Dear Folks,

Just a minute here. Over the past months I have begun to detect a slight stirring of sentiment that seemed to be running against kindly, loving, benign Mr. Bennet. Now that sentiment has burst forth with a challenge to name one good quality that the man possesses. OK, how about these: He put up with and humored his nut case wife  he loved his girls  he was able to comment in a clever way on all the travails in his life  he was pleasant: he was well read (or at least he read a lot)  he sprang into action when his goofy daughter ran off with that lout Wickham  he was abstentious  he was at home, not off chasing foxes or women  and in addition to all the foregoing, he did not, even once, refer to Darcy as "That jerk", which in fact, he was.

Being much closer in age and situation (three daughters in my case) to Mr. Bennet than I am to Darcy who has no daughters and lots of money, I say point out one good quality of Darcy’s except that he was smitten with a woman who we all love, and who had the ability to put him in his place (I suspect he was looking forward to being tied to the bedposts).

A couple of months ago I came before this group asking for help in defending that jerk, Sir Walter. As I reported I was going on a Jane Austen trip and seminar this summer and I was going prepared to defend all male characters. It never occurred to me that I might be put in a position where I might have to defend Mr. Bennet of all people.

How the lot of you can allow me go off all alone to spread my brand of brown suit knowledge, I do not know. Is there no one who wants to go and keep me under control? I will be maintaining my southern gothic persona and might be able to use an interpreter.

We all tend to assume that Charlotte's dislike for her husband is right there in the book in front of our very eyes, but I can't find anything like that.  We know that Elizabeth "...rather looked with wonder at her friend that she could have so cheerful an air, with such a companion." And that "When Mr. Collins said anything of which his wife might reasonably be ashamed,... she [Elizabeth] involuntarily turned her eye on Charlotte."  And also that "When Mr. Collins could be forgotten, there was really a great air of comfort throughout, and by Charlotte's evident enjoyment of it, Elizabeth supposed he must be often forgotten."

Really, all we know, that I can see, is that Charlotte encourages Mr. Collins in the garden, and sits in the back parlor so she can enjoy her own passtimes without interruption.  The desire to have some time alone isn't unusual in married couples.  Don't we all send our spouses to the movies or shopping, or out to weed the garden sometimes?    We have nothing to indicate Charlotte is ever unhappy, or has not grown to esteem her husband, except Elizabeth's opinions as to how Charlotte should feel.  (And a tradition in the BBC versions of P&P to make Mr. Collins as ridiculous as possible and Charlotte as embarassed as possible.)

So let's cut her some slack.  Charlotte wasn't the first and won't be the last to marry a man whom her friends thinks is an utter geek.  She wouldn't be the first or the last to be happy with an utter geek, either.

P.S. would we be questioning her motives if she'd accepted Mr. Collins after two days if she'd done so because of a Grand Passion?  Would her chances for happiness been any greater?

Dear Heather Swallow,

Pardon my intrusion. I am nobody from nowhere, and I find myself kerplunk in the middle of your conversation, but I would like to add a thought or two regarding Charlotte Lucas. First, let me say that I am no scholar, I don't know much about Miss Austen's life history, and have not read her letters. I merely read her work with a hunger that grows with every meal.

Charlotte Lucas is the proverbial piece of work. I have never liked her one bit, and Elizabeth's ardour for her friend is certainly affected by the cold-blooded-murderess approach to the Collins union. I don't think Charlotte deserves any pity whatsoever. She has struck her bargain, and has the sense of honor to follow its terms--at least you can say THAT for her. Her approach to marriage is not the result of horrid social iniquity, i.e. the dreadful condition of women--an argument that, if I have not actually heard, I can easily imagine. Nay, Miss Lucas is far from desperate. She has options other than Mr. Collins (who is, despite his many faults, too good for her). She might choose a spinster's life  genteel poverty, while not the ideal, never killed anyone. These people had a way of taking care of their own. Charlotte need not have relinquished the Sunday joint.

So much for Miss Lucas Mrs. Collins. In my opinion, when looking for a character to shower with pity, Mr. Collins is the more deserving recipient. He has won the prize, a wife who feels nothing for him.

Dear BKB,

You are the only person ever that has taken my view of these things! I assume that you have a keen intelligence. Welcome to our community and please say more.

To Everybody,

I paraphrase.
Regarding the family portrait that, astonishingly, bears no exact resemblance to any of the living descendants.

"A face once taken must be worn for generations."

I laughed for at least ten minutes the first time I read it. The idea of a face being "taken" simply annihilated me. Call me odd.

