The Brontës and Religion

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This is the first full-length study of religion in the fiction of the Bronte¨s. Drawing on extensive knowledge of the Anglican Church in the nineteenth century, Marianne Thorma¨hlen shows how the Bronte¨s’ familiarity with the contemporary debates on doctrinal, ethical and ecclesiastical issues informs their novels. Divided into four parts, the book examines denominations, doctrines, ethics and clerics in the work of the Bronte¨s. The analyses of the novels clarify the constant interplay of human and Divine love in the development of the novels. While demonstrating that the Bronte¨s’ fiction usually reflects the basic tenets of Evangelical Anglicanism, the book emphasises the characteristic spiritual freedom and audacity of the Bronte¨s. Lucid and vigorously written, it will open up new perspectives for Bronte¨ specialists and enthusiasts alike on a fundamental aspect of the novels greatly neglected in recent decades.           ¨    is Professor of English Literature at Lund University in Sweden. She is the author of ‘The Waste Land’: A Fragmentary Wholeness (), Eliot’s Animals () and Rochester: The Poems in Context ().

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¨S THE BRONTE AND RELIGION M A R I A N N E T H O R M A¨ H L E N

          The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom    The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Marianne Thormählen 2004 First published in printed format 1999 ISBN 0-511-03350-8 eBook (Adobe Reader) ISBN 0-521-66155-2 hardback

Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations and editions

page vii ix 

Introduction              A Christian home in early nineteenth-century England: Evangelicalism, Dissent and the Bronte¨ family



 Charlotte Bronte¨ and the Church of Rome



 An undenominational temper



     The Bronte¨s in the theological landscape of their time



 God and his creation



 Faith and redemption



 This life and the next



         Forgiveness and revenge



 The Christian life



        Clergymen in the Bronte¨ novels v



vi

Contents

 The enigma of St John Rivers



Notes Select bibliography Index

  

Acknowledgements

Many people and organisations assisted me in the writing of this book. The Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research contributed a most munificent grant and Lund University put extra research funds at my disposal; both together gave me the opportunity I needed to get the project off the ground and on the way. It could be brought to a conclusion thanks to the linguistic section of the Arts Faculty at Lund, which granted me a priceless sabbatical term, and to my colleagues and postgraduate students at the English Department, who loyally ensured that I was able to draw full benefit from it. Research on the book necessitated a number of trips which could not have been undertaken without the assistance of the Royal Society for Research in the Humanities and the New Society of Letters at Lund. At an early stage, a travel grant from the Magn. Bergvall Foundation was particularly valuable, and a generous contribution from the Erik PhilipSo¨rensen Foundation helped me pay for books, photocopies and computer equipment. The assistance provided by the Bodleian Library and the English Faculty Library in Oxford is best summarised in Thomas Arnold’s words (in Introductory Lectures on Modern History, , p. ): ‘[T]o this hour I look back with the greatest gratitude to the libraries and the comparative leisure of this place, as having enabled me to do far more than I should ever have been able to effect elsewhere, and amidst the engagements of a profession.’ The unfailingly courteous staff at both libraries evinced a flexible approach to my requirements which was refreshing as well as helpful. While insufficient funding and unfortunate policies have gradually reduced the Lund University Library to an institution of very limited usefulness to a scholar in my field, I wish to thank its valiant and long-suffering staff for many kind efforts on my behalf. As every Bronte¨an who has worked in the Bronte¨ Parsonage Museum vii

viii

Acknowledgements

at Haworth knows, that institution is run with admirable professionalism and dedication to research. I am grateful to Ann Dinsdale, Kathryn White and Rachel Terry for deft and efficient service which not only satisfied but sometimes even anticipated my needs, and for boosting my morale by making it clear that they believed in the potential usefulness of this project. My editor at Cambridge, Josie Dixon, guided the book through what were sometimes stormy seas with unruffled calm, illustrating Agnes Grey’s statement ‘Patience, Firmness, and Perseverance were my only weapons; and these I resolved to use to the utmost.’ In addition to editorial efforts far beyond ordinary levels of commitment, she contributed excellent hands-on criticism which opened up rewarding perspectives. Christine Alexander read a succession of drafts and proposals for Cambridge University Press, supplying many useful hints as well as consistent support which was instrumental in keeping the project on course and my spirits up; and Stephen Prickett’s seal of approval on a late version carried me through the final stage. My former tutor Professor Claes Schaar read the manuscript as it evolved, contributing much good advice as well as precious encouragement along the way. I am deeply indebted to him, to Lars-Ha˚kan Svensson for an illuminating conversation on Jane Eyre and the Psalms, to Elizabeth Palmer for moral support at a crucial time and to my daughters Åsa and Imke, staunchest of allies. The latter also gave me the benefit of her professional expertise as a novelist and historian, and her careful scrutiny of the script saved me from a number of errors and inconsistencies. But my greatest debt is to my husband Axel Thorma¨hlen. Work on the materials that formed the basis of this book led to a change in my life which he had little reason to welcome. For coping with it as nobly as any Paul Emanuel, for constantly reminding me of why I wanted to work with literature in the first place and for patiently enduring thirty years with a spouse whose tongue, like Jane Eyre’s, is not naturally a silent one, I thank him, vom ganzen Herzen.

Abbreviations and editions

The Clarendon edition of the Bronte¨ novels is the one most often referred to by scholars. It is expensive, though, and not even all Bronte¨ researchers own a set. In view of this, and as the highly affordable World’s Classics edition by Oxford University Press prints the same text and explanatory notes, I have preferred to make parenthetic references to the novels as issued under the World’s Classics imprint. Upper-case Roman numerals refer to volume numbers (wherever appropriate), lower-case ones to chapters and Arabic figures to page numbers. The following editions are the ones referred to in the text.       ¨ The Professor, ed. Margaret Smith and Herbert Rosengarten, with an introduction by Margaret Smith (Clarendon edition in ; issued as a World’s Classics paperback in ) Jane Eyre, ed. with an introduction by Margaret Smith (Clarendon edition in ; issued as a World’s Classics paperback in ) Shirley, ed. Herbert Rosengarten and Margaret Smith, with an introduction by Margaret Smith (Clarendon edition in ; issued as a World’s Classics paperback in ) Villette, ed. Margaret Smith and Herbert Rosengarten, with an introduction by Margaret Smith (Clarendon edition in ; issued as a World’s Classics paperback in )     ¨ Wuthering Heights, ed. with an introduction by Ian Jack (Clarendon edition in ; issued as a World’s Classics paperback in ); a new edition has an introduction by Patsy Stoneman ix

x

Abbreviations and editions

    ¨ Agnes Grey, ed. Robert Inglesfield and Hilda Marsden, with an introduction and notes by Robert Inglesfield (Clarendon edition in ; issued as a World’s Classics paperback in ) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, ed. Herbert Rosengarten with an introduction by Margaret Smith (Clarendon edition in ; issued as a World’s Classics paperback in ) The abbreviation BLL refers to the Shakespeare Head edition – first published by Basil Blackwell, Oxford, in  and reissued in  – of The Bronte¨s: Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence, in four volumes, ed. T. J. Wise and J. A. Symington. Upper-case Roman numerals denote volume numbers and Arabic ones page numbers. The abbreviation BST refers to the Bronte¨ Society Transactions. In the endnotes and bibliography, publishers’ names are omitted in respect of books published before .

Introduction

The Bronte¨ sisters belong to those writers on whom so much has been written that a new full-length work calls for an explicit excuse, if not an apology. Such an excuse must incorporate the element of novelty, the raison d’eˆtre of any additional publication in an already well-researched field. Beyond that, the writer can only hope that the novelty will be perceived as part of a useful endeavour. As no previous scholar has devoted a whole book to an attempt to situate the Bronte¨ novels in the context of early and mid nineteenthcentury religion – at least not a book readily available to students and researchers – this one may lay claim to being new in the sense that it attempts to do something that has not been done before on the same scale. So far, so good; but a writer who proposes to add a ‘first’ to a mass of scholarship and criticism that includes hundreds of books must pause to wonder whether the reason for the lack of predecessors might be that the undertaking has seemed unnecessary in the past. A natural, and somewhat disturbing, corollary is the worry that such an attitude was – and remains – justified. That worry may be articulated in two separate queries: has enough work been done on the Bronte¨s and religion in the existing chapters, essays and articles by various authors, so that an entire book exclusively devoted to this line of enquiry is superfluous? Is that line itself of marginal interest and hence not sufficiently important to sustain a full-length effort? While prepared to accommodate doubts in other respects, I am confident that the answer is ‘no’ in both cases. Although some excellent scholarship has been devoted to religious issues with a bearing on the Bronte¨s and their work, previous efforts have either concentrated on isolated matters or presented general overviews. Taken together, they do not yield a full and balanced picture of the theme as a whole (nor, indeed, was there any reason to expect that they would). The second query has been answered for me over the last few years by a number of 



The Bronte¨s and religion

Bronte¨ans, who have repeatedly emphasised the desirability of closing what one of them referred to as ‘a tremendous gap’. The Bronte¨s and Religion cannot claim to have achieved that, however. Work in this area soon convinced me that full coverage of the subject was too ambitious an aim for a single book; the first study must be followed by others written by people with different kinds of expertise. Another thing became clear as the magnitude of the task manifested itself: the scholar who sets out to remedy his/her profession’s comparative neglect of religion in the Bronte¨ fiction faces a peculiar aggregation of difficulties. Not only is he/she working in, and inevitably affected by, an intellectual climate which affords little scope for religious enquiry, as well as little readiness to allow for the potential power of religious feeling and experience in the context of artistic creation; the historical context itself is problematic, too: religious life in early nineteenth-century Britain was characterised by enormous complexity and variety which often threaten an investigator’s foothold. Even the most attentive examiner runs into inconsistency and contradiction, and remembered morsels of religious instruction may be impediments rather than aids to reflection and analysis. Thus, for instance, a modern academic with a reasonably wellrounded education will think of Methodism as a branch of Protestant Dissent – but the Church of England has had few more devoted sons than John Wesley. He or she will also know that the Evangelical revival which began in the eighteenth century drew much of its inspiration from dissatisfaction with the worldliness of the Church of England and her clergy; but some leading Evangelicals – such as the members of the so-called Clapham Sect, the spiritual base of men who supported the young Patrick Bronte¨ – enjoyed the good things of this life with gusto. The Bronte¨ student encounters seeming paradoxes when contemplating the words and actions of family members in the expectation that they will yield a religiously consistent pattern: the daughters and son of a Church of England clergyman firmly rooted in Evangelicalism freely associated and corresponded with Nonconformists, and Patrick Bronte¨ himself asked a Unitarian to write Charlotte’s Life. Similar pitfalls make the mapping of religious associations in the novels a precarious business. Not even the distinction between the Protestant and Roman Catholic spheres is invariably clear. For instance, the piety of Helen Burns is traditionally regarded as being of a Low Church, even Methodist, character; but Helen’s views on the impregnability of a clear conscience, her submissive resignation and her

Introduction



warnings against attaching too much importance to human affections are too powerfully reminiscent of passages from Thomas a` Kempis’ Imitation of Christ for coincidence to seem likely. Charlotte Bronte¨ had special reasons for being familiar with this Catholic classic (read and translated for centuries in Protestant countries): she inherited a copy of John Wesley’s abridged translation of it from her mother. Charlotte also owned a copy of Pascal’s Pense´es, given to her by her beloved M. Heger; and Pascal’s theology sometimes seems at least as close to contexts in her novels as that of nineteenth-century clerical writers belonging to the Church of England. It is hard enough to acquire the factual knowledge required in anyone who would claim to guide others across such an arduous terrain, and the concepts and values of later ages exacerbate the problems. For a present-day student, for instance, F. D. Maurice’s readiness to perceive part of the highest truth in several religions might look like a precursor of the benignly laissez-faire attitude so often advocated in our own ‘multicultural’ times. Maurice, however, loved the Church of England above any other denomination, and ‘the very thing he could least endure was the spirit ‘‘which was ready to tolerate all opinions in theology’’ ’. The quotation-within-the-quotation points to an additional complication: taken from a passage where Maurice condemns the Liberal party in the Church, it serves as a reminder that much interdenominational hostility was coloured by social and political alienation and/or dislike rather than by doctrinal disagreement. This element is present in the Bronte¨ novels, too, as well as in Charlotte Bronte¨’s letters. No wonder Bronte¨ scholars have been wary of this minefield. The third and fourth chapters in Tom Winnifrith’s The Bronte¨s and Their Background remain the most thorough investigation of it, and even this ambitious survey (of forty-seven pages in all) supplies indirect testimony to the difficulties involved. Having stated that one ‘cannot overestimate the influence of religion’ in the lives and works of the Bronte¨s, Felicia Gordon rightly remarks: ‘The difficulty lies in identifying exactly what their own complex, and even shifting, religious positions were.’ Fortunately, the identification of the authors’ shifting positions is not the chief aim of this study. While it gives a fair amount of scope to biographical considerations, its fundamental purpose is to open up new and richer channels of perception to Bronte¨ readers unfamiliar with the religious dimensions in the novels. Consequently, discussions of and



The Bronte¨s and religion

references to factors, incidents and circumstances in the lives of the Bronte¨s are always ultimately aimed at elucidating their writing. This sounds like an over-simplified rationale, and so, of course, it is. The story of the sisters’ lives has fascinated people as long as their works, and the Bronte¨s’ works and lives are so powerfully intertwined in the minds of generations of readers that a truly rigorous attempt to keep them separate throughout an examination of their fiction would probably irritate as well as confuse many Bronte¨ans. But it is essential to distinguish between creative work on the one hand and personal experiences and opinions on the other. The time-honoured equation of characters in the Bronte¨ novels with ‘real-life’ people known to the authors not only is irrelevant (why should it interest a modern reader which particular Yorkshire clergyman Charlotte Bronte¨ may have had in mind when creating Matthewson Helstone?), it also detracts from our awareness of the authors as imaginative writers who worked with the serious artist’s control both of self and of materials, and who researched their topics carefully. The most abundant source of pertinent information on the lives of the Bronte¨s is Charlotte’s letters, and they are often quoted in the following chapters; but like any correspondence they should be used with discrimination. While it is hard to imagine Charlotte Bronte¨ telling a coldly deliberate lie, especially for selfish purposes, the charm of her letters (as of the letters of any pleasing private correspondent) to some extent resides in her consideration for the feelings and expectations of their recipients. To mention a single instance, she adopts a different tone when writing to her publishers about Roman Catholicism from that used when she addresses her father on the same subject. Consequently, I use her letters, wherever pertinent, as records of relevant family activities and preoccupations as well as for the purpose of confirming concerns I have found in the novels. I hope that the presence of any detail which suggests the reverse order of priority might be tolerated as testimony to the irresistible lure of ‘the Bronte¨ story’. This book examines the treatment of religion in the Bronte¨ novels from four fundamental perspectives: the denominational angle; the doctrinal dimensions; the ethical issues; and the roles and duties of clergymen. The first perspective is relevant to Evangelicalism, Dissent and Roman Catholicism as related to the Bronte¨s and their writings; this discussion is headed by a review of the forces and conceptions which shaped the spiritual climate of the home they were born into. The second section of the book addresses the theological issues raised by the

Introduction



novels, above all that of salvation versus damnation and the underlying question of Divine love and the Atonement of Christ. The third section looks at the ways in which the novels deal with the moral obligations of Christians, to one another and, crucially, to their selves as God-created beings. Next, in the first chapter of section , the pastoral functions of vicars and curates are scrutinised, including their week-day obligations to their parishioners as well as their demeanour in their churches. Finally, points raised in the previous sections are brought to bear on the most intriguing clergyman in the Bronte¨ fiction: the man whose confident anticipation of a heavenly crown forms the conclusion of one of the best-loved novels in the English language. With a structure of this kind, a reader interested in a single novel may be frustrated by a sense of fragmentation; but I hope that the obligation to approach the same book from different angles might have the occasional advantage, too. A more serious fundamental objection to thematic analysis of the Bronte¨ fiction as a body would be that it could harm the integrity of the individual work, not to mention the integrity of the individual writer. I have tried to bear this danger in mind throughout, resisting any temptation to exaggerate similarities and downplay differences while encouraged by Phyllis Bentley’s classic summary of the ‘family likeness’ in the Bronte¨ genius. The readings of the novels within the different sections will disappoint readers intent on ‘challenging’ texts, ‘reading against the grain’. As I learnt more about religious life in early nineteenth-century Britain and began to perceive its relevance to the Bronte¨ novels, I found so much in the ‘grain’ of the books that the wish to introduce new perspectives by reading against it never arose. That is not to say that it could not be done, and done with rewarding results, only that what I discovered while reading in an unchallenging frame of mind was quite enough for me. Similarly, the intense preoccupation with secular power relationships that dominates much contemporary literary criticism did not seem germane to my undertaking, which in part accounts for the absence of current critical terminology. Again, this does not mean that such perspectives could not be fruitfully applied to religion in the fiction of the Bronte¨s, only that they are better entrusted to those whose interest and skill in, and ideological commitment to, this kind of work make them better qualified for the job. Two examples of the way in which the richness of the Bronte¨ ‘grain’ allows for dissimilar readings without disqualifying any might be mentioned as illustrations of the hermeneutic latitude these books provide,



The Bronte¨s and religion

like so many major works of art. The negligent clergyman who is too lazy to go and comfort the new orphans at Wuthering Heights on a rainy evening in , and the ruin of Gimmerton chapel about a quarter of a century later, have been regarded as evidence of ‘the disappearance of God’ in Wuthering Heights. They could also, however, be viewed as emblematic of that period of spiritual and material decay in the Established Church – distressingly evident in many rural parishes – which gave rise to the Evangelical revival in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Neither perspective excludes the other. When Shirley is told by Mr Helstone to repeat the Apostles’ Creed and says it ‘like a child’, the little scene may well be read as implying that the senior clergyman assumes himself entitled to belittle her. However, a reader interested in theological issues is likely to pay more attention to the deliberate way in which the girl steers clear of the Athanasian Creed which Charlotte Bronte¨ loathed, and he/she will be aware that childlike piety is a quality held in high esteem by Charlotte, as by many of her contemporaries. There is no profound contradiction here either; what these examples illustrate more than anything else is the sheer range of interpretive possibilities that the novels offer. In reminding readers of the presence of religious dimensions in the fiction of the Bronte¨s, I am thus not attempting to prescribe altered responses. Quite apart from the fact that developments in literary criticism in the s and s finally disposed of the tyranny of the ‘best’ reading, it would be foolish to attempt to wave a didactic banner in the middle of the surge of enthusiasm and affection that flushes countless copies of these books from booksellers’ shelves and carries them into the homes of people who regard any notion of a deity as at best a curiosity. The fiction of the Bronte¨s will keep conquering new generations who appropriate it for their own purposes, as readers have always done and are entitled to do, and it seems unlikely that a preoccupation with spiritual concerns will feature in that process for the foreseeable future. Even so, I do think that scholarly analyses of the Bronte¨ novels which fail to take the religious context into account are incomplete. Worse, the vacuum they leave is easily usurped by anachronistic irrelevancies, and dual distortion ensues. There is no escaping the fact that the plot lines in all the books, including Wuthering Heights, confirm fundamental Christian tenets. From a different point of view, unfamiliarity with this context prevents the scholar/critic from appreciating the breathtaking

Introduction



freedom from prejudice and dogmatic restraint with which all three writers examined Christian doctrine and ethics. Both in their own time and in ours, the Bronte¨s have been labelled ‘anti-Christian’ – then censoriously, now approvingly. These opposite attitudes are actually rooted in the same basic critical perspective: ‘Christianity’ has been regarded as inseparable from its earthly organisation and the views and practices of its members. Any criticism against the conduct of clergymen, and against opinions and values commonly held by Anglican Christians, expressed in the Bronte¨ novels has always been interpreted as a more or less covert repudiation of the Christian faith. This is one of the two fallacies that have long bedevilled appraisals of religion in the fiction of the Bronte¨s. The other is the failure to realise that while faith and everyday practice are separable, faith and doubt are not. The more knowledgeable a person is where religious matters are concerned, the more self-evident that fact appears to him or her; it is significant that some of the finest scholarly investigations of nineteenth-century literature in the context of religion bear titles where both concepts occur together. Phrases like Credo quia absurdum and ‘Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief’ have accompanied Christians for centuries. To a present-day unbeliever, manifestations of the ineradicable shadow of doubt naturally seem to detract from the validity of the faith and are thus regarded as implying hostility to Christianity. In the nineteenth century, when religion was literally a matter of life and death in a way few people in our time can comprehend, many Christians feared doubt as an ever-present danger. Unable to deny it, they saw it as a thing to be instinctively and decisively rejected wherever it emerged. In view of these circumstances, it is understandable that suggestions of doubt in the fiction of the Bronte¨s have been regarded as anti-Christian. I have called these two views fallacious because they imply that spiritual searching beyond the notions prevalent in one’s religious community is at odds with the foundations of faith. I cannot think of a single leading Christian theologian, at any time, who would support that opinion, and the Bronte¨s most certainly did not. The most striking quality in their exploration of religious subject-matter is its essential liberty: lives and works alike bespeak a consistent and insistent refusal to allow man-made obstacles to halt the peregrine spirit. Acceptance of a wide latitude for spiritual enquiry was clearly a family characteristic. Seriously ill at school, seventeen-year-old Anne Bronte¨ summoned a Moravian minister, not one of those Anglican



The Bronte¨s and religion

clergymen who were in plentiful supply in the immediate vicinity, and apparently nobody tried to prevent James La Trobe’s attending on her. Eleven years later, Charlotte commended the purity and elevation of F. W. Newman’s The Soul: Her Sorrows and Aspirations, a highly unorthodox and controversial book by John Henry Newman’s brother. She even admitted to finding ‘sprinklings of truth’ in J. A. Froude’s The Nemesis of Faith, another work associated with anti-Established-Church currents in mid nineteenth-century Britain. As for Emily, she consistently kept her thoughts on religion to herself, and her family seems to have respected her reticence in this as in other respects. Such an attitude presupposes confidence in one’s own power to search for and recognise the truth, as well as trust in the truth to be good when one finds it. Where the Bronte¨s are concerned, these feelings are obviously rooted in Christian faith. For centuries, Christian thinkers have placed the heart of truth in God, maintaining that the unfettered and sincere pursuit of the former will lead to the latter. In Charlotte Bronte¨’s novels especially, truth and freedom are as intimately associated as in John :: ‘And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’ The quester assured of this connexion has nothing to fear. One of the most profoundly moving characteristics in the fiction of the Bronte¨s and in their writings generally – including poems, letters and prefaces to editions of the novels – is their intrepidity. It meets us everywhere: in the opposition to social convention which has been the object of so much Bronte¨ criticism; in the refusal to surrender personal integrity and submit to bullying from whatever quarter; in the flat, sometimes even contemptuous, rejection of what is felt to be unmerited censure. That fearlessness characterises the Bronte¨s’ handling of religious issues, too: though entirely typical of and in tune with their time in their concern with religion, and in the issues they raise, they are unusual in the courage and independence of their explorations. Others who have responded to these qualities, with disgust (in the Bronte¨s’ own time) or admiration (in ours), have regarded them as signs of revolt, even heresy, directed against both God and society. To me, they express the heroism of the pilgrim rather than the wrath of the rebel. This book wants to alert Bronte¨ students to a perspective on the fiction of the Bronte¨s which has not received due attention in the past. I hope it will be useful in drawing attention to the significance of passages that readers tend to pass by quickly, or to read in an unnecessarily one-

Introduction



dimensional manner. The Christian life is a foreign country to most people today, and I believe it serves some purpose to be reminded that to the Bronte¨s it was home, with the occasional irritations as well as the manifold blessings of the domestic sphere. But I do not offer complete readings of the novels from religious perspectives, merely possibilities for readers to assimilate or reject as they see fit. It has been said that the Bronte¨s’ contemporary Charlotte M. Yonge needs to be taken on her own terms in order to be understood. The works of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte¨ make no such claim on their readers. That is part of their greatness.

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

Denominations

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 

A Christian home in early nineteenth-century England: Evangelicalism, Dissent and the Bronte¨ family

The spiritual elements that were present in Haworth Parsonage can be viewed as microcosmic representations of religious currents in Britain from  to . These movements transformed the life of the Established Church; created a major new Nonconformist community as Methodism formally separated from the Church of England; and resensitised the historically painful area along the boundary between the Anglican Church and Roman Catholicism. The family at the Parsonage felt the impact of all these events, and each of the Bronte¨ sisters attempted to steer her own course among them with characteristic fearlessness and determination. This absence of stasis in the religious lives of the sisters is another reason to avoid simple categorisation where their beliefs are concerned, in addition to the seeming contradictions and paradoxes referred to above. The terms in which Hoxie Neal Fairchild describes the Bronte¨s’ religion are over-simplified by any standards: Anne, never much tempted to smash through the wall which surrounded her, was a mildly faithful Evangelical. Charlotte, in whose mind Jane Austen and Mrs. Radcliffe contended for mastery, was a Broad Churchwoman. Emily, so pure a romantic that she reminded Matthew Arnold of Byron, cared nothing about Christianity, broad or narrow.

Two of the most important religious influences on Patrick Bronte¨ were Wesleyan Methodism and Evangelicalism in the Church of England, as he came to know and absorb it at Cambridge. A recorded conversation between John Wesley and a leading exponent of the latter movement conveys a potent warning against relying too much on labels when describing the spiritual life of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: 



Denominations

‘Sir’, said [the young Charles] Simeon, ‘I understand that you are called an Arminian; and I have sometimes been called a Calvinist; and therefore I suppose we are to draw daggers. But before I consent to begin the combat, with your permission, I will ask you a few questions, not from impertinent curiosity, but for real instruction.’ Permission being very readily granted, the young minister proceeded to say, – ‘Pray, Sir, do you feel yourself a depraved creature, so depraved that you would never have thought of turning to God, if God had not first put it into your heart?’ ‘Yes’, says the veteran [i.e. Wesley], ‘I do indeed.’ ‘And do you utterly despair of recommending yourself to God by anything that you can do; and do you look for salvation solely through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ?’ ‘Yes, solely through Christ.’ ‘But, Sir, supposing you were at first saved by Christ, are you not somehow or other to save yourself afterwards by your own works?’ ‘No; I must be saved from first to last by Christ.’ ‘Allowing then, that you were first turned by the grace of God, are you not in some way or other to keep yourself by your own power?’ ‘No.’ ‘What then, are you to be upheld every hour and every moment by God, as much as an infant in its mother’s arms?’ ‘Yes, altogether.’ ‘And is all your hope in the grace and mercy of God to preserve you unto his heavenly kingdom?’ ‘Yes, I have no hope but in him.’ ‘Then, Sir, with your leave I will put up my dagger again; for this is all my Calvinism; this is all my election, my justification by faith, my final perseverance: it is in substance all that I hold, and as I hold it: and therefore, if you please, instead of searching out terms and phrases to be a ground of contention between us, we will cordially unite in those things wherein we agree.’ These doctrines, so beautifully and graphically stated by these two illustrious champions, may justly be styled the doctrines of the Church of England.

This exchange provides an excellent illustration of the dynamics that characterised religious developments in England throughout Patrick Bronte¨’s long life. His apparent readiness to allow his children to evolve their own beliefs will not only have been due to personal distaste for indoctrination and respect for the unadulterated perspicacity of the young: the spirit of unfettered enquiry in religious matters that gradually gained ground in the Britain of his youth is surely a factor, too. Patrick Bronte¨ himself, the son of an Irish small farmer, was brought up in a Protestant household. In due course, he was befriended by the Revd Thomas Tighe, Vicar of Drumballyroney and a member of the Church of Ireland. It was his spell as tutor to Tighe’s children which introduced him to that Evangelical brand of Protestantism which shaped his future career: first as a mature student (he was twenty-five on admission as a sizar at St John’s), subsequently as a clergyman in the Church of England. As Evangelicalism was of such fundamental importance in Patrick Bronte¨’s home, a summary of its main features seems in order at this

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point. The movement emerged in the eighteenth century as a reaction against the secularity and spiritual shallowness that were felt by many to prevail in the Established Church. Its power and influence grew steadily, though it was slow to obtain a secure footing among the higher echelons in the Church hierarchy. In the early nineteenth century, however, Evangelical bishops began to be appointed, and Evangelicalism became the predominant religious current in the Church of England. After , a decline set in; but it was gradual, and the Bronte¨ sisters grew up at a time when their father’s spiritual orientation was generally felt to constitute a central force in the Church he served. The focus of Evangelical Christianity is illustrated by the conversation of Wesley and Simeon quoted above: wholehearted love of and faith in the merciful God whose just wrath against wretched humanity was forever appeased by his Son’s Atonement. To the Evangelical, Christ’s sacrificial death to save mankind was an even more crucial event than the Incarnation itself. It is characteristic that the inscription on Charles Simeon’s tomb echoes  Cor. :: ‘I determined not to know any thing . . . save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.’ A personal response to the Atonement was required of every Christian; even if Christ extended the possibility of salvation to all men, it had to be actively embraced. Consequently, the element of conversion was of great importance in Evangelicalism. Conversion did not necessarily take place in a moment: it was often preceded by months and years of spiritual agonising. Nor was it enough to have experienced it; faith in the Gospel must be evinced in a life of piety and effort. In these labours of body and spirit, the Christian’s chief guide is the Bible, which he should study individually as well as in the company of other believers during Church and society meetings. This brief recapitulation indicates several points of confluence between Wesleyan Methodism, Calvinism and Evangelicalism in the Established Church. Both the former have been mentioned as religious influences on the Bronte¨s, and not without reason; but though all three possess distinct characteristics, they have much in common, too. For instance, the emphasis on Scriptural authority links Calvinism and Evangelicalism; and like the Methodists, Evangelicals were strongly aware of the sinfulness of man and of the sole hope of redemption through Christ. All three branches of Protestantism were united in their commitment to justification by faith accompanied by the pursuit of holiness, manifest in practical action as well as in the glorification of God.



Denominations

A subsequent chapter shows how Anne and Charlotte Bronte¨ expressly repudiated the Calvinist doctrines of election and predestination; it also looks at Emily Bronte¨’s Joseph, as pungent a satire on sanctimonious Calvinist hypocrisy as Burns’s ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’, with which it has occasionally been compared. Here, however, it is enough to say that while Calvinist tenets caused Anne, Charlotte and Branwell much spiritual anguish, there is no evidence that they had such notions specifically impressed on them by their elders. Nor is it fair to denounce Calvinism in toto as a monster responsible for cruel and unnecessary suffering in the lives of the Bronte¨s. Apart from the fact that Calvinism comprises much more than the doctrine of predestination, an awareness of sin and a desperate yearning for salvation were feelings promoted by all the denominations represented in their immediate milieu. It should be borne in mind, too, that however forbidding all this may seem to a later age, these fears coexisted with hopes for everlasting bliss whose nature and intensity few of us can imagine today. Many unsuccessful attempts have been made to blame Patrick Bronte¨ and/or Aunt Branwell for the religious tribulations that occasionally beset Charlotte, Branwell and Anne. The meagre scraps of indirect evidence favouring the allegations are nullified by the astounding mental and spiritual liberty which the Bronte¨s demonstrably enjoyed in their religious development, as well as in their reading and study. It would be tempting to call this freedom unique, at least in the home of a clergyman in the Church of England; but where parental non-interference with children’s spiritual progress is concerned, Mr Bronte¨ had at least one predecessor among the Evangelical clergymen he knew and admired. Henry Venn, the distinguished father of the Clapham Sect’s pastor John Venn, and the friend of Charles Simeon and Isaac Milner, was very much against the religious indoctrination of children: The great danger is, from surfeiting a child with religious doctrines, or overmuch talk. Doctrines they are too young to understand; and too frequent talking to them is a wearisomeness to them. Too many parents greatly err, in expecting the religion of a child should be nearly the same as their own. Much have I thought on the subject; and much pains, indeed, have I taken with my children; and, God knoweth, desiring this one thing – that He would give them the knowledge and love of His ever blessed name. But I did not give them formal instructions till they were eight years old; and then, chiefly set before them the striking facts in the Old Testament, or the miracles in the New; and laboured much to set before them the goodness of our God, in things they could understand.

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A peculiarly satisfying way of attacking your beˆtes noires is to make fun of them, and Joseph at Wuthering Heights is not the only instance of Bronte¨ mockery directed against representatives of religious denominations or communities other than Evangelical Anglicanism. From their early youth, the children of Haworth Parsonage ridiculed Methodists and Baptists, and the portrayals of Dissenters in the Bronte¨ novels are consistently uncomplimentary: for example, Caroline Helstone’s dead aunt Mary’s Methodist Magazines are ‘mad’, and the unholy alliance of Dissenters challenging the Church of England school-feast party in Royd-lane must suffer ignominious defeat. Patrick Bronte¨’s chief disputes were with the Baptists, against whom he would happily quote Independent and Wesleyan divines. In his ‘Treatise on Baptism’, a polemical piece directed against a Baptist adversary, he resorted to a phrase whose potential disingenuousness was less apparent to the early nineteenth century than it is today: ‘I have been able to number some of my best friends amongst Dissenters’. The qualification he added, however, carried an unambiguous sting, ‘yea, even amongst Baptists’. His strong ties with Wesleyan Methodism will have been a factor in his more conciliatory attitude towards Wesley’s successors; but his children, born after the formal secession of Methodism from the Church of England, lambasted representatives of that denomination with glee. Commentators on Wuthering Heights have seen an element of antiMethodist satire in Emily Bronte¨’s creation of Jabes Branderham (in Lockwood’s first dream, ch. iii in the first volume). Three circumstances have been adduced in support of the belief that Branderham is based on the founder of independent Methodism, Jabez Bunting: the shared first name and surname initial; the fact that Bunting’s predecessor referred to himself as ‘a Brand plucked out of the burning’ (Wesley had been rescued from a fire as a child); and Bunting’s conduct in connexion with the opening of a chapel at the Wesleyan Academy of Woodhouse Grove, when he allegedly quelled an ‘unseemly riot . . . by thumping vigorously on the pulpit book-board and demanding silence’. The last two arguments seem somewhat feeble: the ‘rapping’ in Wuthering Heights is associated with blows dealt in a brawl, and there seems no obvious reason why Emily Bronte¨ should have recalled the Woodhouse Grove incident, which took place as far back as , when writing these pages in her novel. Maybe Emily, whose ‘organ of veneration’ (to borrow Charlotte’s phrenological idiom) cannot have been strikingly large, would not have scrupled to create the name of a grotesque fictional



Denominations

character by means of taking a famous Methodist/Scriptural phrase in vain. In that case, though, she was not acting as a ‘loyal daughter’ (Harrison’s phrase); Patrick Bronte¨ would not have relished any flippancy, however implicit, directed against Wesley. The link forged by the similarities of the names seems less tenuous; but on these grounds, a stronger claim can be made for another Dissenter. The Baptist and temperance pioneer Jabez Burns, named after Bunting by a Wesleyan mother, was an indefatigable compiler of ‘Sketches and Skeletons of Sermons’ (a popular genre in early nineteenth-century clerical publishing). In , a few years before the appearance of Wuthering Heights, Burns published The Pulpit Cyclopaedia; and Christian Minister’s Companion. This book alone contains some  ‘skeletal sermons’, along with a number of essays on relevant subjects by well-known divines; another work by his hand, which also antedated Wuthering Heights, is entitled Four Hundred Sketches and Skeletons of Sermons. The name ‘Burns’ is semantically closer to ‘Branderham’ than ‘Bunting’, and the plethora of sermons associated with the Baptist minister makes it more natural to think of him in connexion with the  pulpit addresses endured by Lockwood than of the hard-fisted Methodist administrator. A tangible cause of vexation with Nonconformists on the part of the family of a clergyman in the Established Church is, of course, simple rivalry, for the parishioners’ material support as well as for their souls. Again, ch. iii in Wuthering Heights reminds us of these grim realities: the ruin of the chapel of Gimmerton is directly due to the stinginess of the rural population, who ‘would rather let [the parson] starve than increase the living by one penny from their own pockets’, and starve he would with no more than  pounds per annum. When we take a closer look at what actually annoys the Bronte¨s in representatives of Dissent, we encounter another interesting element: an unmistakable note of disgust originating in matters unrelated to religious dogmas and conceptions (or material considerations). Methodist and Baptist preachers are despised not because they are wrong in what they teach, but because they are vulgar, ranting, noisy people. The contempt they elicit is hence due to social and aesthetic considerations as well as – indeed, rather than – doctrinal disagreement. More than one notable representative of Nonconformity in Shirley is a notorious inebriate; socially, several of them are no better than scum. The shouts and groans of the common people who ‘find liberty’ during prayermeetings offend against the more austere and sophisticated tastes of their church-going betters. In the eyes of a modern reader, these sneers

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are unattractive, smacking of social and intellectual snobbery. The latter quality is expressed in Charlotte Bronte¨’s letters, too. It must not be forgotten, however, that animosity between Church and Chapel was informed by social–political aspects and that this antipathy was articulated by combatants on both sides. The Dissenters felt discriminated against, and financially exploited, by an ecclesiastical establishment to which they did not belong and whose representatives were given to ridiculing their beliefs and practices (Mr Helstone’s descriptions of the activities of Messrs Barraclough and Supplehough are typical; see Shirley I.i.–). The fact that they tended to belong to the lower strata of society did not help. Paradoxically enough, ChurchChapel friction grew when Church of England parsons lost some of the civil powers with which they had been invested, powers which had continually reminded them of their duties to Dissenters as well as to their own flock. As a result of these measures, which were intended to emancipate non-Anglicans, Dissenter preachers and Church of England clergymen became rivals in a way they had not been before. This partly explains the resentment felt by Anglicans: if the Dissenters loathed the Established Church, representatives of the Establishment were often bitterly hostile to them. A chilling example is found in William Gresley’s Portrait of an English Churchman of . Regretting that the Dissenters make it impossible for Anglicans to live peaceably with them, the otherwise comparatively conciliatory Herbert exclaims: ‘Delenda est Ecclesia’ is their motto; or, to use their own words, ‘Down with the old hag.’ . . . I cannot but express my sorrowful conviction that, amongst the large majority of Dissenters, there is a deep hatred of the Church – an hostility which cannot be appeased by concession, and therefore must be opposed by firmness and vigilance . . . In truth the question has already literally come to this, – not whether the Established Church will tolerate Dissenters, but whether Dissenters will tolerate an Established Church.

Charlotte Bronte¨ was hence reproducing real sentiments and ressentiments current in her time and her circles, not merely giving vent to arrogant notions of her own. Besides – and this is an important point which illustrates her essential broad-mindedness – she did not approve of wholesale condemnation of Dissenters. In a letter where she acknowledged the excellence of two curates’ anti-Dissenter sermons, she still took pains to point out that she considered the preachers’ actual opinions ‘bigoted, intolerant and wholly unjustifiable on the grounds of common sense’, adding that her ‘conscience [would] not let [her] be



Denominations

either a Puseyite or a Hookist’. Five years later, her impatience with curates ‘glorifying themselves and abusing dissenters’ resulted in a sharply worded protest which even managed to ‘[horrify] Papa’. Shirley displays the same irritation with young men of the cloth who exalt their useless selves at the expense of the Nonconformists. Consequently, it is no paradox to find the writer who cheerfully chronicles the discomfiture of socially obnoxious sectarians allowing for the legitimacy of religious searching beyond the pale of the Established Church. The following lines occur in a letter to a correspondent with whom Charlotte could be more outspoken in respect of religion than was possible with the theologically unadventurous Ellen Nussey: I smile at you again for supposing that I could be annoyed by what you say respecting your religious and philosophical views; that I could blame you for not being able, when you look amongst sects and creeds, to discover any one which you can exclusively and implicitly adopt as yours. I perceive myself that some light falls on earth from Heaven – that some rays from the shrine of truth pierce the darkness of this life and world; but they are few, faint, and scattered, and who without presumption can assert that he has found the only true path upwards?

Thus speaks a mind that insists on freedom for spiritual questers. That is a point of direct relevance to Charlotte Bronte¨’s quarrel with the Church of Rome, a topic which will be discussed below. Ultimately, too, this quality contributes to explaining why she could not be referred to as ‘Evangelical’. Before leaving the religious milieu formed by Haworth Parsonage as the Bronte¨ children grew to adulthood, we should look briefly at what their domestic sphere meant to those who were reared there. It was peculiarly representative of Evangelical Christianity as a family home. Evangelical families were particularly loyal and devoted, and bonds between parents and children were close and powerful. Emily Bronte¨ was not the only child from an Evangelical home who suffered intense homesickness, even to the point of physical ill-health, when obliged to spend time away from it. Evangelically reared children loved their homes. To mention just one example, young Tom Macaulay was passionately devoted to his, barely surviving school terms and living for the holidays. Pat Jalland has recently emphasised that Evangelical families were often, contrary to modern belief, cheerful families, comfortable and content in their religion. It is no accident that so many sons of Evangelical men wrote affectionate biographies of their fathers.

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They were raised by patriarchs who tempered paternal authority with unstinting devotion and frequent jocularity. Though many scions of Evangelical families drifted away from their parents’ religion, the characteristic family affection remained. Unsentimental and undemonstrative as the Bronte¨s were, that emotion pervaded Haworth Parsonage from first to last. Patrick Bronte¨’s children were especially fortunate in enjoying this warm domesticity while being spared the dark shadow that haunted many of these otherwise so happy homes. Unlike a large number of Evangelical Christians, the father of the Bronte¨s was not constantly watching his young ones for early signs of evil propensities. The harshness with which childish misbehaviour was often punished, even by parents whose devotion to their offspring could not be doubted, was largely due to the fear that such transgressions might constitute ‘the germ of unspeakable miseries’ and that they were especially hateful in God’s sight. It is in this context that Mr Brocklehurst’s ‘evangelical’ school (he himself uses this word about Lowood in conversation with Mrs Reed) should be seen. The policy of mortifying the flesh to save the soul rested on a conviction, influenced by Calvinist thought and held by large numbers of Evangelicals, that the young trees could only grow straight if every sign of incipient crookedness was vigorously and instantly counteracted. It could and did coexist with a genuine love of children – a quality which the Ehrenrettung of William Carus Wilson, the original of Mr Brocklehurst, has frequently stressed. Another privilege granted to the Haworth Parsonage children was the liberty to enjoy childish games and adventures unchecked by a disapproving parent. Many serious-minded Evangelicals deplored recreational activities, distrusted the liberal arts and frowned on even the most innocent worldly pleasures. By contrast, Patrick Bronte¨ and his sister-in-law were apparently content to leave the children to such humble amusements as they could find. The horror stories of Mr Bronte¨’s eccentricities first promulgated by Mrs Gaskell have repeatedly been challenged and can now safely be consigned to oblivion. One noteworthy detail in this context is that he was clearly happy for his children to take part in games of a theatrical character – and the theatre was one form of entertainment which even fairly liberal-minded Evangelicals outlawed. The Evangelicals insisted that a Christian’s commitment to God was a matter of the heart. By and large, intellectual probing into doctrinal

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Denominations

issues did not much interest them; and however important it was to try to live according to Christ’s example, such efforts must be informed by love. When Anne Bronte¨ discussed the significance of the statement ‘God is Love’ in Agnes Grey, she thus raised an issue lodged at the very core of Evangelical Christianity. Evangelical divines kept exhorting their parishioners to remember that God required all their hearts. This emphasis on Christian love seems to have agreed with the climate of religious instruction in Haworth Parsonage. Like the revered Henry Venn, and like his own curate William Weightman, Patrick Bronte¨ appears to have made ‘the love of God, rather than the fear of hell, the ruling motive for obedience’ in teaching his ‘little flock’, as he often called his children. He unequivocally condemned Calvinist ideas of predestination, referring to them as ‘the appalling doctrines of personal Election and Reprobation’. Such a man would never have suffered his sister-in-law to burden his children with notions of this kind, even supposing she had any desire to do so, which is highly unlikely. In view of this, there is no mystery attached to Anne Bronte¨’s wish to see a Moravian minister when ill at school. The Anglican clergymen associated with Miss Wooler’s establishment seem to have had Calvinist leanings; attendance at their services may have exacerbated, or even initiated, Anne’s religious anxieties. The Moravians, by contrast, were characterised by simple piety and devotion to the person of Christ the Redeemer. Their faith was informed by warmth mingled with cheerfulness, a combination which did much to account for their success in the field of foreign mission. To the teenager Anne Bronte¨, lonely, homesick, suffering from the peculiar misery of gastric illness and gravely troubled in mind and soul, a representative of this sect must have seemed the best hope for local comfort. She had probably heard Miss Wooler speak of the Moravians with approbation and respect; and a girl brought up in Haworth Parsonage must have known of the formative influence on John Wesley of Moravian Brethren. Patrick Bronte¨’s patron Wilberforce’s A Practical View admitted that the language used by the Moravians might well appear offensively gross at first. However, Wilberforce went on to proclaim that this ‘body of Christians’ have perhaps excelled all mankind in solid and unequivocal proofs of the love of Christ, and of the most ardent and active and patient zeal in his service. It is a zeal tempered with prudence, softened with meekness, soberly aiming at great ends by the gradual operation of well-adapted means, supported by a courage

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which no danger can intimidate, and a quiet constancy which no hardships can exhaust.

Anne thus turned for comfort to a source congenial with the spiritual climate of her home. It is surely significant that both her and Charlotte’s worst religious crises came upon them while they were away from Haworth. For a century and a half, people have wondered what factors – genetic and environmental – were especially significant in the evolution of the Bronte¨ genius. Part of the answer lies, I believe, in the physical, emotional, intellectual and religious freedom accorded to the exceptional talents that developed in Haworth Parsonage. It was a freedom allied to an ethos of labour and effort, informed by affection for fellow humans and by personal commitment to a religion which not only allowed for, but demanded, the engagement of the passions. It would be hard to think of a more favourable climate for creative imagination and intelligence to mature in at the time, and it was very much a product of that time.

 

Charlotte Bronte¨ and the Church of Rome

Although the Bronte¨s, father and children, took a lively interest in the continuous bickering between and among Church of England representatives and various kinds of Dissent, occasionally contributing to it themselves, the tone of their polemics is comparatively light. Doctrinal disputes are usually conducted with irony rather than heat. As was pointed out above, one often has a feeling that what the Bronte¨ sisters object to in Nonconformists is silly or unseemly behaviour rather than fundamental, and potentially dangerous, errors. But when the focus shifts from fellow Protestants – however personally irksome and religiously misguided – to Roman Catholics, a different note creeps in. Charlotte Bronte¨’s fiction, especially Villette, evinces a degree of hostility to the Church of Rome which has grated on many readers. It was a little hard to stomach even for a few of her contemporaries, especially High-Church Anglicans and free-thinkers; and in modern times (with their readiness to stigmatise anyone who expresses public disapproval of a religious denomination other than the Established Church) she has often been condemned as intolerant and bigoted. It is the purpose of this chapter to clarify the diverse factors which bred and conditioned that hostility, looking at the particularities of its textual manifestations in the process. First of all, though, it should be observed that simple biographical circumstances made it more natural for Charlotte to engage with ‘Romanism’ than it would have been for either of her sisters. Anne saw very little of it; and unlike Charlotte, Emily was never exposed to a Roman Catholic environment on her own, and under trying circumstances. In addition to these outward conditions, there were temperamental reasons for the latter’s preoccupation with the Church of Rome, and I will return to them by way of conclusion to this discussion.



Charlotte Bronte¨ and the Church of Rome



‘             !’ Bronte¨ scholars usually relate Charlotte Bronte¨’s animus against the Church of Rome to the national unrest and political dissension that led to, and attended, the emancipation of Roman Catholics in the late s and the so-called Papal Aggression around . They are no doubt justified in doing so. It is clear from Charlotte Bronte¨’s correspondence that she shared the mood of the nation in November , after the publication of the letter from the then Prime Minister Lord John Russell to the Bishop of Durham. Russell – who, as a Whig, had no natural claim to Charlotte’s political sympathies – fanned popular disgust with the Pope by talking about the latter’s ‘attempt to impose a foreign yoke’ on free-born Englishmen; antagonised the High Church party within the Church of England by arguing (a view he shared with his Sovereign) that the Tractarians, as a sort of ‘enemy within’, were more to be feared than the Roman Catholics; and caused the latter, heterogeneous community, whose coexistence in the British Isles was far from harmonious, to close ranks. It was, in other words, ‘the most foolish act of Russell’s political career’; but Charlotte Bronte¨ read the letter ‘with very great zest and relish’, thinking its author ‘a spirited sensible little man for writing it’. There is hence biographical proof of Charlotte’s interest in events in the field of ecclesiastical politics, as well as of her dislike both of the Church of Rome and of the High Churchmen in her own Church. Always a staunch patriot, she will have gloried in Russell’s proud dictum according to which ‘No foreign prince or potentate will be at liberty to fasten his fetters upon a nation which has so long and so nobly vindicated its right to freedom of opinion, civil, political, and religious.’ The word ‘foreign’ is significant, pinpointing the deepest source of the alarm felt by wide sections of British society. Anti-Catholic sentiment in England always had political implications and strong nationalistic overtones, and the Papal Aggression supplies a particularly vivid, and comparatively recent, example. This, however, was merely one facet of the ‘Romanist’ issue. While the crisis of  – exacerbated by heavy-handedness on both sides – showed a lack of a sense of proportion among many otherwise levelheaded Britons, there was no doubt that the early nineteenth century saw a massive increase in the Roman Catholic population in England. Irish immigration was only one element in this development. Numerous Anglican writers of books, pamphlets and sermons under the No-Popery

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Denominations

banner would provide alarming (to their readers) descriptions of the rapid growth of Roman Catholic worship. The deep-seated apprehensiveness fostered by this trend was increased by developments within the Anglican Church itself. Evangelicalism did not enjoy its relative hegemony in the Church of England for very long: in , John Keble preached his famous ‘National Apostasy’ sermon, commonly regarded as the symbolic launching of what is variously termed ‘the Oxford Movement’ and ‘Tractarianism’. Usually thought of as the opposite pole to Evangelicalism, it was actually born out of a yearning for spirituality which recalls the early days of Evangelical Protestantism and its pursuit of holiness. Two aspects of this movement caused deep concern among many Anglicans: its insistence that the authority of the Church is and must be independent of the State; and its adoption of doctrines and practices which struck appalled observers as ‘Romish’. Any tugging at the bonds between Church and nation was both sacrilegious and unpatriotic to a large number of Church of England men and women. Talk of ‘apostolical succession’ and the sight of surplices in pulpits where congregations were used to seeing sober Geneva gowns were also offensive. In addition, the steady stream of Tractarian conversions (‘perversions’, in contemporary parlance) to Rome confirmed many people’s worst suspicions. If a highly gifted and widely respected Churchman who had fulminated against the Roman Catholic Church as ‘crafty, obstinate, wilful, malicious, cruel’, resembling ‘a demoniac’, in  could join her in , what power might she not exercise over feebler minds? Attitudes to the Tractarians varied within the Church of England. High Church Anglicanism became especially popular with the younger clergy. It was a development viewed with marked distaste by their Evangelical elders. The equation of ‘Puseyism’ with ‘Romanism’ was an extreme view, but quite a few people held it, including the ‘Bishop of the Church of England’ who published a book entitled Protestantism Endangered: or Scriptural Contention for ‘The Faith’, as opposed to Puseyism and Romanism in . Full of the customary abuse of Roman Catholicism (‘the putrid leaven of abominable popery’ is a typical example), it exclaims: Awake! awake! then, fellow-countrymen, to the fact that popery        ! But mark well, how and where it is advancing. Not in the Kirk of Scotland, or amongst evangelical Congregationalists, or Wesleyan Methodists, or the Baptists. – No! but it is in the Established Church, and nowhere else amongst nominal protestants in this country, that popery is doing its deadly work.

