Summary
This is the paid subscribers’ essay about Elizabeth Gaskell’s, Life of Charlotte Brontë. Gaskell was commissioned to write this biography because of the culture war-style commentary on Brontë’s character that raged in the 1850s. Modern critics focus on the way Gaskell elided and omitted material about Brontë’s sexual life, and on Gaskell’s focus on the domestic side of Brontë’s life. These criticisms are misguided—that’s how you win a Victorian culture war!
In fact, Gaskell’s book is about how Brontë’s remarkable talent developed in the obscure and strange conditions of her life. It has not been properly appreciated that Gaskell shows us how Charlotte Brontë became a great novelist. The biography is a study of talent. When we account for the fact that this book is a study of talent, and Gaskell and Brontë’s Christianity, we can see its merits more clearly,—and see that if Gaskell’s hadn’t won the culture war, she wouldn’t have been able to focus on Brontë’s development as a writer as much.
The fact that a gang of ahistorical, myopically literary critics later misread her book is hardly Gaskell’s fault.
Contents
“It is possible that it would have been better to have described only good and pleasant people, doing only good and pleasant things (in which case they could hardly have written at any time): all I say is, that never, I believe, did women, possessed of such wonderful gifts, exercise them with a fuller feeling of responsibility for their use.”
Elizabeth Gaskell, Life of Charlotte Brontë
Victorian culture wars
When Charlotte Brontë died in 1855 her reputation was up for grabs. Jane Eyre had been praised by many as a startling work of innovation: a novel about the moral development of a woman with a deep understanding of her consciousness was a new thing in literature.
Many, though, found it “coarse”, “unwomanly”, and “unchristian”. That was big talk for the 1840s. And this matters. There was a crucial link between the personal and the professional for women writers.
As Nell Stevens said,
The idea that Brontë was, in the words of one article, “a filthy minx” seems to us irrelevant now (if luridly exciting). But if people don’t read your books because they think you’re a whore, that is not exciting at all.
This affected Victorian men too. Dickens did himself no favours by leaving his wife.
People speculated freely on Brontë’s personality. Who could have written such a book other than a woman who had “long forfeited the society of her own sex”? Matthew Arnold called Jane Eyre, “a hideous, undelightful, convulsed, constricted novel… one of the most utterly disagreeable books I’ve ever read.” He attributed this to the fact that “the writer’s mind contains nothing but hunger, rebellion and rage.” You almost expect, Donald Trump style, to find the word “Sad” at the end of that little outburst.
The Quarterly Review said,
We do not hesitate to say that the tone of mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated every code human and divine abroad, and fostered Chartism and rebellion at home, is the same which has also written Jane Eyre.
Imagine thinking that the person who wrote Jane Eyre must have violated every code human and divine. If you enjoy the culture wars, you might also be interested in Victorian periodicals…
Both her remarkable talent, and her bothered and beleaguered reputation meant that a biography was in order when Brontë died. And so Elizabeth Gaskell, novelist and friend, was called in. Her Life of Charlotte Brontë became a classic in its own right. Inevitably, it also became part of the literary culture wars, in its time and ours.
I want to show you that these culture wars issues, while important, are a distraction. It’s time to re-think this excellent book and see it for what it really is: a prescient study of how talent develops in unusual circumstances. Elizabeth Gaskell won the culture war of the 1850s and by doing so she put the focus where it belongs:—on the development of great talent in Charlotte Brontë and her sisters.
The real focus of the book
We talk now as if creative non-fiction is a decidedly modern genre. But Gaskell got there back in 1857. This is a most novelistic biography, right from its opening line, “The Leeds and Skipton railway runs along a deep valley of the Aire; a slow and sluggish stream, compared to the neighbouring river of Wharfe.” From there, Gaskell moves slowly towards her heroine’s parsonage, placing her vividly in the changing world of the industrial north. Unlike the sleepy cathedral towns of the south, Gaskell says, this is a place of transformation.
Gaskell does this because without knowing “the peculiar forms of population and society amidst which her earliest years were passed”, we cannot understand Brontë’s life and mind. Though her aim is to take sides in the culture war about Brontë’s “unwomanly” writing, Gaskell is concerned to show how Brontë emerged from this strange place as a literary talent. Imagine if someone had taken the trouble to do the same for Jane Austen!
Gaskell’s intent is often overlooked. Critics have focussed on issues of feminism and sexuality, on the extent of Gaskell’s honesty, and on the ideas of genius she supposedly falls prey to. Often Gaskell is criticised: she excluded vital information for reasons of personal bias, she distorted Charlotte into an image of respectable femininity, she didn’t focus enough on the novels. And so on.
As a defence of Brontë against her critics, however, Gaskell does a very good job. Yes, she portrays a feminised picture of Brontë, but that allows her to focus on the way Brontë developed her talent. The paradox is that by throwing cold water over the culture war issue, she makes room for us to watch Brontë develop. Ironically, the people who critique Gaskell think that her portrait of Brontë as dutiful, good at housework, obedient daughter and so on, distracts from Brontë as a writer.