Dear Heather,

I have done an audit, conducted down a few hollow logs at great personal risk, and have found that, as I had guessed, Tasmanian devils don't wear baseball caps.  Being indigenous, they wear, of course, Akubras.

I notice that Ashton has posted on the Brontes, but I'm answering you first on purpose, before reading his submission, so as not to cloud my judgement or upset my blood pressure.  I imagine the Bronte children wrote because they had no choice, just as they breathed.  Their father's extraordinary determination in acquiring an education for himself, and thus making such a quantum leap from the world into which he was born, must have influenced his children, whom he in some part educated himself.  Patrick Bronte was born two years after Jane Austen, into a two-room hut in County Down, the first of ten children.  The family was undoubtedly poor, but not indigent: in 1796 the family was living in a two-storey stone house at Ballynaskeagh.  What is remarkable is Patrick's pursuit of learning at a time when the Irish countryside was largely illiterate, and when the eldest son could be expected to provide a pair of hands on the farm.  Patrick was actually teaching his own school at the age of sixteen. He was twenty-five years old when he finally made it to Cambridge, to find his fellow students anything up to ten years his junior. Somewhere between the village school and Cambridge, Patrick managed to become proficient in Latin and Greek.  He arrived at Cambridge with seven pounds in his pocket, and was admitted as a sizar. St John's College was his choice, because it had the largest funds on offer for poor students. Patrick survived on the proceeds of Exhibitions, the sponsorship of William Wilberforce and his cousin (ten pounds each per annum), and, it would seem, fresh air.  He did not obtain his degree until 1806.  It seems like a lot of work to achieve entry into a profession that would never return him more than the 170 pounds per year that the perpetual curacy of Haworth afforded - not much on which to keep a family of eight, plus two servants. The thing is that Patrick was an Evangelist, and a highly political animal, who passed on his passions to his children (he, himself, was a published author before by the time he obtained the curacy of Haworth).  I don't know why other clergymen's daughters wrote (as indeed they did), but ink and paper were life blood in the Bronte household.
Julie

To Everybody,

I don't remember how it began or when, but some time ago Julie and I started a running joke about the Brontes. A joking position is always an exaggerated position and so I had better present my true position. I think it wonderful if everyone wants to discuss the Brontes, especially in the context of Jane Austen. The point raised by Heather is an excellent one - that must be true because it once occurred to me. Obviously Ray and Julie have a great deal to add on this subject and I, for one, would very much like to see it.

It is true that I don't much care for the Brontes' novels and I loathe the things that Charlotte Bronte said about Jane Austen. But I too have an unnatural taste - I am thinking of my growing obsession with Thomas Hardy - and I am not as hypocritical as I might seem.

Cheryl: the rule for starting conversations around here is "anyone, everything, all the time". There are only six novels and so I don't see how we can avoid going back over old subjects from time to time. Please feel free to attempt any Jane-Austen subject at any time. Umm - Dondi-eyes?

Dear Sir,

Though you may loathe what Charlotte Bronte said about Jane Austen's novels, I suspect that Jane herself would have coped quite well.  I wonder, though, have you read those quotes in context, or in isolation?  The latter would present a very different picture.  I can't think of any two authors with less in common, either socially or temperamentally, extraordinary though they both were.  I don't know of any more moving writing than that of Charlotte, in the letters she wrote around the time her siblings were dying, one after the other after the other.  In contrast, I find Jane Austen's two letters at the time of her father's death, and also those written after the death of Elizabeth Knight, a little wooden, though there is no doubt that the feeling was there.  I will give you two short quotes, from letters written on the day of, and shortly after, Emily's death: 'She grows daily weaker.  [The physician] sent some medicine, which she would not take.  Moments so dark as these I have never known.  I pray for God's support to us all.'

And afterwards:  "Emily suffers no more from pain or weakness now.  She never will suffer more in this world. ..... The anguish of seeing her suffer is over  .... No need now to tremble for the hard frost and the keen wind.  Emily does not feel them......'

If Jane Austen, or, indeed, Cassandra, after Jane's death, wrote like this, then the letters have not survived.  The fact is that the two authors were very, very different women, temperamentally, socially, religiously and politically - they are not comparable.

I must bore you just one more time with a quote, from Mrs Gaskell, describing Emily's funeral: '[The family] were joined behind the coffin by Keeper, Emily's fierce, faithful bulldog.  He walked alongside of the mourners, and into the church, and stayed quietly there all the time that the burial service was being read.  When he came home, he lay down at Emily's chamber door, and howled pitifully for many days ...'
Julie

From the Meister: So-oo, Charlotte Bronte was a loving sister
was she? And this love was comparable to the sisterly love of
the Austens' was it? Then Charlotte must have loved Wuthering
Heights. What was Charlotte's opinion of Wuthering Heights?