Charlotte Bronte¨ and the Church of Rome



To this writer as to many others, Tractarianism was ‘the sister of popery’; and he set out to prove, at some length, that ‘popery and Puseyism coincide’. It is not surprising that Anglican churchmen and laity were confused or that rifts widened within the Church of England as waverers gravitated either towards the High or the Low road, finding middle-of-theroad positions increasingly uncomfortable. Nor is it strange that this unsettled climate should become the breeding-ground of conspiratorial theories and outbreaks of sheer hysteria directed against Roman Catholicism. Authors of religious didactic fiction depicted the subtle means employed by – for instance – French governesses and Italian ladies of rank, inspired and seconded by their father-confessors, in their attempts to lure unsuspecting young people into the arms of ‘this Mother of Harlots’. According to a modern authority, though, the extent and effect of such clandestine campaigns were in fact negligible: [M]ost of the converts were repelled by the erastianism of the English State Church rather than attracted by what they took to be Catholicism. Few had much knowledge of the institution they joined, and very few were actually converted through the agency of the Catholic clergy. As Luigi Gentili reported to Rome in , ‘nearly all came after reading the Fathers or our books; it was not because of our efforts’.

‘                               ’ The sociopolitical and nationalistic dimensions of anti-Catholic feeling in early nineteenth-century Britain have already been referred to: Roman Catholics were fundamentally distrusted as persons whose chief allegiance was to ‘a foreign potentate’. Still, this was of course only one of the reasons for the suspicion and antagonism with which ‘Popery’ was fairly universally regarded. Defenders of Protestantism reviled the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, and the list of phenomena they concentrated on was as constant as their abuse: the worship of saints, especially the Virgin Mary; the adoration of images and relics (‘idolatry and superstition’); the lavish decorations of churches and outward splendours of services (universally referred to as ‘mummeries’, a word repeatedly used by Charlotte Bronte¨); Papal supremacy and infallibility; an emphasis on tradition and the Fathers rather than on the Bible; restrictions on the

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reading and dissemination of Holy Writ among the laity, as well as the inclusion of the Apocrypha in the ‘Romanist’ Bible; repressive disciplinary measures as a result of which searching minds were inexorably subjugated under the ‘Dictatorship’ of a priest (even in the nineteenth century, the occasional No-Popery writer would mutter about the Inquisition); the idea of buying out of sin by way of indulgences; and a set of doctrinal issues comprising baptismal regeneration and apostolic succession (two notions also advanced by the Tractarians in England), auricular confession, transubstantiation and belief in purgatory. One source of concern and indignation among Anglican churchmen was the ‘Romanist’ reluctance to propagate what was to them the very heart of the Gospels, the Atonement of Christ – a reluctance which, to their horror and disgust, they also discerned among the Tractarians. This major difference between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism had a bearing on the central issue of justification. Put in very simple terms, the Church of England adhered to the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith, whereas the Church of Rome laid the emphasis on good works – thus eschewing the bugbears which resulted in much sectarian schism among Protestants, but withholding the full glory of Divine love and grace that brought such hope and comfort to troubled breasts. Protestant polemicists would consequently stress that theirs was a religion of the heart, unlike the oppressive disciplinarianism of the Church which even Bickersteth did not hesitate to label ‘Antichrist’.       ¨ ’        This was the climate in which Charlotte Bronte¨’s attitudes to Roman Catholicism and Tractarianism evolved. Her letters as well as her fiction bear witness to her keen awareness of and familiarity with the issues. Interestingly enough – certainly in view of the fact that so many readers have thought her fanatical in her anti-Catholicism – her stance cannot be said to be extreme in view of the contemporary situation. Nor is it an attitude of absolute and unwavering repugnance; it encompasses jovial irony as well as dispassionate rejection and plenty of nuances besides. In her letters, Charlotte’s tone and argumentative focus varied to suit the recipient’s sensibilities and the relationship she had with him or her. To Ellen Nussey, she condemned the ‘mummeries’ of the Roman Catholic Mass and deplored the ‘idiotic, mercenary, aspect of all the priests’. If Ellen still feared for her friend’s safety in foreign lands, Charlotte will have set her mind at rest by averring that far from

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threatening Protestant souls, a period of residence in a Roman Catholic country must show every sensible person what a ridiculous piece of fraud ‘Papistry’ is. A particularly interesting contrast emerges when her letter to her father following a Roman Catholic Society meeting attended by Cardinal Wiseman is put beside one where she envisages George Smith as a Catholic convert. To Patrick Bronte¨ – possibly concerned that his daughter should seek the company of one of the most controversial men in England – she expatiates on the Cardinal’s ‘quadruple’ chin and ‘sleek hypocrite’ physiognomy, surrounded by ‘a bevy of inferior priests . . . many of them very dark-looking and sinister men’. While Charlotte’s father had publicly advocated Catholic emancipation in the late s, he was never a friend of that faith, and the Papal Aggression worried him deeply. His daughter’s slightly childish libels must have been calculated to reassure him that she was in no danger of succumbing to the wiles of Papists. The letter to Smith also makes use of humour, but here Charlotte resorts to subtler means: she pretends to attack Protestantism for its ‘presumptuous self-reliance’ and ‘audacious championship of Reason and Common Sense which ought to have been crushed out of you all in your cradles’. Her vision of her publishers’ oratory – complete with saint’s image, candles, a ‘handsomely bound Missal’ and so on, into which Messrs Smith, Taylor and Williams would carry rosaries and crucifixes – is a piece of good-humoured burlesque. Even so, her bantering words about a savour of the Middle Ages in Smith’s letter to her suggest that she was aware of a powerful source of Roman Catholic appeal to educated people. A reawakened nineteenth-century taste for mediaevalism had been instrumental in many conversions among intellectuals, and Charlotte Bronte¨’s ‘nonsense’ was probably more deliberate in intent than the ingenuous conclusion to her letter implies.

       In her correspondence, Charlotte Bronte¨ expressed disapproval of many of the aspects of Roman Catholicism that featured in the NoPopery tracts of her times – the outward shows and trappings, the worship of saints, confession and apostolic succession, priestly hypocrisy and the alarming propagation of ‘Papistry’. Like the anti-Catholic writers referred to above, she took care to distinguish between individual ‘Romanists’ and the ‘system’ they belonged to, extending condi-

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tional sympathy to the former while sternly withholding it from the latter.Villette actually goes so far as to allow for the prospective union of a Roman Catholic man and a Protestant woman – an aspect which to some extent counteracts the harshness with which the novel depicts the Church of Rome. The factors that make this union possible within the framework of the novel will be addressed after a review of the components that make up its anti-Catholic stance. It is often hard to draw a line of demarcation between autobiography and fiction as regards this aspect of Villette. Charlotte Bronte¨ had been in a difficult position as a young and foreign woman Protestant in Brussels, especially when she no longer had Emily to share her plight. She may well have had to endure the sottises of pupils who, like the little pensionnaire at Mme Beck’s, thought that Protestants would burn in hell and would really be better off pre-emptively incinerated on earth (ix.). Lucy Snowe’s extreme irritation with the ‘lecture pieuse’ has a near-the-bone ring to it, too (xiii.–). The fact that Charlotte Bronte¨, overwhelmed by isolation, longing to communicate with a human being and impelled by sheer curiosity on the spur of the moment, went to confession in the Church of Sainte-Gudule is well known. A letter of hers – addressed, significantly enough, to Emily, the only correspondent who would understand the impulse and feel no ripple of shock – describes the experience, which she turned to effective use in Villette. Lucy Snowe, however, is exposed to provocation and persuasion in ways that Charlotte Bronte¨ was not. The daughter of a respectable Church of England clergyman, whose commitment to her welfare was obvious to every notable person in her environment, could never have been the object of a Jesuit-planned campaign to convert her. By contrast, Pe`re Silas in Villette marshals his forces with considerable skill and subtlety. Although he claims to be momentarily taken aback by the young woman to whom his customary set of routine responses does not apply, he soon divines her weak spots and engineers his temptations accordingly. Lucy’s passionate nature, frustrated and mortified in her loneliness and desperate for kindness and affection, is one of his three targets. Another is her aesthetic sensibilities, which he hopes to impress by way of the splendours of Roman Catholic worship. Finally, she has an extraordinarily active intellect allied to an ascetic, somewhat morbid streak and a conspicuous absence of any talent for contentment. Such people rarely attain serenity in life by their own efforts, and Pe`re Silas holds a key to that state: soothed by a carefully prescribed routine of good works, just arduous enough to keep her strictly occupied

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without exhausting her, her searching, irritable mind will surely find peace. All alone, and in due course in love with a man who aids and abets her would-be seducer, Lucy is in acute danger. Her best ally is her Bible, with whose assistance she fights off the various attempts to persuade her through books: I had a book up-stairs, under my pillow, whereof certain chapters satisfied my needs in the article of spiritual lore, furnishing such precept and example as, to my heart’s core, I was convinced could not be improved on. (xxxvi.)

Here Charlotte Bronte¨’s heroine exactly parallels those girls and young women in didactic anti-Catholic fiction who cling to their Bibles as tenaciously as their ‘Papist’ counterparts clutch their crucifixes. In Elizabeth Sewell’s Margaret Percival, a Roman Catholic mother forces her daughter, who has become convinced of the truth of Protestantism, to ‘give up her Bible’; the girl does not survive this deprivation. Similar losses befall people who go over to Rome. In From Oxford to Rome: and How It Fared with Some Who Lately Made the Journey, the disenchanted convert Elizabeth Harris addresses the following words to those who hover on the brink: Borderers on Rome – Yet a little while is the Light with you . . . Use these days, for they are precious, and may be few, and when the Book of your Faith is taken out of your hands, let it be no matter, because you have it in your hearts. Perhaps the very thing that has seemed to our weak judgments before now, a folly of man, the unrestrained circulation of the Holy Scriptures among all classes, even the most ignorant and abandoned, has been in reality the Wisdom of God providing for the exigencies of coming times; by which He has been laying up the Truth with His ‘little ones’ and His ‘poor’, that their love may keep it from loss at a period of which Eternal History may have to record even as of times heretofore, ‘The Word of the Lord was precious in those days, there was no open vision.’

Saintly little Sarah in Charlotte Elizabeth’s Falsehood and Truth ‘loved her Bible with an almost exclusive love’ and would poke the Pope himself down with it. ‘Truth’ is one of the most frequent words in the works of English anti-Catholic writers of all descriptions, and the chief dispenser of this highest good is Holy Writ. The authority of the Scriptures was absolute to early nineteenth-century churchmen in the days before Biblical criticism gained ground in the Church of England. At this time, only a few enquiring spirits, notably Coleridge and Carlyle, were aware of the

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new German theology and its implications in respect of Biblical exegesis. Charlotte Bronte¨ and her sisters’ attitudes to the Scriptures as repositories of truth are a subject for another chapter; here it is enough to say that there is no reason to assume that Charlotte Bronte¨, a selfavowed devotee of the truth, regarded Holy Writ any differently from Lucy Snowe, who told Paul Emanuel that ‘[her] own last appeal, the guide to which [she] looked, and the teacher which [she] owned, must always be the Bible itself ’ (xxxvi.). The concerted efforts of the Silas faction to lure Lucy across the boundary by exposing her to ‘the pomp of Rome’ were clearly abortive from the start. These displays did not impress her any more than they had done Charlotte Bronte¨ in  (see above). Even so, Roman ornateness, ritual and ceremony undoubtedly held a powerful appeal for many Church of England members, and the following passage from Villette proves that Charlotte Bronte¨ was thoroughly conscious of it ten years later: Many people – men and women – no doubt far my superiors in a thousand ways, have felt this display impressive, have declared that though their Reason protested, their Imagination was subjugated. I cannot say the same. Neither full procession, nor high mass, nor swarming tapers, nor swinging censers, nor ecclesiastical millinery, nor celestial jewellery, touched my imagination a whit. What I saw struck me as tawdry, not grand; as grossly material, not poetically spiritual. (xxxvi.–)

This, chronologically the third and last of Lucy’s temptations, is the one she finds easiest to dismiss. That ease is reflected in the considerateness she is able to show her tempters. She does not want to hurt the kind old priest’s feelings by telling him how pathetic she finds his offerings; and even when she expresses her dislike to M. Paul, she refrains from attacking them, tactfully adopting the unanswerable ‘I-message’ tactic instead: ‘I did not respect such ceremonies’, ‘I wished to see no more.’ Lucy’s distrust of her ability to withstand kindness and warm approval that made her resolve to stay away from Pe`re Silas after the confessional shows that she was indeed vulnerable on that score, but at the same time her awareness of it lent her some protection. The ‘meek volume’ which was intended to move her heart to love of the tender, maternal Church of Rome was rejected with similar non-accusatory restraint. But when the independent spirit’s pursuit of truth comes under threat, the anti-Catholicism of Villette becomes virulent: surrounded by people whose personal good qualities do not prevent them from resorting to such instruments of oppression as secret surveillance, deliberate

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deception and downright bullying, Lucy Snowe fights back, sometimes with more vigour than discretion. Even then, however, she is outwardly more defensive than aggressive. Lucy contents herself with correcting those erroneous conceptions of Protestantism (‘crafty Jesuit-slanders’) with which M. Paul’s spiritual director had attempted to poison his mind, trusting the essentially honest man whom she loves to see the justice of her claims. What is important to her is that she be allowed to retain her spiritual liberty: she never has the slightest ambition to persuade anyone else to adopt her beliefs. It is against the background of this attitude that the most forceful and sustained onslaughts on Roman Catholicism in Villette should be seen, the words ‘I avowed’ suggesting that Lucy does not spare Pe`re Silas this time: Then Pe`re Silas showed me the fair side of Rome, her good works, and bade me judge the tree by its fruits. In answer, I felt and I avowed that these works were not the fruits of Rome; they were but her abundant blossoming, but the fair promise she showed the world. That bloom, when set, savoured not of charity; the apple full-formed was ignorance, abasement, and bigotry. Out of men’s afflictions and affections were forged the rivets of their servitude. Poverty was fed and clothed, and sheltered, to bind it by obligation to ‘the Church;’ orphanage was reared and educated that it might grow up in the fold of ‘the Church;’ sickness was tended that it might die after the formula and in the ordinance of ‘the Church;’ and men were over-wrought, and women most murderously sacrificed, and all laid down a world God made pleasant for his creatures’ good, and took up a cross, monstrous in its galling weight, that they might serve Rome, prove her sanctity, confirm her power, and spread the reign of her tyrant ‘Church.’ For man’s good was little done; for God’s glory less. A thousand ways were opened with pain, with blood-sweats, with lavishing of life; mountains were cloven through their breasts, and rocks were split to their base; and all for what? That a Priesthood might march straight on and straight upward to an alldominating eminence, whence they might at last stretch the sceptre of their Moloch ‘Church.’ It will not be. God is not with Rome, and, were human sorrows still for the Son of God, would he not mourn over her cruelties and ambitions, as once he mourned over the crimes and woes of doomed Jerusalem! (xxxvi.–)

A similar argument is put forward in a much earlier chapter of Villette (but at this point Lucy is not of course in a position to express it to anybody else): A strange, frolicsome, noisy little world was this school: great pains were taken to hide chains with flowers: a subtle essence of Romanism pervaded every arrangement: large sensual indulgence . . . was permitted by way of counter-

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poise to jealous spiritual restraint. Each mind was being reared in slavery; but, to prevent reflection from dwelling on this fact, every pretext for physical recreation was seized and made the most of. There, as elsewhere, the C    strove to bring up her children robust in body, feeble in soul, fat, ruddy, hale, joyous, ignorant, unthinking, unquestioning. ‘Eat, drink, and live!’ she says. ‘Look after your bodies; leave your souls to me. I hold their cure – guide their course: I guarantee their final fate.’ A bargain, in which every true Catholic deems himself a gainer. Lucifer just offers the same terms: ‘All this power will I give thee, and the glory of it . . . If thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine!’ (xiv.)

To Lucy Snowe, ‘Romanism’ is ‘a great mixed image of gold and clay’, and the latter quality is particularly evident in the bartering deals where material comforts and peace of mind are acquired at the expense of spiritual liberty. The horrors of this exchange are articulated with a warmth which springs directly from the hatred of oppression that informs all the Bronte¨ novels. There is more to this revulsion, however, than the disgusted response of a lover of freedom. By lulling the docile sheep in its fold, Roman Catholicism blocks the channels through which they might have communicated with ‘that mighty unseen centre incomprehensible, irrealizable, with strange mental effort only divined’ (xxxvi.). What could have been the children of God are thus merely the members of an imperfect terrestrial organisation. Under the guidance of their priests, they do not experience the sense of their desperate wickedness which impels sinful human beings to pray for God’s forgiveness. Roman Catholicism has substituted man-made consolations for the ineffable comfort of Divine grace. The children of the Church of Rome have hence not only surrendered worldly power to ‘the tyrant ‘‘Church’’ ’; they have also given up their rightful citizenship in the kingdom that is not of this world. An impassioned paragraph in Villette describes the glories which the Roman priesthood withholds from those whom it directs, ending with the triumphant assertion that God’s pardon can extend even to this body of men: Oh, lovers of power! Oh, mitred aspirants for this world’s kingdoms! an hour will come, even to you, when it will be well for your hearts – pausing faint at each broken beat – that there is a Mercy beyond human compassions, a Love stronger than this strong death which even you must face, and before it, fall; a Charity more potent than any sin, even yours; a Pity which redeems worlds – nay, absolves Priests. (xxxvi.)

In view of the force and generality of this condemnation, it may at first seem odd that the Protestant Lucy Snowe should feel no qualms about

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marrying the Roman Catholic M. Paul Emanuel. Is it perhaps a case of amor vincit omnia? By no means: Paul possesses qualities which render a union with him feasible from a religious point of view. Despite his reverence for his Jesuit confessor, he is too intelligent and open-minded to cling to what Lucy calls his prejudices when they are cogently challenged. More important still, his is a piety which is almost childlike in its artlessness, a characteristic which shows that his faith is essentially untainted by the wiles and corruptions of Rome. When Lucy explains to him why the various manifestations of the Church of Rome would impede her attempts to acknowledge her sinfulness to God, the proper recipient of the penitent’s confession, she fears that she thereby cuts herself off from him. In fact, the reverse happens: [A]t last, came a tone accordant, an echo responsive, one sweet chord of harmony in two conflicting spirits. ‘Whatever say priests or controversialists,’ murmured M. Emanuel, ‘God is good, and loves all the sincere. Believe, then, what you can; believe it as you can; one prayer, at least, we have in common; I also cry – ‘‘O Dieu, sois appaise´ envers moi qui suis pe´cheur!’’ ’ (xxxvi.)

In recognising that they share the conception which is the beginning of Christian wisdom, Paul grants Lucy her religious freedom and pays tribute to the supreme virtue of truth and honesty. Clearly, this ‘Christian Hero’ (xxxv.), who is ‘like a knight of old’ (xxxiii.), has come through his initiation trials with flying colours. He is aptly named, with his apostolical first name and the surname – one of the appellations of Christ – that means ‘God with us’. In releasing Lucy from bondage in the Rue Fossette, he is a true saviour, and her soul is safe with him. His final words to her in the novel confirm the fact: ‘Remain a Protestant. My little English Puritan, I love Protestantism in you. I own its severe charm. There is something in its ritual I cannot receive myself, but it is the sole creed for Lucy.’ (xlii.)

Paul Emanuel remains a Roman Catholic: ‘in him was not the stuff of which is made the facile apostate’. In its comfortable contemplation of a mixed marriage, Villette actually agrees with the attitudes of later ages in these matters, obviously going against the notions that prevailed in its own time. Both in works of fiction and in real life, close and loving proximity between Protestants and Roman Catholics was generally seen as problematic, if not impossible. An untroubled marriage along those lines was barely conceivable, and an Anglican’s conversion to Rome

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would often be felt and regarded as a death, both by the convert himself/herself and by friends and family members who stayed in the Church of England. Frances Trollope’s Father Eustace: A Tale of the Jesuits () draws a sad picture of a union between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant; the Morley spouses had started married life in love and happiness, but the religious split in the household successively vitiates it to the point where the dying Richard Randolphe de Morley, tormented by having married (and fathered) a ‘heretic’, refers to his once loved wife as ‘the fatal beauty, sent by the fiend to destroy me’. However, Villette was not unique in allowing persons from different faiths engaged in conversion projects to develop warm feelings for one another. For instance, Sewell’s Margaret Percival is a love story: the eponymous heroine and the Anglo-Italian Beatrice are singularly devoted to each other, and the latter’s confessor is just as earnest and well-intentioned in his wish to ‘save’ Margaret as Pe`re Silas is in attempting to win Lucy for what he sees as the greatest happiness for her. Not even hints of a Jesuit background – ever guaranteed to inspire apprehension and hostility in an English breast – are allowed to mask the genuine benevolence of such priests. Personal affection naturally adds to the drama and agony of the denominational conflicts. In this sense, then, Villette conforms to a contemporary pattern in religious fiction; but its resolution is the only instance of a happy ‘draw’ known to me – although we should of course bear in mind that the arrangement was never tested by everyday experience, unlike that of Mrs Trollope’s unhappy couple.

          While Villette must predominate in any discussion of anti-Catholicism in Charlotte Bronte¨’s fiction, the other novels contain relevant material as well, though on a much smaller scale. Repelled by ‘Romanist’ snooping and deceit, William Crimsworth wins a peculiarly suitable bride in Protestant Frances, half English and half Swiss – the latter heritage bearing shades not only of Calvin and Zwingli but of the illustrious freedom fighter Wilhelm Tell, too. As in Villette, sincerity is conceived of as a virtue more honoured by Protestants than by Roman Catholics. It is a quality which the Church of Rome did its best to eradicate from Crimsworth’s best pupil apart from Frances, the crippled Sylvie, who is the object of the only extensive attack on Roman Catholicism in The Professor:

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[D]estined as she was for the cloister, her whole soul was warped to a conventual bias, and, in the tame, trained subjection of her manner, one read that she had already prepared herself for her future course of life by giving up her independence of thought and action into the hands of some despotic confessor. She permitted herself no original opinion, no preference of companion or employment, in everything she was guided by another. With a pale, passive automaton-air she went about all day long doing what she was bid, never what she liked or what, from innate conviction, she thought it right to do; the poor little future religieuse had been early taught to make the dictates of her own reason and conscience quite subordinate to the will of her spiritual Director. She was the model pupil of Mdlle. Reuter’s establishment; pale, blighted image where life lingered feebly but whence the soul had been conjured by Romish wizard-craft! (xii.)

Sylvie, ‘destined for the cloister’ from childhood, has hardly had much chance to evolve an ‘independence of thought and action’. The case of Eliza Reed in Jane Eyre, another future nun, is different in this respect. Her minute observance of the tasks and routines she imposes on herself, her dedication to form and letter as well as her indifference to heart and spirit, proclaim her the perfect convert-to-be as unmistakably as ‘the nun-like ornament of a string of ebony beads and a crucifix’ she wears (.vii., –, ). Unlike Sylvie, Eliza freely chooses – as Jane bluntly puts it – to remove what ‘sense’ she has to a French convent and wall it up for life. Eliza is an extreme creation in her complete lack not only of charity and compassion, but of any human feeling at all. The nuns in the convent she ultimately rules need expect no Christian mercy or pity from their Mother Superior. No wonder she did not feel at ease in a church whose first requirement of its members was that they love God with all their hearts.                 ? It has been maintained that Charlotte Bronte¨’s animus against Roman Catholicism is in part rooted in a secret personal attraction to this faith, or at least to aspects of it. Such a claim is hard to disprove, of course; but in view of the points raised in the preceding discussion, I find it difficult to believe in a ‘secret hankering’ (Winnifrith’s expression) for Rome on her part. It is natural to be suspicious of hysterical hostility; but in view of the contemporary situation, Charlotte’s antipathy hardly deserves that epithet. Influenced by her reading, her friends and the mood of the time, she absorbed some of the ubiquitous anti-Catholic sentiment and passed it on, but with less heat and rancour than many of

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her contemporaries. ‘Romish’ Tractarian doctrines and practices which caused otherwise fairly level-headed Anglicans to rave about Antichrist did not elicit much more than a sardonic chuckle from her, as the first two pages of Shirley demonstrate.) Two Haworth curates who believed in apostolical succession – anathema to No-Popery tractwriters – lost none of her affection as a result; she even married one of them. Her attacks on Roman Catholicism became truly intense in two contexts only: first, when she castigated the features that seemed to her to deaden reason and common sense, of whose importance as controllers of feeling she was so sharply aware; second, when the manifestations of that faith conflicted with the quest for truth and the insistence on personal integrity and spiritual liberty which dominated both her life and her art.

 

An undenominational temper

The preceding discussion of Charlotte Bronte¨ and the Church of Rome avoided referring to the latter as the ‘Catholic’ Church. In her time as in ours, Anglicans declare(d) their belief in ‘the holy Catholick Church’ (the Apostles’ Creed) without any sense of compromising their Protestant faith. Many contemporary writers on religion emphasised the title of the Church of England to the epithet ‘Catholic’, defending it against what they saw as wrongful appropriation by the Roman Catholic Church. Though tied to the British Isles, the Anglican Church did have some claim to the universality and all-inclusiveness implied by the term ‘Catholic’. Despite the many conflicts that agitated the Church of England in the early nineteenth century, it contained plenty of influential members who recognised and promoted the essential unity of Protestant churches. The creation of the Jerusalem Protestant bishopric in  was symptomatic: representatives of King Frederick William’s Lutheran Prussia and leading bishops of the Church of England jointly supported the appointment of a converted Jewish rabbi. It is possible to speak of an ecumenical movement in the s in Britain, and the Bronte¨ family was not untouched by it. The Bible and Tract Societies in which Patrick Bronte¨ had been active from his young manhood onwards were interdenominational, and in the mids many English people shared Lucy Snowe’s dreams of a ‘Holy Alliance’: I went by turns, and indiscriminately, to the three Protestant Chapels of Villette – the French, German, and English – id est, the Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian. Such liberality argued in [Pe`re Silas’] eyes profound indifference – who tolerates all, he reasoned, can be attached to none. Now, it happened that I had often secretly wondered at the minute and unimportant character of the differences between these three sects – at the unity and identity of their vital doctrines: I saw nothing to hinder them from being one day fused into one 

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Denominations

grand Holy Alliance, and I respected them all, though I thought that in each there were faults of form; incumbrances, and trivialities. (xxxvi.)

This passage was published twenty years after Thomas Arnold’s Principles of Church Reform, which had met widespread opposition, especially from the Tractarian quarter. Arnold, desperately anxious about the condition of the Established Church, had proposed Protestant unity within the framework of an enlarged national church. Focused on the worship of Christ and dedicated to the promotion of Christian moral discipline, this church should be able to accommodate Protestant Dissenters. ‘Christianity without Sectarianism’ and ‘Comprehension without Compromise’ were Arnold’s mottoes. Lucy’s vision of a ‘Holy Protestant Alliance’ has points in common with Arnold’s ideal church, and this agreement is not fortuitous. Arnold was one of Charlotte Bronte¨’s heroes. In a letter to W. S. Williams in , Charlotte – recalling Arnold’s ambition to rally all good Protestant forces against the menace of disestablishment associated with the High Church movement – wished ‘Dr. Arnold were yet living or that a second Dr. Arnold could be found’. The resounding exclamation at the end of ch. v in the second volume of Shirley is very Arnoldian in thrust and earnestness: Let England’s priests have their due: they are a faulty set in some respects, being only of common flesh and blood, like us all; but the land would be badly off without them: Britain would miss her church, if that church fell. God save it! God also reform it! (.v.)

Less controversial in  than Arnold’s proposals had been in , Lucy’s ‘liberality’ – by no means an honorific term to large sections of the educated British population in the mid-nineteenth century – is directed towards the other Protestant churches in Europe, whereas Arnold was concerned with Protestant unity in the British Isles. There is a sharp edge in Charlotte Bronte¨’s references to Protestant sects in England which might be taken to suggest non-Arnoldian animosity. This hostility is, however, directed against an element which is itself the greatest foe to liberality: fanaticism. Time and again, Charlotte Bronte¨’s fiction associates movements outside the main stream of the Church of England with frantic zeal, sometimes in arresting juxtapositions. The Antinomian Mike Hartley in Shirley is a ‘mad Calvinist and Jacobin’ (.i., .ii.–, .xiv.); little Polly in Villette prays ‘like some Catholic or Methodist enthusiast – some precocious fanatic or untimely saint’ (ii.); and St John’s Calvinism is a forbidding manifestation of a

An undenominational temper



‘church-militant’ which is somewhat out on tune with the ‘evangelical charity’ he showed in taking in the starving Jane Eyre in. Isabella in Wuthering Heights also associates Dissenter practices with the ravings of irrational people; she contemptuously describes Heathcliff, desperately addressing his dead idol, as ‘praying like a methodist’ (.iii.). In Charlotte’s novels, then, Protestant Nonconformity as well as Roman Catholicism is attacked for its unhealthy enthusiasm, which runs counter to those rational forces that prevent unbridled emotion from luring unfortunate souls towards perdition. To the extent that a religious community encourages the suspension of reason and common sense, it cannot be the object of tolerance and forbearance. A simile in Shirley illustrates Charlotte Bronte¨’s deference to the ideal of right-minded toleration. Visiting Shirley and Caroline, the saintly vicar Mr Hall has come to report on the success of a philanthropic endeavour. Warmly greeted by Caroline, ‘he gazed down on her with a gentle, serene, affectionate expression, that gave him the aspect of a smiling Melancthon’ (.iv.). Philipp Melanchthon was not only Luther’s co-Reformer. He was the author of the Augsburg Confession, whose position in the Lutheran Church is comparable to that of the Thirty-Nine Articles in the Church of England. In addition, he was a conciliatory figure whose concessions both to Roman Catholics and to Calvinists shocked and angered zealous Lutherans. His name is an emblem of religious liberality in the context of the history of the Protestant faith, and it is no accident that Charlotte honoured her perfect clergyman by attaching it to him. Melanchthon was not the only non-British Protestant whom Charlotte Bronte¨ admired. As early as , in a letter to Ellen Nussey, she had praised the ecumenical views of the French Protestant pastor Jean Henri Merle D’Aubigne´, a native Swiss. Admitting that his notion of an Evangelical alliance was unrealistic, Charlotte felt that it was ‘more in accordance with the spirit of the Gospel to preach unity amongst Christians than to inculcate mutual intolerance & hatred’. Though too much importance should not be attached to a sentence in ‘scribble[d] . . . lines’ (Charlotte’s own expression) in a letter to a pious friend, it is nevertheless noteworthy that what she referred to here was the essential duty of Christians to love one another, not Church polity in a narrow sense. The label ‘Broad Church’ used by Hoxie Neal Fairchild may seem convenient to anyone who is looking for a neat categorisation of Charlotte Bronte¨’s stance in religious matters; but it is a problematic term in



Denominations

itself as well as in this context. Originating around , it was first given currency by W. J. Conybeare in an Edinburgh Review article in , two years before Charlotte’s death. The concept was vigorously rejected by F. D. Maurice when applied to him, partly because he resisted being drawn into any one party in the Church and partly because he regarded the Broad Churchmen as insufficiently engaged with the essential nature of faith and the exigencies of theological study. The Broad Church movement was never a uniform one, and some of its exponents were liable to accusations of confusing religious liberalism and toleration with indifference to dogma and doctrine. While the insistence of Broad Churchmen on latitude for religious enquiry fits in with that commitment to freedom of thought that is so characteristic of all the Bronte¨s, such indifference would have seemed strange and repulsive to them. In this sense, they had more in common with Maurice: all the Bronte¨ novels are intensely concerned with tenets of Christianity and exhibit considerable boldness in their explorations of them. The Bronte¨s stoutly defended what others regarded as religious and moral provocation in their novels, and they did so because they believed themselves to be expressing the truth. They certainly would not have felt at home in a climate in which nobody reacted because anything went, and that was the way towards which some otherwise liberal people felt, with uneasiness, that the Broad Church movement was tending. Another of Fairchild’s thumbnail characterisations should be reconsidered by way of conclusion to this discussion of the Bronte¨s and Christian denominations. In her patronising comments on ‘meek little Anne’, Fairchild defines the position of the youngest Bronte¨ as that of ‘a mildly faithful Evangelical’. But the sustained probing into theological matters that is so characteristic of the Bronte¨s places them all outside that Evangelical context in which they were raised – not so much because Evangelicalism was repressive but because it was, essentially, intellectually incurious. Evangelicalism in the Church of England was a movement of enduring importance in that it revived the spiritual and emotional dimensions of religious worship; but it did not offer much in the way of innovative thought. Apart from Isaac Milner, it had few intellectuals to boast of, and acute reasoning powers were seldom among the gifts of its leading exponents. None of the Bronte¨s fits in with this absence of mental drive and acumen. Even so, this very lack of a fixed denominational fold can in fact be related to the Bronte¨s’ Evangelical upbringing. The Evangelicals were not, on the whole, greatly interested in ecclesiastical polity and never

An undenominational temper



managed to resolve the contradiction between two fundamental notions of the Church: an ad-hoc gathering of professing Christians, and the visible Holy Catholic Church. Hence, Evangelicalism – in the words of a Congregationalist divine, R. W. Dale – ‘encouraged what is called an undenominational temper’. In this limited and specific sense, the Evangelical home of the Bronte¨s may be said to have promoted the individualistic licence with which they moved in the sphere of religion.

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

Doctrines

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 

The Bronte¨s in the theological landscape of their time

The preceding section looked at the religious development of the Bronte¨s in the context of those denominational differences and dissensions that prevailed in the Britain of their youth and brief maturity. They were obviously well acquainted with the questions involved, and the topography of the respective camps was familiar to them. In view of Charlotte Bronte¨’s ardent and idealistic personality, it would have been natural to expect her to take up arms under the banner of the combatant with the greatest claim on her loyalties; but her dedication to truth made adherence to a party impossible and caused her to move freely on territories far away from the heartland of Anglican orthodoxy. Toughminded, intelligent Anne’s temperament was of a quieter cast, but her explorations of vexed religious issues were every bit as daring as her sister’s. Emily’s robust unconcern with dogma may seem to represent an extreme position even in this spiritually libertarian family; but her sisters will have found Lockwood’s characteristically pusillanimous refusal to engage with Nelly Dean’s ‘something heterodox’ question about the degree of happiness enjoyed by the likes of Catherine Earnshaw Linton in ‘the other world’ as ridiculous as she (.ii.). The Bronte¨s resembled some of the leading religious thinkers of their time, notably Thomas Erskine and F. D. Maurice, in regarding religion as the concern of the individual soul guided by God. Church controversy may have, by turns, distressed, irritated and amused them; but it did not interfere with their own fundamental convictions. At this point, the discussion of the Bronte¨s and religion leaves the specifically denominational aspect aside and concentrates on those matters of faith that play central roles in their fiction. It addresses two main topics: the nature of God and his relationship with his creation, and the question of the life everlasting. Ethical concerns are addressed in the ensuing section, which begins with an analysis of revenge and forgiveness between human beings and goes on to deal with the question 



Doctrines

of how a Christian should live in the world. Here, the focus is on God’s love and the love of God, the joy and comfort of the religious life, salvation through the Atonement of Christ, and conceptions of this life and the next. All these concerns were at the forefront of theological debate in the time of the Bronte¨s. It is difficult to be sure of the exact nature of the channels through which they derived instruction and inspiration in an individual case. There can be little doubt, however, that their reading of devotional literature was extensive and varied, and they were clearly used to taking part in advanced discussions of religious matters. Mary Taylor wrote to Mrs Gaskell that she had been surprised by Charlotte Bronte¨’s knowledge of ‘isms’ beyond the pale of the Church of England. While there are comparatively few references to theological works and their writers in those letters of Charlotte’s that have been preserved, passing references to ‘Hookists’, ‘Puseyites’ and ‘Irvingites’ proclaim her acquaintance with varieties of contemporary religious thought. One spiritual guide which the Bronte¨s certainly knew, Christian Instructions by their kinsman William Morgan, commends both Dissenter tracts and the works of Erskine of Linlathen to students of theology; another instance of Morgan’s catholicity is found in the fact that he mentions Calvin and Arminius – in the same breath – as meriting the attention of every divine. Morgan urged the clergy to lend books freely and to start circulating libraries if they could; ‘Books kept on the shelves of a library, are like so many persons sitting in company without speaking.’ The prevalence of such views in their immediate environment supports the contention that the Bronte¨s had access to a fairly wide range of theological works. Their fiction repeatedly indicates that they made diligent use of these opportunities. The following discussion frequently refers to two leading figures in nineteenth-century theology, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and F. D. Maurice. There is little in the way of hard evidence when it comes to assessing the likelihood of a direct influence of either of these men on the Bronte¨s. There are no references to such works of Coleridge’s as Aids to Reflection and Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit in Charlotte’s surviving letters; but that is no reason for dismissing the possibility that the Bronte¨ siblings were acquainted with the religious thought of a man whose poetical output was certainly familiar to them and whose name was a household word in Haworth Parsonage. Maurice has been mentioned as an influence on Emily: more than a hundred years ago, the poet A. Mary F. Robinson’s biography of Emily Bronte¨ claimed that she had

The Bronte¨s in the theological landscape of their time



‘[called] herself a disciple of the tolerant and thoughtful Frederick Maurice’. No available documentation supports this statement, though, and the first mention of Maurice in Bronte¨ records occurs in a letter of Charlotte’s praising his preaching in London. Caution is obviously advisable in respect of Maurice as well. But whether or not the Bronte¨s actually studied theological works by Coleridge and/or Maurice, these two men exercised a tremendous influence on religious thought in Britain throughout the nineteenth century, a fact of which any student of contemporary theological developments must have been aware; and both were demonstrably known to members of the Bronte¨ family at different stages of their lives. It is hardly fanciful to believe that the substance of Coleridge’s and Maurice’s theology found its way, through whatever medium, to the sisters, both at Haworth and in the homes and institutions where they studied and taught and stayed as visitors. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and Fraser’s Magazine were obvious transmitters of contemporary views on theological matters, and in their columns Coleridge and Southey featured not only as Romantic poets, but as religious writers as well. The ‘Ettrick Shepherd’, James Hogg, contributed tall and colourful tales to both periodicals, and both gave plenty of space to translations and discussions of German literature, chiefly Goethe and Schiller but also Klopstock and Tieck. As early as , Blackwood’s sardonically exhorted the Tractarians at Oxford to stop worrying about such nonsense as the eastward position and whether ‘the clergy shall wear little crosses on the tips of their scarves’, telling them to remember their priorities instead: [T]he very existence of the Church is at hazard; . . . a rabble of legislators in the streets are howling for her plunder, and Popery, like a wild beast, is foaming at her threshold. Let Oxford bestir herself while she remains an University; leave those pompous triflers to their obscure squabbles; and add something manly, honest, and rational to the national defence of Christianity.

This will have gone down well in Haworth Parsonage with its Evangelical and Cantabrigian bias. Charlotte Bronte¨’s admiration for Thomas Arnold has already been referred to. In view of its peculiar warmth and of the subject’s prominent position in the early and mid nineteenth-century debate on religious issues, it is likely to have evolved well before the first surviving record of it. Arnold’s concern for the unity of the Church coexisted with an ardent desire to increase the lay element in it and with a pronounced dislike of anything that smacked of sacerdotalism. The



Doctrines

grounds for his objection to the privileged position of the priesthood are summed up in the following extracts from his Christian Life: [T]he relations subsisting between God and man . . . establish the everlasting priesthood of our Lord, which leaves no place for any other; they bar it, because priesthood is essentially mediation; and they establish one Mediator between God and man – the Man Christ Jesus. . . . Do we want [the earthly priest] for intercession? Nay, there is One who ever liveth to make intercession for us . . . To revive Christ’s church, therefore, is to expel the antichrist of priesthood . . .

Arnold did not regard the clergy, to whom he himself belonged and whose functions as ‘presbyters’ he thought essential, as expendable; what he was attacking was the notion that worship calls for the mediating function of a sacerdos. In Arnold’s view, human beings do not require the services of special performers of sacred ceremonial acts. Access to God is open to everybody through Jesus Christ, the Scriptures forming a safer guide than any human agent. As one would have expected, Arnold was fiercely attacked, especially by the Tractarians whom he had openly challenged; but his stance agrees with the rejection of clerical intercession between human being and God which finds such strong expression in Charlotte Bronte¨’s fiction. The most memorable example is found in Jane Eyre, in the scene where Jane is on the point of yielding to St John. Under his magnetic influence, ‘Religion called – Angels beckoned – God commanded’ (.ix.).It is a deceptive vision, however, conjured up by the compelling ‘hierophant’ – a significant word denoting just such an interpreter of sacred mysteries that Arnold abhorred. When Jane herself appeals directly to God for guidance, she is set on a very different course. With their commitment to the freedom of the individual to pursue truth and goodness unencumbered by restraints imposed by earthly institutions and their human representatives, the Bronte¨s were taking a stand on the vexed issue of authority. Many participants in the theological debate of the time were gravely concerned about what they regarded as unwarranted individual licence in spiritual matters, arguing that the authority of the Church must be upheld and that too great a latitude weakened belief in fundamental Christian dogma. Responding to criticism by a reviewer who had pilloried him and Maurice as subverters of faith, Julius Charles Hare exclaimed: [The English Review] complains that I agree with those who in this day, and in former days, have declared liberty, – liberty of conscience, heart, reason, spirit,

The Bronte¨s in the theological landscape of their time



– to be the great blessing of man. I plead guilty of the charge. I believe that the history of the Bible is the history of a Redemption, that we do not know God until we regard Him as a Deliverer . . .

Coleridge, who was in a limited sense the common ancestor of Maurice, Arnold and Hare, foresaw the disputes and tensions that would arise as Christians claimed the right to think for themselves on religious matters. Like them, he reminded his readers of the authority of the Bible, and he granted a measure of spiritual supremacy to the Church; but this was not much help at a time when the Church was plagued by internal and external struggles and the study of the Scriptures was in the process of being revolutionised by ‘neology’, the German-inspired new approaches in Biblical scholarship and exegesis. The concept ‘private judgement’, anathema to some, summarised the essence of the freedom claimed by the most intrepid religious enquirers. Among them we find a young lady not usually thought to belong to the rebels in the fiction of the Bronte¨s: ‘You allow the right of private judgment, I suppose, Joe?’ ‘My certy, that I do! I allow and claim it for every line of the holy Book.’ ‘Women may exercise it as well as men?’ ‘Nay: women is to take their husbands’ opinion, both in politics and religion: it’s wholesomest for them.’ ‘Oh! oh!’ exclaimed both Shirley and Caroline. (Shirley .vii.)

Caroline Helstone goes on to interpret  Tim. :– in a way that demonstrates the writer’s familiarity with the shifting perspectives in Scriptural study: ‘I account for [Paul’s words] in this way: he wrote that chapter for a particular congregation of Christians, under peculiar circumstances; and besides, I dare say, if I could read the original Greek, I should find that many of the words have been wrongly translated, perhaps misapprehended altogether. It would be possible, I doubt not, with a little ingenuity, to give the passage quite a contrary turn; to make it say, ‘‘Let the woman speak out whenever she sees fit to make an objection’’.’ (.vii.–)

Other adherents of unfettered exploration in spiritual matters may have had, and expressed, occasional doubts about the permissible range of individual enquiry; but not the Bronte¨s. Several contemporary reviewers of the Bronte¨ novels found them ‘irreligious’, and this uncompromising attitude is probably a factor in that context. However, it is important to remember that these reviewers did not speak for all of Christian England, not even for the Established



Doctrines

Church as a body. Their disapproval must be viewed in the context of the great latitude and diversity in religious opinion that prevailed in the early nineteenth century, both inside and outside the Church of England. To quote a single instance, Robert Southey’s The Curse of Kehama was praised as a superb piece of religious writing by some (including the conservative Fraser’s) and disapproved of by others on account of its ‘paganism’. It was not to be expected that Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights would meet with a consensus of opinion even among critics writing for religious periodicals.

 

God and his creation

             Evangelical Christianity in the nineteenth-century Church of England was a profoundly emotional faith. Its exponents were tireless in exhorting believers to give their hearts to God. Discoursing on Divine love, Isaac Watts – another household name in Haworth Parsonage – had stressed that that one passion ‘will influence all the other Affections of the Heart’. God’s love for mankind was the fundament on which all religious commitment and activity rested, the first cause in every individual’s spiritual peregrination and his/her mainstay to the end. Time and again, an Evangelical divine would remind his readers that ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life’ (John :). This insistence on Divine love was not an exclusively Evangelical phenomenon, however. Directly or indirectly influenced by Coleridge’s explorations of the connexions between reason, feeling, belief and experience, theologians in various quarters enquired into the ways in which human hearts are won for God through Christ. What strikes a reader of much early-nineteenth-century devotional literature is the sense of a close and living communion with God, a communion which involves the whole human personality. Religious despair and depression are states induced and exacerbated by a loss of that essential nearness. These features are present in the Bronte¨ novels, too. It is, for instance, significant that Jane Eyre’s ‘remembrance of God’ in her desolation does not manage to inspire her with the strength to pray and hence unleashes the full force of her misery. Her collapse under that misery is aptly foreshadowed in words borrowed from David’s nd Psalm, ‘Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help’ (v. ) – the Psalm which begins, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ 



Doctrines

(.xi.) Similarly, Helen Huntingdon in her darkest hour struggles to remember that the Lord will not cast off for ever; but her immediate reaction to the sudden defeat of her hopes is couched in those images from the third chapter of the Lamentations which speak of being abandoned by God (xl.). Both Jane and Helen can live, and live with a degree of acceptance, if not contentment, apart from the men they love; but life without God is impossible. It is characteristic of the secularity of our time that any reference to love in the Bronte¨ fiction made in a modern work of criticism is bound to concern a human relationship. I believe that an attempt to analyse the power of love in these books must take account of that Divine love which sustains the characters through their tribulations and guides their steps towards fulfilment, both on earth and in the future life. Such a notion is likely to seem strange to present-day Bronte¨ readers. Even scholars who realise that religion was important to the authors are occasionally reluctant to perceive the presence and significance of theological dimensions in the novels, as the following quotation from Tom Winnifrith’s chapter on ‘The Bronte¨s’ Religion’ illustrates: Agnes Grey is . . . surprisingly free from religion in view of the fact that the narrator is the daughter of a clergyman who marries a clergyman; apart from the rather naı¨ve message that good girls like Agnes Grey prosper while bad girls like Rosalie Murray do not, there is little of a specifically religious nature except in the chapters, ‘The Church’ and ‘The Cottagers’, and here . . . the confused account of Mr Hatfield’s religious proclivities does not enable us to form any clear picture of what Anne is trying to attack.

This amazing statement entirely disregards the fact that Anne Bronte¨ devotes almost ten pages in the chapter called ‘The Cottagers’ to a central discussion of Divine and human love. Nancy Brown, a widow afflicted by poverty, infirmity and religious anxiety, asks Agnes to read the passages from John’s first epistle that deal with God’s love. Agnes complies, gratifying her listener by reading slowly and with emphasis, assuring Nancy that ‘The wisest person . . . might think over each of these verses for an hour.’ The subsequent pages in the novel refer particularly to the following extracts from  John : He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

God and his creation



Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. (–) And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. ()

During Nancy’s moments of acute distress, the statement that ‘He that loveth not knoweth not God’ troubles her greatly, and the worldly rector Mr Hatfield makes matters worse by dismissing her fears and adding to her worries by suggesting that she neglects her religious duties. Hatfield knows as little about the workings of God’s love as he does about the nature of true love between man and woman. It takes the patience, sympathy and genuine devotion to his calling of the new curate Mr Weston to set Nancy’s mind at rest. His explication of  John  testifies to Anne Bronte¨’s intimate knowledge of the chief religious issues of her day: ‘ ‘‘You say you cannot love God; but it strikes me, that if you rightly consider who and what He is, you cannot help it. He is your father, your best friend; every blessing, everything good, pleasant, or useful comes from Him; and everything evil, everything you have reason to hate, to shun, or to fear comes from Satan, His enemy as well as ours; and for this cause was God manifest in the flesh, that He might destroy the works of the devil: in one word God   ; and the more of love we have within us, the nearer we are to Him, and the more of His spirit we possess.’’ ‘ ‘‘Well sir,’’ I said, ‘‘if I can always think on these things, I think I might well love God; but how can I love my neighbours – when they vex me, and be so contrairy and sinful as some on ’em is?’’ ‘ ‘‘It may seem a hard matter,’’ says he, ‘‘to love our neighbours, who have so much of what is evil about them, and whose faults so often awaken the evil that lingers within ourselves, but remember, that He made them, and He loves them; and whosoever loved him that begat, loveth him that is begotten also. And if God so loveth us, that He gave His only begotten son to die for us, we ought also to love one another. But if you cannot feel positive affection for those who do not care for you, you can at least try to do to them as you would they should do unto you; you can endeavour to pity their failings and excuse their offences, and to do all the good you can to those about you. And if you accustom yourself to this, Nancy, the very effort itself will make you love them in some degree – to say nothing of the goodwill your kindness would beget in them, though they might have little else that is good about them. If we love God and wish to serve Him, let us try to be like Him, to do His work, to labour for His glory, which is the good of man, to hasten the coming of His kingdom, which is the peace and happiness of all the world – however powerless we may seem to be, in doing all the good we can through life, the humblest of us may do much towards it; and let us dwell in love, that He may dwell in us, and we in Him.’’ ’ (xi.–)



Doctrines

The following excerpts from devotional works current in the early nineteenth century illustrate the closeness of Anne Bronte¨’s commentary to those of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theologians: The Reason of Man, and our daily Experience teach us that he is the Author of our Being and our Blessings: He causes the Sun to shine, and his Rain to descend on the Earth; he gives us fruitful Seasons, and fills our Hearts with Food and Gladness. This desire of imitating the life and tempers of Jesus is strengthened exceedingly by the love the Christian bears towards him . . . The disposition of a Christian is also distinguished . . . by the affectionate love he bears to God, and the supreme delight and joy he receives from the knowledge of him . . . Besides the incomparable excellency of God, a Christian has also other motives to love him. For, the more completely an object is suited to produce benefit and advantage to us, so much the more will our hearts be united to it, and feel a proportionate affection towards it. Accordingly the Christian loves God as his chief good. What more to be longed for, than to be assured that we are loved by Him who made us? It is God who has given us life; God, in whose world we live; God, on whose favour our eternity depends – what then can it so much concern us to ascertain, as the fact, whether He loves us or not? . . . The evidence we have that God loves us is to be found in His Name and Nature, His word, His deeds, His promises, and His ordinances. His Name is love. His Nature is to do good. He is our Father, and is actuated by a father’s feeling. Above all, measure your progress [as a Christian] by your improvement in love to God and man. ‘God is love.’ This is the sacred principle which warms and enlightens the heavenly world. [When we believe that God loves us with] a love – which sits enthroned on that mercy-seat which rests on eternal truth, and whose very nature it is to hate all evil, . . . [t]he effect upon the character of man . . . will be to love Him who first loved us, and to put the fullest confidence in his goodness and willingness to forgive – to associate sin with the ideas both of the deepest misery and the basest ingratitude . . . and to love all our fellow-creatures from the consideration that our common Father has taken such an interest in their welfare. [I]f it be true, as I fear it is, that too many of us do not love God, is it not quite as true that we cannot believe that God loves us? Have we any thing like a distinct sense of the words of St. John, ‘We love God because he first loved us?’ ··· Believe me, you could have no better charm to keep you safe . . . than this most true persuasion that God loves you. The oldest and the youngest of us may alike repeat to himself the blessed words, ‘God loves me;’ ‘God loves me; God has redeemed me; God would dwell in my heart, that I might dwell in him.’

