The Writer's Life: “The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master.”

Read more: Charlotte Bronte’s relationship with writing had a difficult start ever before she got to “Jane Eyre.” She and her two sisters, Anne, who wrote “Wuthering Heights,” and Emily who wrote “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,” had at first to publish under pseudonyms that suggested the authors were men.

Before that, while working as a teacher, Charlotte wrote to the then English poet laureate, Robert Southey, asking if she could make her living as a writer. This is what Southey replied; “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it.” He gave himself credit later for having given “that poor girl” what he called “a dose of cooling admonition.” He wrote this long after the appearance on the scene of Miss J. Austen. With such vision, no wonder he wasn’t much of a poet.  

How Charlotte wrote anything seems a miracle rather than a mystery, given the emotional stress she must have suffered; her brother, Branwell, a year younger, died at the age of 31; Emily, two years younger than Charlotte, died at age 30; and Anne, three years younger, died at age 29. No wonder Charlotte recorded one day that she picked up her pen “and, I regret to say, nothing occurred.”    

 

Comments

[Vivienne]

Thank you for these insightful, inspirational, tear-provoking words. Brave, brave Charlotte! I still have the response to a letter I wrote, at age 10, to the governor of my home state, asking him why I could not be a paper-boy for the local News! In short, he said it was due to the weight of the papers & something about not being lady-like! STILL ticks me off! ( I had a great arm!)

[Dr Dennis Low]

What if I said that Robert Southey wasn't the ferociously patriarchal misogynist that Bronte scholars often make him out to be after all but, instead, one of the nineteenth century's greatest champions of women's writing? He was absolutely instrumental to the careers of many women writers, including Maria Gowen Brooks, Sara Coleridge and Caroline Bowles, as well as vital to the posthumous publication of Lucretia Davidson. I strongly suspect Bronte knew this and specifically targeted Southey as someone who was known for helping young women writers. More in my book, The Literary Protégées of the Lake Poets (Ashgate 2006) if you're interested!

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754655954

[P. Hanrahan]

Just found the site, Frank. Very interesting. Love the bit about the roots of words. We'd all like that book, I think. Up to now Latin has only helped in completing Irish Times crosswords. I can hear some educators screaming in the background.