Dear Sir,

Why, yes, indeed, Charlotte was one of five sisters and those that survived into adulthood appear to have been very close.  Charlotte remembered with love also her sister Maria, whose sufferings at Cowan Bridge she described in Jane Eyre.  Their mutual love could be compared with that of the Austen sisters, but that was not my point, which was rather that, in her personal correspondence, Charlotte TO ME (and it is only my view) Charlotte expresses that love more vividly than I find to be the case in the surviving correspondence of the Austen sisters.  This is hardly a fair comparison, of course, as Charlotte was writing at a time of stress and anxiety that had not been experienced by the Austen sisters - at the time of the quotes regarding Emily's illness and death, Charlotte was mourning also the death of her brother, only three months earlier.  All too soon, she was to be mourning the death of her last sister, leaving her alone in the world with an elderly father.  Nothing in the experience of the large Austen family is similar.  We have, too, a wealth of correspondence surviving from Charlotte to 'Nelly' (Ellen Nussey), to whom Charlotte wrote unreservedly and who, despite Mr Nichol's instructions, did not destroy Charlotte's letters.  In any case, we are not entering into a 'love competition' here, in order to see which sisters were the more worthy - I was commenting merely on the expression of overwhelming feeling.

How did Charlotte feel about Wuthering Heights?  She tells us.  She wrote to W. S. Williams in 1850, 'I am likewise compelling myself to read it over, for the first time of opening the boook since my sister's death. Its power fills me with renewed admiration, but yet I am oppressed: the reader is scarcely ever permitted a taste of unalloyed pleasure; every beam of sunshine is poured down through black bars of threatening cloud; every page is surcharged with a sort of moral electricity - and the writer was unconscious of all this - nothing could make her conscious of it.'

Charlotte examines the question in more depth in her preface to the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights:  'I have just read over Wuthering Heights, and, for the first time, have obtained a clear glimpse of what are termed (and, perhaps, really are) its faults; have gained a definite notion of how it appears to other people - to strangers who knew nothing of the author, who are unacquainted with the locality where the scenes of the story are laid   to whom the inhabitants, the customs, the natural characteristics of the outlying hills and hamlets of the West Riding of Yorkshire are things alien and unfamiliar. ... [Emily's] imagination, which was a spirit more sombre than sunny, more powerful that sporting, such in such [brutal] traits material whence it wrought creations like Heathcliff, like Earnshaw, like Catherine.  Having formed these beings, she did not know what she had done. ... Had she but lived, her mind would of itself have grown like a strong tree, loftier, straighter, wider-spreading, and its matured fruits would have attained a mellower ripeness and a sunnier bloom, but on that mind time and experience alone could work' to the influence of other intellects, it was not amenable. ... Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always the master ...'

Charlotte adored, but did not really understand Emily - chances are that nobody did, indeed. I do hope that I have been giving you information, and not ammunition!  We shall see.
Julie

From the Meister: I am puzzled that you can look at those
quotations and see in them the remarks of a loving sister!
She was kinder to Jane Austen. It seems to me that she is
describing an out-of control writer and is trying to guide
the reader to make that conclusion without being explicit.

Dear Sir,

Charlotte was simply acknowledging that she understood why many readers felt the way they did about Wuthering Heights.  She was being less than completely frank about the book, though, as she must have recognised the characters and some of the incidents, who had been appearing for years in the Gondal and Angrian sagas that all four Brontes wrote (and in Emily's case, virtually lived in).  Charlotte never mentioned the 'Infernal World' to anybody outside the family.  And what a world it was!  Rape, murder, violence, dungeons (no dragons, but lots of Genii) abounded, and elements of the Heathcliff/Cathy story had appeared there before.  Wuthering Heights was, in fact, much toned down.  Charlotte could be rather a bossy boots to her younger sisters, but I doubt she overstepped the mark with Emily too often!  Charlotte acknowledged that Emily was one: 'upon the recesses of whose mind not even those nearest and dearest could intrude unasked.'

But does a reasoned criticism of a sister's work count as a lack of love?
Julie

Dear Julie,

First of all you are quite correct in saying that this conversation is not about a sisterly-love contest. The point should be Heather's; what was it about the Brontes' and Jane Austen's similar backgrounds that made them great writers. The sooner we get back to that question the better. You responded to that in your usual excellent manner in your first post and I got things off the track.

