Transcription
[Music] Hello everybody. Welcome to a session on a very interesting trio: the Brontë sisters. As all of you know, the Brontë sisters are Charlotte, Emily, and Ann Brontë. Charlotte Brontë, born in 1816; Emily Brontë, born in 1818—that is the year of Frankenstein—and also Anne Brontë, 1820. You know that these were times of tuberculosis, and Brontë and Emily died very early, but before that, they wrote very amazing novels.
Charlotte, Emily, and Anne were actually part of a family of five sisters. Two of their sisters died because of poverty, because of problems they had in school days—in school, you know the suffering they had—and Charlotte became the eldest of the sisters. They also had a brother called Branwell. These sisters lived in Yorkshire; their father was a clergyman, and their parsonage was called Haworth Parsonage. I have been there during my literary tour. You can also look up on the internet and YouTube the parsonage—Haworth Parsonage—a small church inside which their tombs are still seen. Their father was a very strict man; the girls had a very cloistered family life. They didn't have much experience outside their families. The father had a lot of books at home; the girls read all these books. They also read magazines like Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, and their minds expanded. I have seen the room where they sat and read these books near the fireplace. Their minds expanded; their imagination grew, developed, and they began to create imaginary worlds like Glass Town, Angria. Then there was Gondal, about which Emily Brontë wrote Gondal poems. So these children, the girls, became very imaginative because of their reading.
They went to Clergy Daughters' School, which was very strict, and uh, there was very little facility there. The girls were cold, and they didn't get enough food, and this suffering that they had led later to depictions of Lowood School, etc.—Lowood School in *Jane Eyre*. And during this time, they were all writing poetry. They were influenced by their Calvinistic aunt who brought them up. There was also a servant called Tabitha. Calvinism is a religious doctrine that believes in a very violent world and a very vengeful or punishing God. They had also superstitions. This aunt and Tabitha—all this inspired the girls, and they could create a world in their novels later which reflected such a Calvinistic approach to life.
While they were writing poetry early in their career and life, they also became governesses. They started working as governesses in houses, which they did not like. It was not a happy time for them. And as a governess, Charlotte had a very bitter experience when one of her wards threw a Bible at her. This is represented in *Jane Eyre* as the cousin John Reed throwing the book at Jane Eyre, and Jane Eyre fighting with him. So there is a lot of autobiographical elements there. There are a lot of autobiographical elements in their novels, as you can see. And all the heroines of these sisters were also governesses, and this part of the story or narrative must have been colored by their own experiences.
Then Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels in Belgium, where they attended the school run by Constantin Héger. At this time, there were troubles in the family; their aunt died, and later Branwell also died, and Charlotte and Emily came back. But Charlotte alone went back to Brussels. There she fell in love with the owner of the school, Constantin Héger. He did not reciprocate her affections. You know, girls who were brought up without any contact with the outside world—they fell in love; she fell in love with the first man she came to know, and it must have been traumatic for her.
At this time, when she was writing poetry, Charlotte sent her early poems to Robert Southey, who was a very famous man and a poet laureate at that time. And Southey was very dismissive. Southey did not appreciate it, and he said, "You girls have not been called to your life as wives yet. Once you get married, all this poetry writing will stop for you." That's how he responded—very bad. Anyway, Charlotte was the person who took the initiative to publish the poems of the three sisters—*Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell*—that is the title of the poetry collection. So the girls took—Charlotte took the name Currer Bell; C.B., Charlotte Brontë, same initials. So C.B., Currer Bell; Ellis Bell; Acton Bell—pen names they took.
Then, um, the very next year, in 1847, Charlotte Brontë took the initiative to publish the novels that all of them had written. Charlotte published *Jane Eyre* first. Actually, she had written a novel, *The Professor*, based on her experiences in Brussels, but this was like not so decent or acceptable for a family readership, so the publisher did not accept it. *The Professor*. *Jane Eyre* was accepted by Smith, Elder and Co., the publisher. And after *Jane Eyre*, immediately, a few months later, same year, 1847, came *Wuthering Heights*, and then came Anne Brontë's *Agnes Grey*.
So next we have to talk about the amazing novels, *Jane Eyre* and *Wuthering Heights*. So let us talk about *Jane Eyre*, 1847. The novel was first published as *Jane Eyre: An Autobiography*, and it is a *Bildungsroman*, the novel of development of a character. As you know, *Jane Eyre* is a love story, the story of Jane's love for Rochester. And Jane is a plain, vital heroine, perhaps the first romantic heroine in English, and her story is told with frankness—a truthful story told by the narrator or the protagonist herself. In this novel, you see that there is deep characterization; characters are drawn deeply, and there is a poetic language, a poetic intensity for the narration. *Jane Eyre* is a strong woman; you can say she's a proto-feminist who stands up against injustice and lives her life according to her own will and passion. The novel tells the story in five stages. You can see Jane's story evolving over five stages of her life. In the second edition, there is a dedication to Thackeray—William Makepeace Thackeray—which connects with Thackeray's realism.