God and his creation



In this volume, the author has laboured particularly to keep in view, to explain, and to enforce that Christian principle and duty, which is too much forgotten, but which stands foremost in the Scripture – namely,  .

Mr Weston in Agnes Grey tries to persuade Nancy that good works and intentions directed at her neighbours will breed kind feelings between them and her, and Nancy’s subsequent experiences (fortunately) confirm this. He is careful to anchor such endeavours in the Divine love that embraces all men, linking human affection with the love of God. Anne Bronte¨ then skilfully evolves a similar linkage between the young governess and the new curate himself. Assured by her own impressions and by Nancy Brown’s narrative, Agnes makes Mr Weston a focus of her yearning for goodness and worth in an uncongenial environment: I felt very happy, and thanked God that I had now something to think about . . . The gross vapours of earth were gathering round me, and closing in upon my inward heaven; and thus it was that Mr. Weston rose at length upon me, appearing like the morning star in my horizon, to save me from the fear of utter darkness; and I rejoiced that I had now a subject for contemplation, that was above me, not beneath. (xi., )

Agnes proceeds to muse on Mr Weston’s appearance in terms that make it touchingly clear that she is falling in love with him. The discovery of his softer qualities is patently instrumental in that process. The love of God is associated with that of human beings in Charlotte Bronte¨’s fiction, too, if less explicitly than in Agnes Grey: true love is never allowed to fructify unless there is religious harmony between the parties. Before Caroline Helstone accepts Robert Moore, she makes him thank Providence for his deliverance from the threat of bankruptcy and exile. When Robert first lets her glimpse the true extent of his affection for her, he speaks of worshipping her like the Holy Virgin (‘Rose ce´leste, reine des Anges’: .xii.); and when he looks forward to their union, he recognises that she will bring him ‘charity’ and ‘purity’, Christian virtues of a kind he does not possess himself (.xiv.). As Caroline reveals Shirley’s love for Louis to the latter’s incredulous brother, she describes her friend’s heart in religious terms: ‘Like a shrine, – for it was holy; like snow, – for it was pure; like flame, – for it was warm; like death, – for it was strong’ (.xii.). At a somewhat earlier stage in the novel, Henry Sympson, not realising that he was speaking to the presumptive beneficiary himself, had told Louis Moore of the person to whom Shirley had willed most of her fortune. In Shirley’s words, this person was a ‘good

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man’: ‘a man that might not profess to be pious, but she knew he had the secret of religion pure and undefiled before God. The spirit of love and peace was with him: he visited the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and kept himself unspotted from the world.’ (.v.). The previous section indicated the importance of fundamental spiritual agreement for the prospective marriage of Lucy Snowe and Paul Emanuel. What is not often recognised is that the blissful reunion at Ferndean, prompted by the strange occasion on which Jane Eyre had heard Rochester summoning her, was preceded by his independent recognition of ‘the hand of God’ in his predicament. His acknowledgement of God’s mercy after Jane has been restored to him is neither surprising nor, in essence, operative; but it is noteworthy that that restoration is the direct result of Rochester’s sincere repentance: ‘Of late, Jane – only of late – I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere . . . I asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged – that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart’s wishes broke involuntarily from my lips, in the words – ‘‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’’ ’ (.xi.)

Rochester’s reformation is not the only change of heart that has to be completed before he and Jane can be united at last. Looking back at the days of deceptive happiness at Thornfield, Jane Eyre recognises that her love for Rochester stood in the way of her love of God: My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and, more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for his creature: of whom I had made an idol. (.ix.)

In Villette, it is the realisation that she has erred in thinking more of her long-dead fiance´ than of God that sets Miss Marchmont on the path to salvation. Hoping that ‘in thus loving the creature so much, so long, and so exclusively, [she has] not at least blasphemed the Creator’, the afflicted invalid resolves to accept her lot and endeavour to bring happiness to others. Thus liberated from her preoccupation with herself and her grief, Miss Marchmont knows a moment of happiness – swiftly followed by release from her sufferings in a gentle death (iv.–).

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Genuine piety being of crucial importance in the novels of Charlotte and Anne Bronte¨, irreligious conduct on the part of a protagonist invariably heralds disaster in their books. A particularly apt instance is offered by the memorable conversation of the newly wed Huntingdons on their way home from church. Helen is ‘shocked and horrified’ by her husband’s disapproval of the fact that her worship at church excluded him. To Arthur’s complaint that such intense concentration on God will make him jealous, his bride replies: ‘I will give my whole heart and soul to my Maker if I can . . . and not one atom more of it to you than He allows. What are you, sir, that you should set yourself up as a god, and presume to dispute possession of my heart with Him to whom I owe all I have and all I am . . . I should rejoice to see you at any time, so deeply absorbed in your devotions that you had not a single thought to spare for me. But, indeed, I should lose nothing by the change, for the more you loved your God the more deep and pure and true would be your love to me.’ (xxiii.–)

Again, as in Agnes Grey, Anne Bronte¨ links the love of man and woman with devotion to God; but here the association occurs in a context that bodes ill for the human relationship. It becomes increasingly apparent that Arthur Huntingdon’s affection for his young wife is indeed a shallow emotion. Incapable of loving God, this impious man cannot love any human being either; even his infatuation with Annabella Lowborough does not last. Experiences of this kind make Helen react with horror to the improper advances of Mr Hargrave, her would-be seducer, who refuses to acknowledge that the will of God requires them to abstain from an illicit relationship. Against this background, too, Helen’s anguished outcry when Gilbert Markham adopts the same strategy (‘that man is not your husband; in the sight of Heaven he has forfeited all claim to – ’) is only too understandable (xxxvii.– and xlv.–). As she breaks away from Rochester to avoid succumbing to the temptation of becoming his mistress, Jane Eyre has no such bitter experience to guide her. Fearing for Rochester’s health, sanity and salvation as she leaves him, she is repeatedly on the point of abandoning her purpose for a ‘temporary heaven’ with him in his chamber. Only the highest power could keep her on her course – ‘God must have led me on’ – and later, at Morton, she thanks him for having given her the ‘guidance’ she needed to make the ‘correct choice’ (.i. and .v.). It will be clear from instances like these that Jane and Helen withstand temptation not because they are ‘good girls’, to quote Winnifrith’s

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designation for Agnes Grey, reluctantly complying with now-outmoded rules for virtuous behaviour. They resist because failure to do so would be a betrayal of the Creator who is to them, as to so many of their contemporaries, the very fount of love.               The love of God for mankind is not only the ultimate origin of true love between human beings; it is also the source of that reliance on Divine aid and comfort which was such a crucial element in early-Victorian Anglicanism. Theological writers would stress that God’s love was a first cause; we love God because he loved us first, and ‘unless men [are] convinced that God [loves] them, they [will] not be able to trust Him’. Such confidence enables Helen Burns in Jane Eyre to anticipate death in peace, even joy. Young Jane, whose spiritual needs have hitherto been as neglected as her physical and emotional welfare, receives her first true religious instruction from the dying girl whose unusual character she had sensed from the first. Helen’s clear-eyed recognition of her own shortcomings in the eyes of the world lends a note of poignant realism to her piety. It prevents her deathbed from being just another of those numerous tales of saintly children, too good to live, which flooded nineteenth-century children’s literature. The stark directness of Jane’s questions also helps to raise the scene above sentimental convention: ‘I leave no one to regret me much: I have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not miss me. By dying young I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.’ ‘But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?’ ‘I believe; I have faith: I am going to God.’ ‘Where is God? What is God?’ ‘My Maker and yours; who will never destroy what he created. I rely implicitly on his power, and confide wholly in his goodness: I count the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore me to him, reveal him to me.’ ‘You are sure, then, Helen, that there is such a place as heaven; and that our souls can get to it when we die?’ ‘I am sure there is a future state; I believe God is good: I can resign my immortal part to him without any misgiving. God is my father; God is my friend: I love him; I believe he loves me.’ (.ix.)

This exchange is followed by a brief dialogue where reserved Helen, on the brink of death, for once allows herself to express a surge of spontaneous human affection:

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‘How comfortable I am! That last fit of coughing has tired me a little; I feel as if I could sleep: but don’t leave me, Jane; I like to have you near me.’ ‘I’ll stay with you, dear Helen: no one shall take me away.’ ‘Are you warm, darling?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Good-night, Jane.’ ‘Good-night, Helen.’ She kissed me, and I her; and we both soon slumbered. (.ix.)

With its fusion of Divine and human love, trust in God, and absence of rancour against any living being, Helen’s last conscious hour is the most decisive moment in the religious education of Jane Eyre. Subsequently fortified and encouraged by Miss Temple (who had loved Helen and recognised her worth as the child Jane could not have done), the maltreated orphan grows into a woman able to overcome temptation when it confronts her. Not only does she manage to tear herself away from Thornfield; she resists St John’s masterful campaign against her inmost integrity, too, and the memory of Helen’s deathbed helps her extend her ‘full and free forgiveness’ to her aunt, the tormentor of her childhood. Facing the prospect of death in the wild night outside Moor House, Jane, struggling to regain her ‘footing of fortitude’, echoes Helen’s words. Resigning herself to the inevitable – even to the extent of being unable to rekindle hope as St John’s voice unexpectedly answers her out of the dark – she says aloud, ‘I can but die . . . and I believe in God. Let me try to wait His will in silence’ (.ii.). It is such essential faith that underlies actions of what seems to a present-day reader to be reckless courage, not to say foolhardiness. Lucy Snowe’s journey to Villette, by way of London and a packet to the Continent, is the most awe-inspiring tale of intrepidity. Incidental snippets of information that come her way direct her course, on which the Northern Star originally set her; but her progress is attended by intimations that she is a creature in God’s hand. Strengthened by praying and sleeping in the shadow of St Paul’s, cheered by the sight of a rainbow, ‘the God-bent . . . arch of hope’, and guided by Providence to Madame Beck’s pensionnat, Lucy acknowledges ‘God’s blessing’ as she attains this ‘inn’, and the next morning witnesses her ‘devotions . . . all thanksgiving’. Many critics over the years – starting with Anne Mozley, the Christian Remembrancer reviewer of Villette – have maintained that Charlotte Bronte¨’s fiction lacks a sense of devotion to Christ and that her Christianity, while serious, is not consoling. There is some basis for

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such a view, certainly; but to the latter notion at least the passages quoted above form a considerable counterweight. Faith and trust in God are also, according to Nelly Dean, the factors that allow the bereaved Edgar Linton in Wuthering Heights to rally after the shattering blow of Catherine’s death. Nelly comments on the distinction between Hindley Earnshaw and Edgar in their respective grief: while the former had no strength to keep on course after the loss of a beloved wife, ‘Linton . . . displayed the true courage of a loyal and faithful soul: he trusted God, and God comforted him’ (.iii.). In a striking passage, Edgar Linton muses on his approaching demise and the dangers it may entail for the daughter to whom he is so tenderly devoted. It ends in an avowal that he would rather ‘resign her to God’, and ‘lay her in the earth before me’, than abandon Cathy to Linton Heathcliff if he were to ‘be unworthy – only a feeble tool to his father’. Nelly’s reply is characteristic: ‘Resign her to God, as it is, sir . . . and if we should lose you – which may He forbid – under His providence, I’ll stand her friend and counsellor to the last. Miss Catherine is a good girl; I don’t fear that she will go wilfully wrong; and people who do their duty are always finally rewarded.’ (.xi.)

As ‘friend and counsellor’, Nelly turns out to be fallible enough; but her belief that young Cathy’s essential ‘goodness’ will guide her aright is in fact borne out by the conclusion of the book. The girl may be spoilt and rude at the Heights, but her sufferings are surely a sufficient excuse for bad manners. More important, she bravely resists evil in Heathcliff and – eventually – recognises goodness in Hareton. Her force of character and unwarped judgement constitute a bedrock of virtue which does win her an ultimate reward, the love in which she and Hareton ‘would brave Satan and all his legions’ together (as Lockwood realises in the final paragraphs of the book). This is an aspect of Wuthering Heights which criticism has largely neglected. Regardless of the degree of confidence one places in the values and beliefs of the two patently flawed narrators, the happy ending of Cathy’s ordeal justifies the reliance on God that inspires her father and her nurse, whose human affections are all centred in her. Writers on religion in the time of the Bronte¨s would stress the different components in religious worship: confession of sin; praise and thanks for God’s mercies; studying God’s words; and addressing him in prayer ‘for such things as be needful both for our bodies and our souls’. Gratitude for God’s ‘lovingkindness’ was not the least important aspect:

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‘it deserves to be considered, whether the heart of any man can be right with God, who does not enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise’. No heroine in Charlotte and Anne Bronte¨’s fiction omits this duty, even in times of danger and perturbation of mind; but most of them also live through moments when the greatest mercy they can hope for is to be saved from utter despair. Jane Eyre in the coach on her flight from Thornfield, Caroline Helstone in the valley of the shadow, Lucy Snowe isolated with the ‘cretin’ in the Rue Fossette, Agnes Grey pining for Mr Weston and Helen Huntingdon brutally ill-treated and humiliated – all of them turn to God for help in their efforts not to sink altogether under the burden of their distress. Not the least of their troubles is their awareness of the sinfulness of giving up hope. Authors of religious manuals repeatedly warned their readers not to ‘[y]ield . . . for a moment to Satan’s temptations to despair. If you do not strive, you know you must be lost.’ No wonder human endeavours were felt to be unequal to the task of vanquishing the combination of acute suffering and the threat of spiritual ruin if one were to allow oneself to be crushed by it. For centuries, Christian spiritual advisers have urged the afflicted to remember that ‘whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth’. Charlotte Bronte¨, describing Caroline Helstone’s misery during the darkest period of her own life, could not forbear to insert a piece of religious tractwriting along these lines in Shirley: The perishing birds . . . cannot . . . understand the blast before which they shiver; and as little can the suffering soul recognise, in the climax of its affliction, the dawn of its deliverance. Yet, let whoever grieves still cling fast to love and faith in God: God will never deceive, never finally desert him. ‘Whom He loveth, He chasteneth.’ These words are true, and should not be forgotten. (.ix.)

Like Caroline Helstone, whose predicament set off this brief homily, Charlotte Bronte¨ feared ‘the doom of reprobation’ in her girlhood. Her letters to Ellen Nussey, written when she was about the same age as her heroine, speak of her religious tribulations in agitated terms: ‘if the doctrine of Calvin be true I am already an outcast’; ‘[I am] smitten at times to the heart with the conviction that [your?] Ghastly Calvinistic doctrines are true’. Writing the quoted passage from Shirley immediately after referring to Caroline’s ‘Calvinist’ moments of ‘religious despair’, Charlotte may have been attempting to lay her own Calvinist ghosts once and for all.

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It is impossible to derive consolation from a supreme authority whom you suspect of having marked you out for perdition. If prayers are to bring ‘patience, strength, relief’ (the objects of Caroline’s solicitations), they must be directed to a God whose love for his created beings never fails. As her siblings fell ill and died, Charlotte Bronte¨ clearly felt an urgent need to assert her belief in such a merciful Maker.                    All those Bronte¨ characters who look to God for help in affliction receive the strength and courage they pray for, and this aid is instrumental to their progress. In the best traditions of English devotional writing from Bunyan onwards, trust in God is hence rewarded – but the ways in which Divine assistance manifests itself have features which deviate from those traditions while evincing peculiarly nineteenth-century characteristics. While the views of God and his relationship with the creation that are expressed in the Bronte¨ novels adhere closely to conceptions articulated in contemporary works of religious instruction, the reader who peruses the former in the context of the latter is soon struck by a singular discrepancy: the fiction of the Bronte¨s accords very little space to the person of Christ. The only first-rank Bronte¨ personage whose life is imbued with a vision of Jesus Christ is St John Rivers, and his Christology is characterised by arduous battle in his prince’s cause rather than by thankful worship of the best friend and brother of mankind. The two virtuous old maids in Shirley are the sole, if notable, exception; Miss Mann relies on ‘the tender compassion of Jesus’, and Miss Ainley’s ‘life [comes] nearer the life of Christ, than that of any other human being [Mr Hall] had ever met with’ (.x., ). Apart from them, however, no Bronte¨ character, however pious, lives ardently in and with Christ. Helen Burns refers to the example of Christ and the Sermon on the Mount (.vi.), but her concern is with precept rather than with the Son of Man himself. Most of the references to Christ in the fiction of the Bronte¨s concern his role as Redeemer; and even they are not numerous. Where theologians such as Maurice insisted that we ‘could not think, breathe, live a single hour’ except that we are ‘joined to Christ’, the religion of the Bronte¨s is more concerned with the Father than with the Son. This orientation not only separates them from most of those religious writers with whom they have so much in common; it also points to a problem of central importance to nineteenth-century theolo-

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gians: the relation of the person of Christ to Christianity as a whole. That problem, in its turn, involved the placing of the historical Jesus of Nazareth – recently become the subject of scholarly enquiry – in the context of Christian belief and the life of the Church. In the time of the Bronte¨s, the Anglican Church did not possess a clearly defined and consistent Christology (some might say it never has done). The nature of the Trinity itself was a contentious issue, and many Christians in different denominations and church parties shied away from committing themselves on it. One of the ‘-isms’ which Charlotte Bronte¨ knew well was Socinianism, which denies the divinity of Christ. A number of influential eighteenth- and nineteenth-century intellectuals, women as well as men, were drawn towards it, and Unitarianism developed rapidly, and radically, in nineteenth-century Britain and America. Other unorthodox views concerning the ‘humanity’ of Christ were articulated by Edward Irving. There are indications that the three Bronte¨s shared the uncertainties of many of their contemporaries as regards the nature of Jesus Christ. Emily rarely refers to him, either in her prose or in her poetry: her concern was always with the ‘God within [her] breast’. Some of Anne’s poems celebrate Christ the Redeemer, and old Nancy Brown in Agnes Grey speaks rapturously of a sermon in which Mr Weston quoted Matthew :, ‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden’; but Anne’s references to Christ are characteristically concerned with his functions, not with his person. In the throes of religious anxiety it is God she addresses rather than Jesus. Charlotte Bronte¨’s novels and letters supply suggestive evidence in this respect. Catechised by Mr Helstone, Shirley Keeldar tactfully eschews having to say the Athanasian Creed; again pressed to recite it, she claims not to ‘remember it quite all’ (.xi.,). A letter from Charlotte to Mr Williams, written at roughly the same time as the relevant portion of Shirley, articulates her strong dislike of this liturgical item; she explicitly excepts ‘the profane Athanasian Creed’ from those appurtenances of the Church of England to which she is ‘sincerely attached’. The sense of the word ‘profane’ here will be ‘blasphemous’ rather than ‘worldly’; it hence voices a forceful condemnation uttered on religious rather than on ethical grounds. The ‘Creed of St Athanasius’ (falsely ascribed to a fourth-century Bishop of Alexandria) is still found in the Book of Common Prayer. It formulates a set of notions regarding the Trinity in which the unity of God, Christ and the Holy Ghost is repeatedly asserted from a variety of

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angles. The Creed insists that anyone who doubts its truth must perish. Charlotte Bronte¨ was not alone in thinking it repulsive; the ageing William Wordsworth, for instance, found it ‘a ‘‘needless and mischievous’’ attempt at explaining what should not be explained; it was ‘‘an unhappy excrescence’’ ’. F. D. Maurice agonised over the Athanasian Creed and its uses and abuses; often appealed to over it, he found it impossible to reject outright ‘[b]ecause . . . [it] asserts some great principles which are not asserted so clearly elsewhere.’ When God consoles the Bronte¨ characters who appeal to him in their hour of need, he does not transmit aid and guidance through Jesus Christ. His chosen vehicles of hope belong to a part of the creation whose theological implications occupied a crucial place in the religious thought of Coleridge, Wordsworth and their followers: Nature as part of the cosmos. Two quotations from the Bronte¨ fiction exemplify these channels of spiritual comfort: Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night; too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us: and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty milky-way. Remembering what it was – what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light – I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of Spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe: he was God’s, and by God he would be guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and erelong, in sleep, forgot sorrow. (Jane Eyre .ii.–) My burning, bursting heart strove to pour forth its agony to God, but could not frame its anguish into prayer; until a gust of wind swept over me, which, while it scattered the dead leaves, like blighted hopes, around, cooled my forehead, and seemed a little to revive my sinking frame. Then, while I lifted up my soul in speechless, earnest supplication, some heavenly influence seemed to strengthen me within: I breathed more freely; my vision cleared; I saw distinctly the pure moon shining on, and the light clouds skimming the clear, dark sky; and then, I saw the eternal stars twinkling down upon me; I knew their God was mine, and He was strong to save and swift to hear. ‘I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,’ seemed whispered from above their myriad orbs. No, no; I felt He would not leave me comfortless: in spite of earth and hell I should have strength for all my trials, and win a glorious rest at last! (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall xxxiii.)

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In both these scenes, the night sky inspires a weary supplicant with new strength and confidence by recalling the omnipresence, eternity and charity of God. Despite their similarities, there is an interesting difference between them: Jane’s concern is exclusively with the man she loves; it is to pray for him that she rises to her knees in the heath. Helen, cruelly disappointed in her last flicker of hope for her husband’s love, is not moved by such considerations: she does not rise to her knees for another; she sinks on them under the blow that has fallen on herself. Its force is so great that it strikes at her ability even to address herself to God, as was the case with Jane at Thornfield after the abortive wedding. But a harbinger of comfort is sent her way: a gust of wind revives her and liberates her from the dangerous state of utter desolation, and ‘the self-same moment she can pray’. A quotation from ‘The Ancient Mariner’ is particularly apposite in this context. Jointly and severally, Wordsworth and Coleridge had engendered views of Nature as a manifestation of God which left their mark on virtually all early nineteenth-century theologians, regardless of their orientation. Coleridge’s influence was particularly potent in Maurice, Charles Kingsley and Julius Hare; Wordsworth’s had a wider range, extending to such diverse recipients as John Stuart Mill and John Keble. Wordsworth’s conceptions of Nature and the Deity embody elements of contradiction which have made it natural for different students of his religious thought to seize on different features. Despite their individual differences, however, Wordsworth and Coleridge effected a break with the late eighteenth-century tradition of regarding Nature as a repository of evidence for Christianity. Instead, Nature is an expression of God himself. ‘Nature is the robe of God’, conveying his messages to created beings, rousing their feelings and inspiring their deepest thoughts. The word ‘inspire’ is highly relevant to conflations of God and Nature in the novels of the Bronte¨s. The agent that brings the relief of prayer to Helen Huntingdon is ‘a gust of wind’ – a transmitter of vigour, peace and liberty directly related to that arch-Romantic image, the inspirational breeze. The wind that refreshes Helen has a counterpart in Shirley. As the crisis in Caroline Helstone’s illness passes, the heat and aridity of summer are terminated in rain followed by ‘genial’ sunshine: ‘Caroline’s youth could now be of some avail to her, and so could her mother’s nurture: both – crowned by God’s blessing, sent in the pure west wind blowing soft as fresh through the ever-open chamber lattice – rekindled

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her long-languishing energies’ (.ii.). It is noteworthy that Charlotte Bronte¨ chose to call this chapter on Caroline’s recovery and convalescence ‘The West Wind Blows’. References to Wordsworth and Coleridge in critical and biographical works on the Bronte¨s are typically concerned with the literary qualities of the two men or, in the former’s case, with Branwell Bronte¨’s plea for guidance. Still, I think we should bear in mind that the Romantic poetry on which the Bronte¨ children cut their teeth was imbued with ‘religious musings’ (to borrow a Coleridgean phrase). Whether or not they read Coleridge’s prose, they will have felt and responded to the intense preoccupation with the spirituality of Nature which characterises his and Wordsworth’s poetical works. One factor that lends further support to the idea of the Romantics’ religious influence on the Bronte¨s is found in that allegiance to the truth which both Coleridge and Charlotte Bronte¨ expressed in such uncompromising terms. Coleridge, and after him Hare and Maurice, regarded this allegiance as their paramount obligation. A characteristic formulation of it might be quoted by way of example: ‘He, who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.’ The fact that men like Coleridge, Hare and Maurice disliked clerical controversy and looked for points on which religious people could agree does not mean that they did not feel strongly about the needs and standing of the Established Church. So did Charlotte Bronte¨, as witness the conclusion of vol. , ch. v, in Shirley (‘God save it! God also reform it!’). It is interesting to observe, however, that Bronte¨ heroines tend to receive Divine assistance in the open air, far away from God’s own houses. No leading Bronte¨ character experiences a moment of Heavensent illumination attending church; indeed, all three sisters satirise unsatisfactory services. An arresting passage in Shirley equates Nature with Eve in Paradise. Shirley herself refuses to spend a beautiful evening being bored in church; ‘Nature is now at her evening prayers’, and Shirley wishes to join her ‘mother Eve’ in her devotions (.vii.–). Caroline acquiesces, though conscious of remissness in not entering the church, worried about her uncle’s displeasure, and part amused, part censorious when confronted by Shirley’s reckless mingling of Judaeo-Christian lore and ancient pagan mythology. Such a mixture is in fact germane to contexts where Nature is

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referred to as a mother. It is a Classical notion, known to the Greeks and Romans and alive through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and Romanticism until the present day. Pagan religions incorporate it and Judaeo-Christian writers of both sexes keep referring to it. Like countless writers ancient and modern, Milton – whose Eve Shirley rates a failure – referred to Nature as ‘she’. The idea of a female principle in Nature wedded to a male deity is as old as religious worship itself. Christian poets through the centuries have regarded Nature as a manifestation of God – as his gift, his art, his mode of instructing mankind, and so on. It might serve some purpose to recall these well-known circumstances when looking at the treatment of Nature in the Bronte¨ novels. Critics with a feminist bias have quite naturally dwelt on the maternal qualities of Nature in Jane Eyre, regarding them in conjunction with the fact that both Jane and her creator were motherless. The moon, which occupies a peculiarly important position in Charlotte Bronte¨’s books, has been analysed along similar lines. This is not the place to go into its functions; but it should not be forgotten that just as Nature (natura) is traditionally regarded as female, the moon (luna) was always viewed as the feminine counterpart of the masculine sun in Western culture, and that Charlotte Bronte¨ is one in a long line of writers, male as well as female, who have operated in that tradition. When Jane Eyre receives and answers the decisive exhortation to ‘flee temptation’, it comes to her – like the communications of the Classical gods to the heroes of Antiquity, and like many of God’s commands in the Bible – in a dream; but there is one supernatural incident in Jane Eyre: Rochester’s desperate call as Jane hovers on the brink of irrevocable commitment to St John. She answers his cry, and Rochester later tells her that he heard her replies just as she had heard his ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ At that point, but not before, Jane Eyre realises that this strange incident involved forces beyond Nature’s own; out by the gate of Moor House, she accounts for the eerie summons as ‘the work of nature. She was roused, and did – no miracle – but her best’ (.ix. and .xi.– ). What makes this incident so interesting in the context of the manifestations of the Deity in the Bronte¨ novels is that it springs from one of those moments of despair which can only be resolved by help from God. As the preceding pages have indicated, Nature is a preferred vehicle for such assistance. Rochester was as ‘desolate, afflicted, tormented’ as Jane and Helen Huntingdon were at the height of their distress; like them he

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prayed, and was granted a sort of consolation (‘perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine’). Jane, in St John’s halfembrace, was simultaneously entreating ‘Heaven’ to ‘shew [her] the path’. But whereas Helen and Jane drew strength from the contemplation of the omnipresence of God in his creation, the experience shared by Rochester and Jane has a literally supernatural dimension. In other words, Jane was wrong in thinking that the occurrence which tore her out of the dangers of the moonlit room in Moor House was ‘nature . . . [doing] . . . her best’. It was a miracle. Recognising this, she appropriates the Gospel’s words about the Virgin Mary and ‘[keeps] these things . . . [pondering] them in [her] heart’ (.xi.). This is not only an apt response to revelations of an inexplicable event, occasioned by a man pleading with God for mercy and a woman begging Heaven for guidance: it is a reaction in line with much early nineteenth-century thought about the miraculous in religion. Enquiring into the nature of the miracles in the Bible, religious writers applied points of view which would not have occurred to late eighteenth-century Evangelical divines with their belief in the Bible as literal truth. Coleridge and Maurice, for example, explored the supernatural along the lines of metaphorical and imaginative comprehension. They concluded that ‘miracles are not . . . breaks in the natural order, but . . . visible symbols of the dependence of Nature on a greater, hidden order which they affirm’. In other words, ‘progressive’ theologians were satisfied that the supernatural had its given function in the total context of Creator and creation – a function which rational understanding could not, and should not expect to, grasp. To those who thought as they did, there could be no better place to ponder such things than the human heart.

 

Faith and redemption

         The heart that must not falter in its love for God has two mighty obstacles to contend with, and both are addressed in the novels of the Bronte¨s: the obvious injustice of this life, including the sufferings of the innocent; and the fear of death and damnation. Christianity has a joint solution for both problems: those who mourn in this world will be comforted in the next, and a merciful God will gather his faithful to himself beyond the gates of death. God devised this plan for mankind, tainted by sin; and his chosen agent is his Son Jesus Christ. Contemplation of this scheme should assuage grief, dampen mutiny and take away terror. It was set up by the perfect love which we cannot fully comprehend, but which is evident in the glories of the creation and the warmth and joy of human affections. We only have to believe in this vast design of grace, and our earthly sorrows will become bearable and death will lose its sting. Even the Victorians, however, found this condition hard to fulfil. Doubt and anxiety would constantly undercut trust in the Divine order. The preceding pages dwelt on the staunch faith of Bronte¨ heroines in times of acute distress and on the solace bestowed on them through that faith. In the Bronte¨ novels, intimations of wavering belief are not so prevalent as manifestations of faith, though they do occur; it is in the letters and poems of the eldest and youngest sister that the anguish of doubt breaks out in full force. Charlotte Bronte¨’s Calvinist horrors have already been mentioned. The poetry of Anne Bronte¨ contains records of acute despondency accompanied by a spiritual lethargy that struck at the root of thought and feeling, blocking every effort to rally and leaving no alternative to pleading for faith and hope. Even those lyrics that express trust in God’s mercy are usually rather sombre in tone. It is characteristic not only of Anne Bronte¨ and her family, but also of the religious climate in which they lived, that her poems do not present 

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faith as a quality subject to human will and endeavour. To the Protestant, especially one who grew up in an Evangelical home, faith is God-given. As it is the factor on which true happiness hinges, in this life as well as in the afterlife, no gift is more priceless. It is – for a modern reader at least – striking that prayer in the writings of the Bronte¨s is rarely orientated towards desired objects and events; instead, it solicits faith, strength and patience. At death’s door, these are what Caroline Helstone, restlessly pondering the mysteries of life and death, asks God for, not health or even salvation. Her mother cannot but pray for her child’s life; but for herself she wants nothing more than ‘strength’ and ‘courage’ (.i.–). It is not for mortal beings to request any changes in God’s plans for them; what they need, and may pray for, is to be made fit to acquiesce in God’s will. This awareness of the legitimate purposes of prayer is in perfect agreement with exhortations contained in contemporary devotional literature known to the Bronte¨s. Nineteenth-century theologians emphasised the preciousness of plain, unsophisticated faith, like that evinced by M. Paul in the little scene from Villette which signals the progress of his and Lucy Snowe’s affaire de coeur. Commenting on the Evangelicals in the Church of England, Owen Chadwick remarks that they were men who ‘spoke to simple hearts, and knew that little children shall inherit the kingdom of God’. Childlike trust in God was hence far more praiseworthy in their eyes than formal learning, though Chadwick defends them from the charge of ignorance. Holding on to one’s childhood faith is a feat which very few religious thinkers at any point in time have accomplished, and the pre- and early Victorians were no exceptions. Men like Carlyle and Maurice drifted away from their parents’ religion to earn a new basis for Christian belief on the other side of doubt and disorientation; and George Eliot found herself compelled to resign the beliefs of her youth while retaining her respect for those who held them. Such painful experiences being the common lot of contemporary intellectuals, it is not surprising to find them eloquently expressed in the letters and poems of Charlotte and Anne Bronte¨. What might, by contrast, seem puzzling is that there is so little of them in Emily’s writings. She, after all, has been set up as a rebel against Christian orthodoxy. But if she was indeed impelled by heretic zeal, where is the evidence of animosity against religious oppression imposed from outside? The spiritual struggles in her poetry are characteristically inward ones – ‘Three gods, within this little frame, / Are warring night

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and day’; ‘Speak, God of visions, plead for me, / And tell why I have chosen thee!’ While her lyrics deal extensively and restlessly with loss and grief as well as with endurance and rekindled hope, the restrictions against which their protagonists chafe are tangible ones (such as grave mounds and dungeon walls); of spirits shackled by creeds outworn there is no sign at all. The defiant tone of much of Emily Bronte¨’s poetry (with or without Gondal connexions) makes the conception of protest and insurrection understandable; but it is hard to locate a focus for it. It seems difficult to envisage a rebel if there is no authority to rebel against; and Emily Bronte¨ never appears to have acknowledged, or even contemplated, the existence of any spiritual authority outside her own consciousness. As the person who knew her best said, ‘her nature stood alone’, caring little for either friend or foe and impervious to external pressures of any kind. In view of this peculiar self-sufficiency, it is not after all so strange that Emily Bronte¨’s best-known poem rejects the very possibility of doubt (‘No coward soul is mine’). It is equally unsurprising to find that one of the lyrics in the Gondal Poems notebook features a child, ‘wiser than [her] sire’, who affirms her faith in a ‘land divine’ where she and her loved ones will be ‘Restored into the Deity’. Critics have called Emily Bronte¨ ‘pagan’ or ‘pre-Christian’, and for understandable reasons; but a recent historical appraisal of the Bronte¨s and the Evangelical Revival supplies a challenging counter-perspective: One may argue about whether the source of Emily’s inspiration was Christian, but I doubt whether her father would seriously have quarrelled with her view, that God lies within us. He would simply have suggested that the trappings of formal religion played a larger part in fixing Him there than she was willing to concede.

 ,                         For the well-being of mankind, said Carlyle’s Professor Teufelsdro¨ckh, ‘Faith is properly the one thing needful’, and for the Protestant it is the only way to salvation. The doctrine of justification by faith is a notoriously difficult one to explain even for theologians; one common misunderstanding – one into which the Bronte¨s would not have fallen – concerns the operative principle in it. Man does not as it were purchase justification by deciding to believe; God grants man pardon for his sins and bestows righteousness on him through the atoning death of Jesus Christ. That is the essence of justification, and by placing their trust in

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Christ human beings may attain this state of grace. It is thus God who acts and human beings who receive, not the other way round. For this act to be possible, humanity must be redeemed by Christ: A sinless God, for sinful men, Descends to suffer and to bleed; Hell must renounce its empire then; The price is paid, the world is freed, And Satan’s self must now confess That Christ has earned a Right to bless.

Although the person of Christ is largely absent from the Bronte¨ novels, his function as Redeemer is alluded to more than once. In the following dialogue from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, for instance, Helen Huntingdon attempts to turn her dying husband’s thoughts towards God by way of Christ and his Atonement: ‘ ‘‘God is Infinite Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness – and L ; but if this idea is too vast for your human faculties – if your mind loses itself in its overwhelming infinitude, fix it on Him who condescended to take our nature upon Him, who was raised to Heaven even in His glorified human body, in whom the fullness of the godhead shines.’’ . . . ‘‘No man can deliver his brother, nor make agreement unto God for him . . . ‘it cost more to redeem their souls’ – it cost the blood of an incarnate God, perfect and sinless in Himself, to redeem us from the bondage of the evil one; – let Him plead for you.’’ ’ (xlix.)

In using the Son as a guide to the Father, Helen conforms to the traditional policy of Christian persuaders; but her lack of success (‘he only shook his head and sighed’) is not to be wondered at. Expressed in such turns of phrase as ‘in whom the fullness of the godhead shines’, the conception of the Saviour can hardly seem less incomprehensible to the restive unbeliever than the ‘vast idea’ of the God of love. Not the least intriguing aspect of this devout Christian is her inability to convince anybody else of the truth of those doctrines which she herself believes so fervently. Helen’s failure is consistent with the Protestant contention, sharply formulated by Arnold in his rejection of the sacerdotal claims of the priesthood, that no human agent can serve as a mediator between God and man: Christ is the only intercessor. In this instance, Helen might have been more successful if she had invoked a Biblical text whose power to convert was tried and true. For example, Isaiah’s fifty-third chapter had been instrumental in convincing the notorious John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, of the reality

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of redemption and the possibility of salvation. To a man overwhelmed by awareness of a particularly miserable earthly record, the notion of an outcast man of sorrows meekly shouldering yet another transgressor’s iniquities must be easier to admit and absorb than that of an ‘incarnate God, perfect and sinless’. Another potentially useful source of Scriptural assistance could have been found in the text on which Nancy Brown in Agnes Grey (xi.) had heard Mr Weston preach a most comforting sermon, Matthew : (‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’). As Coleridge said, these words were crucial to St Augustine, who had found nothing like them in Cicero or Plato. Huntingdon’s deathbed is one of the most central loci with regard to the last things in the fiction of the Bronte¨s, and the following discussion looks at it from several different angles. One interesting aspect of this scene is supplied by the mental condition and capabilities of the dying man himself. Arthur Huntingdon is, as Gilbert Markham immediately senses when looking at his portrait, no fool (v.); nor is he ignorant of the teachings of the Church, however little he cares about them. Helen’s ineffectual attempts to make him grasp the doctrine of the Atonement are introduced by an exchange which indicates that Arthur, even when mortally ill and in a state of unholy terror, is more intelligent and well informed than one might have supposed such a monstrous debauchee to be: ‘ ‘‘ . . . there is joy and glory after, if you will but try to reach it!’’ ‘ ‘‘What, for me?’’ he said, with something like a laugh. ‘‘Are we not to be judged according to the deeds done in the body? Where’s the use of a probationary existence, if a man may spend it as he pleases, just contrary to God’s decrees, and then go to Heaven with the best – if the vilest sinner may win the reward of the holiest saint, by merely saying, ‘I repent?’ ’’ ‘ ‘‘But if you sincerely repent – ’ ’’ ‘ ‘‘I can’t repent; I only fear.’’ ’ (xlix.)

Prevailing upon a person with such a clear idea of the teachings of the Anglican Church, and of his own desperate plight in the light of them, would have been hard even for the most skilful divine. Woodhouse’s Practical Sermons testify to the justice of Arthur’s scruples: [I]t is not to the careless, but the contrite, that the minister of God has to speak of comfort. He cannot come to the bedside of a dying man, whose whole life has been a life of forgetfulness of God and devotedness to the world, and assure him of peace. He can indeed tell him of the love of God: he can speak to him of

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Christ’s atoning blood, and the gracious promises of pardon to the really penitent; but every faithful minister will feel that he may not slightly heal the wound, which a whole life of sin has made. He may not let it be supposed, that a prayer or two for mercy, and a late and almost compulsory repentance, will prove that all is well, or ensure the sinner’s safety. No, at such an hour, though mercy may still be extended, and the door of hope still open, and the sinner’s salvation not pronounced impossible, yet his future state must remain in awful obscurity; and it is only the bare possibility of salvation, and not the full assurance of hope, which can be spoken of as the groundwork of comfort.

Woodhouse’s text does not only confirm the very real basis of the dying man’s fears; it illustrates the difficulty of Helen’s theological position, too. While she privately believes that all sinners are eventually purified and admitted to eternal bliss, and once more or less inadvertently intimates as much to her husband, she knows perfectly well that her belief disagrees with Anglican orthodoxy. It will not do to block any true impulse of repentance on his part by suggesting that repentance may not be mandatory after all. One reason why Arthur Huntingdon cannot repent is that he lacks awareness of his sinfulness. He is sorry for his past misdeeds because they have brought him to such a wretched pass and because – or so he says, rather pathetically – they wronged his ‘Nell’, who is ‘so good’ to him. His sins as such are simply not real to him. Deficient awareness of sin (‘hardened’ sinfulness) is a major stumblingblock to salvation, which can only be granted to the genuine penitent. Remission of sins is impossible unless those sins are understood and regretted as such. Nineteenth-century religious writers were keenly conscious of this point and of the necessity of making people feel their sinfulness as a first step to pleading for God’s forgiveness and hoping for reconciliation with him through Christ. Time and again, the fundamental importance of the prayer ‘God be merciful to me a sinner’ was urged on readers and audiences. As we saw, both Lucy Snowe and Paul Emanuel in Villette regard it as expressing a vital reality which sets the tone for man’s communion with God (xxxvi.). Mr Rochester’s remorse is very much a feature in the happy conclusion of Jane Eyre: only as a penitent before God is he in a position to receive grace. Here Charlotte Bronte¨’s novels are in complete accord with the doctrines of the Church of England. Charlotte’s familiarity with other aspects of sin and redemption is evident in Shirley. That novel testifies to her acquaintance with those problems of justification that are associated with the terms ‘Antinomian-

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ism’ and ‘salvation by works’, both of which she uses in the book. The latter occurs particularly prominently in the heading of the chapter which describes the inception of Shirley Keeldar’s philanthropic schemes, ‘Shirley Seeks to be Saved by Works’ (.iii). In fact, a literal reading of this title would entirely misrepresent Shirley’s motives. She acts out of a generous impulse partly inspired by the fact of her personal affluence, in combination with the realisation that poverty may breed civil unrest (in which, incidentally, her aristocratic instincts would render her incapable of evincing any solidarity with the rebels). The hardships of the poor would hence be alleviated while there was still time to prevent mischief; significantly, Shirley says, ‘Let me listen to Mercy as long as she is near me’ (.iii.). In other words, Shirley’s plans bear no relation at all to the notion of purchasing eternal bliss by means of good works, which contemporary theologians constantly imputed to Roman Catholicism. More than anything else, the chapter heading is one of Charlotte Bronte¨’s many jests with religious undertones in this novel. The violent Mike Hartley, who shoots Robert Moore, is repeatedly referred to as an Antinomian; but the fact that the would-be assassin is a mentally unbalanced inebriate qualifies the term. Unlike the saintly John Fletcher (born De la Fleche`re), Vicar of Madeley, whose widow befriended the young Patrick Bronte¨, Charlotte Bronte¨ treated Antinomianism as something of a joke. The term was coined by Martin Luther during his theological debate with his former student Johann Agricola, the ‘father’ of Antinomianism in Protestantism. The Antinomians held that moral law has no compelling authority over those who are justified by faith in Christ. The Church of England vigorously rejected this view, maintaining that justification is characteristically accompanied by a willing submission to the laws given to mankind by God. Popular Antinomianism in its more savage form – and there seems to have been not a little of it in early nineteenth-century Britain – would thus encourage its adherents not to feel bound by such commands as ‘Thou shalt not kill’, if they were convinced that a particular person was better removed from the face of the earth. This is obviously a handy ideological background for somebody like Mike Hartley, who duly forewarns Moore that ‘hell was foreordained [as Moore’s] inevitable portion’ and that ‘God’s vengeance . . . was preparing for [him]’ (.ii.). In James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, a Bronte¨ favourite, arguments of this nature helped Robert Wringhim’s demoniac Doppelga¨nger incite him to

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the murder of anyone he could be persuaded to regard as the Lord’s enemy. If Shirley ridicules the notion that moral law might be overruled by men who deem themselves ‘saved’ already, no matter how they live, Jane Eyre engages in protracted struggles with related problems. Both Rochester and Jane herself grapple with the conflict between Divine law and human wishes. The first intimation of Rochester’s intention to raise his own desires into law occurs in vol. , ch. xiv (pp. –), after he has acknowledged his failure to stand firm in adversity – an ominous admission from one who would claim the right to be his own legislator, and his allusion to the paving of hell with good intentions is not calculated to inspire confidence in him either. Jane reminds Rochester that he himself said that ‘remorse is the poison of life’, that he is but ‘human and fallible’ and that ‘[t]he human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be trusted’. Even here, the terms of the couple’s discourse signal their joint awareness of the fact that the laws they speak of are not of the kind enacted by parliaments. Religious parlance is even more dominant in Rochester’s musings after Jane’s acceptance of his first proposal: ‘ ‘‘It will atone – it will atone. Have I not found her friendless, and cold, and comfortless? Will I not guard, and cherish, and solace her? Is there not love in my heart, and constancy in my resolves? It will expiate at God’s tribunal. I know my Maker sanctions what I do’’ ’ (.viii.). Rochester’s appropriation of the terms in which Christianity expresses the redemption of sinful man through Christ (‘atone’, ‘expiate’) is as irreligious as his plan to commit bigamy. Nor is there any true repentance in his explanation of his scheme after its collapse: ‘‘‘I meant . . . to be a bigamist: but fate has out-manoeuvred me; or Providence has checked me, – perhaps the last. I am little better than a devil at this moment; and, as my pastor there would tell me, deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God, – even to the quenchless fire and deathless worm’’ ’(.xi.). Not until the days of blind solitude at Ferndean does Rochester begin to recognise the full extent of his wickedness. Even during his desperate pleading with Jane before she leaves him, he is not really aware of having done anything wrong. Jane sees this perfectly well, and the realisation is not the smallest part of her anguish. Tempted almost beyond endurance, she manages to check ‘Feeling’ and to turn ‘Conscience’ and ‘Reason’ from their dangerous course (of persuading her to stay to save Rochester). To her own question ‘Who in the world cares for you?’, Jane replies:

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‘I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad – as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour: stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth – so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane – quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.’ (.i.–)

As critics have pointed out, Jane’s words express a powerful commitment to her own integrity. The laws and principles she speaks of are not mere conventions but convictions deeply held by her when ‘sane’; significantly, she expressly refers to them as ‘given by God’. Thanks to her resolution to stand by God’s law, she ‘still [possesses her] soul’ in Rochester’s passionate embrace, ‘and with it the certainty of ultimate safety’ (.i.). Perceiving this on looking into her eyes, Rochester acknowledges – consciously or not – that her yielding to him would have been a meaningless sacrifice; it is her spirit he wants, the ‘resolute, wild, free’ spirit that only manages to remain so thanks to Jane’s retaining the integrity which grants her full mastery of it. The temptation of St John is much more dangerous to that sense of her own worth which Jane Eyre has defended so vigorously since childhood. It is because St John’s onslaught on the spirit whose essential freedom Rochester loved comes in the guise of religion that it constitutes such a peril. By contrast, Rochester flouted God’s law, as Jane instantly recognised. His arguments were easy to resist; the essential threat to her was posed by his love for and need of her. St John, however, neither loves nor needs Jane in any personal sense; it is for God’s service he claims her, telling her that by refusing him she would reject God. His powers of persuasion are uniquely fitted for his purpose: he is a highly intelligent and learned divine, with a charisma on a level with Edward Irving’s, and he is her precious cousin, too, part of the love-starved orphan’s new-found family. No wonder Jane’s inner self – weakened by months of submissiveness to St John’s every whim – cannot provide the sure guidance it always gave her before. Ultimately, it is God who saves Jane by virtue of the supernatural summons that sets her on ‘the path’ she entreated him to show her – the way to Rochester, as it turns out. But the source of Jane’s resistance to St

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John during the preceding week is her heartfelt conviction that it would be wrong to marry him. To his demands, her heart is ‘mute’; as she tells him, with more than a hint of irony, she is willing to give it to God, as St John does not want it. Such a gift would, as Jane recognises, constitute the surrender of her whole self. Once again we are reminded of the centrality of the heart in early nineteenth-century theology. It is not merely the seat of feeling; it is the core of the entire personality, including its religious dimensions. If Rochester had not been so profoundly agitated by her materialising by his side at Ferndean, he would surely have appreciated the full meaning of his lost love’s reassurance that ‘[s]he is all here: her heart, too’ (.xi.). The Rochester to whom Jane returns is a man blighted by severe disabilities. It goes against the grain of a present-day reader to regard them as Divine chastisement; modern critics have, not unnaturally, been more interested in the implications of Rochester’s injuries in relation to Jane. But the man who had reacted to the first catastrophe in his life by rebelling against its consequences in a way that defied God’s laws needed to lose his own powers – in a very tangible manner – in order to be made aware of the power of God (and part of the loss is temporary, after all). The stricken man finally learns to repent, wholly and unreservedly, thereby opening the channels of Divine mercy for the first time since his untainted boyhood. Jane Eyre thus offers a particularly noteworthy example of the importance of God-given moral law in the fiction of the Bronte¨s, especially as transgression is not inexorably followed by ruin: penitence saves, both in this life and the next. It is understandable that Helen Huntingdon wants to see her husband evince it. Helen and Jane are examples of a thorough-going pattern in the Bronte¨ novels: one personage, usually the book’s heroine, is the moral anchor of the story, the person whose character development testifies to the truth and force of those laws that are ‘given by God’. Jane Eyre, Caroline Helstone, Lucy Snowe, Agnes Grey and Helen Huntingdon all commit errors of judgement owing to imperfect comprehension and immaturity of approach. All are guilty of the occasional awkwardness in their dealings with their fellow men and women, and the sheer intensity of their efforts to comply with what they know to be right bears witness to their essential human fallibility. But when they take action in obedience to that knowledge, they act and speak with the authority of those who perform God’s commands. Jane resisting the surrender of her self to the caprice of a man (Rochester or St John); Helen rescuing her son as

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well as herself and urging her husband to reform; and Caroline, Lucy and Agnes fighting potentially lethal depression of spirit by focusing their minds on objects beyond their personal wishes and longings – all struggle heroically and eventually victoriously against the various manifestations of those dark forces that would lead human beings astray. In addition, they are all, like Helen, admonishers: Jane implores Rochester to place his trust in God; Caroline, gentle and diffident as she is, still manages to correct Shirley, Robert and even her mother; Lucy scolds Ginevra Fanshawe, who cheerfully responds by calling her ‘Timon’; Agnes begs Rosalie to avoid the worst follies of self-indulgence and vanity. Even where they fail, there can be no doubt of the fundamental rightness of their convictions. Disciplinarians of others, they draw authority from their constant awareness of the need to discipline themselves. By virtue of this insistence on self-control, Anne and Charlotte Bronte¨’s fiction sometimes recalls that of Charlotte Yonge. Wuthering Heights has no such moral focus which might have imparted authority to any ethical standpoint associated with the dramatis personae themselves. As generations of Wuthering Heights readers have observed, with varying degrees of irritation and fascination, none of the persons in the novel is entirely likeable: the natural wish to identify and sympathise with a leading character is thwarted at every turn. Attempts to make Nelly Dean the villain of the piece may seem fanciful; but her loyalties are inconstant and her complacency unjustified. Edgar is surely right to upbraid her for delaying the recognition of the severity of Catherine’s illness, and that is only one of her grave mistakes. Convinced of the goodness of her intentions, she shows no sign of ethical development involving recognition of her faults. Nor does anybody else in the book, with the possible and partial exception of young Cathy. Hareton is guided towards his happy ending by nature (decent genes in combination with love), not by principle; and Edgar Linton is a gentleman and a devoted husband and father, but he does not possess enough force of character to provide a moral centre of gravity in a tale which contains such varied and vehement passions. However, Wuthering Heights does have a disciplinarian, too, a person who constantly invokes Scripture, who delights in chastising the erring and whose utterances form a string of exhortations to reform. The very first we hear of Joseph is a characteristically surly ‘The Lord help us!’ as he is commanded to take care of Lockwood’s horse (.i.). Throughout the book the action at Wuthering Heights is punctuated by his prayers, execrations and reproofs, in which the frequent references to the Devil

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and his province are irreconcilable with the idea of genuine piety. Joseph – like Heathcliff, he only has one name – is, as has often been pointed out, a caricature of a Calvinist with his exaggerated notions of Sunday observance, his interminable prayers and his conviction of his own assured salvation. He is given to contrasting his own happy lot with the fates of other inmates of the house which is his life. The skill with which Emily Bronte¨ fashioned this character shows in a number of touches, not least the way in which the self-designated saint adapts to the exigencies of servantship: Joseph’s bullying is always directed against those from whom he has nothing to fear; and a master is a master, however wicked. While one senses that whatever trace of unselfish loyalty the wizened old man possesses belongs to Hareton, the legitimate Earnshaw heir, Joseph is not above trying to set Heathcliff against Hareton by accusing the latter of ingratitude to the former when it suits his purposes (.xix.). Clearly, then, Joseph is not in any sense a fixed point in the book; he has no independent values and convictions beyond that of his own superiority as a saint among sinners. In this sense, he is typical of the ethically indeterminate world of the novel.        ,               Where Charlotte and Anne Bronte¨ agonised over the possibility that the ‘Ghastly . . . doctrines’ of Calvin might be true, Emily thus applied the instrument of satire to her Calvinist. Joseph is not merely a figure of fun; he is too actively and aggressively malignant not to cause a shudder in the midst of amusement at his grotesqueries. The fact that the only character in Wuthering Heights who repeatedly and passionately expresses religious sentiments is a canting rascal is another indication of the special position which this novel holds in the body of the Bronte¨ fiction. The only other personage in the Bronte¨ novels whose mind constantly runs on religion is Joseph’s complete opposite. Even as a young girl in love for the first time, Helen Lawrence/Huntingdon does not forget her faith; she is and remains a devout Christian, and nothing in this world matters so much to her that she will even for a moment jeopardise her hope for salvation to obtain it. Her wish to win that reward for Arthur Huntingdon (to whose faults she is not entirely blind even at the height of her passion for him) is one of the reasons she claims for wishing to marry him despite the difference in their dispositions. Arthur is perspicacious enough to play on those hopes when proposing to her:

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‘My father . . . was something of a miser, and in his latter days especially, saw no pleasure in life but to amass riches; and so it is no wonder that his son should make it his chief delight to spend them, which was accordingly the case, until my acquaintance with you, dear Helen, taught me other views and nobler aims. And the very idea of having you to care for under my roof, would force me to moderate my expenses and live like a Christian – not to speak of all the prudence and virtue you would instil into my mind by your wise counsels and sweet, attractive goodness.’ (xx.; see also xvii.)