I won't further confuse matters by engaging you in a debate over what I believe to be the sincere tragic nature of the letters written by Jane and Cassandra Austen to which you referred. Merely note my protest and we will reserve that debate to some other time.

However, I still should be allowed to answer the question asked in your final addendum. Literary criticism is not science, it is opinion. When Charlotte offers her criticism, she is giving her opinion. She gives these negative opinions about her sister's work (and even her sister's mental stability) not in some intimate, off-the-record, private conversation; rather, she publishes them. That is not the worst thing; Charlotte publishes them in the preface to her sister's book! This was a preface that Emily did not invite Charlotte to write. BETRAYAL! - SHAME! Of course, this from the same guy who thinks that Charlotte Lucas betrayed her husband in that conversation with Elizabeth Bennet at the parish. I mean, what kind of credibility do I have? I don't know - Maybe men are more romantic (in all senses of the word) and more sensitive than woman. Men certainly seem more idealistic. Umm - what do you think?

Dear Heather, Julie, and Ashton,

I always admired Branwell Bronte because he was apocraphylly reputed to be able to translate English into Greek and Latin simultaneously, holding a pen in each hand.

Love is a strange thing.  Two brothers (or best friends) will play harder in (say) a game of one on one basketball against each other than against anyone else.  I fancy that as much as Charlotte loved Emily, she also was very competitive with her.  She probably envied her talents while deploring (reasonably) her lack of discipline and technique.

From the Meister: I have played a lot of pick up basketball with
my brother and with best friends. We always avoided one on one and
would try to be together in three on three, say. It could become com-
petitive when we were on opposite sides, but never more competitive.
My brother was a great shooter, and he might have become a good
passer if he had ever tried it.

I see Charlotte's preface as saying, "I loved my sister, and she's a genius, but I'm a better writer than she was, although she might have learned had she lived.  By the way, I'm a better writer than Jane Austen, too."

How can an older sister, competitive, ambitious, and talented, really be objective about the talents of her younger sister?  Charlotte tried.  And the results were the preface that Julie quoted.

Needless to say, I have no evidence to support any of this.  My fantasies are more prosaic than Angria and Gondol.  This is one of them.

Speaking of egregious "pouring beams of sunshine through threatening clouds", what about the ending of Villette?  Charlotte kills off the hero in a storm for no better reason than to withhold happiness from both the heroine and the reader.

To All,

My point all those postings ago was that the Brontes did not share a similar background to the Austens, at all.  They were not even of the same race - the Austen family had been settled in Kent for many generations, whereas the Brontes (who couldn't even agree on how to spell their surname, Patrick having changed it from 'Pranty' to Bronte, and having added the accent) were indigenous Irish.  The Bronte children's mother was Cornish.  The Austens were members of the Established Church; the Brontes were Evangelists - their aunt Branwell, who virtually reared the younger four, was a Methodist.  This would not matter today, but was pretty hot stuff back then.

I just can't see Charlotte's introduction to Wuthering Heights as criticism, or denigration of her sister's work!  Not criticism in the destructive sense, anyway.  She was not the only one who thought that Emily had not reached her full potential - her Belgian teacher, M. Heger, gave his opinon that Emily would not be seen to fullest advantage until seen as an essayist.  His opinion was that 'she should have been a man - a great navigator.  Her stern spirit would have overcome any obstacle.'  Incidentally, lack of discipline is probably the last criticism that could be made of this strange, isolated woman:  her discipline, while it probably didn't actually kill her, given the lack of treatment for tuberculosis at the time, certainly hastened her death.  As Charlotte said, 'Never in her life had she lingered over any task before her, and she did not linger now.'

Charlotte does not explicitly kill off the hero of Villette, but she certainly implies it. But the reason for that was not simple nastiness:  Villette was Charlotte's purging of her own soul, after the bitter, miserable love she bore for M. Heger had at last worn itself out.

Charlotte was an unhappy, repressed neurotic for much of her life; she is, indeed, almost a text book of sexual repression.  She was a passionate creature, but she was also small, ugly, poor, and had rotten teeth.  The contrast between the maiden lady and the married Mrs Nichols is astounding - her letters and her personality simply blossom and shine.  I think it was a sad life - to find love, physical and emotional, after so many years alone, only to die within the year. Interesting aside:  Charlotte was in the early stages of pregnancy at the time of her death, which may well have been caused by hyperemesis gravidarum.  Mrs Gaskell, in letters at the time, implies that Charlotte should have had a termination, in order to save her life.  Pragmatic preacher's wife!
Julie

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