, you would laugh to all eternity." Charlotte is at first amused at the noises made by M. Héger and his brother-in-law.

In May the noises made by Monsieur fail to amuse. Still, she is "indebted to him for all the pleasure or amusement" that she had, and in spite of her indebtedness, she records a "total want of companionship". "I lead an easeful, stagnant, silent life, for which … I ought to be very thankful" (but she is not). May I point out that though you may be "silent" in the first workings of a tragic and illegitimate passion, you are not "stagnant", and certainly not "easeful".

At the end of May she finds out that Madame Héger does not like her, and Monsieur is "wondrously influenced" by Madame. Monsieur has in a great measure "withdrawn the light of his countenance", but Charlotte apparently does not care. In August the vacancies are at hand, and everybody but Charlotte is going home. She is consequently "in low spirits; earth and heaven are dreary and empty to me at this moment"…. "I can hardly write, I have such a dreary weight at my heart." But she will see it through. She will stay some months longer "till I have acquired German". And at the end: "Everybody is abundantly civil, but homesickness comes creeping over me. I cannot shake it off." That was in September, in M. Héger's absence. Later, she tells Emily how she went into the cathedral and made "a real confession to see what it was like". Charlotte's confession has been used to bolster up the theory of the "temptation". Unfortunately for the theory it happened in September, when M. Héger and temptation were not there. In October she finds that she no longer trusts Madame Héger. At the same time "solitude oppresses me to an excess". She gave notice, and M. Héger flew into a passion and commanded her to stay. She stayed very much against, not her conscience, but her will. In the same letter and the same connection she says, "I have much to say—many little odd things, queer and puzzling enough—which I do not like to trust to a letter, but which one day perhaps, or rather one evening—if ever we should find ourselves by the fireside at Haworth or Brookroyd, with our feet on the fender curling our hair—I may communicate to you."

Charlotte is now aware of a situation; she is interested in it, intellectually, not emotionally.