It is significant that Helen, who is quick enough to perceive and condemn Huntingdon’s readiness to pose as a religious hypocrite, does not object to this fairly clumsy piece of pandering to her reformist aspirations. In believing that she can save him from his profligate companions and ‘recall him to the path of virtue’, Helen is not only being vain and stupid, as any lovesick teenager may; she forgets a central religious tenet, too. While human agents may well assist a fellow creature’s efforts to live virtuously, the fundamental desire to improve must originate within the person himself/herself, and only God can inspire it. The point is proved by the reformation of Hattersley in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (xlii.–). Here, Helen’s blunt speaking certainly helps; but her admonitions would have been useless had the man himself not begun to tire of dissipation and long to ‘[comport himself . . . ] with all decency and sobriety as a Christian and the father of a family should do’. Helen’s most persuasive, and significantly silent, measure consists in showing him two letters from his wife; his resolution to mend his ways is the direct consequence of the feelings aroused during his perusal of them. The subsequent exchange between Hattersley and Helen is a fine example of Anne Bronte¨’s skill in dialogue. Helen’s typically didactic discourse effectively offsets the bumbling penitent’s awkward sincerity, characteristically touched with profanity: ‘I’ve been a cursed rascal, God knows . . . but you see if I don’t make amends for it – G – d d – n me if I don’t!’ ‘Don’t curse yourself, Mr. Hattersley; if God had heard half your invocations of that kind, you would have been in hell long before now – and you cannot make amends for the past by doing your duty for the future, in as much as your duty is only what you owe to your Maker, and you cannot do more than fulfil it – another must make amends for your past delinquencies. If you intend to reform, invoke God’s blessing, His mercy, and His aid; not His curse.’ ‘God help me, then – for I’m sure I need it.’ (xlii.)

There was never any indication that Arthur Huntingdon was susceptible to Divine influence of any kind. On the contrary, his corrupt and

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corrupting nature was in evidence from the first, and he steadily deteriorates throughout the book. Not only his wife and child flee from him; so do his boon companions, his mistresses and his servants. When his wife returns to nurse him, she has to endure his recriminations, insults and unreasonable demands, and she must submit to being blamed for the drinking bout which brings on his last illness. The Helen who quietly replies to her husband’s scornful remarks is a very different person from the starry-eyed eighteen-year-old she was when they met: ‘Oh! I see,’ said he with a bitter smile, ‘it’s an act of Christian charity, whereby you hope to gain a higher seat in Heaven for yourself, and scoop a deeper pit in hell for me.’ ‘No; I came to offer you that comfort and assistance your situation required; and if I could benefit your soul as well as your body, and awaken some sense of contrition and – ’ ‘Oh, yes; if you could overwhelm me with remorse and confusion of face, now’s the time.’ (xlvii.–)

Tutored by years of misery, Helen knows that she is utterly powerless to save Arthur; the best she can do is to encourage him to repent. Anything further is in the hands of God. In the absence of any sign of last-moment remorse, Helen is obliged to seek comfort in a conviction she held even as a girl. In conversation with her aunt, the young Helen happily seized on a chance to sidetrack from Mrs Maxwell’s highly concrete and pertinent strictures on Huntingdon’s character: ‘And suppose, even, that he should continue to love you, and you him, and that you should pass through life together with tolerable comfort, – how will it be in the end, when you see yourselves parted for ever; you, perhaps, taken into eternal bliss, and he cast into the lake that burneth with unquenchable fire – there for ever to – ’ ‘Not for ever,’ I exclaimed, ‘ ‘‘only till he has paid the uttermost farthing;’’ for ‘‘If any man’s work abide not the fire, he shall suffer loss, yet himself shall be saved, but so as by fire,’’ and He that ‘‘is able to subdue all things to Himself, will have all men to be saved,’’ and ‘‘will in the fulness of time, gather together in one all things in Christ Jesus, who tasted death for every man, and in whom God will reconcile all things to Himself, whether they be things in earth or things in Heaven.’’’ ‘Oh, Helen! where did you learn all this?’ ‘In the bible, aunt. I have searched it through, and found nearly thirty passages, all tending to support the same theory.’ ‘And is that the use you make of your bible? And did you find no passages tending to prove the danger and the falsity of such a belief?’

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‘No: I found indeed some passages that taken by themselves, might seem to contradict that opinion; but they will all bear a different construction to that which is commonly given, and in most the only difficulty is in the word which we translate ‘‘everlasting’’ or ‘‘eternal’’. I don’t know the Greek, but I believe it strictly means for ages, and might signify either endless or long-enduring. And as for the danger of the belief, I would not publish it abroad, if I thought any poor wretch would be likely to presume upon it to his own destruction, but it is a glorious thought to cherish in one’s own heart, and I would not part with it for all the world can give!’ (xx.–)

In all other respects, the physically and emotionally exhausted woman whose girlhood must seem very distant to her has had reason to come round to her aunt’s views; but on this point the new widow retains the teenager’s belief: ‘How could I endure to think that that poor trembling soul was hurried away to everlasting torment? it would drive me mad! But thank God I have hope – not only from a vague dependence on the possibility that penitence and pardon might have reached him at the last, but from the blessed confidence that, through whatever purging fires the erring spirit may be doomed to pass – whatever fate awaits it, still, it is not lost, and God, who hateth nothing that He hath made, will bless it in the end!’ (xlix.)

Anne Bronte¨ gave this belief such explicit and comprehensive treatment that no reader can fail to observe it; but it might be possible to read Jane Eyre without noticing that Helen Burns shares this faith in the essential ‘equality of souls’. Like Helen Huntingdon, Helen Burns realises that her conviction is an unorthodox one and best kept to herself: ‘Surely [the soul] will never . . . be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend? No; I cannot believe that: I hold another creed; which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention; but in which I delight, and to which I cling; for it extends hope to all: it makes Eternity a rest – a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss.’ (.vi.; see also .vi.)

Neither of the two Helens has been taught to believe that God’s pardon will ultimately extend to every one of his creatures. Similarly, Anne’s letter to the Liverpool minister David Thom stressed that the writer had come to embrace this doctrine ‘before [she] knew that any other held it’; ‘I have cherished it from my very childhood.’ When Charlotte Bronte¨ asserted the truth of the doctrine of universal salvation in a letter to Miss Wooler, she also implied that she had come to it without benefit of clergy. This emphasis on the inwardness of the ‘delightful creed’, the outcome of the intense religious preoccupations of mere children, is inter-

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Doctrines

esting in more ways than one. It could, of course, be an implicit defence against potential accusations of being led astray by reprehensibly unorthodox religious writers; after all, the possibility that sinners might not be destined for endless torment had appeared in print even before the nineteenth century. The insistence of Charlotte and Anne Bronte¨ on the emergence of this belief in the untutored child, however, looks more like an attempt to strengthen its intrinsic validity. While they certainly did not share the Rousseau-inspired ideas of the social and moral superiority of the unspoiled child, they knew that ‘whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein’. Scholarly comments on these passages from the novels and letters of the eldest and youngest Bronte¨ sister usually summarise the belief they express as ‘Universalism, or universal salvation’; but it is important to distinguish between different kinds of ‘universality’. An appropriate starting-point for a clarification of the conceptions involved is found in the fundamental opposition between the Calvinist doctrine of election and the notion that Christ suffered for all. (The terms ‘predestination’ and ‘Arminianism’ are sometimes used to denote these conflicting views; but this may result in some confusion, as Arminianism also employs the term ‘predestination’, albeit with different implications.) All members of the Bronte¨ family are on record as disapproving of the Calvinist doctrine of election, according to which God decrees that a limited number of designated human beings shall be saved – none more so than Patrick Bronte¨ himself. If Emily Bronte¨ was content to satirise it in Joseph, Charlotte and Anne rejected it with an intensity that bespeaks some sort of personal involvement. But neither was ever, as far as can be ascertained, even temporarily convinced of the truth of the notion of election. In Anne’s poem ‘A Word to the Calvinists’, the main charge directed against the addressees consists, characteristically, in a denunciation of their pharisaic heartlessness. In other words, the Calvinists are deficient in those very qualites – humility and charity – which Evangelical Christianity places first among Christian virtues. It is a very powerful, one might almost and paradoxically say condemnatory, attack. For early nineteenth-century people with literary interests who contended with the problem of salvation versus reprobation, the despair of William Cowper — especially as rendered in the ‘The Castaway’ – was an obvious focus for thought. The Bronte¨s grew up with ‘The Castaway’ and alluded to it in their writings, the foremost example being Anne’s

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poem ‘To Cowper’. That poem implicitly sums up the reasons for the Bronte¨’s rejection of Calvinist election: Cowper’s ‘gentle soul’ is surely now reposing ‘in the bosom of its God’: ‘It must be so if God is love / And answers fervent prayer’. Anne’s lines point to the main objection against the doctrine of election on the part of those who believed that all men could be saved: the idea of a God who marks a majority of human beings out for damnation from the outset is irreconcilable with belief in a God who is love itself. To those who felt as she did, imputing such a policy to God is an offence against him. One influential writer of conduct books for young people of both sexes put the latter point in vigorous terms, invoking the sad example of Cowper: [‘The Castaway’ constitutes] the most affecting lines that ever flowed from the pen of genius; and it pleads more strongly than a thousand arguments against permitting such unworthy ideas of the Almighty to enter into our minds. May the example of Cowper’s despair not plead in vain! then we shall cease to lament the years which the amiable, but, in this point, bewildered sufferer spent in agonizing woe; the innocence of his life, and the amiable tenor of his writings, seem to justify the resplendent vision of hope which depictures him awakening from his long night of wretchedness, at the rapturous sound of ‘Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!’

Jane West shares Anne Bronte¨’s warm personal affection for Cowper, both illustrating the link between compassion for a sufferer and trust in a merciful God. West’s book also contains a typical instance of the view that salvation is possible for everybody: [O]ur articles [of the Church of England] uniformly assert the universal possibility of salvation; which is directly contrary to Calvin’s declaration, that much the greater part of the human race are absolutely and unconditionally excluded from mercy. The st article affirms, ‘That the death of Christ is a perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual;’ which implies, not only that all Christians are offered eternal salvation; but that the heathen world are delivered from the imputation of the original guilt of Adam . . . provided they frame their lives according to the imperfect knowledge which they possess. . . . You well know, universal redemption does not mean that all men will, but that all men may, be saved.

The concluding sentence draws the line of demarcation between the conviction (held among Wesleyan Methodists as well as by members of the Church of England) that salvation may be won by all on the one hand and the ‘hope long nursed by’ Anne Bronte¨ that ‘even the wicked shall at last / Be fitted for the skies’ on the other. These two concep-

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tions are sometimes referred to under the name of ‘Universalism’; here, that term is reserved for the latter. Both these beliefs were represented in the Bronte¨ family. Despite sulphurous references in some of his sermons, Patrick Bronte¨ manifestly believed that Christ’s Atonement had opened the door of salvation to everybody. The mere existence of an open door, however, was not enough – redemption does not extend to him who shows no interest in going through it. Here, Charlotte and Anne clearly had other views, believing that even the vilest sinner will eventually, by God’s grace, be purified and made fit for Heaven. Even among those who thought that all men could (as opposed to would) be saved, there were differences in degree and emphasis. William Morgan, for instance, was apparently convinced of the genuine possibility of salvation, but he insisted on what might be called ‘the full treatment’ – repentance, belief in Christ and virtuous living. At the other extreme, but still on the ‘orthodox’ side of the fence in relation to Universalism, were Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, John McLeod Campbell and F. D. Maurice. While these three friends did not hold identical views, the line of thought with which they may all be linked amounted to a belief that the Atonement of Christ entailed pardon to everybody. God’s love for mankind, manifested in his Son’s sacrifice, has already lifted the burden of sin – all that human beings have to do is to realise it. Insisting on the mere consciousness of being forgiven through the love of a merciful God and the vicarious suffering of a sinless representative sounds like a fairly mild requirement, but it was a requirement nevertheless. In the early s, both Campbell and Maurice could be held to have moved so close to the Universalist position as to be identified with it; but at that point they were no longer in a position to influence the Bronte¨s. Whatever the true positions of Campbell and Maurice were on this issue, their critics did not scruple to aver that they entirely disregarded all human obligations towards God, and both were stripped of posts as a result. After a much-publicised trial in , John McLeod Campbell had to leave his Scots parish (this was the so-called ‘Row controversy’); and twenty-two years later F. D. Maurice was dismissed from his professorship at King’s College in London. The ostensible reason – political considerations have also been said to have played a part – was that Maurice’s Theological Essays contained ‘certain points of belief regarding the future punishment of the wicked and the final issues of the day of judgment’ that were ‘of dangerous tendency, and calculated to unsettle the minds of the theological students of King’s College’.

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Maurice’s essay ‘On Eternal Life and Eternal Death’ appeared too late to be of any significance to the writings of the Bronte¨ sisters, only one of whom was alive at this point (). It addressed issues, however, which had been debated for years, giving plenty of scope to the very word ai0 x! mio| which the girl Helen knew to be central to a discussion of the exact significance of the word ‘eternal’ in the New Testament. In the essay, Maurice writes with disapproval about ‘a vague Universalism being preached from some pulpits in America and on the Continent’, and he refers to the propagation of such notions in Britain too. What both Helen Burns and Helen Huntingdon are saying is that a merciful God will not place any creature of his beyond eternal bliss. It is a bold doctrine, very much a minority view in its time; but it was far from being an unprecedented one. There is no reason to doubt that Anne Bronte¨ held it before she knew that anybody else did, and the same thing may well be true of Charlotte; but it is inconceivable that that knowledge should not have preceded the writing of Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. In a very special sense, the treatment of the issue of salvation in these two books is associated with the commitment to spiritual liberty that is so characteristic of the Bronte¨s. It comes as no surprise to find their books resisting the imposition of any doctrine on an unwilling subject. But in resisting the notion of endless punishment for those who die unrepentant, they awarded the Divine will a licence to conquer evil and bestow mercy, a licence which was not restricted by the event of death. On this point, they anticipated Maurice: I ask no one to pronounce, for I dare not pronounce myself, what are the possibilities of resistance in a human will to the loving will of God. There are times when they seem to me – thinking of myself more than of others – almost infinite. But I know that there is something which must be infinite. I am obliged to believe in an abyss of love which is deeper than the abyss of death: I dare not lose faith in that love. I sink into death, eternal death, if I do. I must feel that this love is compassing the universe. More about it I cannot know. But God knows. I leave myself and all to Him.

To argue that sinners suffer everlasting torment is hence to deny God the freedom to save in ways that the human mind cannot fathom. The Bronte¨s were not prepared to withhold that freedom from the power in which they saw the beginning and end of all love.

 

This life and the next

The works, in poetry and fiction, of all three Bronte¨ sisters reflect the conviction that the passion of love is never simply bounded by the span of human life on earth. That passion, variously conceived, lies at the heart of the Bronte¨ novels and resists whatever forces are marshalled against it. Such forces are without exception evil, whether they manifest themselves in the selfish desires of the proud, weak or misguided or in the machinations of the envious and the actively malevolent. Similarly, the power of love is informed and sustained by a goodness whose strength may well be called supra-human. The operations of coincidence may fit into providential patterns, as Thomas Vargish has shown in respect of Jane Eyre. Even in Wuthering Heights, hatred ultimately has to yield to love. But if love draws its power from beyond earthly existence in all the Bronte¨ novels, certain distinctions emerge when the nature of that beyond is placed under scrutiny. The death of the body is never viewed as the end of a person’s life; but the conceptions of an afterlife vary considerably, and the three authors explore them from different standpoints.

           Despite the doctrinal audacity of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, that novel is in one sense closer than any other of the Bronte¨ novels to the view of the last things that prevailed among Evangelical clergy and believers in its day. From beginning to end, the main priority of Helen Lawrence/ Huntingdon is the salvation of her soul, and in due course her son’s. Death, even his, would be infinitely preferable to imperilling the hope of everlasting glory. Once bitter experience has taught her not to clothe her own wishes in would-be religious garb, she resists every temptation to infringe Divine laws with a passion bordering on ferocity. Her 

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unwavering commitment to the prospect of ultimate bliss is matched by her dying husband’s terror of death and of what may come after. Just before the end, his fears are too acute to be articulated; it is only while he still has hope of recovery that he is able to speak of the torments of the damned: ‘The other night while I was waiting on him, and just as I had brought him a draught to assuage his burning thirst – he observed, with a return of his former sarcastic bitterness, – ‘ ‘‘Yes, you’re mighty attentive now! – I suppose there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for me now?’’ ‘ ‘‘You know,’’ said I, a little surprised at his manner, ‘‘that I am willing to do anything I can to relieve you.’’ ‘ ‘‘Yes, now, my immaculate angel; but when once you have secured your reward, and find yourself safe in Heaven, and me howling in hell-fire, catch you lifting a finger to serve me then! – No, you’ll look complacently on, and not so much as dip the tip of your finger in water to cool my tongue!’’ ‘ ‘‘If so, it will be because of the great gulf over which I cannot pass; and if I could look complacently on in such a case, it would be only from the assurance that you were being purified from your sins, and fitted to enjoy the happiness I felt. – But are you determined, Arthur, that I shall not meet you in Heaven?’’ ‘ ‘‘Humph! What should I do there, I should like to know?’’ ‘ ‘‘Indeed, I cannot tell; and I fear it is too certain that your tastes and feelings must be widely altered before you can have any enjoyment there. But do you prefer sinking, without an effort, into the state of torment you picture to yourself?’’ ‘ ‘‘Oh, it’s all a fable,’’ said he, contemptuously. ‘ ‘‘Are you sure, Arthur? are you quite sure? Because if there is any doubt, and if you should find yourself mistaken after all, when it is too late to turn – ’’ ‘ ‘‘It would be rather awkward, to be sure,’’ said he; ‘‘but don’t bother me now – I’m not going to die yet.’’ ’ (xlix.)

This is a remarkable passage for several reasons. For one thing, Helen’s sober replies contain a reference to the highly unorthodox idea that the sufferings of the wicked after death could constitute a period of purgation rather than the eternal punishment which all Church authorities spoke of as certain. She quickly moves on from her slip, though, and the sick man does not appear to notice it. Secondly, the spouses’ references to Luke  bring peculiarly disturbing implications into Anne Bronte¨’s text. Verses – tell the story of the rich man (Dives) and the beggar Lazarus. Having denied the poor man at his gate any substantial succour, the rich man goes to Hell after death, in which state he sees

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Lazarus in bliss (‘in Abraham’s bosom’). Dives’ plea to Abraham to send Lazarus with the equivalent of crumbs from his table – Lazarus’ finger dipped in water, to ‘cool [his] tongue’ – is denied. The blessed and the damned can see and speak to one another but not enter the opposite domain; ‘there is a great gulf fixed’ between them. Finally, the tormented man’s considerate petition to let Lazarus return to Dives’ father’s house to warn the latter’s still living brothers is also rejected: ‘If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead’ (verse ). The tale of Dives and Lazarus is one of the best-known stories in the New Testament. It is not surprising to find that even Arthur Huntingdon (who is, after all, better read in Scripture than one might have expected) is sufficiently familiar with it to be able to quote from it. What makes its occurrence in this scene especially striking is its linkage with the idea that souls in bliss are entirely indifferent to the sufferings of the damned even when in full view of them. In the eschatological debate of many centuries, Luke  is a locus classicus, particularly whenever the relations of the saved to the inmates of Hell are concerned. As one of the chroniclers of that debate, D. P. Walker, has observed, ‘since Dives could see Lazarus, there is every reason to suppose that Lazarus could see Dives’. To anyone who accepts every act of God as justified (as the blessed must), the act of condemnation and its consequences must be laudable, too. Hence, the inhabitants of Heaven would be misguided in pitying the damned; in fact, the plight of these wretches should add to their own glory in their celestial state. As Walker points out, this was the view taken by St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. While the notion faded out during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was still sufficiently ‘live’ for Thomas Burnet to refer ironically to it in  and for the Victorian universalist F. W. Farrar to mention it in a sermon. Farrar, a disciple of F. D. Maurice, affixed the designation ‘the abominable fancy’ to the idea that part of the happiness in Heaven consists in contemplating the torments of the damned. When Arthur Huntingdon anticipates Helen’s lack of pity for him, ‘howling in hell-fire’, he is thus not accusing her personally of callousness (though he does that on other occasions) but evoking the age-old, if at that time obsolete, belief that the smoke of Hell is as incense in the nostrils of the hosts of Heaven, to whom it is a manifestation of God’s righteousness. Perhaps the most upsetting aspect of the Huntingdons’ exchange is the fact that Helen does not expressly repudiate the suggestion that she could ‘look complacently on’, suffering no diminution of her ‘happi-

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ness’, in such a situation. It would have been easy for her to deny this imputation, but that would not have served her purpose, which is to persuade her husband to repent. She is not interested in, and will not waste a moment on, defending herself: her sole interest is in saving him, and the likelihood that she will fail draws those earthly tears from her that she accepts she would not shed in Heaven. However keenly one sympathises with Helen – not least in the realisation that her own great sufferings have taught her to chastise her vanity and keep her mind focused on essentials – it is impossible not to feel that there is something inhuman about her purposefulness here. If Huntingdon had been in extremis at this point, instead of in a truculent and irreverent mood, Helen’s epistolary account of this scene would have been somewhat difficult for an admirer of hers to stomach. The hopeful prospect which Helen allows to surface for a moment before urging the dying man to aim for Heaven is that of a purgatorial state. As Michael Wheeler has shown, the Reformatists’ renunciation of purgatory has created problems for Protestant theologians through the centuries. In view of the venality associated with the functions of purgatory at the time of the Reformation, dispensing with it entirely must have seemed an attractive course; but at the same time Protestantism jettisoned a dimension of hope and mercy the lack of which would subsequently be regretted by many of its exponents. Anne Bronte¨ was acutely aware of that lack and did not hesitate to design an intermediate stage of her own. It was a daring step in view of the constant and virulent attacks of nineteenth-century Anglicans on Roman Catholic doctrines, of which purgatory was one; its boldness is underlined by the use of ‘purified’ and ‘purging’ as operative concepts. Writers on Heaven and Hell often point out that representations of the latter tend to be more concrete and detailed than accounts and pictures of Heaven. Despite the emphasis on the last things in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, however, the intensity of hopes and fears for the afterlife is not matched by graphic description of either destination. The only attributes associated with Hell in the book are the customary ones of hell-fire and the bottomless pit / awful chasm and darkness, and we do not learn much of the nature of that blessed state so ardently desired by the heroine either. Nevertheless, the most extensive account of life beyond death in the novel deals with Heaven; interestingly enough, the passage constitutes something of an apologia for it. Faced with Gilbert Markham’s reluctance to envisage a future state where there is no place for his and Helen’s special love for each other, Helen is obliged to set a

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corrective vision against his lament for the loss of individual devotion. What she resorts to in this predicament is not, significantly, rapt description of that bliss which has always been her chief aim. Instead, she tries to make him see that no conception that either of them may have of Heaven can capture its true nature: ‘I do know that to regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of Heaven, is as if the grovelling caterpillar should lament that it must one day quit the nibbled leaf to soar aloft and flutter through the air, roving at will from flower to flower, sipping sweet honey from their cups or basking in their sunny petals. If these little creatures knew how great a change awaited them, no doubt they would regret it; but would not all such sorrow be misplaced?’ (xlv.)

Subsequently putting the same case to Gilbert in suggesting that they ‘are children now’ and feel and understand as children (obviously, as commentators have pointed out, drawing on  Cor. :), Helen tries to persuade Gilbert to adopt her own trust in God. Recognising that she is calling on him to join her in an act of faith, he pledges his assent – probably, irrepressibly human as he is, as greatly influenced by the condition she sets up (‘If you cannot, never write to me!’) as by her argument. In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, then, the quest for salvation is paramount. The fact that the nature of this goal is unfathomable does not detract from its importance. In that sense it is, for all its incomprehensibility, real to Helen – a reality which does not rely on the representations of human hope and imagination, but on the urgency of the impulse to believe. Like F. D. Maurice, Helen Huntingdon leaves herself and all to God: she need not know; it suffices that he does. The correspondence between Helen’s universalist belief and the contention articulated in Anne Bronte¨’s poetry that ‘as in Adam all have died / In Christ shall all men live’ has often been noted. But Helen differs from the woman who created her in many ways, the most important of which has nothing to do with wealth, beauty or social status: Helen possesses that unerring trust in God which Anne Bronte¨ struggled so hard to secure and retain. Anne’s poems speak of recurrent attempts to shore up faltering faith, and even when she celebrates happy moments of religious conviction, calm assurance of permanence is absent. The guidance of the ‘Spirit of Faith’ is an ambition, not a realised achievement. Anne Bronte¨ would not, however, have been the fine artist she was if she had simply projected her own keenest desire onto her heroine. Helen’s faith is subjected to powerful and dangerous

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attacks as she lives through the consequences of the cocksure teenager’s fateful decision, and the woman’s spiritual self is very different from the girl’s. Even so, Helen Huntingdon is a religious woman first and foremost, and no earthly love is ever allowed to come between her and Heaven. No other Bronte¨ heroine lives so steadfastly with her eyes on the afterlife as she. Agnes Grey is certainly anxious about the effects on her soul of living in homes without goodness and generosity of spirit; but by and large her tribulations are of a worldly nature – including the pangs of jealousy and, as she thinks, unrequited love. The two Catherines in Wuthering Heights have no thoughts to spare for the hereafter, though the afterlife of the elder is a vital issue in the book. While Charlotte Bronte¨’s heroines cannot live without God or love well against his laws, their stories are those of women engaged in earthly struggles – sometimes even struggles for mere survival. They strive to act wisely, justly and honourably, but their sights are not set on the life everlasting: the only Charlotte Bronte¨ personage of whom that may be said is St John Rivers.

    Not even to Helen Burns in Jane Eyre, quietly renouncing the earthly existence which holds so few attractions for her, is the afterlife a clearly conceived and actively desired state of bliss. She trusts that the God she loves also loves her and will take care of her, and for the dying child that is enough. All she says about Heaven is that she shall see him there and it is a ‘region of happiness’. Helen avoids answering Jane’s question ‘shall I see you again . . . when I die?’, contenting herself with reassuring the younger girl that she will come to the same place and be received ‘by the same mighty, universal Parent’. The question of whether the joys of Heaven include meeting and associating with loved ones was one that engaged several writers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and to the Victorians that prospect had come to seem so likely as to be virtually certain. Helen Huntingdon, as we saw, is sure that she and Gilbert will meet in Heaven, though not as ‘exclusive’ lovers. Helen Burns, however, does not speculate at all. Unlike Florence Dombey, another neglected daughter, she never cherishes daydreams of a spiritual sphere whose inhabitants would make up for the lack of family affection from which she suffers: Helen has centred all her expectations of a father’s love in God.

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This scene follows closely on the moment when the child Jane Eyre becomes aware of the last things as a set of notions that are relevant to her personally. Having enjoyed a day of liberty in the wood with her bright and easy-going companion Mary Ann (a liberty brought about by the typhoid epidemic, which circumstance does not prevent Jane from relishing it), she reflects on the pleasantness of the world and on the undesirability of dying from it: And then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what had been infused into it concerning heaven and hell: and for the first time it recoiled, baffled; and for the first time, glancing behind, on each side, and before it, it saw all round an unfathomed gulf: it felt the one point where it stood – the present; all the rest was formless cloud and vacant depth; and it shuddered at the thought of tottering, and plunging amid that chaos. (.ix.)

Once these ideas have entered into Jane’s active mind, the child who famously told her catechiser that the way to avoid going to Hell was to ‘keep in good health, and not die’ (.iv.) has grasped the finiteness of life on earth. Her new-found insight allows her to interpret an overheard conversation correctly and realise that Helen Burns will shortly be ‘taken to the region of spirits, if such region there were’. That insight prompts her to defy the nurse’s prohibition, find Helen and share her last hours. Born of a moment’s childish exultation over the joys and comforts of this world, it thus leads to the most decisive lesson in Jane Eyre’s religious education. The fact that Charlotte Bronte¨ accomplished the entire transition in four pages testifies to the tautness and concentration which (in my view) make Jane Eyre her masterpiece. A corresponding absence of prolixity is found in the inscription on Helen’s tombstone: instead of the pious verses and laudatory epithets which past ages bestowed on their dead, Helen’s marble tablet bears the one word ‘Resurgam’. The laconic tribute to this child of few words, in the language she had learnt from her father while he still took an interest in her, says it all: the Helen who rises again is the true Helen. Nobody but Jane can have put the tablet on the grave of Helen Burns, neglected by her kin in death as she was in life. The inscription must have been Jane’s choice, too. Herself constantly enjoying ‘domestic endearments and household joys’, ‘[t]he best things the world has’ (.viii.), Jane Rochester did not forget the essence of what Helen taught her, nor the essence of her friend’s being. To Helen Burns, then, Heaven exists, as the state of happiness which awaits after the hardships of this life and as the loving home which earth could not offer. By contrast, in Jane Eyre the first of the four allusions to

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Hell that go beyond a passing reference is articulated by a man whose interest in the afterlife has never been great, and was never less than in that moment. ‘Hardily and recklessly’, according to Jane, Rochester prefaces his explanations of his bigamous project by the following self-characterisation: ‘I am little better than a devil at this moment; and, as my pastor there would tell me, deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God, – even to the quenchless fire and deathless worm’ (.xi.). There is not a hint of remorse in that speech. The sardonic invocation of Isaiah  (and Mark ), forestalling the clergyman’s expected reproaches, is a mere flaunting of Scriptural knowledge suggesting that the speaker dismisses Hell’s attributes and hence its very existence as superstitious nonsense. Coming after his utterances to Messrs Briggs and Mason in the church (‘go to hell’, ‘[t]he devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly’), the thwarted Rochester’s blasphemy is not surprising. It is part of a fit of icy anger that has room for nothing else, not even pity and concern for Jane. His discourtesy to the clergyman, whose solemn injunction to admit any impediment to the marriage ‘as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment’ he has already flouted and whose temple he desecrated with profanities, is doubly offensive in that this was the man whom Rochester had intended to implement his reprehensible design for him. The allusion to Isaiah  underlines the gravity of Rochester’s misconduct: according to the prophet, those who will experience the eternal ‘worm’ and ‘fire’ are ‘the men that have transgressed against’ God. Rochester knows that his scheme amounted to such transgression, and yet there is no sign of the ‘contrite spirit’ that God requires, according to Isaiah :. Not unexpectedly, the clergyman could not leave Thornfield Hall without addressing ‘a few sentences, either of admonition or reproof’, to ‘his haughty parishioner’. Rochester’s self-diagnosis, ‘I am little better than a devil at this moment’, does not seem greatly exaggerated. The second noteworthy reference to Hell shows that Rochester never believed in everlasting torment. Telling Jane of his one-time plan to break free from his infernal marriage by killing himself, he describes how he rejected ‘the fanatic’s burning eternity’ and thought that death – a suicide’s death, chosen as a way out of a living hell that was at least partly, if unintentionally, of his own making – would bring him ‘home to God’ (.i.). It is a startlingly unorthodox view and documents the distance between Rochester, even as a young man, and Divine law. No wonder Jane’s terse admonition, a few pages later, to ‘Believe in heaven. Hope to meet again there’ carries a note of resignation.

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The last substantial invocation of Hell in Jane Eyre occurs in the course of St John Rivers’ endeavour to persuade Jane to join his mission as his wife. Reading to his sisters and their cousin, the young clergyman chooses Revelation  and dwells with particular emphasis on the eighth verse: ‘But . . . the fearful, the unbelieving, &c., shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death’ (.ix.). This is little better than an attempt at spiritual blackmail, uttered by someone who sincerely believes in eternal perdition and who has no inhibitions about using it to bend a reluctant fellow-creature to his will, which he is certain reflects the will of God. Jane’s brief reaction, ‘Henceforward, I knew what fate St. John feared for me’, contains no hint of horror either at the implications of St John’s threat or at his making it; nor is there any suggestion that her subsequent agonising over her decision is in any way influenced by the fear of Hell he has tried to arouse in her. As always, Jane turns for guidance to those deeper instincts which, developed by study, reflection and experience, she regards as the core of her God-created self, and they embody nothing but reliance on her Creator. To Helen Burns’ disciple, fire and brimstone are ineffectual arguments. In other words, one of the two men who attempt to break Jane’s integrity represents himself as an inmate of Hell and the other as one authorised to threaten her with it. Neither appears in a particularly attractive light when alluding to everlasting fire, but St John has mostly been regarded as a far more righteous man. Superficially at least, he certainly comes across as a fair Apollonian counterpart to Rochester’s Vulcanic villainy. Whereas the latter voices his open disdain for Christianity’s teachings concerning the afterlife, those teachings – and his interpretations of them – form the centre of St John’s whole existence. What he calls his vocation constitutes, as he tells Jane, his ‘hope of heaven’, which he would not dream of exchanging for ‘the fear of hell’ by relinquishing his plan to become a missionary (.vi.). In his last letter to Jane, he ‘[anticipates] his sure reward, his incorruptible crown’ (.xii.); but he never describes his conception of Heaven. All his ambition – and he is the most single-mindedly ambitious person in the Bronte¨ novels – is geared towards winning the good fight and entering Heaven a hero. Enjoying eternal bliss seems less important than achieving victory, and being rewarded by Jesus Christ more desirable than being near him.

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       At a first glance, the following exhortations from the beginning of chapter xxxviii in Villette may look similar to St John’s idea of gaining admission to Heaven in their references to banners, good soldiers and ‘more than conquerors’: Proof of a life to come must be given. In fire and in blood, if needful, must that proof be written. In fire and in blood do we trace the record throughout nature. In fire and in blood does it cross our own experience. Sufferer, faint not through terror of this burning evidence. Tired wayfarer, gird up thy loins, look upward, march onward. Pilgrims and brother mourners, join in friendly company. Dark through the wilderness of this world stretches the way for most of us: equal and steady be our tread; be our cross our banner. For staff we have His promise, whose ‘word is tried, whose way perfect:’ for present hope His providence, ‘who gives the shield of salvation, whose gentleness makes great;’ for final home His bosom, who ‘dwells in the height of Heaven;’ for crowning prize a glory, exceeding and eternal. Let us so run that we may obtain; let us endure hardness as good soldiers; let us finish our course, and keep the faith, reliant in the issue to come off more than conquerors: ‘Art thou not from everlasting mine Holy One?          !’ (xxxviii.)

Two factors prevent this paragraph from being a true parallel to St John’s campaign, however. First, while the quoted Biblical passages speak of good fights and prizes, none of them fails to emphasise that it is God alone who saves and succours. For instance, the ‘more than conquerors’ phrase comes from Romans :–, where the context leaves little scope for human triumphalism: As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

Second, the opening of chapter xxxviii in Villette forms a contrast to the happy union of Paulina and Graham which concludes the preceding chapter. The very first lines of chapter xxxviii aver that such happiness is not everybody’s lot. Throughout Villette, Lucy Snowe repeatedly expresses her conviction that it is part of God’s great plan ‘that some must deeply suffer while they live’, ‘[thrilling] in the certainty that of this number, [she] was one’ (xv.). On another of the occasions when she strives to marshal her spiritual strength, she says: I see that a great many men, and more women, hold their span of life on conditions of denial and privation. I find no reason why I should be of the few

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favoured. I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep. (xxxi.)

In other words, Lucy’s fighting-talk in chapter xxxviii is not so much a summons to glorious battle as an admonition to endure, directed not only to herself but also to a multitude of other sufferers – ‘brother mourners’ – who share her misery. It is very far removed from St John’s solitary heroism. Her exhortations to herself are paralleled in spirit by Thomas a` Kempis’ insistence in The Imitation of Christ that ‘[i]f thou canst hold thy peace and suffer, without doubt thou shalt see the salvation of the Lord’, and that anyone who suffers for Christ and bears his cross willingly will find that it bears him. Lucy Snowe does not steadily keep her gaze on Heaven like Helen Huntingdon, nor does she quietly await liberation in death like Helen Burns. The things of this world concern her intensely, as they do Jane Eyre, another ‘secular pilgrim’, to borrow Barry Qualls’s expression. To that extent, Qualls is surely right in speaking of a ‘this-worldly ethic’ in Charlotte Bronte¨’s fiction. And yet it is the belief in life beyond death that prevents these two passionate women from yielding to and sinking under despair. An attempt to recast Jane Eyre and Villette as tales in which the death of a person’s body is the end of him or her would entail far-reaching changes in both books. A similar undertaking in respect of Wuthering Heights would result in a story possessing only vague affinities with Emily Bronte¨’s novel.

  As numerous Wuthering Heights critics have affirmed, no character in the novel provides a moral anchor for the tale. They are all illustrations of Nelly Dean’s contention that ‘we must be for ourselves in the long run; the mild and generous are only more justly selfish than the domineering’ (.x.). That does not mean that they are all wholly, let alone equally, hateful, though: if none of them gains the reader’s wholehearted sympathy, nor is anyone the object of antipathy throughout. Even the two monstrous ‘lovers’ stir the occasional feeling of compassion in the two narrators, neither of whom has any cause to harbour tender feelings for them, and in generations of readers. A novel, however, may possess an ethical centre of gravity without requiring reliance on a narrator’s perspective or a chief character, and it seems to me that Wuthering Heights

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does have such a centre; later, after a review of the elements in the novel that make up its powerful streak of other-worldliness, I will return to that question. Catherine Earnshaw marries Edgar Linton, thereby gaining possession of the delights of Thrushcross Grange which she can expect to enjoy in the pleasant atmosphere of uncritical adoration from its (conveniently decimated, in that her fever killed off the elder Lintons) inhabitants. She takes this step without realising that it entails separation from the man she never believed anything could separate her from. Having thus unwittingly brought ‘the fate of Milo’ on herself, she cannot survive. As a number of scholars have observed, Catherine’s death is the pivotal event of the novel. She embraces it as a strategy when the end approaches – first childishly as a way of making Edgar sorry, then desperately as an escape from the intolerable situation she has placed herself in. Catherine’s demise, however, is no resolution: in her end is her beginning. Told of her severe illness, Heathcliff, recently married to Isabella, anticipates his own subsequent condition: ‘Two words would comprehend my future, death and hell – existence, after losing her, would be hell’ (I.xiv.). The latter state is not exactly a novelty. For years, Heathcliff has surrounded himself with his own private hell; Catherine’s death will only intensify that condition by removing the chance of sometimes seeing her – the chance for which, along with the means of avenging himself on Hindley, he has surrendered whatever spiritual freedom he might have had to those dark powers to whose sphere he seemed to belong even as a child. Heathcliff’s loss of one his objectives so soon is a misfortune typical of the disappointments suffered by many Teufelspakt protagonists: the Devil is infamous for cheating those who have struck deals with him. In the words of Daniel Defoe, when he has ‘stock-jobb’d with us on the best Conditions he can get, he very seldom performs his Bargain’. The contention that Heathcliff is one of the Devil’s party and even, in adulthood, his bondsman may seem difficult to accept at first. The sheer weight of infernal imagery and devilry in general in Wuthering Heights supports it, though, and so does the prevalence of satanic figures in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Gothic fiction to which the novel is so obviously indebted. One example of this kind of writing, known to the Bronte¨s since childhood, is James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs & Confessions of a Justified Sinner. The infernal ancestry of Wuthering Heights goes further back than that, however: the seventeenth

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and eighteenth centuries brought forth a plethora of books on sorcery, witchcraft, black magic and various representations of the powers of darkness, and these phenomena played prominent roles in the imaginative writing of these periods, too. Among instances known to the Bronte¨s, Defoe stands out; the Devil is, as Rodney M. Baine has stressed, ‘a very real and potent force’ in Robinson Crusoe as well as in Captain Singleton and Moll Flanders. Another, and perhaps the most powerful, vehicle of infernal lore was, of course, Paradise Lost; the resemblance of Heathcliff to Milton’s Satan has often been remarked on, particularly succinctly and illuminatingly by Jacques Blondel: ‘Aussi n’est-ce qu’en de´truisant, comme le Satan de Milton, qu’il trouve le repos.’ The early nineteenth century retained a lively interest in devilry and sorcery, as is shown by the frequent occurrence of such topics in periodicals and by the degree of (mostly favourable) attention elicited by Sir Walter Scott’s Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft of . Before anything more is said about the last things in Wuthering Heights, three points should be made. First, Emily Bronte¨ was not taking a stand in the theological debate so much as joining predecessors and contemporaries such as Scott, Goethe, Byron, E. T. A. Hoffmann, George Sand and Dickens in exploring certain dimensions of the human predicament assisted by various conceptions of the forces of evil. In view of the prevalence and variety of such features in early nineteenth-century literature, it does not seem imperative to extract an eschatological rationale from Wuthering Heights, still less a personal attitude on the part of its creator. If the identity of the author of Wuthering Heights had been unknown, or at least not known to have been the spinster daughter of a poor Yorkshire clergyman, there would have been less talk about the ‘apostasy’ and ‘heresies’ expressed in it. We have no more, and no less, reason to ask ourselves whether Emily Bronte¨ believed in the Devil than whether her fellow-artists Goethe and Byron did, or for that matter George Eliot in creating the character of Grandcourt in Daniel Deronda. Another factor that should be borne in mind while examining the spiritual world of Wuthering Heights is that the nineteenth century witnessed a new latitude in religious enquiry which drew inspiration from the perspectives on creation and Creator that had been opened up by Wordsworth and Coleridge in England and fed by Continental, particularly German, theological philosophy. Related to the wealth of writing, some in fictional form, on matters of faith in the early and mid nineteenth century, the Bronte¨ novels are typical of their time both with regard to the nature and range of their subject matter and the explora-

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tory ways in which it is handled. Much has been said, and said well, about the ‘open-endedness’ and ‘indeterminacy’ of Wuthering Heights; but it should be remembered that these qualities were not unusual in the belles lettres of its time. The pluralities of Wuthering Heights are part of what makes the book unique, but they are not the sole or even the chief reason for its singularity. Finally, the radical shifts of vision that took place in the Romantic period should not blind us to the fact that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that produced a substantial quantity of Bronte¨ reading matter were by no means intellectually or spiritually narrow. In many ways, both Isaac Watts and Daniel Defoe, to mention just two examples, come across as wide-ranging and intrepid thinkers. With regard to the world of spirits, for instance, Defoe affirmed that ‘[t]he Notions we receive of the Devil, as a Person being in Hell as a Place, are infinitely absurd and ridiculous’, and the ‘merry story of the Cloven-Foot’ is just another foolish fiction. To Defoe, the Devil has ‘a mystical Empire in this World’, an empire he runs by means of influencing dreams and thoughts, appearing in borrowed shapes and taking possession of living people. His realm is perpetuated by his ‘legions’ of ‘Imps’ – two items in the infernal vocabulary of Wuthering Heights. Returning to the novel, it is impossible not to be struck by the prevalence and variety of hellish discourse in it. As many Wuthering Heights readers have noted, Heathcliff is constantly being referred to as a devil, demon, goblin, Satan, imp and fiend, and his own conversation is redolent of sulphur. He repeatedly speaks of being in hell, and he is sure the dying Catherine is in hell among the people at the Grange, with their ‘duty’, ‘humanity’, ‘charity’ and ‘pity’ (.xiv.). These words, which Heathcliff spits out as insults, neatly summarise the Christian virtues which he himself so conspicuously lacks: he was anything but dutiful to the one person who had a moral right to expect such conduct, his benefactor old Mr Earnshaw; his lack of humanity shows in his violent and even vivisectionist tastes; charity he has none, even to Catherine; and he is equally devoid of compassion, even boasting about it: ‘‘‘I have no pity! I have no pity! The worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething, and I grind with greater energy, in proportion to the increase of pain’’’ (.xiv.). On his own admission, he is what Isabella calls him, a monster; Charlotte Bronte¨ memorably compared him to ‘a Ghoul – an Afreet’. Such a creature cannot be expected to take any interest in Heaven, and Heathcliff expressly rejects it. As he feels his earthly strength

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deserting him, he gives Nelly directions for his funeral: ‘ ‘‘No minister need come; nor need anything be said over me – I tell you, I have nearly attained my heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me!’’ ’ (.xx.). He is not alone in wanting no part of the kind of afterlife so intensely desired by other Bronte¨ characters. To Heathcliff, heaven is being with Catherine, his sole deity, and Catherine has ideas of her own about where she wishes – and does not wish – to spend eternity: ‘If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.’ ‘Because you are not fit to go there,’ I answered. ‘All sinners would be miserable in heaven.’ ‘But it is not for that. I dreamt, once, that I was there.’ ... ‘I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.’ (.ix.)

It is a strange vision – a girl’s dream, certainly, but told by Catherine as an illustration of her fundamental knowledge of where and to whom she belongs: ‘I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven.’ In her last moments, she again speaks of an afterlife: ‘I’m tired, tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there; not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it, and in it. Nelly, you think you are better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength – you are sorry for me – very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for you. I shall be incomparably beyond and above you all.’ (.i.)

The ‘glorious world’ into which Catherine has long yearned to escape is that of her childhood, her old chamber at Wuthering Heights and the moors – ‘I’m sure I should be myself were I once more among the heather on those hills.’ When Nelly refuses to open the window, explaining ‘I won’t give you your death of cold’, Catherine replies, ‘You won’t give me a chance of life, you mean’ (.xii.). That childhood which looks like paradise to the dying Catherine had ended with her father’s death. Fresh from the blow, and not yet aware that the loss was to result in their subjection to Hindley’s tyrannous rule, Catherine and Heathcliff tried to console themselves in a manner that could have been taken from the pages of a manual for Christian children: The little souls were comforting each other with better thoughts than I could have hit on; no parson in the world ever pictured Heaven so beautifully as they

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did, in their innocent talk; and, while I sobbed, and listened, I could not help wishing we were all there safe together. (.v.)

