Austen, Brontë, Eliot

Charlotte Brontë

Quotes from letters

• “I have read … one of Miss Austen’s works – Emma – read it with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have though sensible and suitable. Anything like warmth or enthusiasm – anything energetic, poignant, heart-felt is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstration the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outre and extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well. … She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood. … Her business is not half so much with the human heart as with the human eyes, mouth, hands, and feet. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death – this Miss Austen ignores. She no more, with her mind’s eye, beholds the hart of her race than each man, with bodily vision, sees the heart in his heaving breast. Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless) woman.” Charlotte Brontë to her publisher W.S. Williams (upon following advice to use the work of Jane Austen as a model for her own fiction), 1850.

• “Henry … intimates that in due time he shall want a Wife to take care of his pupils [after starting his school] and frankly asks me to be that Wife. Altogether the letter is written without cant or flattery …. – Now my dear Ellen there were in this proposal something things that might have proved a strong temptation -- … but again I asked myself two questions – ‘Do I love Henry Nussey as much as a woman ought to love her husband? Am I the person best qualified to make him happy? Alas Ellen my Conscience answered ‘no’ to both questions. I felt that though I esteemed Henry – though I had a kindly leaning towards him because he is an aimiable [sic] – well-disposed man. Yet I had not, and never could have that intense attachment which would make me willing to die for him – and if ever I marry it must be in that light of adoration that I will regard my Husband …. Moreover I am aware that Henry knew so little of me he could hardly be conscious to whom he was writing – why it would startle him to see me in my natural home character he would think I was a wild, romantic enthusiast indeed – I could not sit all day long makinga grave face before my husband – I would laugh and satirize and say whatever came into my head first – and if he were a clever man and loved me the whole world weighed in the balance against his smallest wish should be light as air …” Charlotte Brontë to her best friend Ellen Nussey, explaining why she has turned down the marriage proposal proffered by Ellen’s brother Henry, March 12, 1839.

• “Do not be over-persuaded to marry a man you can never respect – I do not say love because, I think, if you can respect a person before marriage, moderate love at least will come after; and as to intense passion, I am convinced that is no desirable feeling. In the first place, it seldom or never meets with a requital; and, in the second place, if it did, the feeling would be only temporary; it would last the honeymoon, and then, perhaps, give place to disgust or indifference, worse, perhaps, than disgust. Certainly, this would be the case on the man’s part; and on the woman’s – God help her, if she is left to love passionately and alone. … I am tolerably well convinced that I shall never marry at all. Reason tells me so, and I am not so utterly the slave of feeling but that I can occasionally hear her voice.” Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, advising Ellen on marriage. May 15, 1840.

• “I must not bother you too much with my sorrows Ellen … -- if you were near me perhaps I might be tempted to tell you all – to grow egotistical and pour out the long history of a Private Governess’s trials and crosses in her first situation -- As it is I will only ask you to imagine the miseries of a reserved wretch like me – thrown at once into the midst of a large Family – proud as peacocks and wealthy as Jews … all strangers people whose faces I had never seen before – in this state of things having the charge given me of a set of pampered spoilt and turbulent children – whom I was expected constantly to amuse as well as instruct – I soon found that the constant demand on my stock of animal spirits reduced them to the lowest state of exhaustion. I was taken to task on the subject by Mrs Sidgwick [ Charlotte’s employer] with a sternness of manner and a harshness of language scarcely credible – like a fool I cried most bitterly – I could not help it – my spirits quite failed me at first. I thought I had done my best – strained every nerve to please her – and to be treated in that way merely because I was shy – and sometimes melancholy was too bad.” Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, on her first job as a governess. June 30, 1839.

