In search of the Brontes Part 1 - 6/6

[@ksotikoula]

"...but I see you, I talk with you - you with that little air, affectionate undoubtedly, but independent & resolute, firmly determined not to allow any opinion without being previously convinced,demanding to be convinced before allowing yourself to submit - in fact, just as I knew you, my dear L & as I have esteemed & loved you." This shows that he knew both how to caress verbally & also to control & enjoy the dynamics of power & submission that are evident in Jane Eyre too between the heroes.

[@ksotikoula]

The letters were not offensive. They expressed mostly how much she missed him, but they were not meant to be a secret as well, as Charlotte sometimes sent her greetings to his wife. It was madame Heger that secretly preserved the letters after her husband tore them to have proof that CB disturbed her husband in case there was a scandal.

[@iamme611]

L. Miller's The Bronte Myth was so great about pointing out the dilemna of biography writing of the lives of Brontes. BTW, I read the introduction to Tales from Angria. They are the stories that Charlotte wrote. Although maybe the cover could have said, "Created by Charlotte and Branwell Bronte". It would be awesome to include his stories though. I wonder if they were saved? Do you know?

[@iamme611]

Did Gaskell see the more passionate part of the letters she wrote to H? I;m not sure if they didn't come out till much later after Gaskell's biography and that Gaskell never read those parts?

[@ksotikoula]

I believe the letters were not torn up until 1855.How else could he have shown them to Gaskell, torn?(difficult to explain) But if you consider that Charlotte's last letter was written in 1945 it means he had saved them for 10 years which shows he was not so very much uninterested in her. I don't mean to say he loved her but they had an interesting intellectual-only-relationship.Gordon believes he eventually tore the letters to protect Charlotte from being misjudged like she was by his wife.

[@ksotikoula]

For those who want to see part 2 of this documentary go back to my channel and select the second playlist called "In search of the Brontes: Gone like dreams Part 2"

[@ksotikoula]

I agree.CB would never just fall in love with a married man.He must have encouraged her in a way.He understood her well too.Ellen asked him after C's death to give her some letters to include for publication.He said it was in her letters that was recorded the throbbing of "her sick heart".He erases "sick" &writes "wounded" &then changes again mind&leaves "sick" i.e. he did not want to take responsibility.He says also that they would lose in translation as "she whispered them in his heart's ear".

[@Thanasis_Koligliatis]

7:04 The narrator Patricia Routledge is very good

[@ksotikoula]

Most biographers also believe that there was not a word over this subject exchanged between Madame Heger and Charlotte. The first realized the feelings of the later and decided to keep her at a distance from her husband by sending her to do chores or by dictating letters to her while he was teaching. All this Charlotte described in Villette, which enraged Madame. For a long time later the name Bronte was a taboo in the pensionate and no English students were accepted.

[@salanzaldi4551]

It's been my experience that working for a living is being someplace you don't want to be, doing something you don't want to be doing, and being with people you don't want to be with. But that's what you have to put up with if you're going to be self sufficient and not a burden to others. Bramwell just didn't want to have to work for a living! When he lost his chance to have an easy life after he failed to get a rich woman to marry him, he became a hopeless drunk as a result.

[@ksotikoula]

I agree about Mr Bronte, but he was a man of certain age and a man of his era. This doesn't account for some false stories however that Gaskell wrote: that he forbade the children to eat meat & that he had burned a silk dress of his wife to teach her humility. He wrote to Gaskell to say that he was not a calm or ordinary man or else he wouldn't have children like his but he was never such a brute as she presented him. She had to take it back. Biography is something different than fiction.

[@ksotikoula]

I believe I found it in "Charlotte Bronte" by Winifred Gerin. Now tell me is it so impossible that Charlotte would believe he cared for her if he spoke this way? And as a writer words for her had a particular charm. Do you think he missed her too and decided to have another pupil-teacher relationship? He would never find another pupil as brilliant as her and Emily, and nobody to immortalize him in more than 1 books,lol! Yes he was M. Paul. Rochester has some traits only of him.

[@ksotikoula]

Yes Gaskell says that Charlotte had heard a similar story (of a governess marrying a gentleman and learning the truth a year later after she had a child with him) when she was at Roe Head (near 15) but I don't think it shocked her so very much. Her stories in Angria were pretty wild too. But it would be an interesting story to remember.

[@ksotikoula]

What amazes me is that Gaskell never asked him anything about Jane Eyre or Villette. They may have brought him on a difficult position,but he could not be but proud for Charlotte,at least as his student. How much of their conversations passed into her books or how flattered he felt only he knew. I believe was Gaskell was either too amazed to ask or as she said to George Smith she was not interested in presenting CB's life as an author as much as her image as a woman.

[@ksotikoula]

Do you know what is my problem with the Heger letters? They say he tore them up after he read them; his wife took them out of the garbage bin secretly & stitched them together; and after Madame's death her daughter showed them to him again & he surprised threw them away anew. Problem:When Gaskell came in 1855 how could he have shown her the letters since he didn't have them? And if his wife gave them to him then, why was he surprise to see them again in Louisa's possession.