This closing vignette is the sole instance of warm and shared Christian worship in Wuthering Heights – shared by two at that moment almost angelic children who would go on to develop demonic personalities.More than an illustration of Nelly Dean’s ‘conventional piety’, it is an indication that this singular childhood alliance did hold the seed of genuine happiness for the two who would be separated by outward cruelty as well as by their own folly and evil propensities. Although Catherine has forgotten those celestial visions of long ago when she is at death’s door, she knows that if she ever came near to heaven in her life, it was during her early childhood. To that ‘vert paradis des amours enfantins’ she is longing to return. Here, it seems to me, the representation of childhood in Wuthering Heights owes a debt to Wordsworth’s conception of the child’s superiority over adults in terms of instinctive wisdom. Tom Winnifrith’s review of Heaven and Hell in Emily Bronte¨’s poems and in Wuthering Heights ends in the conclusion that Emily gradually evolved the view that earthly suffering is a means, if not the means, of achieving salvation. Winnifrith has no doubt of Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s ultimate fate: they find celestial happiness together. It is refreshing to meet a clearly articulated critical stance with regard to this notoriously difficult issue, but the view is not an unproblematic one. If Heathcliff and Catherine go to some sort of Heaven in consequence of having suffered, what happens to another sufferer, Edgar Linton, who loves faithfully if not happily, places his trust in God and rears his child with tender care, in the sure and certain hope of being united with his wife after death? What of the notion that Catherine and Heathcliff ‘walk’ – on rainy and thunderous nights, too, in the Devil’s own climatic conditions? Is the nature of Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s ordeals, to say nothing of the pain they inflict on others, irrelevant? To make matters worse, the question of whether the ‘lovers’ share some sort of eternal life after Heathcliff’s death is not the only one: Are they joined/separated in bliss/torment immediately after his demise, or is this final resolution postponed until the Day of Judgement, i.e. do they sleep in the grave first? This query raises an issue which was hotly debated from the Reformation onward, under such designations as ‘mortalism’, ‘annihilationism’ and ‘soul-sleeping’ (the first often being used to cover both the others). Relying more or less on passages from Scripture, the many exponents of these heresies – as they certainly were to orthodox Anglicans – maintained either that body and soul formed

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an indissoluble unit which perished whole in death (the annihilationists) or that body and soul sleep until roused by the Last Trump (the advocates of soul-sleeping). It is, said the members of the latter category, illogical to imagine God judging twice – first after the death of the body, and then on the Day of Judgement itself. One adherent of this view was John Milton. The disputes over the sleep/destruction of body and soul raged into the nineteenth century, some sects – notably the Socinians – adopting mortalist beliefs. A modified form of annihilationism held that while the wicked are indeed destined for everlasting fire after death, they do not themselves last forever in it but are consumed within a reasonably short period of time and hence spared eternal torment. There can be no doubt that the Bronte¨s knew about all these conceptions. Emily Bronte¨’s poetry is, at one level, an intriguing sample-card of views, some of them highly unorthodox, on what happens after death. In some poems the peaceful rest of a dead lover is set against the sufferings of the survivor; sometimes death is presented as a muchdesired sleep; and there are evocations of lovers’ meetings in Heaven as well as intimations that Heaven would be well lost for earthly love achieved, or that a soul may be redeemed by love. Sometimes protagonists are envisaged as damned by hate and/or sin, whereas some poems suggest that prayer will be effectual and that every human being, regardless of conduct, carries something of his/her Maker and may hence expect Divine mercy. Attempts to distinguish doctrinal patterns on the basis of the presence or absence of patent Gondal connexions seem futile. The most noteworthy parallels between Emily Bronte¨’s poetry and the world of Wuthering Heights are found in representations of childhood love and of the idea that one’s earthly home is heaven enough. The notion that the love of childhood is originally uncontaminated but subsequently adulterated is expressed in ‘The Death of A. G. A.’, in these lines on the mutual devotion of two girls who would grow up to become deadly foes: ‘Listen, I’ve known a burning heart To which my own was given Nay, not in passion; do not start – Our love was love from heaven: At least, if heavenly love be born In the pure light of childhood’s morn Long ere the poison-tainted air From this world’s plague-fen rises there.’

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The lyric beginning ‘I see around me tombstones grey’ admits that earth is far inferior to Heaven, but the mourning speaker, addressing a dead mother, vows that her children would not forget her even for that ‘land of light’: We all in life’s departing shine Our last dear longings blend with thine; And struggle still, and strive to trace With clouded gaze thy darling face We would not leave our native home For any world beyond the Tomb No – rather on thy kindly breast Let us be laid in lasting rest Or waken but to share with thee A mutual immortality –

In another poem, the spirit of a hilly landscape tells one born there to stop wasting life and energy on useless thoughts ‘In regions dark to thee’: Few hearts to mortals given On earth so wildly pine Yet none would ask a Heaven More like this Earth than thine – Then let my winds caress thee – Thy comrade let me be – Since nought beside can bless thee Return and dwell with me –

As several commentators have observed, the last two quotations invite comparison with Catherine’s dream of being thrown out of Heaven and with her yearning for what would be paradise for her, the hills and moors by her old home. The idea that childhood is a better, purer state, closer to Heaven, was and is of course a commonplace; but the dying Catherine is lamenting not so much over lost innocence as over the strength, freedom and harmony of body, mind and feeling that were hers and Heathcliff’s before she betrayed him, dazzled by the illusory ‘heaven’ of Thrushcross Grange. As her health and sanity fail, she comes to regard the latter house – once a ‘Palace called Beautiful’ to her – as a prison, focusing all her longings on the time when she was ‘half savage and hardy, and free’ (.xii.) as a girl at Wuthering Heights. Returning to the question of an ethical centre in Wuthering Heights, I think there is a strong case for the existence of one and that it consists in love – not the obsessive passion of the young adults Heathcliff and

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Catherine, which Charlotte Bronte¨ (with reason, it seems to me) condemned, but in genuine devotion which seeks not its own. The childhood comrades shared and lost it; Nelly Dean feels it for both her charges, Hareton and Cathy; it is an indissoluble tie between Edgar Linton and his daughter; and Heathcliff’s half-ashamed and usually well concealed ‘regard’, as Charlotte called it, for Hareton is movingly offset by the young man’s affection for him – an affection which did as much as any genetic soundness to preserve his inmost self from corruption during the many years of Heathcliff’s campaign to degrade him: [P]oor Hareton, the most wronged, was the only one that really suffered much. He sat by the corpse all night, weeping in bitter earnest. He pressed its hand, and kissed the sarcastic, savage face that every one else shrank from contemplating; and bemoaned him with that strong grief which springs naturally from a generous heart, though it be tough as tempered steel. (.xx.)

If Edgar Linton seems harsh in rejecting his sister, it must be borne in mind that she wilfully and deliberately defied and cheated him to satisfy an anything but noble passion: the failure in love is on her side, not his, and Isabella herself acknowledges it without reservations. The power of love is manifested in the survival and ultimate happiness of two children conceived in love (for Cathy originates in the days when young Mrs Linton still enjoyed queening it at the Grange as the wife of the man whose unswerving devotion to her makes him, in my view, the closest thing to a romantic hero in Wuthering Heights). Conversely, the child of hatred, Linton Heathcliff, is sickly, faint-hearted and mean-spirited. It is by virtue of their love that Hareton Earnshaw and Cathy Linton are able, as Lockwood memorably says at the very end of the book, to ‘brave Satan and all his legions’ – a phrase with strong Miltonic echoes. It is impossible to reconcile such a view of the fundamental values of Wuthering Heights with belief in a blissful reunion in Heaven for Heathcliff and Catherine, and I cannot see that the book holds out the prospect of such an outcome. On their own evidence, neither party wanted it, anyway. Lockwood, clearly a mortalist, believes them asleep in the earth; Nelly, originally convinced that Catherine’s spirit went ‘home’ to God when she died, is none too sure in the end. As far as I can see, nothing in Wuthering Heights suggests that Catherine and Heathcliff do not attain the ‘heaven’ they desired – being together on the high moors by Wuthering Heights. If ever two people deserved each other, they do. It seems right that this pair who made their own hell on earth should be destined for a heaven of their own making, with each other and without

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God – the latter circumstance making it a state that any Christian would regard as hellish. It would not be the first time either of them received what he or she wished from the powers of the unseen; after all, Heathcliff begged to be haunted by Catherine, and he obviously was. The absence of a definite answer is not only natural in view of the actual circumstances: on whose authority could it have been given? Though the open-endedness of Wuthering Heights is particularly striking, it is, as was pointed out above, far from unparalleled in the fiction of its time. For instance, another book which ends in uncertainty about the ultimate fate of a major character was written in the same place at much the same time: Charlotte Bronte¨’s Jane Eyre. Not long after, the author of the latter novel created a highly virtuous heroine whose restless mind during a life-threatening illness kept asking, ‘Where is the other world? In what will another life consist?’ Shirley gives no answers.             Heathcliff’s two invasions of Catherine’s last rest, and his design regarding his and Catherine’s coffins, make it clear that his belief in ghosts – especially hers – coexists with a powerful physical yearning which he does not expect death to dissolve, even when bodies disintegrate. It is curious that Heathcliff’s passion seems more corporeal when Catherine is dying (heavily pregnant with another man’s child) and dead than it ever was when she was alive. In that sense, the frequent references to his ‘necrophilia’ in Wuthering Heights criticism are certainly warranted. It is also noteworthy that the aspect of Catherine’s haunting of Heathcliff that plagues him most, and ultimately kills him, is his feeling that she is near, but never close enough for him to grasp. This is literally a case of tantalising torment, of a kind that only the underworld can devise. In other words, Heathcliff’s prediction that Catherine’s death will leave him in hell is fulfilled in a way that changes the present line of enquiry from visions of the afterlife to the idea that earthly existence could encompass celestial/infernal dimensions. It entails a shift from eschatology to epistemology and necessitates the parallel adoption of literal and figurative perspectives. For centuries, human beings have described earthly existence as heavenly or hellish. Such references have ranged from cliche´ to earnest definition, denoting a myriad states on the scale from ecstatic happiness to extreme suffering, and the Bronte¨s also knew and used them as such, both in their imaginative writing and in other contexts. One of the most

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Doctrines

memorable examples from the Bronte¨ fiction is the famous scene in Wuthering Heights where the children Cathy and Linton come close to quarrelling over their different ‘heavens’ (.x.). Often quoted in discussions of the cousins’ dissimilar personalities, and of the role of Nature in Wuthering Heights, the two visions proceed from deliberations concerning ‘the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day’. It is a decidedly worldly starting-point, and the dispute ends in the equally secular agreement ‘to try both as soon as the right weather came’. Another interesting instance is Jane Eyre’s condemnation of those who would attempt – unsuccessfully, she claims – to repress poetic genius: I know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost; nor has Mammon gained power over either, to bind or slay: they will both assert their existence, their presence, their liberty, and strength again one day. Powerful angels, safe in heaven! they smile when sordid souls triumph, and feeble ones weep over their destruction. Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign, and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell – the hell of your own meanness. (.vi.)

Theological writers had been referring to life on earth as literally invested with dimensions of Heaven and Hell long before the nineteenth century. In England, Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici is a well-known exponent. Browne’s repugnance at the notion of frightening people into Heaven was echoed by many subsequent writers. His contention that anyone who lived with God was in Heaven and that being in Hell amounted, in essence, to being apart from him became influential, reinforcing similar ideas transmitted by other authors (foreign and domestic and ancient and modern) and helping to confirm the immanence of Heaven and Hell in earthly existence. Among eighteenthcentury writers in English known to the Bronte¨s, Isaac Watts and Daniel Defoe – each in his own way – echoed Browne’s thoughts in their deliberations on good and evil, both in this world and in the spheres inhabited by angels and demons. Defoe agreed with ‘that learn’d and pleasant Author, the inimitable Dr. Brown’ that ‘the Devil is his own Hell’ and that he is constantly contained in it even while travelling all over the world of men – the idea best known through Marlowe’s Mephostophilis, ‘Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it’, and Milton’s Satan, ‘myself am hell’. To Watts, as to numerous predecessors and successors, the worst aspect of Hell is that it means being separated from God in all eternity. The absence of concrete details in the Bronte¨s’ fictional representations

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of Heaven and Hell is suggestive in this context. After all, the art of the Paradise Lost illustrator – and, in the early s, eschatological painter – John Martin was known to them from their early years, and they were familiar with a variety of graphic representations of the last things. The fact that they avoided description might be taken to imply that they, like many of their contemporaries and a notable number of seventeenthand eighteenth-century students of eschatology, viewed Heaven and Hell as states of mind, soul and body which reflected the position of the person concerned in relation to God. Applied to living persons, of course, these concepts do not, and could not, denote an immutably fixed condition. As was suggested above, the characteristic indeterminacy when it comes to assigning perpetual bliss or torment to protagonists in the Bronte¨ novels implies an unorthodox reluctance to interfere with God’s plans for what he has made at any stage, before and after death. Figurative hells in the Bronte¨ novels are usually self-made and visions of self-made heavens flawed and deceptive. For example, on the verge of suicide Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre is persuaded that no future state could be worse than the hell he lives in as Bertha Mason’s husband. On the morning after his first engagement to Jane, he fantasises about making his own heaven with her. Like other infatuated men, in and out of the novels of the Bronte¨s, he calls his beloved an angel, and Jane characteristically objects: ‘‘‘I am not an angel . . . and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither [expect] nor exact anything celestial of me, – for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you; which I do not at all anticipate.’’’ (.ix.). Jane thus turns the appellation into a joke directed at Rochester’s own lack of ‘celestial’ qualities. In the fiction of the Bronte¨s, the word ‘angel’ nearly always sounds a warning note when used of an earthly creature. Elizabeth Hollis Berry has drawn attention to the girl Helen Lawrence’s fatal error in regarding Arthur Huntingdon as ‘an angel of light’ and to Huntingdon’s by turns hypocritical, deluded and scornful applications of the word ‘angel’ to her. When the man whom Helen regards as her most dangerous enemy, the would-be seducer Mr Hargrave, begs her to yield to him, he ominously calls her ‘my angel – my divinity!’ (xxxix.). It is lucky for his successor as Helen’s wooer, Gilbert Markham, that he only uses the word ‘angel’ to her face as a term of endearment after their engagement is settled (‘My darling angel – my own Helen’; liii.). Gilbert’s main redeeming quality is his devotion to the woman, whose human strength and courage he recognises and admires, as he does her talents. Originally attracted by her beauty and

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Doctrines

air of mystery, and by the fact that she seems not to care about him at all, he comes to love the pilgrim soul in Helen and hence deserves her, despite his social inferiority and the patent flaws in his character. The stolid Mary Cave in Shirley was still less of an angel than the ardent Helen Huntingdon. To Mr Yorke, the man who loved and failed to win her, she ‘was a stately, peaceful angel’; but Robert Moore, though a much younger and in many ways less experienced man, knows better: ‘Mary Cave was not what you think her . . . I have seen her picture at the Rectory. She is no angel, but a fair, regular-featured, taciturn-looking woman – rather too white and lifeless for my taste’ (.vii.). Though incensed by these unflattering remarks on his lost love, Hiram Yorke is obliged to agree with Moore’s verdict, acknowledging that ‘the passion I still have is only the remnant of an illusion’: Mary Cave, for all her statuesque beauty, was only human, and not a very wonderful creature either. Not even her total opposite, the vibrant Shirley, is a natural companion for seraphs, according to the crippled youth who worships her: ‘Shirley is not an angel; she is a woman, and she shall live with men’ (..). Rereading Jane Eyre, one perceives the nature of the being Rochester invites when, falling in love with Jane, he first conceives of a scheme to ‘legalize’ (Jane’s term) his aims and motives: ‘I scarcely think the notion that flitted across my brain was an error. I believe it was an inspiration rather than a temptation: it was very genial, very soothing; – I know that. Here it comes again! It is no devil, I assure you: or if it be, it has put on the robes of an angel of light. I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart.’ ‘Distrust it, sir; it is not a true angel.’ ‘Once more, how do you know? By what instinct do you pretend to distinguish between a fallen seraph of the abyss, and a messenger from the eternal throne – between a guide and a seducer?’ ‘I judged by your countenance, sir; which was troubled, when you said the suggestion had returned upon you. I feel sure it will work you more misery if you listen to it.’ ‘Not at all – it bears the most gracious message in the world: for the rest, you are not my conscience keeper, so don’t make yourself uneasy. Here, come in, bonny wanderer!’ (.xiv.)

Jane is of course right in sensing the falseness of this ‘disguised deity’, as Rochester calls it, and he speaks the literal truth when he goes on to say that he is ‘paving hell with energy’, ‘laying down good intentions’. At this moment, Jane cannot have any idea of his drift, but her instinct (the

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word very properly used by Rochester) tells her that her confusion is sounder than his resolution. She warns him that ‘[t]he human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely entrusted’ – a sentence which, brief as it is, sums up the essence of Rochester’s transgressions, past, present and future. The ‘angel’ admitted by Rochester was hence much more of a ‘fallen seraph’ than a ‘messenger from the eternal throne’, and Catherine Linton is hardly less mistaken than Rochester in her account of her predicament after Heathcliff’s return: ‘The event of this evening has reconciled me to God and humanity! I had risen in angry rebellion against providence – Oh, I’ve endured very, very bitter misery, Nelly! If that creature knew how bitter, he’d be ashamed to cloud its removal with idle petulance – It was kindness for him which induced me to bear it alone: had I expressed the agony I frequently felt, he would have been taught to long for its alleviation as ardently as I – However, it’s over, and I’ll take no revenge on his folly – I can afford to suffer anything, hereafter! Should the meanest thing alive slap me on the cheek, I’d not only turn the other, but I’d ask pardon for provoking it – and, as a proof, I’ll go make my peace with Edgar instantly – Good night – I’m an angel!’ (.x.)

Catherine refers to the patient husband who worships her as ‘that creature’, expressly aligns him with ‘the meanest thing alive’ and admires her own magnanimity in not revenging herself on him for having failed to realise how much she missed Heathcliff. If these are the first things to strike a reader, however, the passage is noteworthy for its irreligiousness as well. Like the adult Rochester, Catherine has never bothered to enquire into the true nature of God and Providence, but been content to pursue self-gratification in the ways that offered themselves to her. Her speech has sacrilegious overtones as powerful as Rochester’s, implying that what pleases these two people, rendering them kind, complaisant and well-behaved in company (and thus even more pleased with themselves), is of Divine origin. Naturally, they both use eschatological imagery in a metaphorical sense: Rochester, as the reader of Jane Eyre learns in due course, never believed in everlasting hell-fire and is as happy to represent Jane’s advent in his life as an elfin (and hence pagan) irruption as he is to view it as an act of Providence; Catherine, who knows she has no business in a Christian’s Heaven, does not literally ascribe heavenly goodness to herself. Even so, the sheer insouciance with which they dress their selfish motives and satisfactions in celestial garb is breathtakingly blasphemous. Catherine’s self-designation reverberates disturbingly when Nelly

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describes her dead face: ‘no angel in heaven could be more beautiful than she appeared’ (.ii.). Not until Mrs Linton’s soul has left her body can anything about her be referred to in celestial terms by an outsider, and even here it is merely a comparison centred on her earthly remains. If she was ‘possessed with a devil’, a ‘mere Apparition’ in Defoe’s sense, that evil spirit has now departed. By and large, the distance between figurative and literal levels of meaning are shorter when devils are invoked in the fiction of the Bronte¨s: whenever human beings are likened to angels, we may suspect a grave error of judgement, but intimations of infernality usually have some substance. As was pointed out above, both the unreformed Rochester and the two main protagonists of Wuthering Heights are referred to as, or expressly compared to, devils, and to the extent that they act in open defiance of Christian laws and precepts the designations are just: Rochester’s bigamous scheme, Heathcliff’s pursuit of revenge and Catherine’s egomania are evil forces which inflict great misery on innocent creatures. When Ralph Hattersley in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall refers to the Arthur Huntingdon set as ‘these rollicking devils you call your friends’ (xxxix.), his expression is not without a smack of literality. Similarly, the evocation of the ‘Hell-fire Club’ in ch. xxii of the same novel does not come across as a collection of rhetorical expressions only, and when Gilbert Markham attacks Frederick Lawrence, the notion that he was ‘impelled by some fiend at [his] elbow’ is something more than a feeble excuse (xiv.). The significance of the diabolical properties attributed to the actress ‘Vashti’ in Villette must always be considered against the fact that what is described is, after all, a theatrical performance: I found upon her something neither of woman nor of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength – for she was but a frail creature; and as the action rose and the stir deepened, how wildly they shook her with their passions of the Pit! They wrote HELL on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. (xxiii.-)

Vashti on stage is also said to be ‘torn by seven devils’ and ‘a spirit out of Tophet’. Lucy Snowe does not doubt that she is a representative of unholy forces; but Vashti is presented as a fallen angel who ‘remembers the heaven where she rebelled’, like Milton’s Satan in the first book of Paradise Lost, not as a fiend visibly corrupted by Hell. Much has been written about the significance of Vashti and her origins in Charlotte

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Bronte¨’s experiences of the French actress Rachel. It seems to me that her main function in Villette is that of a warning against allowing emotional abandonment to erode moral stamina, thereby imperilling the allegiance to truth without which one’s whole life project must founder. In that special and restricted sense Vashti represents the powers of darkness, but she acts on a different plane from those Bronte¨ ‘devils’ whose self-will overrides all Christian scruples, insofar as they knew any at all. Heaven and Hell are variously conceived in the Bronte¨ novels, as the preceding review has shown, and there are distinctions between the ways in which the three authors deal with the last things. As a whole, however, the fiction of the Bronte¨s is imbued with the idea of a loving and merciful God, who is the ultimate source of human love. The closer a protagonist feels to him ( and selfless devotion to another human being shortens the distance), the more impervious his or her mind is to the evil forces that are granted considerable scope for action in the books. Such closeness must be won and retained by efforts sustained by a faith which the labouring spirit can only possess if God gives it. Thus the interplay between human struggle and Divine grace permeates the books. In Charlotte’s, the afterlife is never envisaged as a ‘real’ condition: her work is predominantly concerned with the obligation of human beings to go through life making use of every opportunity to improve their minds and souls, actively pursuing truth and goodness. Such an ethos makes this life bearable, and the next may be left to God. If the leading characters of Wuthering Heights resemble satanic figures in older literary works, Charlotte and Anne Bronte¨’s embattled heroines have one thing in common with Goethe’s Faust: of them, as of him, God’s agents may say, Wer immer strebend sich bemu¨ht, den ko¨nnen wir erlo¨sen. With the exception of Lucy Snowe, all of them are granted a substantial foretaste of Erlo¨sung during their years on earth. That circumstance, as well as the many references to earthly heavens and hells in the Bronte¨ novels, contributes to fitting these authors’ explorations of the human soul into the general pattern of spiritual enquiry that was so characteristic of their time. As the nineteenth century wore on, earthly existence was no longer primarily seen as a period of preparation for the hereafter; and it was acknowledged that this life and the next touch each other across the grave.

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Ethics

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Forgiveness and revenge

When the struggle was over – and a marble calm began to succeed the last dread agony – I felt as I had never felt before that there was peace and forgiveness for him in Heaven. All his errors – to speak plainly – all his vices seemed nothing to me in that moment; every wrong he had done, every pain he had caused, vanished; his sufferings only were remembered; the wrench to the natural affections only was felt. If Man can thus experience total oblivion of his fellow’s imperfections – how much more can the Eternal Being who made man, forgive his creature!

Charlotte Bronte¨’s hopes that her wretched brother would find forgiveness in Heaven were bolstered by the change she had seen come over him during the last days of his life. As death approached, Branwell Bronte¨’s unquiet mind seems to have left off its pursuit of phantoms and concentrated on the requisite for grace: repentance. As she envisaged God’s pardon for the brother who had brought such misery on his family, Charlotte felt able to forgive him too. The necessity of repentance before God was discussed above; but anyone who hopes for Divine mercy must also make his peace with his fellow creatures. The Lord’s Prayer makes God’s forgiveness conditional on the penitent’s ability to exercise mercy in his turn, and human reconciliation features prominently in the fiction of the Bronte¨s. The opposite of reconciliation is, of course, revenge, and Wuthering Heights is a nineteenth-century Revenger’s Tragedy in which the avenger is never reconciled – Heathcliff seeks no forgiveness and grants none – but ultimately disarmed by the one force that is stronger than his hatred. In view of the close link between human and Divine forgiveness, it is not surprising that the Bronte¨ books in which the last things play particularly prominent roles should also be the ones most concerned with revenge and pardon between human beings: The Tenant of Wildfell 

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Hall to some degree, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights profoundly. As a brief review will show, however, even those which could not be referred to as ‘novels of forgiveness’ leave the reader in no doubt that mutual understanding must be sought at all times and compassion exercised whenever possible. The bitter last lines of Villette do not suggest that Lucy Snowe ever forgives the members of the conspiracy against her, and her loathing of Mesdames Beck and Walravens never seems to abate. But although Pe`re Silas did her a wrong which could have had fatal consequences for her, the white-haired narrator, looking back over the decades that separate her quiet old age from her passionate youth, acknowledges his goodness when she ends her account of their first meeting (in the course of which the Jesuit had no reason to fear that Lucy would lead one of his sheep astray): ‘[W]hatever I may think of his Church and creed (and I like neither), of himself I must ever retain a grateful recollection. He was kind when I needed kindness; he did me good. May Heaven bless him!’ (xv.). The few hours of earthly paradise granted to Lucy and M. Paul are preceded by an outburst of jealous anger on the former’s part which the latter soothes with an indulgence surely not untouched by flattered vanity. After that final fit of fury, the warring couple whose disputes have made up a sizeable part of the book lay down their arms for good (xli.). That reconciliation was followed by a separation which became final, at least as far as this life is concerned. The lot of Caroline Helstone and Robert Moore in Shirley is, ultimately, a happier one. Never much of an orator before, especially in matters of the heart, the latter delivers himself of the following speech at the end of the book: ‘Will Caroline, who meekly hopes to be forgiven as she forgives – will she pardon all I have made her suffer – all that long pain I have wickedly caused her – all that sickness of body and mind she owed to me? Will she forget what she knows of my poor ambition – my sordid schemes? Will she let me expiate these things? Will she suffer me to prove that, as I once deserted cruelly, trifled wantonly, injured basely, I can now love faithfully, cherish fondly, treasure tenderly?’ (.xiv.–)

Caroline, of course, forgives without effort; she would not even have needed entreaty. But her mother cannot pardon Caroline’s father’s matrimonial crimes until the girl’s goodness and filial love have acted as conciliators. The exact nature of James Helstone’s cruelty is left to the reader’s imagination. It must have been extreme and sadistic to have

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stained his wife’s memory so heavily and to have warped her outlook on life and humanity so permanently, though it fell short of destroying her worth as a person. Striving to be truthful to Caroline without burdening the sick girl with her father’s transgressions, Mrs Pryor tells her to be grateful to James Helstone for bequeathing his beauty to her: ‘You owe him gratitude. Leave, between him and me, the settlement of our mutual account: meddle not: God is the arbiter. This world’s laws never came near us – never! They were powerless as a rotten bulrush to protect me! – impotent as idiot babblings to restrain him! As you said, it is all over now: the grave lies between us. There he sleeps – in that church! To his dust I say this night, what I have never said before, ‘‘James, slumber peacefully! See! your terrible debt is cancelled! Look! I wipe out the long, black account with my own hand! James, your child atones: this living likeness of you – this thing with your perfect features – this one good gift you gave me has nestled affectionately to my heart, and tenderly called me ‘mother’. Husband! rest forgiven!’’ ’ ‘Dearest mother, that is right! Can papa’s spirit hear us? Is he comforted to know that we still love him?’ ‘I said nothing of love: I spoke of forgiveness. Mind the truth, child, – I said nothing of love! On the threshold of eternity, should he be there to see me enter, will I maintain that.’ (.i.–)

Mrs Pryor forgives, then; but forget she cannot (‘ ‘‘The North pole will rush to the South, and the headlands of Europe be locked into the bays of Australia, ere I forget’’ ’). There is no evidence that James Helstone ever desired his wife’s forgiveness while he lived, and Mrs Pryor does not answer Caroline’s question as to whether his spirit is helped by his daughter’s love and his wife’s pardon. Those who decidedly benefit from this reconciliation beyond the grave are the woman whose mind is relieved of a great burden and the girl whose joy in finding her mother is increased by the realisation that she has been able to bring comfort to the parent who comforts her. Another reconciliation scene in one of Charlotte Bronte¨’s novels requires mediation of another kind: it takes hours of gentle persuasion from his mother to convince Master Victor Crimsworth in The Professor that his father had no choice but to shoot his rabies-infected dog, an act which the child happens to witness and claims he will never forgive. Father and son are reconciled, however, during a talk which leaves the former assured that his boy’s heart contains ‘healthy and swelling germs of compassion’ (xxv.). Compassion, rather than explicit forgiveness, is what Agnes Grey finds herself extending to the unhappy Rosalie Ashby, whose wanton

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flirtation with Mr Weston had hurt Agnes so cruelly while Rosalie was still Miss Murray. The reason why the issue of forgiveness does not arise here is that Rosalie is unaware of having erred and hence feels no contrition. As William Madden points out, forgiveness implies guilt, and guilt implies transgression. The interlacing of Divine and human forgiveness is especially obvious in the parallel structure of error, recognition of transgression, remorse and finally a plea for pardon. A sinner who does not understand and acknowledge his sins cannot repent and is therefore unable even to wish for absolution, still less ask for it, as Arthur Huntingdon’s fate shows. And Rosalie has no awareness of having done, or of doing, anything wrong. However sorry Agnes feels for her old pupil, she leaves – though importuned to stay – dryly musing that if young Lady Ashby ‘could but have half her heart’s desire’, she would regard her former governess’ presence as ‘rather a nuisance than a pleasure’ (xxiii.). The central New Testament text on Divine and human forgiveness, Matthew , stresses the element of pity but makes it clear that remorse on the part of the transgressor is also a crucial factor. Jesus begins by emphasising the obligation to forgive time and again if need be: Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.

His exhortations are illustrated by means of the parable of the king who forgave the servant who owed him , talents, but retracted his pardon on learning that the servant himself had no mercy on a debtor of his. Having said that the king then ‘delivered [the servant] to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due to him’, Jesus concludes by announcing, ‘So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.’ To grant forgiveness even in the absence of contrition is difficult indeed. But fostering compassion is a start, and however hard human beings may have to struggle to forgive, the active pursuit of revenge is something they can and must resist. Such resistance is vital for their own sake, as well as for that of the offenders, whose punishment must be left to God, and of the innocent people who may stand in the way of an avenger’s fury. Late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century theological writers of all persuasions agreed in warning readers that vengeance is God’s alone and that revenge in human hands is an infernal action. For one example which the Bronte¨s will have known, we may turn to Henry Venn’s Complete Duty of Man:

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[T]hough some violent provocations may suddenly kindle resentment, and prompt you to cherish the thought of returning evil for evil, soon the conviction of God’s patience and love towards yourself, will make the transient intention appear full of injustice and ingratitude to God, and totally unbecoming your guilty state before him. Thus the hell-engendered spark of revenge will quickly expire, and love instead of resentment, reign within. Besides these arguments, the full credit which you, O Christian! give to every Scripture declaration, will dispose you to resist every rising sentiment of ill-will against your enemies. You are assured by the Lord Jesus Christ himself, that no one who harbours the least degree of malice or hatred in his heart, can stand within the limits of mercy till that detestable spirit is subdued. So highly offensive is it to God . . . that it renders us incapable even of praying, without increasing our sin . . . 

As Venn goes on to observe, someone who does not forgive his enemies cannot say the Lord’s Prayer without condemning himself out of his own mouth. Being unable to pray is a literally desperate condition; a person who cannot communicate with God loses him and thus finds himself in a hellish state. Again, the fusion of earthly and heavenly forgiveness is made explicit. No element in the Christian ethics that pervades the Bronte¨ novels is likely to be so difficult to internalise for present-day readers as the condemnation of anger and vengeance, particularly in situations where both seem amply warranted. Even a twenty-first-century reader who regards himself/herself as a Christian is unlikely to have much sense of the sinfulness of wrath, or to register compunction when retaliating after provocation. But to early nineteenth-century Christians of all denominations (except, of course, rabid Antinomians) such sentiments were to be resisted at all costs, and the fiction of the Bronte¨s reflects that conviction.

            With such a massive aggregation of guilt and wrongdoing as is contained in Anne Bronte¨’s second novel, it is natural for the forgivenessand-revenge complex to play a part in it. The theme has three nuclei: one is centred around Arthur Huntingdon’s evil actions, the second around Helen’s attempts to fend off the attentions of two other men and the third on the Markham–Lawrence quarrel. The first is the most important, in view both of the degree and duration of Huntingdon’s misdeeds and of their corrupting influence on others. The two people on whom Arthur Huntingdon inflicts the greatest

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sufferings, his wife and his mistress’ husband, resist explicit invitations to be avenged on him. Exploring various strategies of seducing Helen, Mr Hargrave asks her whether she never thought of revenge, only to receive the curt answer: ‘Revenge! No – what good would that do? – it would make him no better, and me no happier’ (xxxvii.). It is a drearily pragmatic reply, but Hargrave claims to take it as evidence of Helen’s ‘half angelic’ nature, a piece of insincere flattery which supplies her with material for another rebuke. Though she comes to loathe, indeed hate, her husband, she is never vindictive towards him, and it is hard for her to bear his allegation that her returning to nurse him is a refined form of revenge (xlvii.-). Later, Huntingdon – in the course of attempts to conciliate Helen, which she is human enough to find both irksome and disgusting – asks ‘Will you not forgive me then?’. That question receives the following cool answer: ‘Yes, – I have forgiven you; but I know you cannot love me as you once did – and I should be very sorry if you were to, for I could not pretend to return it: so let us drop the subject, and never recur to it again. By what I have done for you, you may judge of what I will do – if it be not incompatible with the higher duty I owe to my son (higher, because he never forfeited his claims, and because I hope to do more good to him than I can ever do to you); and if you wish me to feel kindly towards you, it is deeds not words that must purchase my affection and esteem.’ (xlviii.–)

Helen’s hardness must be viewed against the background of the possibility – even likelihood, at this point – that her husband will in fact recover and expect to resume their life together. Even so, it is not surprising that the patient’s ‘sole reply to this was a slight grimace, and a scarcely perceptible shrug’. Helen thus manages to stifle the occasional impulse to revenge, although she knows the occasional moment of wavering when tempted by Hargrave (xxxv.), and although the gradual hardening of her mind during her years of torment is reflected in her passing gratification at her rival’s discomfiture (xxxiv.). By contrast, Lord Lowborough (a better man than his drinking companions, though not a particularly admirable or appealing character) nearly yields to the temptation to seek revenge or, alternatively, the peace of death. Urged by his wouldbe second to fight a duel with his wife’s lover, he acknowledges both the allure of the scheme and his determination to resist it: a duel ‘is just the remedy my own heart – or the devil within it, suggested’. He is adamant that he will not resort to covert murder or suicide: ‘Though I hate him from my heart, and should rejoice at any calamity that could befall him

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– I’ll leave him to God; and though I abhor my own life, I’ll leave that too, to Him that gave it’ (xxxviii.). It is a resolution ardently praised by Helen, for whom the thought that God will help her bear whatever comes her way is frequently the only consolation. In Lowborough’s case as in her own, endurance is ultimately rewarded, even in this life. Among the several dangers that beset Helen during her first marriage, Mr Hargrave’s campaign to seduce her is perhaps the worst. It compels her to use language whose harshness is not surpassed by anything she says to Huntingdon. Having elicited repeated promises to leave her alone, she has to submit to renewed proposals, cunningly timed to coincide with moments of particular distress for her. On one occasion she has expressly forgiven Hargrave with the proviso ‘sin no more’ – an apposite exhortation to a would-be adulterer (xxxv.). His resumed efforts having proved that he sets no store by her forgiveness, all Helen can find to say during their last exchange is the following bleak re´sume´: ‘For all the good you ever did me, or ever wished to do, I most sincerely thank you: for all the evil you have done me, and all you would have done, I pray God to pardon you, and make you of a better mind’ (xxxix.). In view of the desperateness of Helen’s struggle to retain her hope of Heaven by resisting temptations which would at best have yielded ‘a few brief years of false and fleeting happiness’ (xxxvii.), her horror when Gilbert Markham resorts to the same tactics as Hargrave is a natural reaction. Anne Bronte¨ took care to ensure that the reader would perceive the resemblance by the use of italics as well as particularly emphatic language: ‘But Helen!’ I began in a soft, low tone, not daring to raise my eyes to her face – ‘that man is not your husband: in the sight of Heaven he has forfeited all claim to –’ She seized my arm with a grasp of startling energy. ‘Gilbert, don’t! ’ she cried, in a tone that would have pierced a heart of adamant. ‘For God’s sake, don’t you attempt these arguments! No fiend could torture me like this!’ (xlv.–)

Helen’s pain in finding herself once more subjected to this specious line of reasoning is aggravated by the fact that she has just asked Gilbert’s forgiveness for her lack of confidence in him – a forgiveness which, moreover, he pretended to withhold for a little while. It is hard to refute the low opinion that critics have generally had of Gilbert Markham, and his behaviour when calling on Frederick Lawrence is far from admirable. In fact, it is not even gentlemanly.

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Finding the victim of his unjustified and near-fatal violence still obviously suffering from pain and fever, he can find no more gracious words than these: ‘The truth is, Lawrence . . . I have not acted quite correctly towards you of late – especially on this last occasion; and I’m come to – in short, to express my regret for what has been done, and to beg your pardon. – If you don’t choose to grant it,’ I added hastily, not liking the aspect of his face, ‘it’s no matter – only, I’ve done my duty – that’s all.’ (xlv.–)

Lawrence is understandably unmoved by this less than handsome ‘apology’: ‘It’s easily done,’ replied he, with a faint smile bordering on a sneer: ‘to abuse your friend and knock him on the head, without any assignable cause, and then tell him the deed was not quite correct, but it’s no matter whether he pardons it or not.’

Gilbert hardly improves matters by telling the sick man that ‘a little candour and confidence on [his] part might have removed’ those suspicions which prompted the attack. The two men are ultimately reconciled, however, largely thanks to Lawrence’s magnanimity. (The latter’s subsequent niggardliness when it comes to talking and imparting information about his sister has to be regarded as forgiveable under the circumstances, much as it annoys Gilbert.) Another exchange about forgiveness, at a much earlier point in the book, takes place at a more superficial level. Encouraged by Helen, Mr Hargrave ‘forgives’ Mr Hattersley for having hit him (xxxii.–). Considering the fundamental importance of the tenet, in the book and in Christian dogma generally, it is something of a shock to find the boisterous and as yet unreformed Hattersley invoking Holy Writ when soliciting his companion’s pardon: ‘he will be damned, won’t he, Mrs. Huntingdon, if he doesn’t forgive his brother’s trespasses?’ Hattersley’s clumsy attempt to appeal to Mrs Huntingdon’s well-known devoutness falls rather flat, though, when she simply replies, ‘You ought to forgive him, Mr. Hargrave, since he asks you.’ This terse answer sums up the attitude to guilt and pardon exhibited in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: revenge must be shunned, whatever the provocation, and an apology should be accepted without probing or prevarication. Human forgiveness and abstention from revenge, though important, are not presented as inherently problematic: it is God’s forgiveness that matters above all things, and human anger or injury is never allowed to stand in its way.

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    To forgive those who trespass against her is less difficult for Helen Huntingdon than one would expect given the nature and extent of her sufferings; but she is assisted by her constant intentness on keeping communication with God free of such obstacles as human bitterness and rancour. Jane Eyre finds it considerably harder, and insofar as modern readers pay attention to her struggles in this respect, they are more likely to be impatient than sympathetic. For every reader who has paused to reflect on the fact and the nature of the child Jane’s remorse after her outburst to Mrs Reed in the breakfast-room at Gateshead, dozens have exulted over that outburst and not given much, if any, thought to its aftermath: First, I smiled to myself and felt elate; but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the accelerated throb of my pulses. A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as I had done; cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine; without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction. A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed: the same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as meetly my subsequent condition, when half an hour’s silence and reflection had shewn me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness of my hated and hating position. Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned. Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed’s pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature. (.iv.)

Jane tells Mrs Reed the truth and defends herself against unjust allegations, and there is nothing to suggest that she regrets this. Indeed, her ‘victory’ strengthens her in a not unwholesome way: having vanquished the formidable mistress of the house, Jane is no longer afraid of the moods of a servant. Her new frankness and freedom of manner actually please Bessie, who rightly points out to Jane that it will not do to appear frightened at school: ‘If you dread them they’ll dislike you’ (.iv.). The substance of Jane’s remorse is contained in the words ‘my hated and hating position’. Her strongest desire, and she knows it even as a child, is always to be loved and to give love in return (she tells her aunt she cannot live ‘without one bit of love or kindness’: .iv.). By not only opposing Mrs Reed but actually frightening her, Jane has put an even

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greater distance between herself and any chance of even a morsel of friendliness from her relatives. A proud and imperious woman, Jane’s aunt must hate a small girl who has reduced her to something very close to humiliation and flight. The child realises this, and the young woman finds it confirmed when she returns to Gateshead and her aunt’s deathbed. Jane’s first taste of revenge is likewise an exercise in unbridled hatred, and the experience does not give her an appetite for either. ‘Rage’ has always been associated with Charlotte Bronte¨ and her work, and the nature of Jane Eyre’s rebellion has been the subject of what amounts to a critical industry. It is significant that a seminal feminist analysis of the novel, the discussion in Sandra M. Gilbert’s and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic, only quotes the first part of Jane’s burning-heath simile in ch. iv: And when . . . Jane tells Mrs. Reed that ‘I am glad you are no relation of mine’ . . . the adult narrator remarks that ‘a ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my mind’ – as the nursery fire was, flaring behind its black grates, and as the flames consuming Thornfield also will be.

The point of Jane’s comparison is lost when its second component is suppressed: lighted heath burns intensely but briefly, and it leaves blackness and devastation behind. It goes against the grain for anyone who has gloried in and identified with Jane Eyre’s succession of revolts against tyranny – and I have certainly done so, like countless other female readers – to force oneself to recognise that Jane herself does not approve of every aspect of her anger, not even as a child. Nor is her aversion to social oppression wholehearted enough to preclude an element of class pride: asked by Mr Lloyd whether she would like to go and live with poorer relatives than the Reeds, if any could be found, she says no – not even if they were kind to her. She has disliked the manners and habits of the poor people she has seen and is ‘not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste’ – an acrid self-characterisation not often quoted in Jane Eyre criticism (.iii.). She is prejudiced, of course, and small blame can attach to her for that; but what this detail contributes to showing us is that young Jane Eyre is an imperfect human being. If she had not negatived the idea, perhaps her Eyre relations – no paupers, as it happened – could have been found when she was still a child (that would of course have depended on the nature and extent of Mr Lloyd’s exertions on her behalf ). And if Jane had not attacked Mrs Reed, the

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latter would not have had (as she thought) sufficient reason to lie to her uncle, thereby denying the growing girl the friendly and material support of a relative interested in her welfare. Young Jane’s flaws are of course part of what makes her lovable; but they should warn us not to accord an a priori acceptance to her conduct and regard it as model behaviour. Earlier generations of readers, from the contemporary reviewers to mid twentieth-century scholars, saw this more clearly than more recent ones. Towards the end of this discussion I shall return to the issue of anger, passion and rebellion in Jane Eyre. As so many critics have observed, the novel unfolds a pattern of education and maturation, and its successive phases must be reviewed before a summary can be attempted. The next stage in the pilgrim Jane’s progress brings her under the influence of her foremost Lowood preceptor, Helen Burns. Telling Jane that ‘[i]t is not violence that best overcomes hate – nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury’, Helen explains to the younger girl that people who are kind to those who are good to them, and dislike those who are not, cannot call themselves Christians (.vi.). Quoting the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew :), Helen admonishes Jane to love her enemies. Asked to explain her opposition to this tenet (which would, as she instantly sees, compel her to love the Reeds), Jane holds forth on her past wrongs, expecting Helen’s sympathy and feeling disappointed when her ‘bitter and truculent’ account fails to elicit any. What Helen does say contains a grain of utilitarian practicality which Jane, as her subsequent development shows, is able to assimilate, unlike the teachings of Christ which remain beyond her. Invited to condemn Mrs Reed as a ‘hard-hearted, bad woman’, Helen replies: ‘She has been unkind to you, no doubt; because, you see, she dislikes your cast of character, as Miss Scatcherd does mine: but how minutely you remember all she has done and said to you! What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! . . . Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.’ (.vi.)

Helen’s advice reinforces what Jane realised after her hollow victory over Mrs Reed: hating is bad for you. While her passionate nature will never allow her to emulate Helen’s stoical calm, Jane does learn to temper her anger. The benefit of that lesson is immediately seen in her ability to convince Miss Temple of her innocence after being accused by

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Mr Brocklehurst. Thanks to ‘Helen’s warnings against the indulgence of resentment’, Jane tells the headmistress her story with ‘far less of gall and wormwood than ordinary’ (.viii.–), and largely for that reason Miss Temple instantly accepts it as the truth. The question of whether Jane can forgive Mrs Reed does not arise at this point: all that the child has learnt – and it is not a little – is that the fury that is in her nature can be harmful to herself. The next step in Jane Eyre’s progress towards inner peace takes place at Gateshead, nearly nine years after her first departure. The frame of mind in which she approaches the house where she suffered so much is one of healthy self-reliance rather than unsound self-repression: ‘I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth: but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers, and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs, too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished’ (.vi.). The discourtesy of her cousins cannot upset her now (partly, of course, because she has better things to think about). She also controls the surge of resentment that comes over her when she realises that Mrs Reed has no wish to stop thinking ill of her, resisting Jane’s ‘strong yearning to forget and forgive’ to the last (.vi.). The ten pages of Jane Eyre that focus on the dying erstwhile tormentor form the centre-piece of the novel and contain some of its finest writing. They explain Mrs Reed’s aversion to Jane in a way that makes it understandable, though her harshness remains inexcusable. One noteworthy detail is that she recalls Jane’s exact words in the breakfast-room scene – a skilful touch on the author’s part which indicates the extent to which Jane’s accusations have preyed on her mind. But although the monster of Jane’s early childhood acquires some human features – the story of her envy and jealousy is forceful and convincing, too – , she is more frightening than ever in another way: she regrets the wrongs she has done to Jane, but only because she is afraid to die with that burden on her conscience. On a deeper emotional level, she has no wish for forgiveness and reconciliation at all. Jane, who asks her forgiveness for the ‘passionate language’ of her childhood, receives no pardon; the dying woman even blames her niece for her own deed of revenge ‘which, but for you, I should never have been tempted to commit’ (.vi.–). No wonder Jane asks herself where Mrs Reed’s spirit is destined to go. Can the soul of someone so obdurate, so devoid of true repentance, ever be on a par with that of the saintly Helen Burns? The chapter ends with the dismal picture of the unmourned corpse, rigid and still but without even a touch of Divine rest and peace.

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There is little reason for assuming that Jane’s ‘full and free forgiveness’ was followed by a wish on Mrs Reed’s part to secure God’s, as Jane hoped it would be. The tearless Jane feels ‘a sombre . . . dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a form’. In a sense, then, Mrs Reed is also a ‘teacher’ in Jane’s life. Here was a woman who was kind to those she liked and made no effort to be good to those she did not, exactly what the child Jane had herself called ‘natural’ (.vii.). If Jane were to give full rein to her own sympathies and antipathies, who is to say that she would not end up in the same state, having found it impossible at the last to ‘make . . . the effort to change her habitual frame of mind’ (.vi.)? Jane leaves Gateshead having forgiven the woman who had done her desperate wrong. She goes back to Thornfield and a man who is planning to do the same, though motivated by a love as fiery as Mrs Reed’s loathing was cold. Alone in her room after the wedding that never was, Jane Eyre faces the fact that – as she puts it with pathetic simplicity – her beloved ‘was not what I had thought him’. Reluctant to frame passionate accusations against him even in her mind, she sees that ‘the attribute of stainless truth [is] gone’ from her idea of Mr Rochester (.xi.). To this zealous campaigner for truth and sincerity, that realisation is enough: she knows that she must leave him. The issue of forgiveness comes up later, when she leaves her room at last to find Rochester waiting outside: ‘Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?’ Reader! – I forgave him at the moment, and on the spot.There was such deep remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such manly energy in his manner; and, besides, there was such unchanged love in his whole look and mien – I forgave him all: yet not in words, not outwardly; only at my heart’s core. (.i.)

As Jane instantly recognises, Rochester is truly contrite. He does not yet repent of his culpable scheme; the expressions he employs (‘by some mistake’, ‘blunder’) in his little parable cannot with any measure of accuracy be applied to a deliberate and long-standing design, as we know that his intended bigamy was. He is genuinely sorry for the pain he caused her, though, and his remorse, pity and love free her from any burden of resentment against him.

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This is the one occasion in Jane Eyre where forgiveness is easy and instantaneous. The servant Hannah at Moor House has to submit to stern reproof from Jane, whom Hannah had turned away ‘on a night when you should not have shut out a dog’. She then had the effrontery to call Jane a beggar and look down on her destitution, a peculiarly unchristian attitude. Hannah freely admits that she was ‘wrang’, and then – but only then – Jane forgives her (.iii.–). The next time a pardon is solicited in Jane Eyre it is Jane who asks for it, and now it is not simply denied (as at Gateshead). Instead, the very basis for the plea is rejected: St John, though obviously hurt and angry at having been told that Jane scorns his idea of love and himself when he offers it, claims not to have been offended and thus not to have anything to forgive (.viii.–). It is immediately apparent that he is lying, which is bad enough. Denying the comfort of reconciliation to his cousin, who ‘would always rather be happy than dignified’, by refusing even to consider her right to ask his forgiveness is worse still: in retaliation, he not only scorns her apology, he scorns her when she offers it. No wonder Jane says that she ‘would much rather he had knocked [her] down’; that, at least, would have been honest. This withheld absolution is uncharitable and hence ungodly, and St John’s calculated behaviour amounts to a kind of vindictiveness against which Jane has no redress. Is Jane right to ask St John’s forgiveness? He has, after all, laid siege to her inmost self without loving or desiring it for himself and with no intention of cherishing it; and he should have known that his notion according to which ‘enough of love would follow upon marriage’ would be offensive to her. In fact, it is in response to that provocation that Jane utters the words she should apologise for: she voices her contempt for his person, ironically enough just after she has prided herself on being able to ‘discriminate the Christian from the man’ and to ‘profoundly esteem the one, and freely forgive the other’ (.viii.). By doing so, she commits an error, and the phrase ‘I could not help saying’ suggests that she realises it. While her tone is not exactly abject (‘Forgive me . . . but it is your own fault that I have been roused to speak so unguardedly’), she clearly wishes she had not levelled a personal attack at him. By contrast, St John later speaks of forgiving Jane when she is not conscious of any wrongdoing. Telling her cousin that he would kill her if they married, and that he ‘[is] killing [her] now’, Jane incurs the following burst of wrath: ‘I should kill you – I am killing you? Your words are such as ought not to be used: violent, unfeminine, and untrue. They betray an unfortunate state of mind:

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they merit severe reproof: they would seem inexcusable; but that it is the duty of man to forgive his fellow, even until seventy-and-seven times.’ (..)

This falls somewhat short of breathing genuine forgiveness, and Jane unwittingly adds to St John’s fury by admitting to being aware of the intensity of the anger he claims not to feel: ‘ ‘‘Now you will indeed hate me . . . It is useless to attempt to conciliate you: I see I have made an eternal enemy of you’’ ’ (.ix.). Realising that this makes St John even more furious (‘I knew the steelly ire I had whetted’), Jane assures him that she had ‘no intention to grieve or pain’ him – but she does not apologise. This time, she has not spoken in anger, nor has she vented animosity against him personally. She has attempted to make him see the true state of things between them, and while she regrets having failed (and having offended him in the process), she does not feel that she is at fault. Consequently, St John’s later show of forgiveness annoys her, pushing her to the point of pure sarcasm: ‘No doubt he had invoked the help of the Holy Spirit to subdue the anger I had roused in him, and now believed he had forgiven me once more’ (.ix.). Considering the fears for her salvation that Jane’s departure and marriage must, on the evidence of his previous statements, have aroused in St John, he is less than generous in never referring to her achievement of her heart’s desire in the course of their subsequent correspondence. This way Jane cannot persuade him to understand her motives and actions, and he never expends a syllable on acknowledging, let alone condoning, them. Whatever view one takes of such conduct, charitableness is not the first word that springs to mind. The preceding discussion has only qualified the contention that Jane Eyre is a novel profoundly concerned with protest and rebellion, not undermined it. The book makes it clear that it is right and proper to protest, and if need be revolt, against injustice (Helen Burns’s acquiescence is, after all, an extreme position, and Jane Eyre as a whole does not hold up her renunciation of the world as a realistic model of conduct; Helen is unique, a creature fitted for the next world more than for this). But such rebellion must be impelled by a spirit of liberation, not by personal venom generated at least in part by injured vanity and fed by self-pity. The duty of the individual is to preserve, improve and develop the self that God created, and nothing that impedes those efforts can be tolerated. Anger against such impediments is just, but hatred against persons is impermissible: it diverts emotional energy, thwarts generous and loving impulses between humans and blocks communication with

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Ethics

God, who requires his creatures to forgive one another. It is when Jane’s fury is contaminated by malice and/or self-pity and takes on an adhominem dimension that it is reprehensible and requires pardon, and she knows that. Learning the difference between justified anger at repressive forces and personal rancour is part of Jane Eyre’s spiritual and emotional Bildungsweg. It calls for tough self-disciplining measures: in fact, one feature of repression in Jane Eyre consists in the heroine’s gradually growing ability to repress the faults in her own character. However distasteful the realisation may seem, Jane Eyre’s rage is not always sound.

