looks almost beautiful.
CHAPTER NINE
Hope
C harlotte, too, has had difficulty sleeping. She has heard footsteps on the stairs. She has gone down to see who was roaming around. She found the nurse sitting before a candle on her own in the kitchen, her shawl around her shoulders, chomping on the lamb bone left from dinner, grease shining on her broad cheeks, blunt chin, and wide mouth, her big, bare feet splayed on the kitchen floor. She had wanted to giggle with her like a naughty school-girl. She had drunk a whole glass of porter and even climbed the stairs with her, taken her hand, and wished her a good night.
She has found an imaginary name for her: Humber.
She is goaded on by the letter in her pocket, containing the rejection that had come on the morning of her father’s operation from the publisher who had turned down their three volumes; and by the poor sales of her poems and her sisters’. She is still convinced of the merit of Emily’s poetry, though little good has come of it as yet. The moor-lark in the air / The bee among the heather-bell. The line with its precise details, its hidden rhythms, still makes her shiver slightly. Surely it will remain? They have had to pay for the publication themselves, and so far only two volumes of 165 pages have been sold, at four shillings each.
She is determined not to write any more pathetic, begging letters to her professor, her Master, and to stop thinking about him, other than to use him in her work, the ultimate revenge. She has given up all hope for her once-beloved brother. Her disillusionment with him is now complete and commensurate with her former adulation. Their physical similarity, their susceptibility to passion, make her determined to detach herself from him. She will transform these fallible creatures into objects that will serve her purposes. She will use all those who have snubbed and ignored her. She will write out of rage, out of a deep sense of her own worth and of the injustice of the world’s reception of her words. She will write about something she knows well: her passion.
She has the habit of writing with her eyes closed, shutting out the world. There is no need for this. She has written so many words in her short life, many of them with her brother. They were two beings with one sensibility, one imagination, their nerves vibrating to the same chords. Was that but practice for this moment?
She would like to reach other women, large numbers of them. She would like to entertain, to startle, to give voice to what they hold in secret in their hearts, to allow them to feel they are part of a larger community of sufferers. She would like to show them all that a woman feels: the boredom of a life confined to tedious domestic tasks. Perhaps she can reach even this nurse, with her busy beneficence, whose quack-quack voice and loud laugh grate upon her ears, who bustles around them so officiously and feeds her face.
Charlotte dozes and wakes in her chair, and for a moment is not sure where she is. She becomes aware of a red glow in the room from the low fire in the fireplace. Of course: she is in Manchester. A stranger stands before her. She rises quickly to her feet and adjusts the lace collar of her dress. “I must have dozed,” she says.
The doctor, for it is he, gives her his hand. Not a tall man, he has a sharp, narrow, but kindly face; large, deep-set eyes; thick, wavy white hair. The nurse, who has retreated to the other room, has ushered him in. He goes to her father’s bedside, a comforting presence as he stands there, bending over, his bright head a white glimmer of light like a halo over her father, speaking softly to him. She watches him in the candlelight as he removes the bandage carefully, lifts the eyelid. His slender, well-kept hands hold her attention—quick, active, and unconstrained hands. She approaches and looks down at her father’s eyes, which seem to stare back at her. Can he see her?
“Do you see anything?” the
CHAPTER NINE
Hope
C harlotte, too, has had difficulty sleeping. She has heard footsteps on the stairs. She has gone down to see who was roaming around. She found the nurse sitting before a candle on her own in the kitchen, her shawl around her shoulders, chomping on the lamb bone left from dinner, grease shining on her broad cheeks, blunt chin, and wide mouth, her big, bare feet splayed on the kitchen floor. She had wanted to giggle with her like a naughty school-girl. She had drunk a whole glass of porter and even climbed the stairs with her, taken her hand, and wished her a good night.
She has found an imaginary name for her: Humber.
She is goaded on by the letter in her pocket, containing the rejection that had come on the morning of her father’s operation from the publisher who had turned down their three volumes; and by the poor sales of her poems and her sisters’. She is still convinced of the merit of Emily’s poetry, though little good has come of it as yet. The moor-lark in the air / The bee among the heather-bell. The line with its precise details, its hidden rhythms, still makes her shiver slightly. Surely it will remain? They have had to pay for the publication themselves, and so far only two volumes of 165 pages have been sold, at four shillings each.
She is determined not to write any more pathetic, begging letters to her professor, her Master, and to stop thinking about him, other than to use him in her work, the ultimate revenge. She has given up all hope for her once-beloved brother. Her disillusionment with him is now complete and commensurate with her former adulation. Their physical similarity, their susceptibility to passion, make her determined to detach herself from him. She will transform these fallible creatures into objects that will serve her purposes. She will use all those who have snubbed and ignored her. She will write out of rage, out of a deep sense of her own worth and of the injustice of the world’s reception of her words. She will write about something she knows well: her passion.
She has the habit of writing with her eyes closed, shutting out the world. There is no need for this. She has written so many words in her short life, many of them with her brother. They were two beings with one sensibility, one imagination, their nerves vibrating to the same chords. Was that but practice for this moment?
She would like to reach other women, large numbers of them. She would like to entertain, to startle, to give voice to what they hold in secret in their hearts, to allow them to feel they are part of a larger community of sufferers. She would like to show them all that a woman feels: the boredom of a life confined to tedious domestic tasks. Perhaps she can reach even this nurse, with her busy beneficence, whose quack-quack voice and loud laugh grate upon her ears, who bustles around them so officiously and feeds her face.
Charlotte dozes and wakes in her chair, and for a moment is not sure where she is. She becomes aware of a red glow in the room from the low fire in the fireplace. Of course: she is in Manchester. A stranger stands before her. She rises quickly to her feet and adjusts the lace collar of her dress. “I must have dozed,” she says.
The doctor, for it is he, gives her his hand. Not a tall man, he has a sharp, narrow, but kindly face; large, deep-set eyes; thick, wavy white hair. The nurse, who has retreated to the other room, has ushered him in. He goes to her father’s bedside, a comforting presence as he stands there, bending over, his bright head a white glimmer of light like a halo over her father, speaking softly to him. She watches him in the candlelight as he removes the bandage carefully, lifts the eyelid. His slender, well-kept hands hold her attention—quick, active, and unconstrained hands. She approaches and looks down at her father’s eyes, which seem to stare back at her. Can he see her?
“Do you see anything?” the
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