[@ksotikoula]

CB never learned who circulated the rumor&had to assure everyone she was fine. I don't like Gaskell's take on the Heger case either.She thought it was all in "poor Charlotte's" mind.She was very impressed by Heger himself.I wonder whether Smith after learning about Heger felt any misgivings about his conduct to C.He was the 2nd one to disappoint her in letter writing not being able to tell her the truth openly&candidly.He sure wasn't straightforward if he made his mother believe he would marry C

[@ksotikoula]

It WAS embarrassing! Charlotte was devastated when Thackeray himself sent her a polite letter explaining the case. She could not also help commenting to Mr Williams "Well may it be said that Fact is often stranger than Fiction". It was certain that she did not know but I wonder her publishers didn't read at all her preface? Couldn't they have warned her and protected her from the blunder?

[@ksotikoula]

An important correction here. Charlotte wrote her letters to Heger after she left Brussels wanting desperately to continue her communication with him, her love and mentor.

[@iamme611]

Darn. I want to see Part 2. It is a good thing you clearified the Heger affair though. They messed the facts up quite a bit. lol! I can relate to the obessesing from a distance too. I had a similair experience with one of my professors! (I've read that story about Thackery. That would have been embarrasing.)

[@iamme611]

Wow! What a cad. lol. Where did you read this letter -- what book? It reminds me more of M. Paul than Rochester.

[@kkloskklos]

Why it's Sir Hallam of Upstairs Downstairs Two... a hunka hunka burning love in any century!

[@ksotikoula]

I believe some of them were since Wise tried to pass them as Charlotte's.

[@ksotikoula]

Maybe Charlotte was more inspirational than her heroes. I know Gaskell only by that biography. I haven't read anything by her. I don't know how she is as a writer but I hated how she treated Mr Bronte and Nicholls. Gordon also notes that Gaskell with her preference for drama had spread the false rumor that CB had consumption which was an additional reason why Smith's mother didn't want her son to marry Charlotte. Inadvertently she hindered her prospects of an advantageous marriage.

[@ksotikoula]

I believe she did. He must have shown them to her in order to explain why his wife refused to see her and talk about Charlotte and as a proof to convince her about CB's handwriting. He also urged her to read his responses to Charlotte to show that their correspondence was proper. He was certain of the existence of his letters. He said it would not be in Charlotte's character to destroy them. But they were never found. People believe she buried them before her marriage like Lucy did in Villette.

[@ksotikoula]

Well Charlotte can not complain much about it.She had 4 prepositions of marriage despite being plain, poor&frail. She was unlucky that they didn't come from the men she fell in love with, but Arthur Bell Nicholls earned her love eventually&she was happy with him even briefly. I don't think Emily cared much about men, but Anne it is said to be in love with Weightman the handsome&lively curate, who died too early. Charlotte made a comment in a letter that those two looked like a beautiful picture.

[@iamme611]

Yeah, Gaskell kept the Heger thing on, as we say in the US, "on the down low" (secrect). Gaskell does focus more on Charlotte's life like a tragedy not as an author. I cried so hard after I read her biography! It is odd Gaskell's book is so maudlin considering her books were not.

[@iamme611]

Something had to have happened between Heger and C in order for her to feel so open with him. Those are some intense letters to be written by someone so shy. I'm not saying it was sex but some sort of connection beyond student/teacher.

[@s0ngf0rx]

woah thats it????

[@ksotikoula]

No, she could not beat Branwell in troublemaking! Lol! I believe she was a very passionate woman that was forced to think of duty first. But she knew that the more you repress something the stronger it becomes. She was known also to be "indomitably honest", so having strong feelings and not being able to pretend always smells like trouble :).

gaskell's claims are based on sources such as nurse who looked after their mother. hardly "fiction". btw it doesn't say he "forbade the children to eat meat", they did not eat meat because he did not eat meat because of illness. later he ate separately. gaskell removed some stuff on 3rd edition of biography but that hardly mean they were untrue. she also removed stuff about the clergy daughter's school and branwell's affair at the same time. so removal is no proof it was "fiction"

[@ksotikoula]

And then there is his letter to another student of his a long time after CB, that is unmistakably erotic in tone without saying anything committing. Many believe he sounds like Rochester: "... I often give myself the pleasure (of talking mentally with her he means), when my duties are over, when the light fades. I postpone lighting the gas lamp in my library, I sit down, smoking my cigar & with a hearty will I evoke your image & you come (without wishing to, I dare say)...

[@ksotikoula]

And then sometimes there were such coincidences in her life! Did you know that Thackeray (the author of "Vanity Fair") to whom she dedicated "Jane Eyre" had a mad wife that he had to confine? Well Charlotte had no clue and as soon as she dedicated the book to him some journalists claimed that JE was written by Thackeray's governess, because he too in "Vanity Fair" had a governess heroine, Becky Sharp, who was trying to seduce her master. And the authors had not even met!

[@iamme611]

I think Mr. Bronte was too controlling. He threw such a fit over her marriage! Gaskell was a great author. Her popularity as a writer has risen lately because BBC has made several successful film versions of her novels -- Wives and Daughters, North and South and Cranford.

[@veem8089]

exaggerated & sensationalist