  The worst aspect of hating people and being unable to forgive them is that it closes the heart to love, human and Divine, received and bestowed. Heathcliff’s life illustrates this, from the point where his adolescent mind begins to dwell on vengeance up to his last days, when his thirst for revenge dries up and he dies of love. As was pointed out above, Wuthering Heights is in a sense a revenger’s tragedy. Like its Renaissance predecessors, it comprises both the reasons for the avenger’s project, its successive implementation and its deepest and most tragic feature, the aftermath of revenge with its absence of lasting triumph and even permanent satisfaction. Stripped to the barest of bones, Heathcliff’s tale is that of a boy adopted into a household which, whatever its deficiencies, is certainly a marked improvement on his origins, whatever they were. Persecuted by his benefactor’s son, he stays because of his emotional ties to his oppressor’s sister but makes no determined and sustained attempt to withstand the bully’s design for his degradation. Consequently, that design succeeds well enough to persuade the boy’s beloved childhood companion to marry a rich and civilised young man instead of him. Having overheard her say that marriage to him would degrade her, he runs away. That is, in essence, the basis for Heathcliff’s revenge, and compared to the crimes and sufferings that prompted his Elizabethan and Jacobean predecessors to take up arms against an assortment of evildoers, it is not a very impressive one. All the wrongs he sets out to avenge are wrongs directed against himself. Nobody has murdered a parent or child of his, and his loved one, as he recognises, in effect murders herself. He tells her so as she is dying:

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‘Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart – you have broken it – and in breaking it, you have broken mine.’ (.i.)

Catherine’s reply and his response to it are stark and moving, if less than conclusive: ‘Let me alone. Let me alone,’ sobbed Catherine. ‘If I’ve done wrong, I’m dying for it. It is enough! You left me too; but I won’t upbraid you! I forgive you. Forgive me!’ ‘It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands,’ he answered. ‘Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer – but yours! How can I?’ (.i.)

It may look like a mark of generosity in Heathcliff that he forgives Catherine for what she has done to him and that it is her crime against herself that he cannot pardon. But in view of the equation Heathcliff proclaims between Catherine and his own life and soul (.i.; see also .ii.), it is hardly an altruistic gesture, and it does little to modify the picture of Heathcliff as one who recognises no suffering but his own. In fact, Edgar Linton would have had nobler grounds for seeking revenge – revenge against the man who has, as he sees and must see it, killed his wife, brought ruin on his sister, deprived his child of her mother and treated his nephew cruelly, thus committing offences against every one of Edgar’s blood relations. Edgar, however, is so far from being vindictive that he would ‘not care that Heathcliff gained his ends, and triumphed in robbing [him] of [his] last blessing’ (i.e. Cathy), as long as he could believe that her cousin Linton was worthy of her (.xi.). Heathcliff, by contrast, nursed grievances from childhood, as chilling instances articulated by himself bear witness. He first shows his instinct for revenge when telling Nelly of his and Catherine’s clandestine and fateful visit to Thrushcross Grange: ‘I’d not exchange, for a thousand lives, my condition here, for Edgar Linton’s at Thrushcross Grange – not if I might have the privilege of flinging Joseph off the highest gable, and painting the house-front with Hindley’s blood!’ (.vi.)

This is strong language from an adolescent. Still, it should not prevent the realisation that the idea of revenge is not yet paramount in his mind, which runs on his own superiority to Edgar Linton. A short time afterwards, however, instinct has developed into preoccupation: ‘I’m trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don’t care how long I wait, if I can only do it, at last. I hope he will not die before I do!’

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Ethics

‘For shame, Heathcliff!’ said I. ‘It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.’ ‘No, God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall,’ he returned. ‘I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I’ll plan it out: while I’m thinking of that, I don’t feel pain.’ (.vii.)

Nelly’s one-sentence recapitulation of Christian doctrine on human forgiveness and God’s punishment comes across as the flattest of inanities in an exhibition of powerful if grim emotion. This is surely a calculated effect; the rank unorthodoxy of ‘God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall’ is a marvellous expression of implacable malevolence which has thrilled generations of readers. But apart from the mistaken alignment of Divine and human motives – God does not punish for his own gratification – it is a premonition of a career of revenge that actually ends in little satisfaction for the perpetrator. This boy is not an ‘essentially humane stable-lad’; he is someone who has given himself over to evil and merely as yet lacks the instruments to implement his desires. Another indication that he is already far gone in hatred is his ‘anguish’ at finding that his ‘natural impulse’ to catch the falling child Hareton has ‘[thwarted] his own revenge’ (.ix.). If he had not, Hindley would in all likelihood have caused his own son’s death. Nelly is so sure that Heathcliff would have preferred this outcome that she believes only the presence of witnesses prevented Heathcliff from bringing it about after the event, as it were, ‘by smashing Hareton’s skull on the steps’. However, it must be remembered that this episode is seen through Nelly’s eyes only, and decades of Wuthering Heights criticism have shown that she is far from being a reliable narrator. As Heathcliff returns, well equipped for carrying out his designs, and begins to put his plans into motion, it is obvious that his project will not be hampered by the slightest touch of human feeling. As Catherine tells Isabella, Heathcliff is ‘a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man’ (.x.), and as she says to Heathcliff himself, his bliss, like Satan’s, ‘lies . . . in inflicting misery’ (.xi.). The latter conversation is a particularly interesting one. Heathcliff has only been back, and living at the Heights, for a couple of months when he speaks of revenge with Catherine. Misinterpreting his assurance ‘if you fancy I’ll suffer unrevenged, I’ll convince you of the contrary’, she asks how he intends to take revenge on her. This is Heathcliff’s reply: ‘I seek no revenge on you . . . That’s not the plan – The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him, they

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crush those beneath them – You are welcome to torture me to death for your amusement, only, allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style . . . ’ (.xi.). Having admitted to possessing a ‘plan’, Heathcliff establishes a hierarchy of suffering: what Catherine, his ruler, does and has done to him, he will do to others over whom he has power in his turn. Catherine, unimpressed, points out that in quarrelling with Edgar and deceiving Isabella, he will disturb the security and tranquillity which she has enjoyed once Edgar was ‘restored from the ill-temper he gave way to at [Heathcliff’s] coming’ (.xi.–). That will, as she says, amount to the most efficient method of revenging himself on her. Catherine and Heathcliff always speak the truth about themselves to each other, and about each other to anybody who cares to listen. It never occurs to either of them to spare the other’s feelings, because in their strange symbiosis they are never conscious of the other as an ‘other’. Subsequent events confirm Catherine’s prognosis: by upsetting the Lintons, Heathcliff indirectly inflicts great suffering on Catherine. Her household in turmoil, her fragile mental health gives way; psychosomatic disorders weaken her and threaten the pregnancy she welcomed while still sane; and in the end she dies, her death undoubtedly hastened by Heathcliff’s invasion of her sick-room. If this is an example of a tyrant crushing a slave, Catherine does not appear to be a natural choice for the tyrant’s part. And yet there can be no doubt that Heathcliff is sincere in not wanting to hurt Catherine. The way things turn out is an illustration of the truth articulated, surprisingly enough, by a character not otherwise remarkable for wisdom. Invited by Hindley to join him in a scheme to be avenged on Heathcliff, Isabella replies: ‘I’d be glad of a retaliation that wouldn’t recoil on myself; but treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends – they wound those who resort to them, worse than their enemies’ (.iii.–). It is a canny remark, and Isabella refrains from playing an active part in Hindley’s failed attempt to ‘do [her] a kindness in spite of [herself ], and Hareton justice’. There is not a hint of Christian forbearance in her passiveness, and on the few occasions when she manages to add an atom to Heathcliff’s grief she does so with glee. Nelly Dean is shocked to hear it: ‘Fie, fie, Miss! . . . One might suppose you had never opened a Bible in your life. If God afflict your enemies, surely that ought to suffice you. It is both mean and presumptuous to add your torture to his!’

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Ethics

‘In general, I’ll allow that it would be, Ellen . . . But what misery laid on Heathcliff could content me, unless I have a hand in it? I’d rather he suffered less, if I might cause his sufferings, and he might know that I was the cause. Oh, I owe him so much. On only one condition can I hope to forgive him. It is, if I may take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, for every wrench of agony return a wrench, reduce him to my level. As he was the first to injure, make him the first to implore pardon; and then – why then, Ellen, I might show you some generosity. But it is utterly impossible I can ever be revenged, and therefore I cannot forgive him.’ (.iii.)

This exchange makes plain the full extent of Isabella’s hatred of Heathcliff. As she told Nelly a short while earlier, Heathcliff has killed her heart and with it any power to feel for him (.iii.). Nowhere is Heathcliff’s destructive influence on all around him so apparent as in the transformation of this initially spoilt and childish, but neither illnatured nor cowardly, girl into a bitter young woman misguided enough to believe that revenge must precede forgiveness. How successful is Heathcliff as an avenger? His ‘plan’ backfires badly in that Catherine dies at an early stage, an event which causes him as much grief as it does Edgar, and the latter has her child to console him. As has been pointed out above, Heathcliff is powerless to kill the love between father and daughter and to deny the dying Edgar the presence of his daughter in his last hour – a comfort Heathcliff himself will not have, though he asks for her company when death draws near. Heathcliff’s stratagems secure Edgar’s property for him, as they do Hindley’s; but he does not manage to ruin Edgar’s life nor, as it turns out, his child’s. Hindley, his other enemy, is Heathcliff’s only success, and one that affords him ‘flinty gratification’ (.iii.). Hindley might well have gone to perdition without Heathcliff’s assistance, however; after his bereavement he too seems possessed with a demon, his talk is all hell-fire and blasphemy and any instinct of self-preservation appears to have died with his wife. Despite his gloating over the demeaning of Hareton (.vii.), Heathcliff is unable to corrupt the boy. Not only the ending of the novel shows it; there are other indications that Hareton’s ‘educator’s’ inhumanity does not manage to eradicate his finer feelings. For instance, despite Cathy’s offending the young man’s pride sorely by taking him for a servant and treating him accordingly, he feels pity for her in her distress and confusion (.iv.). Compassion is, as we have seen, part and parcel of human forgiveness, and Linton Heathcliff’s reprehensible behaviour to Cathy does not

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prevent her from feeling sorry for him and repeatedly forgiving him. Goaded by Heathcliff who plays on her knowledge of her cousin’s weakness and tries to block her affection for Linton, ‘all I have to love in the world’, Cathy delivers a piercing description of the avenger just after the death of his last first-hand enemy: ‘I know [Linton] has a bad nature . . . he’s your son. But I’m glad I’ve a better, to forgive it; and I know he loves me and for that reason I love him. Mr. Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty rises from your greater misery! You are miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you – nobody will cry for you, when you die! I wouldn’t be you!’ (.xv.)

Nelly acknowledges the justice of her remarks when drawing the disapproving conclusion that the girl has ‘made up her mind to enter into the spirit of her future family, and draw pleasure from the griefs of her enemies’; but Nelly is surely short-sighted here. What Cathy does is reject Heathcliff’s brutalising influence. By telling him that his condition is worse than hers, and even Linton’s, she shows him that he cannot destroy her spirit: as long as she retains the ability to love, even Linton, Heathcliff is beneath her. His stung reaction implies that she has hit home, whereupon she ‘scornfully’ leaves the room – a telling adverb. And scornful young Mrs Heathcliff remains when forced to return to Wuthering Heights, putting up a show of passive resistance to Heathcliff at considerable risk to her health and well-being. After Linton’s death, with nobody to love and care for, she is in danger of becoming permanently embittered, rebuffing the clumsy overtures of something that might be called friendliness made by Hareton and the servant Zillah. Lockwood, of course, has a taste of the same dreary aloofness. There is ample cause for Cathy’s rudeness, though. Nursing a fretful, anxious and (justly) complaining patient for weeks without help or even the benefit of professional advice and attendance, enduring his death alone soon after suffering a far greater bereavement, being exposed to taunts and violence from a man who has one completely in his power – all this would have crushed any human being, let alone a teenage girl used to being cared for and waited on by people devoted to her welfare. Zillah’s and Hareton’s attempts to comfort her come too late, and she does not believe them to be sincere: ‘I reject any pretence at kindness you have the hypocrisy to offer! . . . When I would have given my life for one kind word, even to see one of your faces, you all kept off’ (.xvi.). She

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Ethics

knows that Heathcliff is evil, and it is not surprising that she dare not trust any member of his household. Not until Nelly Dean, no longer needed at the Grange after Lockwood’s departure, comes to the Heights does Cathy’s stony facade begin to crumble. Under her old nurse’s warming and steadying influence, she starts to behave like an adolescent again, becoming fractious and roguish by turns and gradually winning over the much-sinned-against Hareton. In the end, her entreaties that he forgive her are accepted, and over the pages of a book the former enemies find themselves ‘sworn allies’ (.xviii.–) – like the young Heathcliff and Catherine a generation earlier. Heathcliff makes some effort to put distance between them, but he does not succeed. One reason is, ironically, Hareton’s affection for him coupled with Cathy’s generous instincts which urge her to respect it. Her attempt to tell Hareton how Heathcliff treated his father is checked by the young man’s statement of allegiance to the man whom he always regarded as master of the house: ‘if he were the devil, it didn’t signify; he would stand by him’. Cathy even goes so far as to confess to Nelly that she is sorry for having tried ‘to raise a bad spirit between [Heathcliff] and Hareton’, and she desists forthwith (.xix.). When this obstacle to the cousins’ relationship has been removed, their love grows from day to day. The basis for Heathcliff’s rudimentary regard for Hareton is the young man’s startling resemblance to Catherine, joined to a measure of self-identification. As Hareton’s mental faculties and emotions are stimulated, that resemblance grows almost uncanny. As for Cathy, she has her mother’s eyes – a fact which checks Heathcliff’s violence against her on an occasion when she runs a serious risk of suffering grievous bodily harm at his hands. The moment which terminates Heathcliff’s eighteen-year revenge campaign again finds the two cousins over a book, the emblem of civilisation. Their faces, close together, are ‘animated with the eager interest of children’. It is thus that Heathcliff sees them when he suddenly enters, meeting their eyes – Catherine’s eyes – as they lift their heads to look at him. Heathcliff is seized by a strange agitation, and the two young people soon leave the room. Asked to remain, Nelly is made to listen to Heathcliff’s extraordinary renunciation of the ambitions that have driven him for more than half his life: ‘It is a poor conclusion, is it not . . . An absurd termination to my violent exertions? I get levers and mattocks to demolish the two houses, and train

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myself to be capable of working like Hercules, and when everything is ready, and in my power, I find the will to lift a slate off either roof has vanished! My old enemies have not beaten me – now would be the precise time to revenge myself on their representatives – I could do it; and none could hinder me – But where is the use? I don’t care for striking, I can’t take the trouble to raise my hand! That sounds as if I had been labouring the whole time, only to exhibit a fine trait of magnanimity. It is far from being the case – I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.’ (.xix.)

Heathcliff is unable to continue his ‘exertions’ to ‘demolish the two houses’ because the heirs, the ‘representatives’, of their dead owners are also Catherine’s – one in the direct sense of being a child of her body, the other indirectly in being her near relation and the living being who most resembles her. His love for Catherine starves his hatred of the Earnshaws and Lintons, thereby eroding the basis for a continuation of his revenge on the second generation. This is the main reason for the shelving of Heathcliff’s project, but not the only one, as the development of the Cathy–Hareton relationship shows: love acts on several planes to undermine the power of Heathcliff’s hate, not least Hareton’s love for him and Cathy’s acceptance of it. Wuthering Heights thus testifies to the supreme power of love, but it is difficult to imagine a less sentimental way of acknowledging its triumph. As was pointed out above, Heathcliff never repents or forgives, and he looks for nobody’s pardon. He gives up persecuting and terrorising innocent people because he runs out of enemies and cannot refuel his hatred. Even Heathcliff cannot hate without provocation for any length of time, and when Cathy stops needling him out of consideration for Hareton, his loathing of her abates. An indication to this effect is found in the last words he addresses to her, on the afternoon before he dies, when he asks for someone to sit with him – a sign that, for once, he feels the need of comfort through human society. Nelly having declined, ‘telling him plainly that his strange talk and manner frightened [her]’, Heathcliff turns to Cathy: ‘Will you come, chuck? I’ll not hurt you. No! to you, I’ve made myself worse than the devil’ (.xx.). The mere fact of his asking a favour from the person on whom he knows he has inflicted such gruesome and undeserved torment is intriguing, and the added touch of the old-fashioned endearment is almost eerie. But though it suggests an uncharacteristic softening in the ‘pitiless, wolfish man’, he soon recovers from his spell of human weakness: Heathcliff’s last words to any living being are an exhortation, directed to those who are anxious for him, to ‘be damned’ (.xx.).

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Ethics

If love overpowers and emasculates hatred in Emily Bronte¨’s novel, it is thus not altogether successful when it comes to soothing anger. It is significant that Lockwood’s absurd Branderham dream turns on the ‘Seventy Times Seven’ text with which St John Rivers had confronted Jane Eyre in another instance of insincere piety: after  transgressions, the next need not be borne (.iii.–). The functions of Lockwood’s dreams as integral components in Emily Bronte¨’s novel have been addressed by a large number of critics. Here it is enough to say that she chose to base one of them on a subversion of the Christian’s duty to forgive his fellow men, allowing the dream to end in an eruption of violence which emanates both from the preacher and from his exasperated listener. The brawl that manifests the irrepressible wrath of the unforgiving and unforgiven is suggested by the rapping of a branch on the window which plays such a harrowing part in Lockwood’s second dream. Forgiveness and revenge are hence essential features in Wuthering Heights, but neither is permitted a decisive triumph: in this respect as well as with regard to the eschatological dimension, the novel probes but does not prescribe. I do not think it is correct to say that Emily Bronte¨ ‘has declared man’s right to his own revenge’, but nor can the book be said to supply a consistent illustration of the view which Charlotte Bronte¨ ascribed to her sister: ‘She held that mercy and forgiveness are the divinest attributes of the Great Being who made both man and woman.’ Wuthering Heights is a world of its own, and it resists every extraneous rationale, be it secular or religious. The power of love is certainly paramount in it, but that power is not manifested according to fixed points on a scale of values. Every critic must leave the book in the awareness of not having reached conclusion, and it will keep attracting new ones who find that the same applies to them. Reconciliation has always been crucial to literary narratives of any age – and belonging to any genre – which deal with human discord, as so many narratives do and have always done. The nineteenth century, though, was particularly preoccupied with repentance and forgiveness. The title of Trollope’s first Palliser novel, Can You Forgive Her? (), might serve as an emblem of a whole era (assuming that the pronoun is also extended to the other sex). Novels with overtly religious overtones, Dissenter, Tractarian, Evangelical and middle-of-the-road Anglican, continuously dwelt on the theme of guilt and expiation, including confession and pardon. One example, extremely popular in the s, was Lady Georgiana Fullerton’s Ellen Middleton (), whose heroine

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happens to commit a minor sin – a slap in anger – which leads to horrendous consequences. Another, from a writer with entirely different denominational roots, is Mrs Gaskell’s Mary Barton. Charles Dickens delves deeply into the issue of transgression and pardon; it is not necessary to go beyond Great Expectations to realise that. The engagement of the age with the question of salvation is an underlying factor in this preoccupation with forgiveness and revenge. Evangelicalism and Coleridge-inspired theology had centred the religious experience, and hence the destiny of the soul, in the human heart; but as Jeremiah said and the Victorians knew, ‘the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?’ The Bronte¨ novels constantly pursue such knowledge, chronicling the vicissitudes of the heart without restraint and prejudice. Insofar as any prescriptive guideline can be extracted from their fearless and variegated investigations, it is that hatred of persons must not be fostered and that love beyond self-gratification is the thing most worthy of trust. This agrees with the New Testament’s teachings on the nature of love, both in the Gospels and the Epistles; and such love cannot pass the barrier of unforgivingness – in any direction.

     

The Christian life

A much-quoted sentence from Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection proclaims that ‘Christianity is not a Theory, or a Speculation; but a Life. – Not a Philosophy of Life, but a Life and a living Process.’ An examination of religion in the fiction of the Bronte¨s must address the question of how the authors dealt with Christianity as the very substance of daily life. Interaction with and obligations to one’s fellow-creatures form part of everyday existence for any human being, fictive or real, and the functions of the individual in his/her relations with other people are often raised in the following pages. But though many Bronte¨ characters are keenly aware of, and labour to fulfil, duties both to people in their immediate surroundings and to larger communities, their most urgent concern is with their own selves. Consequently, this chapter devotes a good deal of space to the obligation of the individual to assume responsibility for his/her own life. It is an obligation from which no leading Bronte¨ character, male or female, is excused, no matter how constrained the latter’s situation may be. It is significant that not even the Bronte¨ heroine whose predicament comes closest to long-term submission under patriarchal rule, Caroline Helstone in Shirley, exempts herself from the duty to create a meaningful existence for herself. It is not always observed that the pages in which Charlotte Bronte¨ uses Caroline’s plight as a point of departure for a rousing call to ‘Men of Yorkshire!’, ‘Men of England!’ and ‘Fathers!’ to deliver their daughters from the shackles of irksome domesticity are at the same time a call for women’s freedom to labour, physically and mentally. It is still rarer for a reference to this impassioned plea to acknowledge that Caroline believes herself to speak with God’s approval, and that her own concrete efforts are channelled in the direction of an ‘imitation of Christ’. This emphasis on responsibility, self-searching and useful endeavour in the service of God is a direct reflection of the Evangelical milieu in which the Bronte¨s grew up. 

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The duty of individuals to their selves cannot be separated from their obligations to their fellow creatures: duty to self and duty to others are jointly subsumed under duty to God. Self-knowledge is an essential component, however, as Coleridge said and as the Rev. Matthewson Helstone affirms in ch. iv of Shirley. No effort to promote the welfare of others can prosper if it is not in harmony with that pursuit of selfimprovement which dominates the lives of Bronte¨ characters. In this sense, too, the Bronte¨s were entirely typical of their time. The ensuing analysis of the Christian ‘living process’ (to borrow Coleridge’s term) in the Bronte¨ fiction deals with the nature of Christian morality as presented in the novels, the emphasis being on Charlotte’s and Anne’s books. A consideration of the useful-employment ethos, so characteristic of the early Victorian age, is followed by an investigation of some central ethical concepts, particularly sincerity/truth and goodness. Finally, the question of what guides the Christian may rely on is addressed in discussions of the Bible and the operations of conscience. These discussions are introduced by a look at the failure of church attendance to bring spiritual insight and comfort, a notable feature in the fiction of the Bronte¨s. Naturally, the opposites of the forces for good – such as hypocrisy, self-deception, arrogance and cruelty – are raised as well throughout the chapter.          , ‘         ’           In the Bronte¨ novels, shows of piety made by people who claim special distinction for themselves in the field of religion are usually deplored and/or ridiculed. On the relatively few occasions where Bronte¨ characters – usually members of what might be termed the supporting cast – indulge in lengthy protestations of devoutness, they emerge as complacent hypocrites. Joseph in Wuthering Heights is an extreme example; the elder Mrs Bloomfield (‘the grandmamma’) in Agnes Grey is a more incidental and less memorable person, but Anne Bronte¨’s portrayal is characteristically acute: ‘But there’s one remedy for all, my dear, and that’s resignation,’ (a toss of the head) ‘resignation to the will of Heaven!’ (an uplifting of hands and eyes.) ‘It has always supported me through all my trials, and always will do.’ (a succession of nods.) ‘But then, it isn’t everybody that can say that,’ (a shake of the head), ‘but I’m one of the pious ones, Miss Grey!’ (a very significant nod and toss) ‘And, thank Heaven, I always was,’ (another nod) ‘and I glory in it!’ (an emphatic clasping of the hands and shaking of the head) and with several texts of

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scripture, misquoted or misapplied, and religious exclamations so redolent of the ludicrous in the style of delivery, and manner of bringing in, if not in the expressions themselves, that I decline repeating them, she withdrew, tossing her large head in high good-humour – with herself at least – and left me hoping that, after all, she was rather weak than wicked. (iv.)

No doubt this incisive thumbnail sketch sums up years of aggregated and aggravated observation. Joseph’s ranting and the elder Mrs Bloomfield’s canting are not merely silly and annoying: their self-admiration coexists with total indifference to the very real needs of their fellow men in general, and the human creatures who especially crave their help and support in particular. This disregard for the elementary obligations of good Christians makes their conduct doubly reprehensible. Relying on the satirist’s classic ploy of letting victims condemn themselves out of their own mouths, Emily and Anne Bronte¨ manage to denounce their sanctimonious self-righteousness with more than a dash of humour. When Charlotte Bronte¨ pillories a bigot in Shirley, the irony is a little more heavyhanded, though still effective. It resides as much in the contrast between the older woman’s diffident criticism and the young girl’s forthright censure as in the faithful reproduction of the hypocrite’s jargon: ‘I remember,’ continued Mrs. Pryor . . . ‘another of Miss H.’s observations, which she would utter with quite a grand air. ‘‘W ,’’ she would say, – ‘‘W need the imprudencies, extravagances, mistakes, and crimes of a certain number of fathers to sow the seed from which  reap the harvest of governesses. The daughters of tradespeople, however well educated, must necessarily be underbred, and as such unfit to be inmates of   dwellings, or guardians of  children’s minds and persons. W  shall ever prefer to place those about  offspring, who have been born and bred with somewhat of the same refinement as        .’’’ ‘Miss Hardman must have thought herself something better than her fellowcreatures, ma’am, since she held that their calamities, and even crimes, were necessary to minister to her convenience. You say she was religious: her religion must have been that of the Pharisee, who thanked God that he was not as other men are, nor even as that publican.’ ‘My dear, we will not discuss the point: I should be the last person to wish to instil into your mind any feeling of dissatisfaction with your lot in life, or any sentiment of envy or insubordination towards your superiors.’ (.x.)

Caroline Helstone’s characterisation is obviously just. Her condemnation of the pharisaic lady’s lack of the two chief virtues of the Anglican Christian, humility and charity, illustrates a vital point in the Bronte¨ novels’ attacks on religious bigotry: the hypocrites, like the faulty clergy-

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men discussed in section IV below, are castigated not because they are Christians, but because they are deficient in true Christianity. A superficial reading of the scenes where ‘religious’ people and practices are denigrated might leave an impression that the authors’ bias is in some sense anti-Christian; but such a view does not stand up to closer examination. As Charlotte Bronte¨ said in her preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre, ‘To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.’ The decisive issue is sincerity, as is shown by the description of the saintlike spinster Miss Ainley in Shirley: She talked never of herself – always of others. Their faults she passed over; her theme was their wants, which she sought to supply; their sufferings, which she longed to alleviate. She was religious – a professor of religion – what some would call ‘a saint,’ and she referred to religion often in sanctioned phrase – in phrase which those who possess a perception of the ridiculous, without owning the power of exactly testing and truly judging character, would certainly have esteemed a proper subject for satire: a matter for mimicry and laughter. They would have been hugely mistaken for their pains. Sincerity is never ludicrous; it is always respectable. Whether truth – be it religious or moral truth – speak eloquently and in well-chosen language or not, its voice should be heard with reverence. Let those who cannot nicely . . . discern the difference between the tones of hypocrisy and those of sincerity, never presume to laugh at all, lest they should have the miserable misfortune to laugh in the wrong place, and commit impiety when they think they are achieving wit. (.x.)

Miss Ainley proves her genuine worth in the countless acts of kindness and good will she carries out with a minimum of display. As Charlotte Bronte¨ observes (in the next paragraph), the ‘works of a Sister of Charity’ are ‘far more difficult to perform than those of a Lady Bountiful’. Being poor, Miss Ainley has little in the way of material comfort to offer the needy, though she gives away what little she can spare on a Spartan re´gime. Her services to the sick and poor are remarkable not only for their disregard of danger and discomfort to herself, but for the serenity with which she performs them. For all her self-imposed privation, the ugly old maid who expects no gratitude (and gets little enough) is not so much a self-sacrificing martyr as a cheerful giver, a perfect illustration of  Cor. :. No wonder the similarly saintlike rector of Nunnely, Mr Hall, ‘said truly, that her life came nearer the life of Christ, than that of any other human being he had ever met with’ (.x.). In her self-abnegation and her constant endeavour to think well of her fellow men and not at all of herself, she is one of the two characters in

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Charlotte Bronte¨’s books – the other is Helen Burns – whose view of life adheres to central tenets in Thomas a` Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ. Moral and spiritual perfection is not much of a basis for fiction, however. Characters who represent it must needs be coincidental to the main human drama enacted by flawed individuals. Every pilgrim’s progress is beset with peril, bright moments making interludes in struggles full of backsliding and loss of orientation. Charlotte Bronte¨ is more explicit than her sister Anne when it comes to emphasising the imperfections of her heroines; Jane Eyre is ‘no Helen Burns’, and even the high-principled Caroline Helstone is forced to admit to herself that ‘the life which made Miss Ainley happy could not make her happy’ (.x.). If the main persons in the Bronte¨ novels had not had their shortcomings – as was argued above, even Helen Huntingdon in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall falls far short of perfect goodness and virtue – the books would have gone the way of all Victorian tracts and works of didactic fiction. While such a statement may seem too self-evident to need articulating, another is not: the human faults and errors which enliven and propel the Bronte¨ tales do not constitute a denial of the existence of norms against which the characters are measured and measure themselves; and those norms are largely in agreement with the basic teachings of the Church of England – consistently so in Charlotte and Anne Bronte¨’s novels, to a limited extent in Wuthering Heights. Of all the Bronte¨ novels, Shirley is the most interesting when it comes to studying the ways in which people – women especially – devise their own answers to the question, ‘How can I live well?’ Caroline Helstone and Shirley Keeldar are in a different situation from Jane Eyre, Lucy Snowe and Agnes Grey in that they need not support themselves by paid employment; nor are they subjected to the ceaseless troubles that are Helen Huntingdon’s lot. In other words, they have leisure for thinking about life and their functions in it, and they do. As a result, Shirley initiates and supports benevolent schemes, being wise and tactful enough to have them drafted by an expert (Miss Ainley) and sanctioned by the three senior clergymen of the district (in such a way as to half-persuade them that the ideas were really theirs). Her impulses are generous; but her liberality is conditioned by a belief that if she fails to ‘give more’, she will be punished for it – ‘my brother’s blood will some day be crying to Heaven against me’ (.iii.). This motive lends a sombre tinge to her generosity, as does her statement that if she were ever to be besieged by a poverty-stricken mob, she would defend

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her property ‘like a tigress’. Shirley is an aristocrat by nature, and she can only give as a Lady Bountiful. Both as an energetic estate-owner and as a provider of funds for charitable purposes, Shirley has plenty to occupy her; besides, she possesses a creative vein which, while largely untapped, ‘[bubbles] in her heart [and] keeps it green’ (.xi.). For Caroline, the question of what to do with her life once she has lost the companionship of the Moores and the hope of a union with Robert sets off repeated musings on the situation of under-occupied women. While resolved to emulate Miss Ainley to the best of her ability (‘ ‘‘I will bestir myself,’’ was her resolution, ‘and try to be wise if I cannot be good’’ ’: .x.), Caroline is not content to renounce all expectation of happiness in, or enjoyment of, life. The thoughts of this ostensibly meek girl are seasoned with bold observations that testify to her strength and independence of mind. Forcing herself to face the questions ‘What was I created for?’ and ‘Where is my place in the world?’, she sees that doing good for others can never be the whole answer: it ‘is right in some measure, and a very convenient doctrine’ for those that benefit from it at no cost to themselves but the odd word of praise. The hereafter ‘baffles description’ and cannot tell her how to live this side of the grave. She rejects the ‘Romish’ idea of renunciation of self and the ‘morbidity’ of the pillar saint as perversions of nature. God, she argues in one of her most striking reflections, ‘surely did not create us, and cause us to live, with the sole end of wishing always to die. I believe, in my heart, we were intended to prize life and enjoy it, so long as we retain it.’ Still, even the audacious mind that framed this thought ultimately limits itself to appealing for ‘interesting and profitable occupation’. Caroline’s view of earthly joys as good things which should be sought with God’s approval not only deviates from the insistence on self-denial voiced by, for instance, Thomas a` Kempis and Isaac Watts; it also sets her apart from two other women who are better than she at keeping themselves occupied. Her cousin Hortense wastes her time and energy on useless domestic exercises, and Mrs Yorke is a worthy enough matron but of a melancholy and suspicious cast of mind which vitiates her efforts and oppresses her household. Clearly, then, one key to successful existence consists in practically beneficial work, even if such endeavour is not necessary for one’s upkeep. The running of a property, the improvement of the mind and the rearing and education of the young – the chief occupations of Bronte¨

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Ethics

characters of independent means – are adequate tasks, and their performers are granted pleasure in them; but the Bronte¨ ethos of labour applies to every person whose life can be called fulfilled. In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Arthur Huntingdon’s inability to occupy himself (Helen shoulders his duties as landlord) sets him on the path to destruction. Even in Wuthering Heights, protracted idleness is wearisome and depressing, doing its practitioners no good at all.

          Useful occupation is only a partial answer to the question ‘How should I live?’ As the example of Miss Ainley showed, the frame of mind in which one’s occupations are devised and carried out plays an essential role in determining the intensity and depth of the satisfaction engendered by one’s efforts. Well might Caroline Helstone perceive that the ‘goodness’, ‘usefulness’ and ‘mildness, patience, truth’ of the old maid invest the latter with a ‘practical excellence’ far superior to her own ‘more varied and fervent emotions’, ‘deeper power of thought’ and ‘wider capacity to comprehend’ (.x.): that realisation does not remove the latter qualities or the fact that they crave nourishment. The routine Caroline adopts under Miss Ainley’s direction is the classic one for Christian ladies: ‘visiting’ poor and afflicted families and assisting in feeding and clothing them. She does derive some gratification from seeing that she is able to help; but the programme does not cure the broken heart which would have killed her if her ‘more varied and fervent emotions’ had not found an outlet in her relationship with her restored mother. The employment with which a human being fills his or her life must hence be congenial: no fixed set of prescriptions will suit everybody. The responsibility for finding the requisite occupation rests with the individual. If that to which one has been assigned, by birth or circumstance (or the agency of others), fails to satisfy, one should try to find another. Jane Eyre provides arresting examples along these lines. The loss of Miss Temple at Lowood reawakens Jane’s ‘old emotions’, and she finds herself ‘tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon’. First yearning for liberty, then for stimulus, she is obliged to accept that ‘a new servitude’ is her sole hope of change; but that hope she is determined to realise (.x.). Her longing to know something more of the world than Lowood (and her old memories of Gateshead, of course) is more than understandable to a modern reader, but her restlessness at

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Thornfield before Rochester’s arrival has an unexpected dimension which is easily overlooked today. In a handsome country house where she is well accommodated, courteously treated and lightly employed doing work she is eminently qualified for, the orphan and former charity-school girl is not contented. Looking out over the surrounding landscape from Thornfield’s roof, she longs for action and variety. That is hardly in itself a strange desire in an inexperienced eighteen-year-old who has seen next to nothing of ‘the busy world’; but these material qualities are not all she desires: ‘I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold’ (.xii.). The word ‘goodness’ as a designation for the focus of Jane’s longing deserves special consideration. Certainly, Mrs Fairfax and little Ade`le are good, each in her own way; but a kindly elderly housekeeper and a prattling child do not offer Jane’s unusual faculties any exercise to speak of. The girl who made such diligent use of every educational opportunity offered by Lowood feels frustrated in her self-improvement project. It is noteworthy that it is moral progress she craves rather than intellectual or aesthetic, looking for ‘other and more vivid kinds of goodness’ rather than wider knowledge, finer skills or greater beauty. The emphasis on the desirability of goodness is particularly interesting considered in conjunction with that other great quality so consistently exalted by Charlotte Bronte¨, namely truth. Both concepts, very differently conceived, were cornerstones in the nineteenth-century debate on ethics, as well as in philosophy and theology. Clerical writers of many generations and denominations – including Thomas a` Kempis, Pascal and Coleridge – have used both as designations for God’s essence as well as for the goals of human endeavour under Christian auspices. The result is a sometimes confusing confluence of spiritual and secular– moral connotations in these two concepts, and both dimensions are present in the works of the Bronte¨s. In Charlotte’s letters and Anne’s preface to the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the authors declare themselves champions of truth (characteristically, Emily’s best-known poems reflect an inability on the speaker’s part even to imagine herself vulnerable to falsehood). In those personal statements, however, the writers are more concerned with telling the truth as perceived than with seeking it through intellectual processes. The deification of truth in Villette (xxxix.–) does not deviate greatly from this stance; the dread titaness is revered as a dispenser of strength (in that she imparts knowledge of the worst), not as

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a stimulator of the brain. As this study repeatedly points out, however, the novels reveal a thorough-going quest for spiritual truths – primarily as regards the nature of Divine love and forgiveness – which draws on the concentrated application of the mental faculties in ways reminiscent of Coleridge’s explorations of reason and understanding in a religious context. In Charlotte’s work especially, this quest coexists with an Arnoldian dedication to the improvement of human societies, to Thomas Arnold a more central preoccupation than theoretical speculations regarding the veracity of various doctrines could ever be. For Charlotte Bronte¨, however, that improvement is inseparable from the efforts of individuals to improve themselves, a process in which a yearning for truth and goodness constitutes both impetus and guide. In this sense, the fiction of the Bronte¨s illustrates the wide-ranging connotations of the two concepts as they were used by Christian writers in their time. Shirley offers plenty of indications that its author was largely in sympathy with Arnold’s views on Church and society, especially with the conviction that there should be no distinction between the spiritual and the secular in the lives of Christians. The coexistence of the two contributes to the multi-layeredness that makes Shirley, with all its flaws, such a fascinating book. Its most active, colourful and energetic characters, the ones who belong to that ‘busy-world’ sphere of which Jane Eyre dreams, all recognise – more or less reluctantly – that their activities cannot be cut off from the moral considerations that emanate from Christianity. The indomitable Shirley secretly longs to submit to the guidance of the man she loves, the man who (in Shirley’s words) ‘[has] the secret of religion pure and undefiled before God’ and (in his brother’s) ‘is a benevolent fellow’ (.v. and .xiv.). Robert Ge´rard Moore, rescued from ruin at the eleventh hour, recognises that not only his fortunes have improved but also his opportunities to ‘take more workmen; give better wages; lay wiser and more liberal plans; do some good; be less selfish’ (.xiv.). Significantly, he will permit his philanthropic undertakings to be guided by Caroline, whose religious superiority he acknowledges and admits to needing. Secular and spiritual endeavour thus coalesce in the Moore marriages and their joint outcome. However, Charlotte Bronte¨ was too sensitive and skilful an artist to design the conclusion of her novel as an unalloyed hymn to civilisation and ‘progress’, based on a marriage of utilitarian conceptions of goodness and goodness-as-virtue. No book of hers ends on an unambiguously

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triumphant happy-ever-after note. The transformation of the Hollow into a prosperous works community, its greenness gone and its fairies fled, conveys more than a hint of regret for the ‘bonnie spot’ sacrificed to the ambitions of the model industrialist. This ending reminds the novel’s readers of the multiple implications of goodness, expressly and banteringly inviting them to put on their spectacles ‘to look for the moral’. The jovial tone is retained in the final sentence, ‘I only say, God speed [the reader] in the quest!’ (.xiv.); but for all its light-heartedness, it is a benediction. The perplexities and complexity that characterise the human striving for goodness thus do not permit anyone, fictional character or reader, to believe himself/herself in possession of absolute answers. This is another important reason for the enduring power of the Bronte¨ fiction. The few ‘perfect’ characters influence by example rather than prescription, and those who would prescribe are more often than not rebelled against or silently resisted. Even when a ‘good’ person imparts a moral lesson, he or she keeps it brief, avoids sanctimoniousness and endeavours to provide constructive suggestions for concrete improvement. A typical example is offered by Agnes Grey. Solicited by Lady Ashby’s fretful insistence that while Agnes’ ‘wisdom and goodness’ are all very well, young people must be allowed to ‘enjoy themselves’, a two-sentence homily is followed by extensive and sensible practical advice, carefully adapted to the recipient’s limited understanding and capability: ‘The best way to enjoy yourself is to do what is right, and hate nobody. The end of Religion is not to teach us how to die, but how to live; and the earlier you become wise and good, the more of happiness you secure. And now Lady Ashby, I have one more piece of advice to offer you, which is that you will not make an enemy of your mother-in-law. Don’t get into the way of holding her at arm’s length and regarding her with jealous distrust. I never saw her, but I have heard good as well as evil respecting her, and I imagine that, though cold and haughty in her general demeanour, and even exacting in her requirements, she has strong affections for those who can reach them; and, though so blindly attached to her son, she is not without good principles, or incapable of hearing reason; and if you would but conciliate her a little, and adopt a friendly, open manner – and even confide your grievances to her . . . real grievances, such as you have a right to complain of . . . it is my firm belief that she would, in time, become your faithful friend, and a comfort and support to you, instead of the incubus you describe her.’ (xxiii.–)

Usually, however, such guidance falls on stony ground, as do Lucy

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Snowe’s efforts to impart some moral sense to Ginevra Fanshawe – the girl who does not know the difference between ‘Romanism’ and Protestantism and does not care, but to whom Lucy at least accords the virtue of honesty (vi. and xiv.). Apart from outward oppression, deception is the greatest danger encountered by the individual who pursues truth and goodness, and no deception is so perilous as that which human beings evolve for themselves. When Charlotte Bronte¨’s heroines, especially Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe, struggle against the blandishments of ‘Feeling’ and ‘Imagination’, those powers are not reviled in themselves – both can be, and often are, servants of goodness and purveyors of truth; it is against their contamination by self-delusion that Reason is summoned as a countervailing force. The harshness against hypocrites that is consistently displayed in the Bronte¨ novels hence has more than one ethical rationale: lying to themselves, these people stifle any impulse to goodness in their own lives and open the way for evil influences to operate there; lying to others, they hamper the moral development of those whom they have the power to influence; and having removed any incentive to honest selfappraisal, they exalt themselves into positions from which they inflict pain and misery on their fellow creatures and lay blasphemous claim to a kind of authority that is God’s alone. Honesty is the most powerful source of protection against the corrupting influence of these enemies of goodness; therefore Ginevra Fanshawe retains an element of soundness which Madame Beck and her wily staff cannot destroy, and Joseph is powerless to meddle with the minds, feelings and spirits of the children Catherine and Heathcliff. The ruin of their alliance is brought about by Catherine’s self-deception; but to the very end, she and Heathcliff remain brutally frank with each other. While an adamant commitment to sincerity helps in resisting and overcoming the dangers of untruthfulness in others, it needs the support of other characteristics when it comes to blocking the temptation to deceive oneself. Reason conceived as a corrective has already been mentioned; another, and one with peculiar Christian connotations, is humility. The core Bronte¨ text on humility as a central Christian virtue is, appropriately enough, delivered by Mr Hall in Shirley: ‘What, to our human perceptions, looks spotless as we fancy angels, is to [God] but frailty, needing the blood of His Son to cleanse, and the strength of His

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Spirit to sustain. Let us each and all cherish humility – I, as you, my young friends; and we may well do it when we look into our own hearts, and see there temptations, inconsistencies, propensities, even we blush to recognise. And it is not youth, nor good looks, nor grace, nor any gentle outside charm which makes either beauty or goodness in God’s eyes. Young ladies, when your mirror or men’s tongues flatter you, remember that, in the sight of her Maker, Mary Anne Ainley – a woman whom neither glass nor lips have ever panegyrized – is fairer and better than either of you.’ (.iv.)

The two chief functions of humility are to check unwarranted pride, a sin both in the world of classical paganism (hubris) and in Christian moral philosophy, and to remind the individual of his own unworthiness and hence of his need for grace. While the Bronte¨ novels do not, comparatively speaking, devote much space to explicit treatment of humility, its opposite is frequently and harshly decried. Arrogance, whether demonstrated in haughty behaviour to people in lower positions or in unthinking assumption of superiority and concomitant privilege, is always sharply condemned in the fiction of the Bronte¨s, as in that of such contemporaries as Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot. Pride coming before a fall remains a classic plot-line throughout the nineteenth century, and it is discernible in the Bronte¨ novels, too. The offenders are usually punished by thwarted designs (a bearable disappointment to the likes of Blanche Ingram) or by the obligation to live, in considerable discomfort, with the consequences of their mistakes. Anne Bronte¨ allows that Helen Lawrence/Huntingdon’s youthful disdain of prudence and experience was a ‘very natural error’, and even in her own time her readers probably agreed with her; apart from everything else, it is ‘natural’ for the young to err. But no matter how understandable it is that a bright teenager should believe herself wiser than her elders, Helen’s superbia in setting herself up as a vessel of virtue, even grace, deserves the kind of punishment it receives as she is stripped of every shred of complacency and subjected to the most appalling humiliation. In Jane Eyre, Rochester undergoes a similarly drastic programme of purgation from pride. Thus grimly taught humility, both learn to put their faith in God rather than in themselves, whereupon their lives and fortunes improve. It may seem strange to a modern reader that fictional works which lay such stress on self-worth and self-reliance should comprise such radical chastisement for people with many excellent qualities and without other vices than that of pursuing their desires a little recklessly. In so doing, though, they usurp ‘a power with which the divine and perfect alone can

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be safely entrusted’ (Jane Eyre ..). In other words, they transcend the limits set for the activities of their selves, and they do so to satisfy their own wishes. The courage with which all Bronte¨ heroines oppose attempts to shatter their integrity derives from a sense that they are not defending their own personal interests so much as upholding a core of moral values with which they regard their selves as affiliated. Fleeing from Rochester, Jane Eyre puts principles she chose to embrace ‘when sane’ before submission to forces that would ultimately leave her without self-respect. Writing the essay which condemns the cruel and arrogant conduct of morally inferior men (with ‘cold yet bold, trustless yet presumptuous faces’), Lucy Snowe defends true as opposed to ‘human’ justice (xxxv.–). The worst of the afflictions suffered by Agnes Grey is the fear that living among morally inferior people will corrupt the essence of her personality: ‘Already, I seemed to feel my intellect deteriorating, my heart petrifying, my soul contracting, and I trembled lest my very moral perceptions should become deadened, my distinctions of right and wrong confounded, and all my better faculties be sunk, at last, beneath the baleful influence of such a mode of life’ (xi.–). Finally, bereft of the human love and material independence which had been hers all her life, the former heiress of Thrushcross Grange, still little more than a child, fights against being similarly destroyed by her imprisonment at Wuthering Heights under Heathcliff’s evil rule.

     ¨         In the life of Christians, fostering innate virtues in reliance on one’s own capabilities was never enough, and guidance from sources outside one’s self is mandatory. For any Protestant Christian, the chief source of instruction on how to live and what to believe was always the Bible, ‘a lantern to our feet, and an enlightenment to our souls’. As was pointed out above, Charlotte Bronte¨ conformed to No-Popery convention in making Holy Writ Lucy Snowe’s ‘last appeal’ and foremost teacher. As such it is, in Villette, a defensive weapon against Roman Catholicism. Apart from the relevant passages in Villette and the extended study of and commentary on  John  in Agnes Grey, there are not many direct references to Bible reading in the Bronte¨ books. This comparative paucity of explicit mention coexists with a wealth of Biblical quotations and allusions, especially in Charlotte’s and Anne’s novels; a thesis by Keith Allan Jenkins, which deals extensively with Charlotte’s use of the

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Bible, claims that few if any of her contemporaries drew so liberally on Scripture as she. David Norton has shown how powerfully the language of the Authorised Version affected Charlotte Bronte¨’s prose. Focusing on rhythmic elements, Norton draws attention to the literariness of King James’ Bible, to which a reader of Jane Eyre is indirectly alerted by the correspondences between the Biblical text and Charlotte Bronte¨’s idiom. In one of the most comprehensive passages dealing with the Bible in the Bronte¨ novels, it functions neither as guide nor as instructor. Interrogated by Mr Brocklehurst, the child Jane Eyre frankly states that she likes ‘Revelations and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel, and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job and Jonah’ (.iv.). With equal candour, she replies ‘No, Sir’ to the leading question ‘And the Psalms? I hope you like them.’ Later, she qualifies her reply by explaining that ‘Psalms are not interesting’, thereby confirming Mr Brocklehurst’s suspicion that she has ‘a wicked heart’. Jane’s selection is exactly what one would expect from an imaginative child fascinated by colourful tales and responsive to the magic of language; she has picked out the plums of exciting narrative from the Old Testament and the visionary and poetic culmination of the New. Brocklehurst had asked her whether she read the Bible ‘with pleasure’, and forthright as ever she makes it clear that what she enjoys are the human dramas of Jacob and Joseph, baby Moses in the reeds (as Jane only liked ‘a little bit of Exodus’, the vicissitudes of Israel after leaving Egypt do not seem to have interested her), Saul and David, Elijah and Jezebel (assuming that their contest belongs to the ‘parts of Kings’ favoured by Jane), the heroic exploits of Daniel and the drastic tale of recalcitrant Jonah. Job is a somewhat surprising preference in view of the relative absence of dramatic incident, but it is easy to imagine that a child seething with anger at the harsh and unfair treatment she suffers could take comfort in Job’s refusal to accept blame for his woes. In that book, too, as in the Revelation, the poetic qualities of King James’ Bible are powerful enough to brush incomprehension aside and invade a childish consciousness. In the ‘stories’ Jane prefers, the pattern of injustice committed, rectified and punished recurs time and again, the able and clever ( Joseph and Daniel, for instance) asserting their superiority over the incompetent, wicked and cruel. Again, the parallel to the child’s own situation is apparent. Of course, the Revelation also offers satisfying prospects of retribution. Obviously, young Jane at Gateshead hence understands and thinks as

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a child; her religious education follows at Lowood, mainly through Helen Burns. Her indifference to the Psalms proves that God is not real to her. The uniqueness of the longest book of the Bible consists in its character of direct human communication with God: The popularity of the Psalms is [partly] due to the way in which they give expression to the deepest of human feelings and experiences – loneliness, shame, guilt, fear, hatred, joy, sickness, and the threat of death. In various forms the Psalms express the reality of human life before God and give us words to address God about those matters that threaten and enhance human existence. Even more important, they give permission to address the Lord of life. While much of the Bible is understood to be words from God, the Psalms are largely words to God, prayer and praise from the worshiping congregation and the individual believer. Many of them are meant to exalt the deity (praise) as much as or more than to express human feelings or give vent to human needs (prayer). More significantly, prayer and praise are frequently linked together: prayer heard and received by God stimulates in turn praise of the God who has heard and responded.