Gaskell’s point is that the two are inseparable. Without the strange conditions of her life, Charlotte Brontë would have been a very different writer.
Genius or talent?
The Cambridge Guide to Elizabeth Gaskell notes that “genius” appears sixteen times in the book, that Gaskell is keen to show early signs of the sisters’ genius, and that she is wary of the Romantic idea of genius as leading to excess. It would have been a typical Victorian caution to worry that a genius would also be more liable to “coarse”, “unwomanly” behaviour. So Gaskell ties the idea of genius to the idea of duty. This is what modern critics react against so sharply.
The critical reaction is summed up in this quote from Deidre D’albertis,
[Gaskell] did more than any other single text to create a myth of martyred feminine creativity that continues to dominate our vision of the lonely woman artist as a heroic genius set apart by aesthetic integrity, intellectual detachment, and physical disease.
Gaskell believed in doing good work in the world, as she often shows Charlotte doing. Rather than praising Brontë’s weak health, she shows us the extraordinary circumstances in which Brontë had to live. And it worked. The Saturday Review said,
… as a woman Charlotte Brontë was in every way remarkable. She clung to duty with a most unselfish completeness and an utter abnegation of all that makes a woman’s life happy.
Remember, Gaskell is defending Brontë against allegations that she is “unchristian” and “unwomanly”. Until she deals with that, the culture wars drown out more serious issues.
When Gaskell discusses the fact that being a woman writer has to co-exist with being a domestic presence, she links genius and duty through the idea of God. Noting that there is a lot to do as both houseworker and writer, Gaskell says,
…she must not shrink from the extra responsibility implied by the very fact of her possessing such talents. She must not hide her gift in a napkin; it was meant for the use and service of others. In an humble and faithful spirit must she labour to do what is not impossible, or God would not have set her to do it.” [My emphasis.]
She must not hide her gift in a napkin. Gaskell does not want us to merely accept Brontë as the little woman or the martyred artist. Life as a woman writer is hard, she says. So be it. God gave you these talents and it would be wrong not to use them. That’s exactly the message of Jane Eyre. We are dealing with two very religious women, both from dissenting or dissenting-adjacent backgrounds. This is a central tenet of their religion. You must do the work God sent you to do.
In the context of the time, this isn’t exactly meek and mild stuff. Brontë’s own feminism was utterly Christian. Look how the line She must not hide her gift in a napkin has a biblical echo of the famous line in the gospel of Matthew,
Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
Gaskell shows Brontë letting her light shine before men that they might see her good works, both as a respectable Christian and as a woman writer bucking convention. If we forget the Christian aspect of both the culture wars and these women’s feminism, we will fail to see this book in its proper context.
The Guide notes this allusion to the parable of the talents, but takes this idea no further. In fact, talent is the core word of this book, not genius.
Branwell’s “talents misused”
To highlight this point in narrative terms, Gaskell constantly contrasts the duty of Brontë to the indulgence of her brother Branwell.
Patrick Branwell, their only brother, was a boy of remarkable promise, and, in some ways, of extraordinary precocity of talent.
Ah, Patrick. Novel readers everywhere will know how cautionary it is to be “a boy of remarkable promise.”
As we will see below, the girls are presented as a fractious group, nurturing each other’s talents in a literary culture, while working independently also. Branwell is separate from that and his aloof, undisciplined arrogance serves as a moral warning.
The father, ignorant of many failings in moral conduct, did proud homage to the great gifts of his son; for Branwell’s talents were readily and willingly brought out for the entertainment of others. Popular admiration was sweet to him. And this led to his presence being sought at “arvills” and all the great village gatherings, for the Yorkshiremen have a keen relish for intellect; and it likewise procured him the undesirable distinction of having his company recommended by the landlord of the Black Bull to any chance traveller who might happen to feel solitary or dull over his liquor. “Do you want some one to help you with your bottle, sir? If you do, I’ll send up for Patrick.”
Branwell does not work, he entertains. He was “fully conscious” of his brilliance, but, Gaskell warns, his “strong love of pleasure and irregular habits” prevented any success. Again and again, while the girls work, Branwell dreams of London, parties, fame,—we never see him apply himself. All the dreary governess work and domestic duties are a burden to the girls, but they provide plots and material. They write their novels from this stuff of life. What does Branwell have? Great expectations that are never fulfilled.
The sisters’ more demure, dutiful,—more Christian,—approach to their talents was much more productive. Gaskell does not praise wild, Romantic, excessive genius. She sees clearly what it takes to nurture talent, to let you light shine before men that they might see your good works. The portrait of a dutiful Christian woman is not a distraction from Charlotte’s talent. Rather, it is integral to it.
Small Group Theory
The first half of the Life of Charlotte Brontë documents the incredible closeness of the three sisters and the way that they work at their talents. Far from disguising Charlotte’s ambitions or intellectual life, it is on full display, most notably in the letters that Gaskell quotes. Here she is writing about going to study French abroad.