• “Ah Monsieur! I once wrote you a letter which was hardly rational, because sadness was wringing my heart, but I shall do so no more – I will try to stop being egotistical and though I look on your letters as one of the greatest joys I know, I shall wait patiently to receive them until it pleases and suits you to send them. But all the same I can still write you a little letter from time to time – you have given me permission to do so. … I [want to] write a book and I would dedicate it to my literature master – to the only master that I have ever had – to you Monsieur. I have often told you in French how much I respect you – how much I am indebted to your kindness, to your advice, I would like to tell you for once in English – That cannot be – it must not be thought of – a literary career is closed to me – only that of teaching is open to me – it does not offer the same attractions – never mind, I shall enter upon it and if I do not go far in it it will not be for want of diligence.” Charlotte Brontë to Monsieur Constantin Heger, Brontë’s teacher and host while she was studying in Brussels from 1842-4. Heger was the object of Brontë’s greatest love, admiration, and even infatuation. This letter was written in French shortly after Brontë returned to England, and she was devastated by Heger’s lack of response. July 24, 1844.

• “I can hardly tell you how time gets on here at Haworth – There is no event whatever to mark its progress – one day resembles another – and all have heavy lifeless physiognomies – Sunday – baking day and Saturday are the only ones that bear the slightest distinctive mark – meantime life wears away – I shall soon be 30 – and I have done nothing yet – Sometimes I get melancholy – at the prospect before and behind me – yet it is wrong and foolish to repine – undoubtedly my Duty directs me to stay at home for the present – There was a time when Haworth was a very pleasant place for me, it is not so now – I feel as if were all buried here – I long to travel – to work to live a life of action …” Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, March 24, 1845.
• “[I]n many a crude effort destroyed almost as soon as composed I had got over any such taste as I might once have had for the ornamented and redundant in composition – and had come to prefer what was plain and homely. 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 hw should not even marry a beautiful nor a rich wife, nor a lady of rank – As Adam’s Son he should share Adam’s doom – Labour throughout life and a mixed and moderate cup of enjoyment.” Charlotte Brontë. Preface to The Professor.

• “I see you are in a dilemma and one of a peculiar and difficult nature – Two paths lie before you – you conscientiously wish to choose the right one - … but you do not know which is the right one – you cannot decide whether Duty and Religion command you to go out into the cold and friendless world and there to earn your bread by Governess drudgery – or whether they enjoin your continued stay with your aged Mother – neglecting for the present every prospect of independency for yourself and putting up with daily inconvenience – sometimes even with privation. … The right path is that which necessitates the greatest sacrifice of self-interest – which implies the greatest good to others – and this path steadily followed will lead I believe in time to prosperity and to happiness though it may seem at the outset to tend quite a contrary direction – Your Mother is both old and infirm; old and infirm people have few sources of happiness -- … If your mother is more composed when you are with her – stay with her – If she would be unhappy in case you left her – stay with her – … You would not be praised and admired for remaining at home to comfort your Mother – Yet probably your own Conscience will approve you and if it does – stay with her. I recommend you to do – what I am trying to do myself [i.e., take care of her own blind and ailing father, Patrick Brontë].” Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, advising Ellen as to whether to stay home and care for her mother or go out to work as a governess. July 10, 1846.

• “[I]f I could leave home Ellen – 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 – More than one very favourable opportunity has now offered which I have been obliged to put aside – probably when I am free to leave home I shall neither be able to find place nor employment – perhaps too I shall be quite past the prime of life – my faculties will be rusted – and my few acquirements in a great measure forgotten. These ideas sting me 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… I shall be 31 next birthday – My Youth is gone like a dream – and very little use have I ever made of it – What have I done these last thirty years --? Precious little.” Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, refusing Ellen’s invitation to help her start a school. October 14, 1846.

• “As to Society, I don’t understand much about it – but from the few glimpses I have had of its machinery it seems to me to be a very strange, complicated affair indeed – wherein Nature is turned upside down – Your well-bred people appear to me figuratively speaking to walk on their heads – to see everything the wrong way up – a lie is with them truth – truth a lie – eternal and tedious botheration is their notion of happiness – sensible pursuits their ennui … if I was called upon to swop [sic] … tastes and ideas and feelings with Mrs. Joshua Nussey for instance – I should prefer walking into a good Yorkshire kitchen fire – and concluding the bargain at once by an act of voluntary combustion …” Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey. January 19, 1847.

• “Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns. These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them; they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is – I repeat it – a difference, and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them. The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth – to let white-washed walls vouch for clear shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinize and expose – to raze the gilding, and show base metal under it – to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.” Charlotte Brontë. Preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre, in response to critics who called the novel an “improper” book.