Charlotte Bronte: A troubled path of genius

“Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart” by Claire Harman (Alfred A. Knopf, 468 pages, illustrated, $30)

She didn’t see London until late in her relatively short life. Overwhelmed by the sights and sensations of the capital, she longed for home at Haworth Parsonage in Yorkshire – simple, reclusive, remote, overlooking a graveyard, swept by the winds off the darkening moors.

There, she outlived all her siblings – tightly bound by a type of preternatural emotion. Insular, neurotic, socializing generally only with themselves, writers all, they lived foremost inside their heads, for a while at least, until her brother and two sisters wasted away from what was thought to be consumption (tuberculosis) – even though Branwell’s demise was due to his drug and alcohol abuse. In any form, death haunted her family; her mother and two older sisters died when she was a young child. And she lived only until 38, dying presumably from complications in childbirth. At her death, she was one of 19th-century England’s most famous and beloved authors, albeit still writing under a masculine pseudonym, Currer Bell.

Her masterpiece, “Jane Eyre,” is considered one of the finest Victorian novels – powerful, realistic, Gothic, autobiographical, anticipating modernism in its aesthetic framework. Subtitled by her publisher as the confessions of a governess, it was clear from the book just how much she had hated that role when she took it up to put food on her father’s table.

She is Charlotte Bronte, the most talented of the Bronte brood, defying publishers’ and friends’ expectations as she pursued her literary gifts. Retiring, myopic and secretive, she nevertheless possessed a fiery heart that mirrored the profound workings of her brain. Altogether, she trod a troubled trail of genius, as Claire Harman shows us in her new, engaging biography of Bronte, issued to celebrate the 200th anniversary of her birth.

Her heart wanted one thing only: to write, a pastime her father thought for many years simple child’s play, imagination run wild on tiny scraps of paper. But Charlotte’s adult manifestations of her abilities swept the London literary world – indeed, all of England – by storm. She would never top her initial success, perhaps because by then feelings of real love had supplanted imaginary ones. But she produced two other significant novels, “Villette” and “Shirley,” and a book of poems shared with her sisters Emily and Anne, again written under male pseudonyms, Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, mysterious men with a feminine sensibility. Ironically, after a protracted fight to essentially self-publish, they sold only two books of poems, losing considerable money.

Making money kept them industrious as teachers and governesses while fighting for their cherished time to write. The middle sister, Emily, would go on to pen at a very young age the Gothic romance “Wuthering Heights,” complete with its then-shocking pagan themes and violent emotions.

Charlotte learned the value of sensationalism from her middle sister and incorporated elements of it into “Jane Eyre.” What seems at first a rags-to-riches story of an orphan rising to the role of governess for a member of the landed gentry ends penultimately in madness and fire and destruction. But the element of restraint that Charlotte brought to her novel kept “Jane Eyre” more believable than “Wuthering Heights,” and with its (somewhat) happy ending, it was a grand success for Currer Bell – the writing praised for its forcefulness, passion and perception.

When Charlotte at last decided to reveal her identity to her publisher in London, it was a comical, slightly absurd scenario made tense by her insistence on keeping her real name a secret to others. Thus, she was feted and celebrated as a literary star incognito. Freud would have had a heyday with the Bronte sisters and their split personalities between books and home, between male and female personae.

Charlotte proves more complex, however, than any psychoanalytic category. Her long interlude attending, then teaching at a boarding school in Brussels saw her excel, even soar academically and as a teacher. There, she received a sentimental education in unrequited love. The best thing she had going for her romantically was her mind, of course; she knew she was no beauty. And when she fell for the married headmaster, who had made her his favorite pupil, she learned that in matters of romance, the heart trumps the mind, and her heart was naive, misunderstanding Monsieur Heger’s intentions in praising her exceptional schoolwork. What she saw as a union of elevated souls was merely a practical matter of teaching to him.

Still, Brussels broadened her horizons and provided fodder for her later novels. Once she left the Continent for good, her broken heart healed long enough for her to marry a curate and try to start a family. But the cloud of gloom hanging over the Bronte clan would not lift in time for her.

Harman does a yeoman’s job of summarizing and analyzing Charlotte’s remarkable life. She assumes that her readers are familiar with “Jane Eyre,” but a sketch of the novel at some point would have been helpful. Harman’s strength is in probing Charlotte’s letters to delve deep within her mental state, which was always more comfortable and fruitful in her rich imagination than in the poverty of the real world at Haworth. There, she dealt with her father’s neglect and eventual decline in health. She resigned herself to accepting the courtship of Arthur Nicholls, who genuinely loved her and took her to his native Ireland for their honeymoon. But once again, reality was no match for the yearning heart.

Much has been written about the Brontes, their severe unconventionality, their almost occult artistic talents. Harman gives us a fresh perspective on the most gifted daughter of the family. We see her struggles for equality, for literary excellence and for fuel for her fiery heart. That she succeeded as well as she did is a triumph of the will. In showing us the ravages of that struggle, Harman’s biography is more than equal to the task – warm, erudite and accessible, echoing that beating heart to the bitter end.

This story was originally published April 2, 2016 at 3:31 PM with the headline "Charlotte Bronte: A troubled path of genius."