Papa will, perhaps, think it a wild and ambitious scheme; but who ever rose in the world without ambition? When he left Ireland to go to Cambridge University, he was as ambitious as I am now. I want us all to get on. I know we have talents, and I want them to be turned to account.
Several things are evident here. Charlotte’s huge ambition. The influence of her family. And the fact that she knows she has talents. The domestic Charlotte never smothers the intellectual, ambitious Charlotte. Gaskell shows us both, plain for all to see.
Gaskell documents the way the sisters read together, put on plays, compared their work, went out walking on the moors and talked. They educated themselves into being writers as a small intensive group. This is what modern sociologists call small group theory. The Brontës are what Michael Farrell would call a collaborative circle. They guard themselves against outside influence, competitively nurture each other’s talents. Farrell notes that these circles have shared goals, a common vision, and a set of assumptions about their discipline. In the evenings, after their work was done, the group swung into action.
It was the household custom among these girls to sew till nine o’clock at night. At that hour, Miss Branwell generally went to bed, and her nieces’ duties for the day were accounted done. They put away their work, and began to pace the room backwards and forwards, up and down,—as often with the candles extinguished, for economy’s sake, as not,—their figures glancing into the fire-light, and out into the shadow, perpetually. At this time, they talked over past cares and troubles; they planned for the future, and consulted each other as to their plans. In after years this was the time for discussing together the plots of their novels.
The whole culture of the house, its religion, its bookishness, the intensity of their artistic interests, the fact that Charlotte could discover Emily’s astonishing poetry,—just knowing that all three sisters were writing,—Gaskell’s book is suffused with this, and it makes the whole thing a description of the ways in which they took their lives and turned them into art.
Bookmaking out of the remains of the dead
The other criticism Gaskell receives is from the anti-biographers. (Brontë was criticised for this as well.)
Charlotte Brontë wasn’t always as popular as she is now. In the later decades of the nineteenth century, she was seen as second-rate, compared to the intellectual novelists like George Eliot. The problem was that she was fundamentally an autobiographically novelist. As Leslie Stephen—Virginia Woolf’s father and the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography—put it, her novels were merely “the study of her life.”
The critics continued to carp, saying she lacked technique. Leavis left her out of the Great Tradition. (Pah! Phooey to Leavis…) Feminist critics have since argued that you can be a great novelist without prioritising unity and rationality. Hardly a shocking thought, but literary criticism is often wary of stating the obvious: no-one can ever put Jane Eyre down once they start reading it, and it expresses something large and powerful and emotional and religious and psychological. How many other novels achieve that?
Hence, Gaskell did less damage than she is accused of. Highbrows were always hostile to Brontë. It’s wrong to blame Gaskell for the sexist, aesthetically narrow reaction Brontë received. She was working within that culture to get Brontë a better reputation.
The anti-biographical school was out against Elizabeth Gaskell too. John Blackwood wrote in 1857, of Gaskell, “I detest this bookmaking out of the remains of the dead.” Interestingly, Gaskell came to feel something similar, hoping there would be no biography of her. Lucasta Miller, in her splendid book The Brontë Myth—which I highly recommend to you all—critiques Gaskell for focussing too much on Brontë’s life, and not enough on the work. The myth that Gaskell set in motion, she says, became hugely dominant, especially in the twentieth century with TV and Hollywood and tourism, which detracts from the work.
Conclusion
But readers didn’t need Gaskell’s analysis of Jane Eyre. It’s typical for modern biographers to give an account of each book by their subject. Gaskell did something far more interesting—she explained how Charlotte Brontë arrived out of nowhere to become a great novelist. Would a dozen pages discussing Jane Eyre really have changed the reception of the biography and Brontë’s reputation?
Yes, Gaskell hid Brontë’s sexual passion for a married man. Yes, she focussed on the domestic, obedient, suffering, semi-Romantic side of Brontë’s character. But by doing that, she was leading contemporary readers to appreciate the ways in which Brontë’s decidedly Christian life was compatible with her radical writing. To include the other material would have been to distract from Brontë as a writer.
Gaskell was trying to show the truth in the only way that was acceptable to her audience. This is not just a feminist issue: when Froude wrote the Life of Carlyle he kept Carlyle’s impotence secret. The Victorians simply didn’t put certain things into print. We may be familiar with this problem ourselves…
As the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says, “The biography was a monumental success, moderating negative judgements about Charlotte’s unwomanly writing and establishing a mythology about the Brontës’ lives for over a century.”
We may not like the mythology,—but it was an important first step in winning the culture wars.
I've read somewhere about the massive row that broke out when the book was published. Mrs Gaskell had gone abroad, Italy I think, to recover from literary exhaustion and came home to discover that in her absence her Minister husband had panicked and set in motion various corrections and apologies, which Mrs G disputed: she wanted to stand by what she had written. Jenny Uglow's biography has some of this but there is also a very perceptive novelisation, Mrs Gaskell and Me, by Nell Stevens.