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Chapter Two The Novel and the Crisis of Conscience The Brontës—The Caged Rebels of Haworth I wish you would not think me a woman. I wish all reviewers believed “Currer Bell” to be a man; they would be more just to him. You will, I know, keep measuring me by some standard of what you deem becoming to my sex; where I am not what you consider graceful, you will condemn me ... Come what will, I cannot, when I write, think always of myself and of what is elegant and charming in femininity; it is not on those terms, or with such ideas, I ever took pen in hand; and if it is only on such terms my writing will be tolerated, I shall pass away from the public and trouble it no more. Out of obscurity I came, to obscurity I can easily return. —Charlotte Brontë to G. H. Lewes, 1849 The village of Haworth, in Yorkshire, was in the early nineteenth century—to use the words of one of its visitors—a “dreary, black-looking village,” defying, through a steep ascent of its roadway, the footing of a visitor. The street leading to the top was paved with flagstones, so placed that pedestrians, horses, and carriages would not slip back. Past uninviting stone dwellings, one clambers till one comes to the church, the churchyard , and finally the Haworth parsonage. Today, hundreds upon hundreds of pilgrims make their way as to some shrine of a “saint” or “martyr,” once the home of the three Brontë sisters; and the modest parsonage ranks second in popularity only to that other “shrine” at Stratford on Avon. Many come to Haworth to honor literary genius; others, heroic womanhood. Such posthumous celebrity would have astounded no one more than a certain visitor , who, in the fall of 1853, two years before Charlotte Brontë’s death, made her way to the home of the last surviving of the three sisters. This was Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell, her future biographer, herself a novelist of some distinction. She had met Charlotte Brontë a few years before and had been deeply impressed by her personality, perhaps even more than by her celebrity as the author of Jane Eyre. This was Mrs. Gaskell’s first view of Haworth. Standing at the front door of the parsonage, she reflected on the loneliness of the spot.“Moors everywhere, beyond and above,” she wrote. “Oh! those high, wild, desolate moors, up above the whole world, and the very realms of silence!”1 390 These realms of silence also included the churchyard, with its time- and weatherstained tombstones lying flat, stretching far and wide. Here lay buried many members of the Brontë family—the mother, three daughters, and a son. Another daughter, Anne, had been laid to rest in Scarborough. And now, since 1849, the parsonage was emptied out: only Charlotte and her father were there, along with their lifelong servant Tabby, now ninety years old. It was hard to believe that at one time not very long ago, despite the sombreness of the surroundings, the inclemencies of the weather and the isolation, the house had been bright, ringing with noises, even the laughter of young people. Once there had been five daughters and a son; and an aunt who had replaced the mother, deceased when the children were very young. But here are Charlotte Brontë now, and her father the Rev. Patrick Brontë, to receive the guest. Miss Brontë is thirty-seven years old, and an “old maid,” or “spinster” in the customary parlance of the day. Her figure is diminutive, almost childlike. She is “very plain,” a source of distress throughout her life; though her plainness is redeemed by beautiful, though very near-sighted, eyes, a shy manner, and a sweet voice. From her behavior one would not conceive that she is one of the famed writers of the day. Beside her looms the stately, forbidding form of her father, now in his seventysixth year, for thirty years now perpetual curate at Haworth—a dominating patriarchal figure encased in a white neckcloth, aloof and retiring. At last Mrs. Gaskell has Charlotte Brontë all to herself. “We talked over the old times of her childhood,” she wrote later. The story as it was to unfold at that time, and more elaborately after Charlotte’s death, was one that might well entrance a novelist. It may have been that at that moment the idea of eventually writing her biography was born...

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