Mary C. M. Phillips

I’ve been reading Charlotte Brontë’s Villette and ruining a perfectly good book as I can’t help but scribble in the margins.  However, I think Lucy Snowe’s wisdom is worth every mark of my pen.

Charlotte_Brontë by Patrick Branwell BrontëLucy reminds me of Anne Elliot from Austen’s strong butwith a servant’s heart.

Lucy reminds me of Anne Elliot from Austen’s Persuasion; strong but with a servant’s heart.

One thing I adore about Bronte’s writing is her use of imagery particularly in Villette’s hallucinatory scene where Lucy’s perception is distorted. Charlotte often refers to Biblical characters in her books. Her analogies name minor prophets and the obscure (similar to the way Edith Wharton uses mythological character references in her books, which Charlotte makes use of as well).  Charlotte, as we know, was a student of art…but also of Scripture.

As a reader and believer, this imagery endears me even more to dear Charlotte.

I found the below video on youtube today (see link below).  It’s from an auction event.  And what an amazing item to appraise!

Oh!  How I would love to see Charlotte’s very own scribbling in the margins!

Charlotte’s Bible

Today is dear Charlotte’s birthday.

My mind has been full of her words of late as I’ve been reading her book, Villette (not as well known as Jane Eyre, but written with the same passion).

Her words have an almost eternal tone, with every syllable gracefully teetering on the edge of heaven.  What an incredible gift she had!

And yet, she endured such an incredibly sad life.  I suppose that’s what made her such an amazing writer.

No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.  – – Villette

Charlotte Brontë:  21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855

“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”

–  Charlotte Brontë,  Jane Eyre

I spent the other day at Starbucks with my laptop.

It’s one of my favorite things to do:  get highly caffeinated, then write.

After finishing a first draft of an essay I’m currently writing on Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, I suddenly had the keen urge to read Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre again.  Not cover-to-cover; just a few passages.

So I went home, cracked it open, and once again…tears began to flow.  Jane’s conversations with Helen Burns are so intense, so lovely, so prayer-like.  Charlotte was a genius.  She truly was. Then it dawned on me: Why haven’t I read her other books?

A quick trip to Barnes and Noble ensued and I’m now on page 75 of Villette.  I’m already feeling a sense of satisfaction (maybe not the level of satisfaction I get when reading Jane Eyre…but close).

…I sat at the fireside sewing.  The wind was wailing at the windows:  it had wailed all day; but, as night deepened, it took a new tone-an accent keen, piercing, almost articulate to the ear; a plaint, piteous and disconsolate to the nerves, trilled in every gust. 

“Oh, hush! hush!” I said in my disturbed mind, dropping my work, and making a vain effort to stop my ears against that subtle, searching cry.  I had heard that very voice ere this, and compulsory observation had forced on me a theory as to what it boded.  Three times in the course of my life, events had taught me that these storage accents in the storm–this restless, hopeless cry–denote a coming state of the atmosphere unpropitious to life.   –  Villette 

Poetry.

Today, the wind is wailing here in New York as well (weakly, but there’s some minor wailing going on), and I am indoors reading Charlotte’s words.  

And, it is well with my soul.

Let it rain!