In a sense, then, Mr Brocklehurst is right in concluding that Jane’s finding the Psalms dull reveals a religious deficiency. Naturally, though, any recognition of his diagnostic ability is swept away by the preposterousness exhibited by the ‘example’ of the greedy little boy who learnt to manipulate his elders to his material advantage by shows of piety. Jane Eyre and the Psalms are relevant to another, and very different, aspect of the Bronte¨ novels’ relation to the Bible. As many commentators have observed, Charlotte and Anne Bronte¨’s prose is interlarded with Biblical phrases to a degree that is remarkable even in the early Victorian age, when writers of all kinds still made diligent and varied use of Scripture. In Wuthering Heights, by far the largest number of Biblical expressions are put in Joseph’s mouth and made to form part of his Calvinist jargon. Others, naturally enough, occur in the Branderham nightmare. The narrators themselves rarely use Biblical language, though. One notable exception occurs at the very beginning: Lockwood’s comparison of Heathcliff’s dogs to the Gadarene swine introduces the theme of demoniac possession a few pages into the book’s opening chapter. Otherwise, his and Nelly’s use of Biblical expressions rarely creates effects that go beyond those produced by any stock phrase or proverbial notion. While the same applies to some of Charlotte’s and Anne’s Scriptural items, many of them repay exploration of their ‘vertical contexts’. The manner in which Charlotte drew on Psalms  and  supplies a useful illustration.

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A previous discussion looked briefly at the passage where Jane sinks under, and is nearly crushed by, the misery she suffers when Rochester’s bigamous plan is discovered and thwarted. Having forgotten God for his ‘idol’, the man she loves, during the days of their courtship, Jane finds herself unable to pray for strength when all her earthly hopes have come to nothing: My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim round me, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow. Self-abandoned, relaxed and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint; longing to be dead. One idea only still throbbed life-like within me – a remembrance of God: it begot an unuttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that should be whispered; but no energy was found to express them: – ‘Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help.’ It was near: and as I had lifted no petition to heaven to avert it – as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips – it came: in full, heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, ‘the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.’ (.xi.)

The two quotations are from two closely related Psalms in which the Psalmist starts out from a situation of acute distress. Number  opens with the cry ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ and continues to portray the speaker’s desperate plight in graphic terms, some of which prefigure the death of Christ. The first two verses of the th Psalm were built, with a telling modification, into the ending of the Jane Eyre chapter (and volume): ‘Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.’ Jane’s predicament is like the Psalmist’s in the sheer intensity of her grief. Unlike him, she has no reason to complain of being plagued by enemies; but the greatest difference between her and the speaker in the Psalms is that she has no power to turn to God for help in resisting despair, no confidence in his ability and willingness to save her and no impulse to praise him. As she herself says, her faith is ‘death-struck’; ‘self-abandoned’ and ‘effortless’, she has relinquished the struggle and

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with it all hope of redemption (wer immer strebend; see p.  above). Where the Psalmist cries out that he is in imminent danger of sinking, and looks to God to rescue him, Charlotte Bronte¨ places Jane in the literally hopeless situation of one who is actually drowned. Yet a reader familiar with the Psalms, as Charlotte had reason to expect that her audience would be, would know that both Psalms  and  end in expressions of trust in God: he ‘hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted’ (:), and he ‘heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners’ (:). The same reader would be alerted by the reference to ‘eddying darkness’ that introduces the Jane Eyre passage in which Psalms  and  form intertexts, be ready for the quotations when they come, register the note of acute desperation which Charlotte’s modifications entail – and still be aware that the Psalms suggest a dimension of hope beyond present anguish. This instance shows how effectively Biblical allusions can be used in the Bronte¨ novels, and many more could be added to it. Anne tends to favour the New Testament, frequently drawing on the Pauline letters; this feature is especially evident in connexion with Helen Huntingdon. Charlotte’s quotations range more widely, including the Old Testament prophets whom young Jane spurned. Helen Burns, like Anne’s Helen, is predominantly associated with the New Testament, as is natural for persons primarily concerned with the salvation through Christ which is its chief message. While explicit references to study of the Bible in the Bronte¨ novels are few, they do cover quite a range, from the routine Bible readings at Lowood (whose inability to inspire is signalled by the word ‘protracted’:.v.) to the careful consideration of  John  in Agnes Grey. The latter is the best example in the Bronte¨ fiction of that study of the Bible in the home which was so vital to Evangelical Anglicans; typically, the High Churchman Mr Hatfield scorns such activity (xi.). Like Lucy Snowe, old Nancy Brown – aided by Agnes and Mr Weston – turns to the Bible for instruction on how to live with herself and with her neighbours (both in the literal and the figurative sense). Explication she may need; but she certainly knows where to go for direction. The preceding review has thrown up, and only partly answered, two questions that ask to be addressed together: how does Biblical language function in the Bronte¨ novels, and what kind of attitude to the Bible itself can be ascribed to the authors? The uses of Biblical idiom in the fiction of the Bronte¨s vary along the scale between flippancy and devoutness. All three authors employed

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Biblical phrases to make a humorous point or to heighten absurdity, and this does not appear to have caused them the slightest uneasiness. For a modern reader it is not easy to perceive any disrespect to the Bible in such turns of phrase as ‘My mother . . . forced . . . them to do what their soul abhorred’, applied to party fare in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The nineteenth century could take a different view, though, and liberties with Scripture provoked the reviewer of Shirley for the Church of England Quarterly Review into making the following disgusted comments: There is occasionally an irreverent use of scriptural phrases and a wresting, to common-place purposes, [of ] the examples in Scripture history, which it is impossible to pass without grave condemnation. The author’s acquaintance with religion is of the most superficial description; or, if its truths are in his heart, they do not, from any evidence furnished by the pages before us, find their way to his lips. There is a vagueness about his expressions on religious subjects which leaves us in doubt if he have any defined notions of religion at all.

The reviewer was apparently upset by an element of levity in spinning Scriptural fragments into the tale. More specifically, the dramatic use of Biblical language in Shirley’s remarkable essay on the marriage of Genius and Humanity – an effort which could be characterised as a humanist, if not a heathen, piece – may have offended him/her. And yet Shirley comprises some extensive Biblical quotations which could not be called irreverent in any sense of the word and which cause obtrusive shifts of tone in the narrative. Even some of the Bronte¨s’ contemporaries were probably somewhat bemused when confronted by these shifts. For instance, there is something more than a little peculiar about the boy Henry solemnly recapitulating James : before Louis Moore, to whom Shirley had applied the description of a truly religious man (‘To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world’). Regardless of the sombre implications of the scene (Henry relates what his cousin said when she thought she might have been infected with rabies), this does not sound like Shirley. Addresses to the reader of the kind quoted on p.  above (on the import of ‘Whom He loveth, He chasteneth’) are infrequent, but it is odd to encounter them at all in a work of fiction by a master. They halt the story and make its resumption awkward, especially in a (predominantly) third-person narrative where personal digressions are obviously much harder to accommodate than in first-person discourse. As for the question of the Bronte¨s’ view of the Bible as a repository of

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truth, it is difficult to do more than speculate. They lived through times which saw leading churchmen coming to doubt Moses’ authorship of the Pentateuch and the historical veracity of Old Testament tales under the impact of historical Bible criticism. The initial reaction to such unsettling developments in their own circle can be descried in the following excerpt from William Morgan’s Christian Instructions: How unsafe a guide must that man be who gives infidels . . . a handle, by admitting that ‘the inspired writings are free from       error!’ Is this all? Is not another late venerable author much more correct, who affirms that ‘the inspired writers were preserved entirely from    error?’

It is possible that the opinions held by members of the Bronte¨ family were dissimilar in some respects and likely that those opinions changed over time. The Bronte¨s were brought up on the Bible, and one may assume that they read it as a story-book, like young Jane Eyre, when they were children. In adolescence, they became familiar with literary adaptations of Biblical narratives such as Byron’s Cain, and they read the poetry of Wordsworth whose ‘profane’ language freely incorporated strands of Biblical discourse. In their own work, written at a time when religious language was, generally speaking, in a state of decline, they proved their ability to use Scriptural idiom to achieve a variety of effects, including patently secular ones. While the Bronte¨ sisters as young adults surely regarded the Bible as the Christian’s greatest store of wisdom and highest spiritual guide, it is I think unlikely that they saw it as chronicling historical events and persons with infallible accuracy, any more than Coleridge, Arnold and Maurice did. It seems probable, too, that they consulted the Bible not for cut-and-dried answers but for support and inspiration in their own religious struggles. The terms in which Charlotte Bronte¨ described Lucy Snowe’s reliance on Holy Writ are suggestive: it is a director and a teacher whose function is to satisfy her ‘needs in the article of spiritual lore’, supplying ‘precept and example’ (xxxvi.–). In other words, it is the quester’s prop and stay, not a blanket authority which renders the quest itself unnecessary.

                       One amusing and thought-provoking aspect of Agnes Grey’s Bible study in Nancy Brown’s cottage is the pointed contrast between the two women’s talk over Nancy’s well-worn Bible on the one hand and the

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failure of church attendance to bring comfort to the old woman’s troubled soul on the other. When she appeals to the rector Mr Hatfield for help in her religious melancholy, Nancy is told to go to church, listen to the sermons, take the sacrament and by all means comply with every outward gesture required from attenders (‘read up all the sponsers after th’ clerk, an’ stand an’ kneel an’ sit an’ do – all as I should’). If this does not comfort her, says the rector ominously, ‘it’s all up’; Nancy ‘must be one of those that seek to enter in at the strait gate and shall not be able’ (xi.). The absence of spiritual satisfaction in connexion with church attendance is a striking feature in the fiction of the Bronte¨s. The Branderham dream episode in Wuthering Heights is perhaps the first instance that springs to mind, but there are many others, partly and naturally associated with the deficiencies of clergymen (discussed at greater length in the following chapter). The misery of the Lowood scholars who spend a large part of their Sundays freezing in church, during and between services, is thus not assuaged by even the smallest morsel of religious benefit. Mr Hatfield in Agnes Grey is as powerless to dispense spiritual comfort as the colleague who is his opposite in virtually all respects, St John Rivers in Jane Eyre. Church services are of course the hypocrite’s finest hours, and the Bronte¨s joined many of their contemporaries in criticising and ridiculing the ostensibly devout whose true impetus in going to church is social and not religious. Sundays in their books thus offer opportunities for showing off luxurious apparel (and means of transport) as well as for flirtation. In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the clergyman’s frivolous daughter simpers at her beau in church; in Agnes Grey the rector himself uses Sundays for the promotion of his amorous project. For obvious reasons, the Bronte¨ sisters had extensive experience where church-going was concerned. Despite their father’s own ability and his endeavour to bring good preachers to Haworth, they must have endured hour upon hour of sermons that were dull or worse, not least when working or studying away from home. For them, with their unusually developed intellectual powers, their aesthetic sensibilities and their acute awareness of ethical concerns, not to mention their keen sense of the ridiculous, sitting through sermons framed by inferior minds and delivered by less than scintillating performers must often have seemed like a mode of penance. It is not surprising that they were unable and/or unwilling to invest church-going in their fiction with any spiritually nourishing properties to speak of. Helen Huntingdon is the

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only Bronte¨ character for whom the desire to listen to the word of God in church is strong enough to insist on fulfilment even at the cost of fear and worry (of discovery, and about leaving her child), and she is undeterred by any shortcomings on the clergyman’s part. If the Bronte¨s’ dedication to truthful representation of ‘things as they were’ forbade them to portray church attendance as a powerful aid to the searching spirit, their books present other and better guides. One of them stands guard over Jane Eyre’s re-emergence from the helpless despair whose ‘waters’ overflowed her after the interrupted wedding – a re-emergence that illustrates the fact that God does not forsake a soul which knows even a momentary stirring of a religious impulse (although Jane could not pray, she did experience a momentary ‘remembrance of God’ before the flood): I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and conscience, turned tyrant, held passion by the throat, told her, tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron, he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony. ‘Let me be torn away, then!’ I cried. ‘Let another help me!’ ‘No; you shall tear yourself away; none shall help you: you shall, yourself, pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand: your heart shall be the victim; and you, the priest, to transfix it.’ (.i.)

Terrifying as the dictates of conscience are on this first page of Jane Eyre’s third volume, they must be adhered to: this is a force whose authority is greater than that of any human agent. At an earlier point in the novel, Helen Burns affirms the Divine origin of conscience when telling Jane: ‘If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends’ (.viii.). Jane, still an unregenerate little rebel, misunderstands her and thinks that the ‘friend’ Helen refers to in the putative case is Jane herself (‘I know I should think well of myself’), but Helen’s meaning is made clear by her subsequent remarks: ‘[T]he sovereign hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our

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tortures, recognise our innocence . . . and God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward.’

Conscience, in other words, is a direct intermediary between God and created beings. As such, it is an infallible conveyor of insight and prompter of action, and its commands must be obeyed. In Jane’s case, obedience entails extreme suffering; another Bronte¨ protagonist of whom conscience makes a hero is required to make a smaller sacrifice. Realising that he will inevitably fall into Mlle Reuter’s snares if he remains at M. Pelet’s school, William Crimsworth in The Professor ‘[plunges] into the gulph of absolute destitution’ by resolutely quitting his employment. It is a drastic step, as he has no other means of supporting himself and no lodgings once he leaves Pelet’s. His inner conflict is described in highly charged language which conflates the Bible and Bunyan in Charlotte Bronte¨’s characteristic early vein: ‘And all this,’ suggested an inward voice, ‘because you fear an evil which may never happen!’ ‘It will happen; you know it will;’ answered that stubborn monitor, conscience. ‘Do what you feel is right; obey me and even in the sloughs of want I will plant for you firm footing.’ And then, as I walked fast along the road, there rose upon me a strange, inly-felt idea of some Great Being, unseen but all-present, who in his beneficence desired only my welfare and now watched the struggle of good and evil in my heart, and waited to see whether I should obey his voice, heard in the whispers of my Conscience; or lend an ear to the sophisms by which his enemy and mine, the Spirit of evil, sought to lead me astray. Rough and steep was the path indicated by divine Suggestion; mossy and declining the green way along which Temptation strewed flowers; but whereas, methought, the Deity of love, the Friend of all that exists would smile well-pleased were I to gird up my loins and address myself to the rude ascent, so, on the other hand, each inclination to the velvet declivity seemed to kindle a gleam of triumph on the brow of the man-hating, God-defying Demon. (xx.–)

In the preceding quotations, the authority of conscience makes reflection of any kind unnecessary. The precise nature of its relationship to and functions in God and man matters less than its infallibility: obeying it amounts to obeying God. Like a number of British nineteenth-century theologians in various camps, Charlotte Bronte¨ thus represented conscience as the voice of God in man. More or less influenced by the eighteenth-century Bishop Joseph Butler and his Analogy, religious philosophers as diverse as John Henry Newman, Thomas Erskine and James Martineau arrived at the conclusion that conscience embodies the force of Divine judgement and is as such part of the very basis of

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religion. However, Kant’s introduction of a juridical dimension in conscience shifted the emphasis from external authority to the discharging of human responsibility. Under Kant’s influence, the functions of conscience gradually came to be more closely associated with the individual’s ethical standards and conduct. While God remained the ultimate origin of conscience, human faculties were allowed greater play in its operations, which meant – among other things – that it was possible for an action dictated by conscience to have unfortunate results. One Jane Eyre passage suggests a different view of conscience from the voice-of-God conception. Masquerading as a fortune-teller, Rochester pronounces that Jane’s forehead declares the supremacy of Reason over feelings and desires in her character: ‘ ‘‘The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.’’ ‘Well said, forehead; your declaration shall be respected. I have formed my plans – right plans I deem them – and in them I have attended to the claims of conscience, the counsels of reason.’ (.iv.)

The first paragraph seems a fair description of Jane Eyre; but there is an unsettling dimension to this ostensibly judicious portrayal. The moral creature outlined here is not an unquestioning follower of ‘the dictates of conscience’, but one who submits those dictates to interpretation under the authority of individual judgement. The allusion to the ‘still small voice’ and the wind, earthquake and fire of  Kings :– (noted by many scholars) suggests that the ‘interpreter’ is God; but the second paragraph erodes one’s trust in Rochester’s preparedness to grant the necessity of submission to Divine authority. The first-time reader does not know that the ‘plans’ Rochester speaks of have certainly not been framed in due deference to ‘the claims of conscience’. With knowledge of subsequent events, however, it is apparent that he attempts to persuade himself and Jane that the adoption of those plans is ‘right’. He weakens Divine authority when laying stress on the workings of human reason (including such attributes of human moral activity as ‘judgment’, ‘argument’, ‘casting vote’ and ‘decision’) and implying that the dictates of conscience are amenable to interpretation. Rochester’s disregard for the divinity of conscience comes as no

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surprise. During his fireside conversation with Jane soon after his arrival at Thornfield, it is obvious that he views his own conscience as a human faculty like any other, indicating that the presence of the cranial prominences which phrenologists associate with conscience are to him sufficient proof that he possesses enough of it (.xiv.). As the story unfolds, the reader comes to see to what extent he is mistaken. His pride in his ability to judge human character on the basis of phrenologicphysiognomic inspection is a trait which the experienced man of the world shares with the innocent girl Helen Lawrence in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (xvi.), both erring on a similarly massive scale. The Bronte¨s’ interest in phrenology is well known, and they are not on record as having uttered anything disparaging about it; but Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall imply an awareness of dangers in its application. The authors will have had a measure of warning from a respected source at an early age: in one of the famous ‘Noctes Ambrosianae’ in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, James Hogg (the ‘Ettrick Shepherd’) lashed out against phrenologists, ‘a peculiar people, jealous o’ good works’. Hogg accused phrenology adherents of making excessively sweeping claims and of being generally wrong-headed, adding that ladies who adopt this school of thought become, or are, mannish and immodest. Christian phrenologists sensed a need to make phrenology fit in with, and under, Christianity, and books were written for that purpose. When Charlotte Bronte¨ wrote the two passages in Jane Eyre where Rochester attempts to reduce or even do away with the presence of God in human conscience, she may not have been aware of the decline of conscience that Kant had set in motion and that pseudo-psychology would accelerate; but if so she foresaw under what kinds of auspices it would be dethroned. In time, of course, Rochester comes to see the wrongness of any human attempt to intercept Divine impulses and stifle them so as to prevent them from interfering with one’s desires. The absence of that insight prevents the terrors suffered by the dying Arthur Huntingdon in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall from representing the operations of conscience; he is fearful rather than remorseful, and his own recognition of that fact lends him a measure of tragedy that sets him apart from the other Bronte¨ villain who is destitute of conscience. Heathcliff actually prides himself on his utter lack of it, a circumstance which confirms his membership of the Devil’s party. As Camille Paglia has pointed out, critics have found it difficult to deal with the brutality and violence of

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Wuthering Heights, and perhaps its most frightening aspect is the cold hatred with which it is perpetrated. That hatred and the impulse to revenge with which it coexists are Heathcliff’s sole directors. Not even his literally fatal love for Catherine constitutes a guiding force for him. It is by yielding to that love and letting go of any other concern or activity, even eating, that he dies. Here, Heathcliff does not act; he is acted upon by powers he has himself conjured up, the usual fate of those that traffic with the Devil.             One of Heathcliff’s more noteworthy inhuman acts is the attempted killing, by hanging, of Isabella’s dog (.xiv.). Although inspired by his hatred of the owner rather than any desire to watch a beast suffer, his callous action illustrates his indifference to the moral rights of any living creature apart from himself. Cruelty to animals is always a peculiarly vile characteristic in a Bronte¨ character. Despite Heathcliff and Arthur Huntingdon’s exploits in that line, the most memorable instance of it surely consists in the two accounts of young Tom Bloomfield’s torturing birds in Agnes Grey (ii.– and v.–). Agnes is resolved to prevent or at least cut short this inhuman pastime by whatever means she has at her disposal, regardless of the consequences to herself, and she incurs her employer’s displeasure by swiftly killing the nestlings young Tom brings home for his ‘sport’. Upbraided by Mrs Bloomfield, Agnes quotes Proverbs :, ‘The merciful man shews mercy to his beast’. Inflicting pain on helpless animals was a crime abhorred by others besides the Bronte¨s. In a sermon called ‘On the Sin of Cruelty towards the Brute Creation’, preached in Bath in  and subsequently printed, the well-known Evangelical divine Legh Richmond – a revered name in Haworth Parsonage – had also quoted Proverbs :. Like Agnes Grey, Richmond insisted on mercy to all created beings. While humans may kill animals for food, they must never evince any ‘wanton cruelty’ to ‘the beasts of the field’, and Richmond was especially careful to warn parents not to allow children to torture birds or rifle their nests: Too much cannot be said on this subject to all those, whether parents or instructors, who have the care of children; they should watch them very narrowly to prevent their treating insects, birds, or any other animals with the smallest degree of inhumanity . . . To boys in particular, that fundamental source of future cruelty of temper, the robbing birds of their nests for amusement, should be represented in its own true and hateful colours.

The Christian life

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In preventing Master Bloomfield from amusing himself (the word ‘amusement’ keeps recurring in the Agnes Grey context) by ‘walloping’ the nestlings, Agnes is thus trying to counteract an inclination which could harm the boy’s moral character for life. The perils of leaving such propensities unchecked are illustrated in the subsequent fortunes of the boy who ‘twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks, [and] set the dogs at the sheep’ (John Reed in Jane Eyre, .ii.) while remaining his mother’s ‘own darling’. While the pages on cruelty to birds in Agnes Grey may compete for sheer disagreeableness with some of the most violent scenes in Wuthering Heights, a soothing contrast to the manifold horrors of the latter novel is offered by a passage from the former in which duty to human beings and to God puts an end to a particularly dangerous form of self-neglect. It is owing to the operations of conscience that Agnes Grey is shaken out of her potentially fatal pining for Mr Weston. Her mother’s solicitude, characteristically ending in Mrs Grey’s resolution to take some of her daughter’s work on her own already heavily burdened shoulders, startles Agnes, who is justly ashamed of disregarding her obligations to the admirable parent to whom she owes so much: Selfish, unworthy daughter, to forget her for a moment! Was not her happiness committed in a great measure to my charge – and the welfare of our young pupils too? Should I shrink from the work that God had set before me, because it was not fitted to my taste? Did not He know best what I should do, and where I ought to labour? and should I long to quit His service before I had finished my task, and expect to enter into His rest without having laboured to earn it? ‘No; by His help I will arise and address myself diligently to my appointed duty. If happiness in this world is not for me, I will endeavour to promote the welfare of those around me, and my reward shall be hereafter.’ (xxi.)

In typical Bronte¨-heroine fashion, Agnes thus sets up a programme of useful employment and resolves, like the similarly afflicted Caroline Helstone in Shirley, to be wise if she cannot be good and not to demand happiness. Agnes is of course more favourably placed than Caroline in having a worthy and reasonably congenial occupation as well as a loving mother and sister; her dream of happiness had not had such firm contours, and been as drastically shattered, as Caroline’s. Even so, the two girls are alike in that they recognise the necessity of disciplining not only their actions, but their thoughts and emotions as well. The kind of moral re´gime to which these Bronte¨ heroines try to adhere entails ceaseless watchfulness over that self which is their prime

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Ethics

responsibility. Steering such a course of self-improvement, avoiding the abuses of self-delusion and self-indulgence without resorting to the theoretically simple device of self-negation, seems almost incomprehensibly arduous to generations brought up to aim for self-fulfilment. But that is the end of the Bronte¨ heroines too, though their pursuit of it is dictated by ethical values rooted in a faith which most present-day readers do not share. The fact that the latter circumstance has not prevented modern readers of both sexes and the most dissimilar ideological, philosophical and religious persuasions from finding the struggles of these fictional characters inspiring is an eloquent testimony to the abilities of their creators.

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Clerics

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 

Clergymen in the Bronte¨ novels

Clergy and churches appear a great deal in Victorian fiction and careful reading can establish an ambiguity in the usual authorial attitude towards them. The clergy are either like Mr Chadband from Bleak House, in which case their badness shows at once what is wrong and implies a remedy for it: Chadband should be replaced by a good minister who will be genuinely concerned for the plight of such as Jo the crossing-sweeper; or they are good in the way that Mr Hale in North and South or the eponymous Robert Elsmere are good, in which case they lose their faith. Treatment of the clergy is either totally secular, as in Trollope, or it is accompanied by a sense of strain. Churches tend to be either decaying or out of place or in some other way wrong.

While this is a factually erroneous statement geared to supporting the author’s argument – the fiction of George Eliot and the Bronte¨s alone easily supplies half a dozen charitable and consistently devout clergymen, and even the less admirable ones do not readily fit into either of Butler’s categories – , it establishes an important point: there are a great many unappealing and/or unsuccessful churchmen in Victorian fiction. The Bronte¨ novels depict a succession of unsatisfactory men of the cloth: the worldly Mr Hatfield in Agnes Grey; the hypocritical tyrant Mr Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre; the self-important gourmand Mr Millward in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; the pugnacious and unspiritual Mr Helstone and, of course, the vain and coarse curates Donne and Malone, all in Shirley. (St John Rivers in Jane Eyre, being a special case, is given a chapter to himself below.) If, as this book argues, the fiction of the Bronte¨s reflects a thorough-going, if sometimes reluctant, respect for the Church of England and a fundamental adherence to the values it attempted to uphold, why are so many of its representatives described in such unflattering terms? In order to answer that question, and some others as well, the first 

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Clerics

pages of the ensuing chapter look at the condition of the Anglican Church during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, a time of reform unique in both scope and swiftness. A number of issues are raised: what sort of men went into the Church, and for what sorts of reasons? How did they regard and perform their pastoral duties? In what ways did they influence the communities in which they lived and worked? These are purely historical questions, and one may well wonder about their relevance to works of fiction. There is a very good reason for discussing the Bronte¨ clergymen in close conjunction with contemporary religious affairs, though: in creating these characters, the authors had no need to draw on their imagination or their reading. Charlotte repeatedly insisted that the clerics in Shirley were framed on the basis of direct observation, and it is difficult to find grounds for disbelieving her. In this respect as in no other except education, where they were themselves professionals, the Bronte¨s had their material to hand. Not only were they the daughters of a minister; they grew up surrounded by clergymen. Most of their father’s friends were colleagues of his, and there was a strong clerical presence in the schools they attended as well as in the families of their own friends and pupils. Their father’s profession was the very basis of their household, the factor that determined their social position and their daily occupations as well as, of course, their accommodation. Few children of professional men at any time can have had such comprehensive and variegated opportunities to study the nature and terms of a parent’s employment, and few kinds of employment can have given imaginative and sensitive youngsters so much to think about. The fact that the Bronte¨ sisters were barred from every thought of going in for the same line of work themselves must, if anything, have facilitated dispassionate scrutiny. Where the clergy were concerned, the Bronte¨s knew what they were talking about, and it was natural for them to be talking about it. ‘      !               ! ’ The conclusion of the first chapter on the school-feast in Shirley ends with a less than fulsome tribute to the Church of England and its ministers: It was a joyous scene, and a scene to do good: it was a day of happiness for rich and poor; the work, first, of God, and then of the clergy. Let England’s priests have their due: they are a faulty set in some respects, being only of common

Clergymen in the Bronte¨ novels

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flesh and blood, like us all; but the land would be badly off without them: Britain would miss her church, if that church fell. God save it! God also reform it! (.v.)

To a present-day reader it may seem odd that the Anglican Church, which generations have regarded as one of the most deeply rooted parts of the Establishment, could have given rise to such anxious concern in the supposedly staid mid nineteenth century. At that time, though rent by schism, it was in fact no longer in danger; but twenty years earlier Thomas Arnold and others had despaired of its survival, and thirty years before that it had been clear to many that it was a body riddled with disease. The Bronte¨ novel which takes up the least space in the following discussion provides a useful starting-point for a review of Church reform in the nineteenth century: We came to the chapel – I have passed it really in my walks, twice or thrice: it lies in a hollow between two hills – an elevated hollow – near a swamp whose peaty moisture is said to answer all the purposes of embalming on the few corpses deposited there. The roof has been kept whole hitherto, but as the clergyman’s stipend is only twenty pounds per annum, and a house with two rooms threatening speedily to determine into one, no clergyman will undertake the duties of pastor, especially as it is currently reported that his flock would rather let him starve than increase the living by one penny from their own pockets. (Wuthering Heights .iii.)

The word ‘chapel’ might be taken to suggest a Dissenter place of worship; but the terms ‘clergyman’ and ‘stipend’ imply that the tumbledown building is an annex which belongs, or should belong, within the pale of the Established Church. The clergy of that Church cannot be blamed for failing to find an incumbent prepared to live on £ pounds a year; it would have been a mean wage even for a live-in footman. The most remarkable thing about the quoted passage is the disrespect of the locals for the institution that is supposed to meet their religious needs. Their refusal to spend even a tiny amount on maintaining a clergyman is surely due to something more complex than traditional NorthCountry tight-fistedness. Accounts of conditions in and around parish churches in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are full of horrors: crumbling houses of worship; fonts filled with coffin ropes and candle ends; frayed and dirty cloths on altars used to serving as meal-tables or even chairs; and clergymen who nonchalantly asked whether a member of the congregation happened to have a corkscrew handy on one of the rare

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Clerics

occasions when Holy Communion was administered – or who were too drunk to hold the chalice straight. These are extreme examples, of course; but the general picture was one of neglect and indifference. Absenteeism was rife. The vicars who did reside in their parishes rarely contributed more than one weekly service, on Sundays, and did not put too much effort into that. The ‘sporting parson’ who rode to hounds has come to stand for a worldliness that adhered even to the best of clergymen – and there were many good men among them – making it hard for parishioners to develop any great reverence for their pastors. While Gimmerton did have a resident clergyman, twenty-odd years before Lockwood became the tenant of Thrushcross Grange, that man was no more sensitive to the spiritual wants of his flock than the ordinary run of dilatory late eighteenth-century clerics. After the death of old Mr Earnshaw, Joseph insisted that the doctor and parson be sent for. Only the former, whose professional skills would, under the circumstances, be less urgently required than the latter’s, responded at once and accompanied Nelly ‘through wind and rain’. ‘[T]he other said he would come in the morning’, leaving the orphaned children to console themselves (.v.). As his neglect must be taken to reflect his view of his pastoral duties, it was natural for the local people to feel that they might as well do without a minister, especially if he was going to take money out of their pockets. In about ten lines, Emily Bronte¨ thus supplied a graphic description of the kinds of conditions that bred and fed the great Evangelical Revival which not only swelled the ranks of Nonconformity but revitalised the entire Established Church, from the Lowest to the most High. Regardless of whether one regards Wuthering Heights as expressing the ‘disappearance of God’ or takes a view entailing a degree of presence, there is at least nothing remarkable about the absence of a Church of England clergyman in a remote rural parish around the turn of the century. The writer of a piece on clerical improvement in Blackwood’s of  had painted a similarly dismal picture. Having deplored the prevalence of blackguards and inebriates in the turn-of-the-century rural clergy, he continued: It will surprise no one when we say, that the inhabitants of these villages held their ministers in contempt. When they had no chapels to go to, the churches were almost deserted, and they thronged to the dissenting teachers as soon as the latter appeared among them.

As Evangelical churchmen came into positions of influence, conditions

Clergymen in the Bronte¨ novels

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improved; but progress was slow. The vitriolic attacks on the Church in the Black Book  found a large audience, but subsequent developments did nothing to alleviate the author’s fury; the more wide-ranging Extraordinary Black Book of  was even more virulent. Two of the main targets of the Black Books were the gross nepotism inherent in the Church organisation and the absurd accumulation of wealth in some sees and parishes. It was, understandably enough, felt to be grotesque that bishops with five-figure annual incomes should be able to hand over four-figure livings to kinsmen and clients. The fact that a number of these clerics held several benefices simultaneously, paying stingy fees to locuming curates or other auxiliary clerics, only made matters worse. At the same time, hard-working parsons in parishes with swiftly growing populations had to make do with very small stipends and no assistance from curates. Even the conservative Blackwood’s opened its columns to writers who castigated ‘the prostitution of ecclesiastical patronage’. The Earl of Rochester’s devastating one-line characterisation of worldly clergymen in the late seventeenth century applied to many of their colleagues  years later: like their predecessors, they would ‘hunt good Livings, but abhor good Lives’. The Church was so unpopular that it had next to no good-will margins. Supporters of the – Reform Bill were particularly incensed at the stalling of the Bill by the bishops in the House of Lords; this circumstance did nothing to placate a public outraged by clerical ‘fat cats’ who did not even have spirituality to recommend them. In , during his residence in Naples, Richard Hurrell Froude wrote that ‘the Church of England has fallen low, and will probably be worse before it is better’. There was no doubt about it: something had to be done. A number of English clergymen realised that it could be fatal to obstruct political and ecclesiastical reconstruction, and Patrick Bronte¨ was one of them. Writing to friends explaining his commitment to the Parliamentary Reform Bill, he repeatedly referred to ‘Church and State’ as needing ‘moderate, or temperate reform’. If the ‘real friends of our Excellent Institutions’ did not support such measures, he argued, their ‘inveterate enemies’ would ‘work on the popular feeling – already but too much excited’ and possibly ‘bring about a revolution’. While the letter is concerned with political issues, ecclesiastical and parliamentary reform were communicating vessels at the time, and the arguments it adduces are equally applicable to the situation as regards the Church. It is hence safe to assume that Sir Robert Peel’s great ecclesiastical reform work had a supporter in Patrick Bronte¨.

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Clerics

Peel’s Ecclesiastical Commission was set up in  as a result of his realisation that the Church could no longer be allowed to continue to enrage the English people by performing so badly in such offensive material conditions. Not until , however, after the bitter winter of – and the Chartism disturbances, did Peel achieve a decisive legislative breakthrough: an Act passed that year resulted in, among other things, a thorough redistribution of influence and wealth, ecclesiastical adaptation to changes in the British population structure, new and improved church buildings and better working conditions for the hard-pressed urban clergy. Peel, who had opposed Parliamentary reform around , was so convinced of the justice and necessity of these measures that he contributed generously to them out of his own pocket. This dedication to reform on the part of a Tory leader makes the opposition of clergymen who, if anything, stood to gain rather than lose from it somewhat puzzling; but three circumstances go some way towards explaining it. In the first place, the restructuring entailed breaking up patterns – parish boundaries, for instance – that had been in place since the Middle Ages. That fact alone may well have triggered atavistic tremors in minds accustomed to viewing anything that smacked of revolution with horror. Second – and this was a circumstance of direct relevance to Patrick Bronte¨ and his colleagues – Evangelical Anglicans had taken active steps to ensure that as many livings as possible were passed on to suitable incumbents by buying up key advowsons. The central figure in this context was Charles Simeon, the creator of the circle of devout Evangelicals to which young Mr Bronte¨ belonged at Cambridge. A letter of Simeon’s describes the leading Evangelical Churchman’s eagerness to acquire livings in graphic terms; phrases like ‘I had pledged myself to purchase the great living at Northampton at any price’ and ‘I think I must secure Derby . . . I will have four or five other places if I can get them’ have a lip-licking covetousness about them that sits a little uneasily with the writer’s undoubted spiritual zeal. Though Patrick Bronte¨’s own experiences with Simeonite trustees were not always happy, he himself owed everything to a network of Wesleyan-Evangelical patronage, and he had friends and acquaintances in similar positions. Such men could have been excused for finding a radical restructuring of the system they had, after a fashion, learnt to ‘work’ unnecessary, and it is clear that Mr Bronte¨ had to defend his pro-reform stance to some of them. Finally, regardless of the abuses of the Church, many admirable clergymen laboured in it. Even throughout its darkest times in the seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries, the

Clergymen in the Bronte¨ novels

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Church of England was faithfully served by pastors who were the best men in their parishes and to whose efforts countless people were indebted for such physical and spiritual well-being as they possessed. In other words, the brief sketch of the decay in the Anglican Church around  that was supplied above should not conceal the fact that the true picture was not as black as the Black Books. An institution which had so many excellent people in its employ was never going to lack champions for its preservation whose motives were other than base.            Even so, the grievous spiritual and moral defects of a very large number of early nineteenth-century clergymen were impossible to ignore, and they caused much sorrow among their devout colleagues. A letter from Legh Richmond to his fifteen-year-old son, written in , supplies an illuminating example. Having been informed that the boy was thinking of following in his father’s footsteps, the latter contemplates the prospect in terms that demonstrate his concern over the state of the Church and her servants: Earnestly as I should wish a son of mine to be a minister, yet I tremble at the idea of educating and devoting a son to the sacred profession, without a previous satisfactory evidence [sic] that his own soul was right with God. Without this, you and I should be guilty of a most awful sin in his sight . . . [Without the proper spiritual dedication] I would rather a thousand times see you a mason, or in the humblest capacity in life . . . The national church groans and bleeds, ‘from the crown of its head to the sole of its feet’, through the daily intrusion of unworthy men into its ministry. Patrons, parents, tutors, colleges, are annually pouring a torrent of incompetent youths into the church, and loading the nation with spiritual guilt. Hence, souls are neglected and ruined – bigotry and ignorance prevail – and the Establishment is despised, deserted, and wounded. Shall you and I deepen these wounds?

Readers of Jane Austen are familiar with the figure of the gentleman parson who has chosen the Church – or had it chosen for him – as a mode of living from among a narrow range of options. Some, like Edmund Bartram in Mansfield Park, Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility and Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey, adopt it as the least objectionable among suitable occupations for the son of a good family; to others, like Mr Elton in Emma, it offers a career for the upwardly mobile (Mr Wickham in Pride and Prejudice is similarly materialistic when contemp-

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Clerics

lating his lost opportunity). Few discussions of the worldliness of turn-ofthe-century clergymen in England omit an illustrative reference to the Austen clerics; but Edmund Bartram could in fact be regarded as a man for the new era. His decision (prompted by his father) to live, and be an influence for good, in his parish amounts to an attack on absenteeism; and however uncomfortable Mary Crawford may make him feel, he defends his choice of occupation with conviction and in terms germane to the views of early nineteenth-century friends of reform. Having been told that ‘[a] clergyman is nothing’, he replies: ‘I cannot call that situation nothing, which has the charge of all that is of the first importance to mankind, individually or collectively considered, temporally and eternally – which has the guardianship of religion and morals, and consequently of the manners which result from their influence. No one here can call the office nothing. If the man who holds it is so, it is by the neglect of his duty, by foregoing its just importance, and stepping out of his place to appear what he ought not to appear.’

While Edmund dwells on aspects of social and moral improvement, the one word ‘eternally’ sounds a distinctive note, implying that he is aware of the clergyman’s duty to the souls of his parishioners. In addition, Edmund knows that a clergyman’s position requires him to conduct himself in ways that earn him respect. A later discussion with Henry Crawford also shows the extent to which he has studied the skills associated with his profession (he is ordained at this point), and he comments on the ‘spirit of improvement [now] abroad’. In all these respects Mansfield Park (published in ) not only reflects but in some degree anticipates the various and massive efforts made in the early nineteenth century to improve the quality of pastoral work along with the organisation of the Church. Some aspects of clerical duties are further discussed below; here, in the context of recruitment, it is enough to point out that young men who turned to the Church in the first few decades of the century began to do so in a new spirit of commitment. Colleges for clerical training came into being, manuals for clergymen proliferated and ordination itself became a less sloppy affair. All this contributed to the emergence of a new generation of clergymen who were ready and able to seize the opportunity for raising the standards of pastoral work which Church reform afforded them. The outcome was astounding: only twenty years after the Extraordinary Black Book and Thomas Arnold’s desperate call for Protestant unity in his

Clergymen in the Bronte¨ novels

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Principles of Church Reform, the Church of England was a thoroughly respectable institution. To be sure, it was beset with controversy – the notorious Gorham case came to a head in ; but at least the subject matter of its disputes was theological rather than material, and High and Low Churchmen alike were inspired both by religious zeal and by an earnest desire to promote the public good. Even at this point in time, of course, they were – to borrow Charlotte Bronte¨’s words – ‘a faulty set’; but they and the generation before them had achieved a reformation unparalleled in the church history of modern England.                ¨  The lives of the Bronte¨s, father and children, spanned the whole era of Church reform and illustrated it in a variety of ways. In Patrick Bronte¨’s youth, a sense of being ‘called’ to it was not the foremost consideration for a very large number of young men who went into the Church. Some forty years later, when his daughter Charlotte wrote her first novel, she made its hero reject that career for the express reason, succinctly formulated, that he had no vocation for it (The Professor vi.; see also i.). Another example of developments which affected the lives of the Bronte¨s and are reflected in their works is supplied by the situation concerning curates. In , the Perpetual Curate Patrick Bronte¨ managed to obtain the aid of a temporary curate, and in the course of the following years the able William Hodgson had worthy successors, notably William Weightman and Arthur Bell Nicholls (as well as some less worthy ones; see below). The continuation of this assistance, a necessity to Mr Bronte¨ in view of his comprehensive duties as well as of his ophthalmic problems, was made possible by the Pastoral Aid Society, founded in . The creation of that body – supplemented in the following year by the High Church’s Society for Promoting the Employment of Additional Curates – was a direct result of the pressure for Church reform which culminated in Peel’s  Act. These Societies thus created opportunities for the Bronte¨ sisters to study the young generation of Church of England clergymen at close quarters, opportunities put to memorable use in Shirley. Among the curates who served at Haworth under Patrick Bronte¨, High Church leanings were the rule rather than the exception. The Parsonage hence harboured Evangelical Anglicanism with Wesleyan roots, Cornish Methodism and Tractarianism under one roof, and differences of opinion were only to be expected. Patrick Bronte¨, like

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Clerics

many clergymen of his generation, insisted that Dissenters were his parishioners too, and he is reported to have attended Chapel services in his old age. Although the large Dissenter population of Haworth was a constant thorn in his side, giving him much trouble over church rates and other matters of parish politics, he seems not to have been repelled by their beliefs. By contrast, he abhorred the Calvinist doctrine of election, and he loathed Tractarianism – or ‘Puseyism’, as its detractors called it – in all its manifestations. It is interesting that his strongest expressions of disapproval (‘appalling’, ‘detest’, ‘odious’) are used about tenets and practices within the Church, rather than about ‘the competition’, as Nonconformity may fairly be termed. For a temperamental young woman with fiercely held loyalties, continually exposed to religious dispute and disagreement (among her friends as well as at home), Charlotte Bronte¨ comes across as remarkably relaxed and broad-minded both in her correspondence and in her fiction. Letters written to Ellen Nussey in  and  express disapproval of exaggerated hostility against Dissenters, the former written at a time when she had reason to find them particularly obnoxious (owing to a row over church rates). While she stood aloof from High Church Anglicanism (for instance, the  letter announces that her conscience would not let her be a ‘Puseyite’), her references to it are free from rancour. Only Roman Catholicism is exposed to anything that may be called abuse; no exponents of Protestantism, inside or outside the Anglican Church, draw similar fire from Charlotte Bronte¨. We know far less about her sisters’ views on these matters. Apart from Anne’s verse attacks on Calvinists, there are no records of their opinions. Still, a joint consideration of the anti-clerical element in the fiction of the Bronte¨s as a whole yields a uniform picture: though nearly all the churchmen in the novels belong in some ecclesiastical ‘camp’, it is not against their respective affiliations within the Church that the authors’ dislike and ridicule are directed but against their shortcomings and failures as pastors. Certainly, the odd ‘positioning’ detail may be thrown in to sharpen the contours of a portrait, but the basic concern is always the man himself. This becomes particularly clear when the books are compared with the works of authors whose polemical purpose is obviously anchored in Church-political-cum-ideological aversion. Frances Trollope’s The Vicar of Wrexhill () provides an excellent example: a vivid piece of antiEvangelical writing, full of skilful parody, it is fundamentally serious in its onslaught on Calvinist Evangelicalism personified by Mr Cartwright,

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the Vicar of the title. Among other things, that gentleman shatters a loving family, ruins a hard-working and high-principled schoolmaster, drives his own hapless daughter to atheism and induces religious hysteria and melancholy in other females (like many charismatic ministers satirised through the ages, Mr Cartwright – a handsome man – is especially attractive to women). To make matters worse, he is a grasping, avaricious hypocrite whose most fervent prayers centre on his wish to ‘be a rod and a scourge to the ungodly’. The Vicar of Wrexhill is not a character but a caricature, and Mrs Trollope’s purpose in creating him, in evidence throughout the book, is especially apparent in the conclusion: ‘[I]n short, a whole flight of evangelicals followed their incomparable vicar, till the pretty village of Wrexhill once more became happy and gay, and the memory of their serious epidemic rendered its inhabitants the most orderly, peaceable, and orthodox population in the whole country.’ Evangelical fanaticism is thus the target of this novel, as other writers with different biases attacked what they saw as the misconceptions and offensive practices of Dissent, Tractarianism and Roman Catholicism. Adding their tributaries to the contemporary mass of polemical fiction on religious matters, especially on denominational issues, the Bronte¨s were thus unusual in that the criticism expressed in their clerical portraits was directed against essential human inadequacy rather than against religious ‘schools’. Though every bit as opposed to fanaticism as Frances Trollope, Charlotte Bronte¨ attacked it in communities rather than in individuals (for instance ‘the tyrant ’ about Roman Catholicism in Villette and the groaning Dissenter congregation in Shirley). Both she and Anne were too interested in personalities to resort to polemical cliche´s in the drafting of their clerical characters. Of course, their use of personal experience will also have counteracted schematic representation.       Even so, it must be admitted that Mr Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre is hardly a psychologically convincing creation. However stoutly Charlotte Bronte¨ insisted on the veracity of her rendering of conditions at the Cowan Bridge school, and whatever pains she may have taken to make Brocklehurst an effective portrayal of William Carus Wilson, it is difficult for the adult reader to take him seriously. Having quoted the scene where Brocklehurst scolds Miss Temple for giving the starving pupils bread

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and cheese and condemns a girl’s natural curls to cropping, Elisabeth Jay perceptively comments: Charlotte Bronte¨ actually weakens the logical case against him as a representative of a particular version of Evangelicalism when she suggests hypocrisy by introducing his fashionably attired and elegantly coiffed wife and daughters immediately after this scene. She relies, however, not upon the reader’s sense of logic but upon his sympathy for the child’s instinctive recognition of a religious argot devoid of religious feeling. To the child’s view of Brocklehurst as tyrannical ogre is added the adult perception of his absurdity.

In her anxiety to settle old scores with the man whom she always held at least partly responsible for the deaths of her elder sisters, Charlotte Bronte¨ made Brocklehurst into a grotesquerie. However fearsome he appears as a black column at Gateshead – and to a juvenile reader he remains terrifying throughout, not least because of his hair-cutting zeal – his obtuseness over the Psalms and the ginger-nuts is too ridiculous for credibility. Joseph in Wuthering Heights is arguably a more consistent and believable, and hence more genuinely scary, creation. Perhaps Charlotte Bronte¨ hated too much to be effective: Brocklehurst would certainly have been a far more frightening character if her impugnation of him had been more economical and more discriminating. As it is, of course, her portrait of a Calvinist-Evangelical churchman is damning enough, and there are actually realistic touches in Brocklehurst’s hypocrisy, too. Religious precocity in young children was greatly prized among Evangelicals, and double standards of the kind represented by the luxurious apparel of Brocklehurst’s own womenfolk were not uncommon among wealthy Evangelical families. But Brocklehurst is not primarily censored for being a Calvinist Evangelical. His worst offence is his utter lack of the Evangelical virtues: charity, warmth and humility. The would-be exponent of the religion of the heart, who upbraids a child for possessing a ‘heart of stone’, himself has no heart at all. The apostle of modesty boasts of his own high social standing. The guardian of the schoolgirls’ souls causes those souls to be prematurely parted from the children’s bodies owing to the harshness of the re´gime to which he subjects them, and he does nothing to give the Lowood pupils spiritual inspiration and strength while they are still in his pastoral care. This is the Bronte¨ clergyman who comes closest to being a caricature, like Frances Trollope’s Mr Cartwright; but unlike the latter he is at least no criminal in a technical sense, and he is too stupid for insidious

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malignity. Still, he is an oppressor and a humbug, a force for evil in an office which needs the best of men and demands the best from them, and hence a peculiarly destructive and repulsive character. The worst charges that can be levied against his colleagues among the flawed Bronte¨ ministers are worldliness, selfishness, vanity and inconsiderateness. While certainly reprehensible, especially in a clergyman, these qualities are not downright vicious; and the men who share them, with all their faults, are not in the same monster category as Mr Brocklehurst.              ,           Next to Brocklehurst, the most harshly criticised Bronte¨ cleric is Mr Hatfield in Agnes Grey. Previous scholarly discussion of Anne Bronte¨’s rector has reflected a degree of uncertainty as to what the author was aiming at; for instance, Winnifrith argues that ‘the confused account of Mr Hatfield’s religious proclivities does not enable us to form any clear picture of what Anne is trying to attack.’ As Robert Lee Wolff and Arthur Pollard have demonstrated, however, Anne Bronte¨ is anything but ‘confused’ in her portrayal of the man whom Pollard characterises as ‘an old-fashioned High Churchman updated with a mixture of Tractarianism’. The latter element comes out particularly clearly in Anne Bronte¨’s description of Mr Hatfield’s chief professional concerns: His favourite subjects were church discipline, rites and ceremonies, apostolical succession, the duty of reverence and obedience to the clergy, the atrocious criminality of dissent, the absolute necessity of observing all the forms of godliness, the reprehensible presumption of individuals who attempted to think for themselves in matters connected with religion, or to be guided by their own interpretations of Scripture, and, occasionally, (to please his wealthy parishioners,) the necessity of deferential obedience from the poor to the rich – supporting his maxims and exhortations throughout with quotations from the Fathers, with whom he appeared to be far better acquainted than with the Apostles and Evangelists, and whose importance he seemed to consider at least equal to theirs. (x.)