Now let me tell you what are the five stages in Jane's life. At first, you see ten-year-old Jane at Gateshead, living with the Reeds—her aunt, Mrs. Reed, and her cousins, John, Eliza, and Georgiana. They are very cruel to Jane. In the second stage, you see Jane at Lowood School, where the headmaster is a cruel Brocklehurst, and Jane is at first a pupil there and then a teacher, and she suffers there. There are very few people who are kind to Jane, like Miss Helen Burns, her friend, and Miss Temple, the superintendent. Then the third stage of Jane's life is when she has left Lowood and she's a governess at Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with Rochester. She's the governess of Adele Varens. She falls in love with Rochester, almost marries him, but her marriage is stopped because somebody reveals that Rochester is already married to Bertha Mason. Bertha is a mad woman, and Rochester is ready to secretly live with Jane, but Jane does not want that. Jane does not want to do anything against religion and morality, so she leaves Thornfield Hall and goes into the fourth stage of her life at Marsh Farm, where she gets shelter with St. John Rivers and his two sisters. There she becomes a school teacher; her life is better; she lives her life teaching children and drawing. And St. John Rivers, who actually loves another woman, is ready to marry Jane for convenience sake and take her as a missionary's wife to India. Jane does not want to marry for convenience. She hears Rochester's voice calling out to her. And then the fifth stage of her life when she goes back to Rochester in search of him, finds that his wife had died, burned the house; he himself has lost his eyesight and a limb. And now that Rochester has lost his wife and been punished like this, Jane accepts him, marries him—"Reader, I married him," says Jane—and she lives at Ferndean with Rochester, and they have a child. So this is the story of *Jane Eyre*. Why is it so famous and important? Because of the way she has been depicted. You know, this lonely, poor, orphaned child is not just a lonely child; she is a—she turns out to be—transforms into a woman of vital and power of character.
In Mrs.—let me give you more details of the story, starting from the beginning. Adult Jane is telling the story of her own childhood, and she could not take a walk that day, so she came home and began reading a book about birds. John Reed does not like her touching his books, and he quarrels with her, and Jane beats him up. She is punished by being shut up in the red room where her uncle had died, and she sees his ghost. Seeing ghosts, etc., came from the Calvinistic upbringing of Charlotte Brontë, I guess. The only person in that household to give her some love—a surrogate mother figure—is Miss Bessie, the cook. She makes some cakes for Jane, and she eats it in a—a plate with a print on it—a printed plate. She loves it, and she takes refuge in a doll and these books that she reads secretly. And then when she beats up her cousin—older cousin John Reed—her aunt sends her away to Lowood School, where Brocklehurst is a clergyman teaching children the values of poverty and simplicity and suffering. Before Jane leaves for Lowood School, she tells her aunt, "You have been very cruel to me; I'm going to tell the world about you." This is why she's writing her book also. And when Brocklehurst unnecessarily punishes her, she can't take it easily. It is Helen Burns who teaches her the value of forgiveness. With Helen Burns's advice, Jane tempers a bit; she becomes a little mature, and Helen dies of tuberculosis in Jane's arms. Jane gets into her bed at night and sleeps with—with Helen, and she dies at night. Helen—uh, Miss Temple is the superintendent who is very kind to Jane, but nobody else is. Many children of Lowood School die of typhus fever or yellow fever, and all this suffering, all these experiences make Jane the mature woman that she becomes later.
When she is a mature woman, you should understand that she knows who she is; she will not step beyond her boundaries. She knows that she is a poor girl; she is not very pretty; that she should not fall in love with handsome young men. She likes Rochester precisely because he's not handsome, and she knows that he is a rich man. [Music] She constantly reminds herself that she does not deserve to be Rochester's wife, and she does not—uh—behave in a coquettish manner to Rochester. Rochester loves her because of her intelligence, because she is so much in control of herself, and she loves Rochester so much. But when she realizes that Rochester is already married and that even though he's ready to give her a life, it will be immoral, she has the courage to leave Rochester, taking with her nothing. She walks in the countryside and swoons or feigns out of hunger and fatigue, but she's so strong in her—in her moral purpose, in her will. Wow. You follow me—that—that woman has so much strength of character—admirable. And when she goes to St. John Rivers' house, she knows very well that St. John doesn't love her, and she doesn't want to get into some marriage just for the sake of security of life. She lives her own life; she works, and she does not tell anybody who she is. When she gets an inheritance unexpectedly from her uncle, she shares it with her cousins. The St. John Rivers and her sisters turn out to be her cousins. She shares that inheritance with everyone; she doesn't—she's very poor; she needs money, but she doesn't keep all that money to herself, and she refuses to marry St. John Rivers out of necessity, and she goes back to Rochester. She has the courage to go back to Rochester when she feels like she should, and when he—when she understands that he has suffered a lot, she realizes that it's now time to accept him. So you see an amazing character developing through these experiences, and she is a self-made woman. You know, she is so unrelenting when it comes to immorality or pleasure and luxury; she does not take any shortcuts in life. Wow. She is such a vital character—that is why *Jane Eyre* is so famous. This kind of power of character, clarity of vision, this tremendous connection of the character with nature—human nature as well as external nature—it is there in *Wuthering Heights* as well, which is why *Wuthering Heights* is a classic. Now I'll talk to you about that amazing novel, *Wuthering Heights*.