understand her better than Nussey did. This correspondence, sadly, is lost. Taylor burned all of Brontë’s letters but the one in which she describes her first visit to her publishers, Smith, Elder and Company. In an 1836 letter to Nussey, Brontë told her, “I sat down and wrote to you such a note as I ought to have written to none but M. Taylor who is nearly as mad as myself, when I glanced it over it occurred to me that Ellen’s calm eye would look at this with scorn, so I determined to concoct some production more fit for the inspection of common-sense” (Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, September 26, 1836; in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 1, p. 151). If Brontë’s personification of Nussey as “common-sense,” seems dismissive, her revelation that she has written two letters entails an appeal, an embedded question: Would Ellen scorn such a production? Brontë indirectly seeks Nussey’s permission for greater freedom of expression in their correspondence.
The desired intimacy was achieved during Brontë’s tenure at Miss Wooler’s school. “ ‘Don’t deceive yourself by imagining I have a bit of real goodness about me,’ ” a self-loathing Brontë enigmatically warned Nussey. “ ‘If you knew my thoughts, the dreams that absorb me, and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up ... you would pity and I dare say despise me’ ” (p. 112). The source of Brontë’s anxiety is the fear, which she veils, that her compulsive engagement with the imaginary world of the juvenile Glasstown and Angria Saga that she and Branwell coauthored was socially unacceptable for a young woman. Brontë’s depression stems not only from the fact that she feels forced to teach at the expense of writing, but also from a corollary effort to abandon the lurid fantasy writing of her youth in favor of realist fiction. Brontë expresses herself in letters from this period with a vehemence that might have repelled a truly conventional person, and emerges from this dark spell calling Nussey “ ‘her comforter’ ” (p. 127).
As their friendship deepened, Brontë was more authentic and unguarded with Nussey than with any other correspondent. “ ‘I write to you freely,’ ” Brontë explained in the difficult summer following her sisters’ deaths, “ ‘because I believe you will hear me with moderation’ ” (p. 314). While it is true that letters to Nussey are evidence that Brontë “was one to study the path of duty well,” as Gaskell says (The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, letter 267), we can also understand why Brontë’s husband deemed her letters to this friend “lucifer matches” (Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, October 24, 1854; in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 3, p. 295). Nicholls understood that Brontë’s publicity would make these expressive letters of interest to a wider audience, and consequently made it a condition of their correspondence that Nussey burn them. The purportedly conventional Nussey, notably, did not comply with Nicholls’s request. This correspondence, which captures Brontë under the stress of self-development, provides a natural character arc for Brontë as heroine of Gaskell’s novelistic Life.
“The Woman Question”
Brontë did prefer teaching in a school to submitting to the “ ‘slavery’ ” of being a governess in a private family (p. 115). Gaskell captures with vivid intensity the painful alienation Brontë felt during her years as a governess. The liminal position of governesses, who were suspended between classes, being neither equal to their masters nor truly servants, had the effect of negating both the value and the difficulty of their work. Brontë’s remarks that she would rather be a “ ‘housemaid’ ” than a governess, and that she “ ‘could like to work in a mill,’ ” may show signs of class insensitivity, but her hyperbole constitutes a critique of the value structure of genteel employment (pp. 134, 138). To make employment
The desired intimacy was achieved during Brontë’s tenure at Miss Wooler’s school. “ ‘Don’t deceive yourself by imagining I have a bit of real goodness about me,’ ” a self-loathing Brontë enigmatically warned Nussey. “ ‘If you knew my thoughts, the dreams that absorb me, and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up ... you would pity and I dare say despise me’ ” (p. 112). The source of Brontë’s anxiety is the fear, which she veils, that her compulsive engagement with the imaginary world of the juvenile Glasstown and Angria Saga that she and Branwell coauthored was socially unacceptable for a young woman. Brontë’s depression stems not only from the fact that she feels forced to teach at the expense of writing, but also from a corollary effort to abandon the lurid fantasy writing of her youth in favor of realist fiction. Brontë expresses herself in letters from this period with a vehemence that might have repelled a truly conventional person, and emerges from this dark spell calling Nussey “ ‘her comforter’ ” (p. 127).
As their friendship deepened, Brontë was more authentic and unguarded with Nussey than with any other correspondent. “ ‘I write to you freely,’ ” Brontë explained in the difficult summer following her sisters’ deaths, “ ‘because I believe you will hear me with moderation’ ” (p. 314). While it is true that letters to Nussey are evidence that Brontë “was one to study the path of duty well,” as Gaskell says (The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, letter 267), we can also understand why Brontë’s husband deemed her letters to this friend “lucifer matches” (Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, October 24, 1854; in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 3, p. 295). Nicholls understood that Brontë’s publicity would make these expressive letters of interest to a wider audience, and consequently made it a condition of their correspondence that Nussey burn them. The purportedly conventional Nussey, notably, did not comply with Nicholls’s request. This correspondence, which captures Brontë under the stress of self-development, provides a natural character arc for Brontë as heroine of Gaskell’s novelistic Life.
“The Woman Question”
Brontë did prefer teaching in a school to submitting to the “ ‘slavery’ ” of being a governess in a private family (p. 115). Gaskell captures with vivid intensity the painful alienation Brontë felt during her years as a governess. The liminal position of governesses, who were suspended between classes, being neither equal to their masters nor truly servants, had the effect of negating both the value and the difficulty of their work. Brontë’s remarks that she would rather be a “ ‘housemaid’ ” than a governess, and that she “ ‘could like to work in a mill,’ ” may show signs of class insensitivity, but her hyperbole constitutes a critique of the value structure of genteel employment (pp. 134, 138). To make employment
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