This paragraph forms a neat summary of the Evangelical position on Tractarianism, and it contains much that a representative of the latter ‘camp’ would unhesitatingly acknowledge, especially the concern with church discipline and ritual and the importance of the doctrine of apostolic succession. Other components would be granted as highly relevant by an exponent of the Oxford Movement, though he/she

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would argue that they were unfairly formulated here. For all the Tractarian interest in the Church Fathers, no Tractarian would regard them as being on a par with the Apostles and Evangelists; and while the ‘Puseyites’ distrusted certain forms of individual Bible study, they certainly would not forbid independent reflection on religious matters. Mr Hatfield’s Tractarianism is not the main issue, though. Naturally, the daughter of an Evangelical pastor would have no great affection for the ‘other side’ in the great church controversy of the s; but the author’s personal loyalty to her father’s faith is of less significance here than Wolff allows. The novelist Anne Bronte¨ castigates Mr Hatfield not for being a High Churchman, but for being an inadequate one: he, too, like Charlotte’s Brocklehurst, disgraces his ecclesiastical ‘home base’. A genuine Tractarian clergyman would not have dreamt of desecrating his holy office by seeking to gain social advantage fussing around the squire and his family in connexion with Sunday services. Tractarian worship had a reserved austerity about it which set it apart from what Oxford Movement representatives saw as the exaggerated emotionalism of Evangelicals; but the adherents of the Movement were deeply religious and loathed impiety, and Anne Bronte¨ will have been perfectly aware of that. Mr Hatfield’s levity immediately after delivering a ‘sunless and severe’ sermon would have been as forcefully condemned by the Tractarian novelist Charlotte Yonge as it is by Anne Bronte¨. The trouble with Hatfield is that he is a bad priest and a bad Christian. He adds to the miseries of the afflicted rather than alleviating their burdens. Both the troubled peasant woman and the dying labourer whom he reluctantly visits would have been better off with no parson at all than with the young man who so obviously despises them (xi.–). The extent to which he fails in one of his chief duties as a clergyman is indicated by the following exhortations from contemporary instructors of ministers: I have called the ‘Visitation of the Sick’ the first of parochial ministrations, for you have then to occupy yourself with a soul perhaps shortly about to go before God, and have its lot fixed for ever, and which has accordingly to be trimmed for His presence; and by whom so fitly as by you? . . . You have a whole household prepared, by God’s severe visitation on one of its members, to entertain you as an angel. You have a little knot of families around, to whom, under your direction, virtue may be made to go forth out of that one sick chamber. Our approach to the sick should be in the garb of a friend. Our aim (unlike that of the medical attendant,) is often unconnected in his mind with any definite prospect

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of benefit. It is more necessary, therefore, that we should enter fully into the sufferer’s case – that our spirit, manners, and voice should exhibit manifest sympathy – such as our Master displayed, when he stopped the bier at the gate of Nain, and wept at the tomb of Lazarus. Nothing more successfully engages confidence, than when the official garb shows – ‘a brother, that is born for adversity.’

The second quotation sets up an ideal which Hatfield’s counterpart, his new curate Mr Weston, explicitly lives up to. The sick man whose closeness the rector could only bear if the door was open, regardless of the harm done to the consumptive sufferer as a result, speaks of ‘Maister Weston’ ‘[sitting] beside me just like a brother’ (xi.). Much of the criticism levelled against the rector comes out in comparisons between him and his curate. The latter possesses all the virtues which the former lacks: he counsels old Nancy Brown wisely; restores her lost cat which Hatfield had kicked across the floor on a previous occasion; and silently observes what the parishioners need and does what he can to obtain it for them on the meagre income his rector allows him (‘he never says nowt about it, but just gets it for ’em’). Weston hence combines the secular and spiritual duties of a parson in an exemplary manner. Where Hatfield reproves, he encourages and consoles. His superior’s scorn for the simple rural people is set against his own warm sympathy for them, all in accordance with the Evangelical emphasis on the affections. Weston is as obviously an Evangelical as Hatfield is a High Churchman, but just as the latter circumstance was not the chief cause of the censure meted out to the rector, the Evangelicalism of the curate is not in itself his most important quality. None of the Bronte¨s would have denied that a Tractarian clergyman could have evinced all Weston’s praiseworthy qualities. The junior cleric is a better man and a better Christian, and therefore a better minister. Mr Weston’s superiority is also manifest in the way he conducts services, and here Anne Bronte¨’s brief sketches illustrate conditions and developments in church history as usefully as Jane Austen’s. Mr Hatfield’s style of prayer is summed up in the verbs ‘mutter’ and ‘gabble’, whereas Weston reads the prayers ‘as if he were not reading at all, but praying, earnestly and sincerely from his own heart’ (x., ). Again, Weston adheres to Simeonite precepts; Charles Simeon had instructed his disciples to ‘[p]ray the prayers . . . don’t read them only’. The two men’s modes of preaching differ radically, too. Hatfield delivers elaborately composed sermons on formal issues of little rel-

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evance to his hearers, except where they antagonise the poorer people by insisting on deference to the rich. On the few occasions when he does preach about spiritual matters, his sermons are bleak and stern, as depressing and unsettling to the audience as the pulpit oratory of the Calvinist Evangelical St John Rivers in Jane Eyre. By contrast, Agnes Grey is ‘pleased with the evangelical truth of [Weston’s] doctrine, as well as the earnest simplicity of his manner, and the clearness and force of his style’ (x.–). Old Nancy, too, testifies to the consolation bestowed on her by Weston’s preaching (xi.). He should probably be envisaged as reading from a manuscript; an extempore sermon from a new curate would have been an unlikely event in an Anglican parish church headed by a High Church rector in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. The early Evangelicals had preferred to speak directly to those audiences whose members they were so eager to convert; but this style of preaching came to be associated with Dissenter ‘enthusiasm’, and in the early nineteenth century Evangelical Anglicans had moved away from it. It should be noted, though, that the Bronte¨s belonged in an ecclesiastical ‘set’ where extempore preaching was both defended and practised, and Patrick Bronte¨ did not allow semi-blindness to prevent him from preaching for his accustomed half-hour. Despite the existence of able preachers, pulpit oratory did not attain its loftiest heights at this time, as Hart and Carpenter point out: The nineteenth century parson was probably not at his best in the pulpit. Sermons were long, although they tended to grow shorter as the years went on, and few took advantage of the advice given to the Hon. Edward Bligh by his rector: ‘Twelve minutes is long enough for one monkey to be talking to a lot of others.’ But worse still they were usually totally unrelated to the life of the people and expressed in a language which the villager did not really understand. Bishop Monk of Gloucester (–), known as the Greek play bishop, was once heard to say at a confirmation service in rural Grittleton church: ‘In fact any calculation founded upon the assumed longevity of the human species is fallacious.’ Bishop Sumner even regarded it as a defect in Charles Kingsley’s sermons that they were ‘too colloquial,’ a fact, however, which enabled him to fill his church. Most country clergy, too, read their discourses, which tended to formalism and a manner of exposition not congenial to a personal ministry.

Writers of manuals for clergymen were acutely aware that the opportunities offered by sermons were not being optimally utilised and urged their readers to improve their communicative skills. Above all, men like Blunt, Bridges and Charles Sumner insisted that the preacher’s first duty

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was to make himself understood. Plain speaking was advocated as being preferable in any circumstances, regardless of the level of education he could expect in his audience, and ministers were warned not to show off: it would be sinful self-indulgence to preach well rather than usefully, and to attempt to cater to the minds rather than the hearts of hearers. The reading of lessons is another essential part of the service, and here too instructors are blunt: [N]o rule for reading God’s Word in the congregation can help [the clergyman] so effectually as the rule of thoroughly understanding what he reads; while the mere regulation of his voice will be an actual commentary, conveying to his hearers the true meaning where it might otherwise escape them, and often giving a novelty to lessons which they had listened to a hundred times before.

In this respect as well as with regard to praying and preaching, Mr Weston is, in Agnes Grey’s view, ‘infinitely better’ than Mr Hatfield: ‘[h]e read the lessons as if he were bent on giving full effect to every passage: it seemed as if the most careless person could not have helped attending, nor the most ignorant have failed to understand’ (x.). No other Bronte¨ novel devotes as much attention to components in Church services as Agnes Grey, and it affords interesting sidelights on another central aspect of worship as well. One of the most patent results of early nineteenth-century Church reform in the actual life of the Church was the greater frequency with which Holy Communion was celebrated, and the references to the Eucharist in Agnes Grey reflect the special importance that the Tractarians attached to it. Evangelical Anglicans had done much to restore the Eucharist to its central position in the life of Christians, inspired by Methodist predecessors; back in the mid-eighteenth century, for instance, the Methodist pioneer Grimshaw of Haworth had his congregation in such fear of neglecting their duty in this respect that there were times when his church could not hold all the communicants. But the Tractarians were concerned with the Eucharist in particular ways and for particular reasons, doctrinal as well as ritual. It is hence natural for Mr Hatfield in Agnes Grey to insist that Nancy Brown take Holy Communion ‘at every opportunity’ (xi., ). However, Hatfield betrays his ignorance of the essential significance which his own ecclesiastical ‘school’ ascribed to the Eucharist in prescribing it like a medicine. Nancy herself reveals a greater awe of the sacrament than the clergyman possesses; as a communicant beset by doubt, she ‘felt as though [she] were eating an’ drinking to [her] own damnation all th’ time’ (xi.). Her fears in that regard are doctrinally

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sound: the th of the  Articles proclaims that ‘such as be void of a lively faith’ are not properly speaking partakers of Christ if they take the sacrament, ‘but rather, to their condemnation, do eat and drink’. Mr Hatfield’s shortcomings as a clergyman are part and parcel of his selfish and worldly nature, and it is his parishioners’ misfortune that such a man should have chosen the very profession where he would be likely to do the greatest harm. It is one of the many delightful ironies of Agnes Grey that the man who is so insensitive to the peculiar dignity of the priesthood should insist on ‘the duty of reverence and obedience to the clergy’ (x.). The special position of that body of men is referable to their spiritual functions, and the spirit is a closed book to Hatfield. Consequently, the letter is all he has; and as his religion is a matter of rites and forms without substance, his office is unable to conceal the meretriciousness of a young man on the make. Agnes is surprised at his unclerical attendance at a ball (where, however, he is obliged to draw the line at dancing: ix.); but attending grand social occasions is a necessity for a clever and ambitious worldling, whether or not he is a man of the cloth. The fact of his having a living worth almost £ a year (a clergyman could live fairly comfortably on half that amount; Patrick Bronte¨ earned £) at an early age points to useful connexions, and he is less unrealistic than he may seem in hoping for the hand of Miss Murray. For all the dire want on the bottom rungs – many curates, for instance, had to live on less than £ a year, and some fell below the bread-line – , there was plenty of money in the Church. A successful ecclesiastic careerist could earn ten times £ in his late thirties, especially if he married well, as both factual and fictive clergymen not infrequently did (in the Bronte¨ novels, too; both Agnes’ and Jane Eyre’s fathers were socially inferior to their wives). Relationships between vicars and curates were often uneasy, and the one between Hatfield and Weston was bound to be fraught. Telling Agnes of its termination, Rosalie – now Lady Ashby – says that Hatfield disliked Weston, ‘because he had too much influence with the common people, and because he was not sufficiently tractable and submissive to him – and for some other unpardonable sins, I don’t know what’ (xxii.). It is not hard to guess that a lack of rigorous observance of some forms of worship could have been one of the ‘unpardonable sins’; but of course the worst offence of all in the eyes of a vain and ambitious human being is committed by the person who is and does better than he/she. However indifferent Mr Hatfield was to the chief duties of a clergy-

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man, he noticed that his curate’s way of fulfilling them won greater approval than his own (Lady Ashby comments, ‘the people made a great rout about his leaving . . . much to Mr. Hatfield’s displeasure’). As the preceding review has shown, Mr Weston’s professional and personal superiority to his senior is driven home again and again. In view of the dimensions of that superiority, and of the character of the relevant profession, one may be slightly surprised to find Agnes expressing it in the word ‘efficient’ (xxv.). Even making allowances for her desire to avoid effusiveness, the adjective sounds rather crass, even a little profane, to modern ears. The early nineteenth-century Church reformers were nothing if not practical though, both in their actions and in their language. The subtitle of Charles Bridges’ The Christian Ministry announces that the manual addresses the reasons for the ‘inefficiency’ of contemporaneous clerical work, especially in the Church of England. The model clergyman in Agnes Grey himself defines his function in low-key terms: ‘The best of happiness . . . is mine already’, says Mr Weston, namely ‘the power and the will to be useful’ (xiii.).                          Mr Hatfield in Agnes Grey is dedicated to secular concerns, and being young and ambitious, he has thrown in his lot with the fashionable set. In the mid- and late s, when the ‘action’ of Agnes Grey supposedly takes place, Tractarianism had the e´clat of novelty as well as the prestige of being associated with Academe and with higher social strata than Evangelicalism, which had been losing momentum for some years. It was, in other words, the obvious choice for a climber, and Mr Hatfield is clever and perspicacious enough to have got in on the ground floor. Unspiritual older men manifested their worldliness in other ways. Matthewson Helstone in Shirley – perhaps the most intriguing character among the Bronte¨ clergymen – is discussed below. As ‘men in whom the animal . . . predominates over the intellectual’, his neighbour Dr Boultby and Mr Millward from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall form a natural pair. Before these two gentlemen are subjected to scrutiny, however, something should be said about the Bronte¨s’ attention to historical verisimilitude and temporal dimensions. Charlotte’s sense of time sometimes seems peculiar: it is, for instance, inconceivable that the post-mistress who hands Jane Eyre Mrs Fairfax’s letter should first spend ‘nearly five

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minutes’ peering at it, and that the Thornfield wedding party should freeze into a ten-minute silence after Mason’s revelations and Rochester’s acknowledgement. Some chronological question-marks occur, too: for example, if the Morton episode took place around , little Ade`le must have been conceived around –, at which point no private English gentleman could have led a life of ease in Paris. However, despite such oddities, all three Bronte¨ sisters invested much thought in chronological consistency and historical accuracy. C. P. Sanger’s classic essay ‘The Structure of Wuthering Heights’ was the first scholarly contribution to offer persuasive evidence for careful structural and temporal elaboration, and Anne’s endeavour to capture the tone of high Regency society in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has often been commented on, if not always commended. The Bronte¨ clergymen reflect the same attention to historical and chronological considerations, not least the worldlings among them. Messrs Boultby and Millward, some fifteen years apart in terms of ‘action’ Shirley takes place in the early s, and Gilbert Markham sets the date  as the beginning of his tale), are very obviously preChurch-reform Anglican vicars. Charlotte Bronte¨’s sketches of the rector of Whinbury have a good-humoured tone which is lacking in the portrayal of Anne’s Millward: [Dr. Boultby] was a stubborn old Welshman, hot, opinionated, and obstinate, but withal a man who did a great deal of good, though not without making some noise about it. (.iii.) The large morocco-covered easy chair had been left vacant for Dr. Boultby; he was put into it, and Caroline . . . hastened to hand to her uncle’s vast, revered, and, on the whole, worthy friend, a glass of wine and a plate of macaroons. (.v.–)

What there is of satire in the passages on Boultby focuses on the females that cluster around him, foremost among them his besotted wife, who thinks that the face of her stout husband becomes like that of an angel when he sleeps off a good dinner, a condition he is frequently to be found in. The rector himself is a practitioner of good living; that, along with his self-importance, is his dominant characteristic. As it causes no ill consequences beyond excess weight, he can afford to indulge in it, and as his entourage are dedicated to indulging him, he leads a fairly contented life. Like many clerics before the age of reform, he is the type of a squire rather than a parson; nothing about him suggests a man of

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God. He is, however, included in a significant piece of blanket praise bestowed on all three rectors in the novel. In the context of Shirley’s charitable scheme, it becomes clear that they are thoroughly aware of their secular duties to their parishioners: In the discussion which ensued, all three gentlemen, to their infinite credit, showed a thorough acquaintance with the poor of their parishes, – an even minute knowledge of their separate wants. Each Rector knew where clothing was needed, where food would be most acceptable, where money could be bestowed with a probability of it being judiciously laid out. (.iii.)

Whether the Reverend Michael Millward in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall would have stood that test is doubtful. An ‘active’ man, he expends his ‘vaunted energies’ (xlviii.) lecturing and hectoring his parishioners when he is not occupied by the ingestion of such staple English foods as beef, ham and bacon and eggs, washed down with ample quantities of beer. Gilbert Markham describes him as ‘a man of fixed principles, strong prejudices, and regular habits, – intolerant of dissent in any shape, acting under a firm conviction that his opinions were always right’ (i.–). The accuracy of that characterisation is soon verified: he, who should have made it his business to assist his new parishioner, ‘Mrs Graham’ (or convert her, if she was really the sinner he believed her to be), bullies her instead, and whatever benefits the poor people of his parish obtain by way of the vicarage is more likely than not to have been put in hand by his elder daughter. While there are some remedying touches to this portrait of another self-opinionated secular priest – for instance, he has the sense to appreciate his virtuous Mary – Mr Millward is another good liver, also (like Dr Boultby) fortunate enough to possess such an organ. That, more than any spiritual resources he might have, is what ensures a satisfactory existence for him. While he does no great harm (unlike Brocklehurst and Hatfield), he does not achieve much good either (unlike Boultby). No wonder his parishioners, especially the indigent ones, greet his curate’s succession to the Lindenhope living with rejoicing (xlviii.): what takes over with the new generation, the meek Mr Wilson and his charitable wife (the former Miss Millward), is the spirit of reform.             Church reform was decades away, however, when the three curates of Whinbury, Nunnely and Briarfield wasted their time ‘visiting’ one

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another instead of attending to their pastoral duties, as their vicars would have preferred them to do. W. A. Craik has made the ingenious suggestion that the three young men ‘define their respective rectors: Sweeting, the best of the bunch, belongs to Mr Hall; the bellicose Malone to Helstone; and the uncouth Donne to Boultby’. In view of all the work Charlotte Bronte¨ apparently put into the structure of Shirley, it seems a likely plan. Charlotte Bronte¨’s correspondence shows that she had a great deal of curate frustration to draw on, and to some extent relieve, when writing Shirley. After the publication of the novel, she claimed that she regretted having been too merciful, ‘too tenderly and partially veiling the errors of ‘‘the Curates’’ ’. This might have been a piece of pre-emptive defensiveness; for good measure, she added, ‘Had Currer Bell written all he has seen and knows concerning those worthies – a singular work would have been the result.’ Currer Bell had certainly seen a good deal of curates by , but whatever stores of annoyance she may have accumulated, she handled the Shirley trio with easygoing humour. Several modern critics have commented on the light-heartedness of the opening levitical satire; as Barry Qualls says, it ‘provides some of the real fun of the novel’. This makes it all the more surprising that so many readers among Charlotte’s contemporaries reacted strongly against the first chapter of the book. Charlotte herself was genuinely puzzled by her publishers’ ‘disapprobation’ of ‘[t]he curates and their ongoings’. The men at Smith, Elder – who after all wanted to like what they saw – were not alone; in a letter to Mrs Gaskell after the publication of her Life of Charlotte, Charles Kingsley admitted that he had been so disgusted by the opening of Shirley that he ‘gave up the writer and her books with the notion that she was a person who liked coarseness.’ It seems a peculiar response from a man whose own disposition was not over-fastidious. There is always the possibility that the inclusion in the satire of topical allusions to Tractarianism struck raw nerves here and there. To joke about baptismal regeneration in , when the Gorham case blew up, could have seemed in poor taste to those who were genuinely concerned about schism in the Church of England, and they were many. Fortunately, the present-day reader, who does not suffer from any such sensitivity, is able to savour the irony of Charlotte Bronte¨’s brief and elegant review of Tractarian dogma and worship. Having pointed out that there were no curate-supplying societies in the s, the narrator continues:

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The present successors of the apostles, disciples of Dr. Pusey and tools of the Propaganda, were at that time being hatched under cradle-blankets, or undergoing regeneration by nursery-baptism in wash-hand-basins. You could not have guessed . . . that the Italian-ironed double frills of its net cap surrounded the brows of a preordained, specially sanctified successor of St. Paul, St. Peter, or St. John; nor could you have foreseen in the folds of its long night-gown the white surplice in which it was hereafter cruelly to exercise the souls of its parishioners, and strangely to nonplus its old-fashioned vicar by flourishing aloft in a pulpit the shirt-like raiment which had never before waved higher than the reading-desk. (.i.)

Many commentators have explained the references to apostolic succession, the very core of Tractarian doctrine, and baptismal regeneration, the subject of the Gorham dispute. The latter was so widely publicised as to have reached Charlotte Bronte¨’s friend Mary Taylor in New Zealand. The subject of the row, which set Low against High Churchman all over the country, was the precise nature of the Divine grace conferred on an infant in baptism. Present-day readers also need to be told that some Tractarians dropped the centuries-old custom of putting on so-called Geneva gowns for the sermon in favour of retaining their white surplices. Two things should be borne in mind in connexion with this Tractarian element at the opening of Shirley. First, Donne, Malone and Sweeting are not of course Tractarians; the Oxford Movement began to form over twenty years after the ‘action’ in Charlotte Bronte¨’s novel. The joke is thus not on them but on the ‘rain of curates’ distributed by the aid societies of the writer’s own present, who are, she intimates, predominantly Tractarian in their sympathies. Second, the latter are not the sole or even the main butt of the writer’s irony. The jocular tone of the reference to ‘tools of the Propaganda’ suggests that Charlotte Bronte¨ did not, unlike many of her contemporaries, subscribe to the notion that the Oxford Movement was the Pope’s battering-ram into the Church of England. She also intimates that the fluttering of surplices in pulpits is not worth all the fuss that has been made over it. In other words, the satirical edge is not directed against the parties in the ongoing Church controversy so much as against controversy itself. The dark side to the curate motif in Shirley is found in the irreligiousness of the young men – Donne and Malone particularly; there is hope for the sensitive Sweeting. Their lack of consideration for others, not least their long-suffering landladies, can be blamed on their youth and inexperience, as can a portion of their vanity and their poor judgement.

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Wasting time and energy on senseless quarrelling is a typically youthful pursuit, too, and the humorous tone in which it is related, with a wealth of amusing details, keeps the author’s censure fairly light. But their neglect of their pastoral duties and the absence of even a spark of religious feeling are serious matters. The only thing that interests them about their profession are its outward trappings and status. Insofar as they discuss theological issues at all, the topics of their talk are almost as far removed from spiritual concerns as the peculiarities of speech, appearance and so on which form the substance of the crude teasing to which they subject one another. Matters of faith are irrelevant to them; so are Christian ethics. None of them, not even Sweeting, would confront the question of how to live as a Christian with the desperate seriousness of a Caroline Helstone. And this is the new generation, due to succeed elders who – whatever their faults – are aware of the clergyman’s duty to ‘do as much good as he can’, to quote Thomas Arnold. The outlook seems anything but hopeful. It would be easy to argue that these unpromising junior clerics were conceived of as belonging to the great mass of pre-reform inadequates; but we have Charlotte Bronte¨’s word for it that the curates were copied from life and no reason to doubt it. However, the disturbing implications of that realisation are to some extent counteracted by the respect and affection for individual curates that Charlotte expressed elsewhere. If the customary account of real-life parallels of the Shirley curates is to be believed, the models for Donne and Malone had served as Mr Bronte¨’s curates in  to ; they were hence only two of a number that included dedicated and successful young clergymen held in high esteem by the Bronte¨ family. The fact that Charlotte Bronte¨ was not implacably anti-curate is demonstrated in the final chapter of Shirley, ‘The Winding-Up’. Neatly balancing the opening ‘Levitical’, surely another instance of authorial deliberation on points of symmetry, these pages inform the reader of the subsequent vicissitudes of Messrs Malone, Sweeting and Donne. Malone’s life, the narrator tells us, was a ‘catastrophe’ – but an interesting feature in the long paragraph that addresses and dismisses the turbulent Irishman is the suggestion that his misfortunes were in large measure due to his failure to realise ‘that the unvarnished truth does not answer; that plain facts will not digest’, and ‘that the squeak of the real pig is no more relished now than it was in days of yore’ (.xiv.). From the pen of such a fervid advocate of home truths as Charlotte Bronte¨, this does not read like censure. Even the closing reference to Malone’s rudeness,

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dirtiness and naughtiness does not dispel the notion that it is the self-deluding segment of society that denounces him rather than the author. Mr Sweeting is granted an almost fatuously idyllic ensuing existence, with a comfortable living as well as a comfortably wealthy and ‘weighty’ (the word is Charlotte Bronte¨’s) wife. The author’s awareness of the saccharinity of the Sweeting outcome is signalled by the concluding sentence, ‘There! I think the varnish has been put on very nicely’ (.xiv.). The fortunes of Mr Donne form a fascinating instance of Charlotte Bronte¨’s ability to avoid, or at least undercut, the obvious. The most repulsive of the curates (depending on one’s susceptibility to Malone’s Hibernian charms) is granted a fair measure of success in his profession, largely thanks to a wise marriage. He looks after the secular welfare of his parishioners, including the education of their offspring, with exemplary dedication and becomes a phenomenal fund-raiser for charitable purposes. All this is much more than one could have expected of the illmannered Cockney who manages to quench even the liberal Shirley’s generosity, but the long account of his achievements is ominously offset by two incidental touches, one even made deliberately inconspicuous by being placed in brackets: ‘(as a pastor, he, to his dying day, conscientiously refused to act)’ and ‘[t]he outside of the cup and platter he burnished up with the best polishing-powder’. The latter is a quotation from Christ’s fulminations against the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew , where religious hypocrites are charged with all kinds of iniquity, including ‘extortion’ (which Donne turns out to be particularly good at). These two brief sentences thus form a fearsome characterisation of a clergyman’s work, and the Shirley narrator’s allusions to the upholsterer’s and the cabinet-maker’s crafts lend further weight to the case against Donne the clergyman: he is only concerned with external things, with frames rather than contents. His refusal to be a ‘pastor’ is taken up again in a subsequent comment: ‘if uniformity and taste in architecture had been the same thing as consistency and earnestness in religion, what a shepherd of a Christian flock Mr. Donne would have made!’ As it is, he is an excellent promoter of worldly benefits, to his parishioners as well as to himself, but he is determined (‘conscientiously refused’ is a telling expression) to have nothing to do with their souls. It is the worst of faults in a parson. No amount of secular usefulness (the significant word is applied to Donne) can atone for being useless in the sphere which is the

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clergyman’s particular province. In Matthew :, Christ’s diatribe against the outwardly unexceptionable culminates in the exclamation, ‘Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?’ Again, the skill of the Bronte¨s in the art of Scriptural allusion becomes evident. The reference to the cup and platter alone would not have sufficed; it was a common, almost a stock, metaphor. Bolstered by ‘altar’ and ‘temple’, operative words in verses where ‘fools and blind’ are condemned in the strongest terms, it sends a whiff of Gehenna across the externally pleasing picture of a ‘model’ parish priest. The representation of curates in Shirley is hence a mixture of wine and water; but the last word on this clerical category is one of praise tempered with tolerant, even amused criticism. Malone’s replacement, another Irishman, a ‘decent, decorous, and conscientious’ man, greatly improves the image of Ireland in the eyes of Briarfield parishioners: He laboured faithfully in the parish: the schools, both Sunday and day-schools, flourished under his sway like green bay-trees. Being human, of course he had his faults; these, however, were proper, steady-going, clerical faults; what many would call virtues: the circumstance of finding himself invited to tea with a Dissenter would unhinge him for a week; the spectacle of a Quaker wearing his hat in the church – the thought of an unbaptized fellow-creature being interred with Christian rites – these things could make strange havoc in Mr. Macarthey’s physical and mental economy; otherwise, he was sane and rational, diligent and charitable. (.xiv.)

What makes this description particularly appealing for a reader interested in the author herself – and the Bronte¨s were always one of the toughest of all challenges to Neo-Critical purism – is the awareness of the model for the portrait. Some five years before her marriage to Arthur Bell Nicholls, Charlotte Bronte¨ drew this favourable sketch of her future husband, gently acidulated by her recognition of his mild bigotry in denominational matters. If the credibility of Mr Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre suffered from the author’s inability to resist throwing every sort of mud at the character, the curates in Shirley show that Charlotte Bronte¨ was capable of putting personal experience, including years of pent-up irritation, to use in creating complexes of comment which are both multi-faceted and subtly ironic. Above all, this component in Shirley makes one admire the broad-mindedness with which she handled issues over which families and friends fell out all over England in her time.

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               Shirley never explains what circumstances prevented Matthewson Helstone from becoming a soldier and made him a priest instead. His personality is defined in a concatenation of adjectives among which even the favourable majority are distinctly unclerical: ‘he was a conscientious, hard-headed, hard-handed, brave, stern, implacable, faithful little man: a man almost without sympathy, ungentle, prejudiced, and rigid; but a man true to principle, – honourable, sagacious, and sincere’ (.iii.). The narrator argues that a man cannot be condemned because he missed his vocation and refutes the idea put about by ‘parson-haters’ that there was anything diabolical about Mr Helstone. Critics have been as divided about him as the people of Briarfield. Certainly, Helstone’s contempt for women and total lack of empathy have not gone down well with modern readers, nor has his rigid Toryism. The two components of his surname have, naturally enough, been observed and commented on as in some measure appropriate. And yet both feminist and Marxist readers have acknowledged that their own disapprobation is not matched by authorial condemnation. Terry Eagleton, for instance, notes that Mr Helstone is – like ‘[a]lmost all the conservative autocrats’ in Charlotte Bronte¨’s fiction – ‘qualifiedly admired’. The question in this context is what sort of parson Matthewson Helstone is, and here his deficiencies are obvious. So is the fact that his faults as a clergyman are easiest to define in negative terms. He is not interested in saving souls by winning them for Christ. The pursuit of holiness interests him not at all. He has no humility and little in the way of mercy and charity. The hard-heartedness he displays, especially in his cruel neglect of women (whom he regards as ‘inferior: toys to play with, to amuse a vacant hour and to be thrown away’: .vii.), is the very opposite of the quality enjoined by Evangelical Anglicanism. His dealings with his parishioners are thus untouched by that pastoral love which Simeon and his followers regarded as the moving force in all clerical work. He is also the opposite of a man of peace: his martial proclivities are in evidence throughout the book. Against these glaring defects, Helstone’s awareness of his parishioners’ secular wants does not weigh very heavily, nor does his punctiliousness in carrying out his functions as preacher and church disciplinarian. These virtues, however, like the prevalence of Biblical allusions in his speech, are indications that he has had the mental

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strength to study the duties and attainments associated with a profession forced on him by circumstance, resolving to discharge them to the best of his ability. Whereas Mr Donne built his praiseworthy parish school out of solicited donations, the Briarfield school was erected ‘chiefly at [the Rector’s] own expense’ (.v.). It is a significant detail. If Mr Helstone’s faults were negative, so are his virtues: he is not mean; ‘[w]hatever he had a hand in, must be managed handsomely’ (.v.). Above all, though, he is not false: two of the epithets applied to him in the description quoted above are ‘faithful’ and ‘sincere’. Matthewson Helstone is all of a piece, and though hopelessly unspiritual and grievously marred by prejudice, it is, essentially, a sound piece: to some extent the clergyman’s faults are redeemed by the man’s virtues. Mrs Pryor, who never had any fondness for her brother-in-law, entrusted her child’s upbringing to him because he ‘was an upright man’ (.i.). The rural population, incensed at the conceited behaviour of the curates, think the ‘old parsons . . . worth the whole lump of college lads; they know what belangs good manners, and is kind to high and low’. Mr Helstone proves that those are not empty words (.i.–). Naturally enough, the strong-minded, honourable and energetic Shirley gets on well with Mr Helstone, sparring with and even outwitting him at times, for which he bears her no ill-will. She recognises his worth, telling Mr Yorke that ‘Mr. Helstone has his faults: he sometimes does wrong, but oftener right’ (.x.). Helstone puts the curates in their places as nobody else will or can, exercising the kind of authority they patently need. On one occasion, his ‘bend-leather heart’ softens: having attempted to revive his desperately ill niece with tea made by his own hand (and chicken from a plate carried upstairs by himself ), he bends over her sick-bed and requites her grateful smile with a kiss and the words ‘Good-night, bairnie! God bless thee!’, spoken in ‘a broken, rugged accent’ (.i.). With his ‘keen brown visage’, where ‘firmness had fixed the features, and sagacity . . . carved her own lines about them’ (.i.), he is like a piece of ‘bend-leather’ all through: tough, strong and useful. A thoroughly secular priest, Helstone is not an unbeliever; he never questions or seems to doubt the doctrines he is required to teach. Both this tacit assent to Church of England orthodoxy and his loyalty to that institution are evident in his exchange with the Dissenter Whig Hiram Yorke. The latter draws a grim and, in the eyes of a Tory like Helstone, seditious picture of England in the s, long before Parliamentary and Church reform:

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‘But where was the use of talking? . . . What chance was there of reason being heard in a land that was king-ridden, priest-ridden, peer-ridden – where a lunatic was the nominal monarch, an unprincipled debauchee the real ruler; where such an insult to common sense as hereditary legislators was tolerated – where such a humbug as a bench of bishops – such an arrogant abuse as a pampered, persecuting established Church was endured and venerated – where a standing army was maintained, and a host of lazy parsons and their pauper families were kept on the fat of the land?’ (.iv.)

The gist of Helstone’s retort is that ‘blasphemy against God and the king was a deadly sin, and that there was such a thing as ‘‘judgement to come’’ ’ (.iv.). He also resorts to the classic response to scoffers, speaking of the deathbeds he has attended where the ‘most rancorous foe[s]’ of the Church sought in vain to be reconciled with it. Clearly, Matthewson Helstone would have made short work of the unorthodox idea of universalism. Leading the Church of England ranks against the forces of Dissent and routing his enemies in Royd-lane ‘for the honour of the Establishment’ is one of his finest hours (.vi.–).                  Shirley pokes fun at Miss Ainley’s reverence for the cloth, even when worn by the curates: The clergy were sacred beings in Miss Ainley’s eyes: no matter what might be the insignificance of the individual, his station made him holy. The very curates – who, in their trivial arrogance, were hardly worthy to tie her patten-strings . . . – she, in her pure, sincere enthusiasm, looked upon as sucking saints. No matter how clearly their little vices and enormous absurdities were pointed out to her, she could not see them: she was blind to ecclesiastical defects: the white surplice covered a multitude of sins. (.iii.)

This ‘harmless infatuation’ is undeserved by all Shirley clerics except one: Cyril Hall, rector of Nunnely, is the second of the two ideal clergymen in the novels of the Bronte¨s (Mr Weston in Agnes Grey, of course, being the other). On every count, he satisfies the requirements: To old ladies he was kind as a son. To men of every occupation and grade he was acceptable: the truth, simplicity, frankness of his manners, the nobleness of his integrity, the reality and elevation of his piety, won him friends in every grade: his poor clerk and sexton delighted in him; the noble patron of his living esteemed him highly. (.iii.–)

To these virtues, the central ones of Evangelical Anglican Christianity, Mr Hall adds plain speaking, a peace-loving nature (unlike Helstone,

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who is spoiling for a fight, he does not desire a rough confrontation in Royd-lane) and tact. The latter quality is demonstrated in a finely drawn representation of spiritual and secular helpfulness: having given needy parishioners material assistance, he makes the children say their catechism as a game, thus distracting them till their mother has had a chance to make them something to eat. Only at the moment of parting does he address ‘a few brief but very earnest words of religious consolation and exhortation’ to the parents, whereupon he hurries off so as not to keep the family from eating their much-needed food or embarrass them by being around when they do (.viii.). The chapter in which Shirley praises Mr Helstone at Mr Yorke’s expense contains some passages which express both her dissatisfaction with the state of the Church of England and her conviction that if anybody could set matters right, it would not be Yorke. Having acknowledged that the faults of the curates persuade her of the desirability of Church ‘reformation’, she accuses Yorke of indiscriminate strictures and inverted pride: ‘You find it easy to speak comfortably to your inferiors – you are too haughty, too ambitious, too jealous to be civil to those above you. But you are all alike. Helstone also is proud and prejudiced. Moore, though juster and more considerate than either you or the Rector, is still haughty, stern, and, in a public sense, selfish. It is well there are such men as Mr. Hall to be found occasionally: men of large and kind hearts, who can love their whole race, who can forgive others for being richer, more prosperous, or more powerful than they are.’ (.x.)

After her own radically aggressive polemics, Shirley thus rests her case on love and forbearance, embodied in the clergyman who excludes nobody from his affectionate care. It is a swift transition which obliges Yorke to shift his ground to private matters in order to be able to score a hit: as a would-be church-and-state reformer, he has been destroyed by the fearless girl. As preceding chapters have already shown, Mr Hall in Shirley is the dispenser of religious wisdom par excellence in the fiction of the Bronte¨s. There is no need to recapitulate his stances here; suffice it to say that they are never undercut by irony or counteracted by events. Even down to his own personal life and habits, he is a man of God, ‘wedded . . . to his books and his parish: his kind sister Margaret, spectacled and learned like himself, [makes] him happy in his single state’ (.iii.). Mr Hall cannot be assigned to any ecclesiastical ‘school’; he represents

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the Church of England at its very best, and if he had been a typical representative of its clergy instead of the embodiment of an ideal, there would never have been any need for reform. In addition to the Arnoldian anti-sacerdotal sentiments recapitulated above, there was an anti-clerical streak in the Evangelical tradition to which the Bronte¨ family belonged. Their readiness to describe representatives of the Anglican priesthood as flawed and fallible is hence in no way surprising. Certainly they did not attack Protestant Christianity in doing so. Their experience had supplied them with a large number of examples of parsons who would have been happier – and spared others unhappiness, too – if they had adopted different professions, and they drew freely on those experiences in their literary portrayals of unsatisfactory clerics. As Charlotte Bronte¨ said, praising her correspondent Mr Williams for not making the mistake of forcing a child into a profession against his ‘natural bent’ in terms reminiscent of Legh Richmond’s agonising over his son’s future: I often think no Profession can furnish [proofs of error in this respect] more abundantly than the Church – You not unfrequently meet with Clergymen who should have been farmers, officers, shopkeepers – anything rather than Priests – and great scandal do they bring on their sacred calling by their natural unfitness to fulfil its duties.

It is not an irreverent statement, only a patently true one coming from a seasoned observer who did not scruple to express her appreciation of anti-clerical writers and in whose works the best spiritual teachers are rarely men of the cloth. Charlotte Bronte¨ also deserves to have her words to the same addressee taken at their face value when she declares: I love the Church of England. Her Ministers, indeed I do not regard as infallible personages, I have seen too much of them for that – but to the Establishment, with all her faults – the profane Athanasian Creed excluded – I am sincerely attached.

Those are not the words of a woman raging against a caste she regards as a collective instrument of oppression wielded by a patriarchal society, but the faintly supercilious assessment of an expert surveying a less than impressive field.

 

The enigma of St John Rivers

Some ten years ago, Laurence Lerner undertook to remind people with an interest in Jane Eyre that the madwoman in the attic is not in fact a major character in Charlotte Bronte¨’s novel. In a piece of suave polemics, he pointed out that nobody who insists on having someone play the role of Jane Eyre’s double will be short of candidates. Lerner’s review of the options includes the following possibility: Is not Rivers a double for Jane? More insidiously and more dangerously than Helen [Burns], he represents the urge toward duty from which she needs to free herself in order to act out of pure love. Rivers quite consciously represses his sexuality, knowing his love for Rosamund Oliver, and putting it aside in order to be a missionary and demand a wife toward whom he feels no sexual attraction. Jane similarly repressed her own sexuality in placing duty before her love for Rochester.

While this tongue-in-cheek suggestion does not look very promising, it should be pointed out that St John Rivers, unlike Bertha Rochester, plays a literally dominant role throughout a sizeable part of the novel. It is surprising that generations of readers have found St John so ‘unmemorable’, to quote a recent writer on Charlotte Bronte¨. Adapters of the novel for film or television have obviously not thought him particularly interesting either, and yet he is arguably the most important person in the story after Jane and Rochester: he saves Jane’s life, provides her with the affectionate blood relatives she always longed for, nearly persuades her to marry him (in consequence of which action she would probably have lost her life for real relatively soon) – and anticipation of his demise concludes the novel. St John’s functions as a counterpart to Brocklehurst and Rochester were observed from the first. For instance, Mary Taylor pronounced ‘I do not believe in Mr Rivers. There are no good men of the Brocklehurst species’ and told Charlotte she had met a nincompoop who felt that 

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Jane should have married St John instead of Rochester. But although commentators on Jane Eyre traditionally observe that both St John and Brocklehurst are forbidding, column-like Calvinists and both St John and Rochester attempt to break down Jane Eyre’s integrity, late twentieth-century critics have usually found Bertha more absorbing than the man who is her complete antithesis. St John Rivers is a fastidious intellectual resolved to stifle every expression of physical appetite, uncontrolled emotion and animal spirits. The black-haired, vile-looking monster incarcerated in the top storey at Thornfield, a personification of unreason and animality, is at one extreme in the novel’s thoroughgoing tension between reason and feeling; at the other we find the handsome, fair-haired parson who rules his household with quiet sternness and is a self-avowed champion of reason. It is odd that this pair of opposites does not seem to have been perceived as such. The hero of the novel is tricked into marrying the former, and but for Divine intervention the heroine would have committed herself for life to the latter. In both cases, physical and spiritual death loomed as the consequences of these acts of folly. Insofar as Bronte¨ scholars have paid more than passing attention to St John, they have found him hard to come to grips with, and no wonder: the book seems to transmit a profoundly contradictory picture. The saviour at the door of Moor House becomes the merciless oppressor who comes close to ‘killing’ (.ix.) the girl, not yet twenty years old, who has just saved his sisters from a life of drudgery. If that transformation can be made to appear consistent and acceptable – and St John would always rather exert himself on behalf of a stranger than show consideration for a close relative – the ending of the novel poses a seemingly insoluble problem. Does that ending announce the imminent apotheosis of the man whose human and pastoral shortcomings have been so acutely portrayed in the hundred or so preceding pages? If so, why have readers not been told how he qualified himself for it – or have they? Two of the finest analyses of St John Rivers in Jane Eyre criticism supply a basis for a consideration of these crucial questions. Judith Williams has demonstrated that St John, though according to Jane Eyre an exponent of ‘evangelical charity’ (.iii.), is in no sense truly charitable and that ‘the greatest of these’ is conspicuously lacking among the qualities he evinces as the end draws near. More incisively than any preceding critic, Williams makes the essential point that St John’s glorious ending is merely anticipated, and anticipated by himself

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rather than by Jane: it is not presented as an achieved consummation. Elisabeth Jay, equally aware of St John’s imperfections, observes that no conversion has paved the way for his translation to the saints in Heaven and that other, less gifted contemporaries of Charlotte Bronte¨’s would not have neglected to describe a change of heart in such a case. Less searching discussions of St John’s functions have resolved the difficulty by maintaining that he is in fact an admirable character who deserves his crown, even if Charlotte Bronte¨ ‘cannot sympathize with him’ and the path he has chosen in life, a path which excludes earthly love. Several passages in the novel can be quoted in support of this view. St John is repeatedly said, by such fearless truth-tellers as Jane Eyre and Diana Rivers, to be a ‘good’ man. Why should the reader trust them less than St John himself, who maintains that he is a ‘cold’ and ‘hard’ one? (After all, we know that his self-characterisations cannot be taken at face value; for example, his claim to be ‘humble’ (.viii.–) is patently ludicrous.) Should we as readers allow ourselves to be reassured by that ‘goodness’ and by Jane’s evocation of Bunyan’s Mr Greatheart to the point where we accept his confident expectation of a place among those who ‘stand without fault before the throne of God’ (.xii.)? The quotation from Revelation : (noted by several scholars) attributes the qualities of virginity and guilelessness to the ‘hundred and forty and four thousand’ who are ‘redeemed from the earth’. It is easy to imagine that St John was never ‘defiled with women’ (Rev. :), and deceit is not one of his vices. But ‘without fault’? That description cannot possibly be made to fit him. After a brief consideration of the implications of his name, this chapter presents St John’s deficiencies, especially as a man of God, as well as the arguments that may be adduced in his defence. A review of relevant historical circumstances follows, with special emphasis on missionaries and their work in the early nineteenth century. Finally, the discussion turns to the question asked by so many Bronte¨ students: why does Jane Eyre end with the impending death of this enigmatic man, rather than with the ‘perfect concord’ of the much more appealing Rochesters? ‘          ’ Bronte¨ critics have drawn attention to the cleansing, elemental force of the surname borne by Jane Eyre’s ‘good’ cousins (as contrasted with the contemptible ‘Reeds’), pointed out that St John’s sisters are named after the greatest female deities of the classical world and Christianity respect-

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ively and reminded their readers of St John the Baptist, St John the Evangelist and St John the Divine of the Revelation. All this is surely pertinent. Charlotte Bronte¨ obviously took great care over the naming of people in her works and invested some of their names with characterising properties, though she was more subtle in this respect than many of her contemporaries. In respect of St John, however, the recapitulated relevancies do not constitute an exhaustive list. The writer of the Gospel according to St John has traditionally been regarded as the same John who wrote the Apocalypse and the Epistles of St John, and as the John of the twelve disciples. In giving his name to Jane’s ‘good’ as well as her ‘bad’ male cousin, I think Charlotte Bronte¨ was alluding to a quality associated with that apostle which both Jane’s kinsmen lack. St John was the disciple whom Jesus loved and to whose filial care he recommended his mother. Neither John Reed nor St John Rivers is ever capable of genuine love for a fellow human being. The former indirectly kills his mother, and not even the latter shines as a son: his father’s death is seen as the removal of an impediment to his plans for himself, and the idea that he could liberate his orphaned sisters from near-slavery by abandoning those plans and going in for an ordinary career in the Church never appears to occur to him. The central texts on God’s love in the New Testament are found in the first epistle of St John, which also urges human beings to love one another. The prefix ‘(My) little children’ which often heads the apostle’s exhortations to his flock adds a note of familial tenderness to his injunctions: the members of the epistle-writer’s audience are assured of their filial position in relation to God as well as to his apostle. Though not devoid of ‘natural affection’, as he states, St John Rivers regards it as part of the feelings that must be made subservient to that ‘vocation’ which is ‘dearer than the blood in [his] veins’ (.vi.). It is hard not to regard his ‘kirstened name’ (as Hannah calls it) as an implicit reminder of the quality which is so obviously lacking in him, a circumstance which lends a disturbing dimension to the fact that the sole stressed syllable in that name is pronounced ‘sin’.                  For a Christian, and especially a clergyman, to be deficient in sympathy for and love of his fellow creatures is a grievous fault. In the case of St John it is exacerbated by his untroubled acceptance of the fact: he admits that his sisters’ warm compassion is a feeling he does not share,

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charitable action being all he is capable of (.iii.), and he takes pride in being – as he thinks – guided by reason, not by feeling (.vi.). Another worrying lacuna is the absence of any patent love for God and his Son. St John may be like Thomas a` Kempis in urging others not to attach too much importance to human affections, but he has none of that compensatory devotion to Jesus as ‘lover’ which suffuses The Imitation of Christ – at least not at the time when he dispenses such advice. A ‘follower of the sect of Jesus’, he has adopted the doctrines of his Master and is pleased to contemplate the way in which religion has developed his much-vaunted faculties (.vi.); but nothing he says to Jane at Morton suggests that he has given his own heart to God, though he recognises that Jane’s offer of hers is a crucial event (.viii.). Indeed, few parsons could be less suitable for preaching Evangelical Christianity, ‘the religion of the heart’, than the apparently heartless St John Rivers. He acknowledges (and Jane sees that he is right) that his love for Rosamund Oliver is a physical passion only, though no less strong for that. It is not the least intriguing aspect of this extraordinary man that his sensual urges are so powerful and his aesthetic sensibilities so keen (the wording of his very first appraisal of Jane reveals him as a would-be connoisseur of beauty: .iii.). The conversation during which St John tells Jane how his decision to be a missionary was formed is significant. Having spoken of his former desire for ‘the active life of the world’, for secular fame, glory and power, he continues: ‘After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell: my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds – my powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather full strength, spread their wings and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me; to bear which afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and eloquence, the best qualifications of soldier, statesman and orator, were all needed: for these all centre in the good missionary.’ (.v.)

It was thus St John’s powers that received a summons, not his heart. His adoption of a missionary’s calling was the outcome of a yearning to employ his faculties in a way that would satisfy his avid ambition; it was not the result of an ardent wish to transform the lives of other troubled and restless souls by bringing them the comfort of the Gospel. When he attempts to harness Jane’s similarly unusual talents to his project, he tries to tempt her with ‘a place in the ranks of [God’s] chosen’, an offer he is not authorised to make (.viii.). Jane is a better Evangelical-

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Protestant theologian than her learned cousin: she asks him whether the few who might be fit for such work should not be receiving the call to it in ‘their own hearts’. When St John replies by demanding to know what her heart says, she answers, and repeats, ‘My heart is mute’. St John’s immediate rejoinder is a masterful ‘Then I must speak for it’. No Christian can govern another’s heart, however, and in claiming control of Jane’s, St John commits Rochester’s arch-sin of ‘[arrogating] a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely entrusted’ (.xiv.). St John appears to believe that the master’s infallibility is somehow communicated to the servant. This is arrogance in a peculiarly literal sense, and St John cannot be absolved from the sin of spiritual pride. The heinous nature of that sin in any Christian, but especially in a clergyman, is constantly hammered home by Anglican writers, from Henry Venn to F. D. Maurice. The latter emphasised that spiritual pride ‘is the essential nature of the Devil’. It is a terrible sentence to set up beside St John Rivers, but the imputation of infernal characteristics to him is no novelty. Judith Williams, for instance, claims that he is in some ways ‘the demonic version of Helen Burns’ and even calls him ‘essentially Satanic’. Williams has also observed that St John is attended by ‘imagery of light’, but she has not linked this circumstance to what would have been a natural extension of her argument. St John Rivers may believe himself a man of reason, but he is in fact ruled by passionate ambition. For that ambition, only the greatest conceivable prize is exalted enough. The human format, earthly existence, will never content it; only a heavenly triumph will do. Insensible to the warnings of theological writers – including Simeon and Wilberforce – never to forget that Jesus Christ alone is the rightful wearer of the heavenly crown and that no man should let his thoughts roam beyond Christ and his atoning sacrifice, St John dreams of the highest honours; in this as in other respects, he differs from the famous American missionary David Brainerd, who had said ‘I do not go to heaven to be advanced; but to give honour to God . . . It is no matter where I shall be stationed in heaven’. St John’s Calvinist bias is apparent in his conception of the chosen few, and he never doubts that he is one of them (.ix.). The combination of his burning ambition with his ruthless bullying, the images of light that surround him and his striking physical beauty recall the leader of the angels who fell by the sin of ambition: is St John, the man with the name of an angel and the face of a pagan god, some kind of Lucifer?

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While the resemblances seem too apparent to overlook, the answer must surely be ‘no’: St John is not a rebel; restless as he is, he is not driven by envy of or dissatisfaction with the stations of others, and he has no desire to overthrow God’s rule and assume power in Heaven. All he wants is a front-rank position there. It is a sufficiently reprehensible wish, as any fellow Church of England clergyman could have told him; but it does not amount to challenging God. The conclusion that the Apollonian divine with the saintly name is at least no Satan seems small comfort to anyone who prefers to view the ending of Jane Eyre as a case of religious virtue rewarded. There is a more positive case to be made for St John, too; but before its merits can be looked into, the ‘con’ side must be supplemented by a look at St John Rivers the preacher. This is Jane’s attempt at describing the effect that his sermon in his Morton church has on her: The heart was thrilled, the mind astonished, by the power of the preacher: neither were softened. Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an absence of consolatory gentleness: stern allusions to Calvinistic doctrines – election, predestination, reprobation – were frequent; and each reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom. When he had done, instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened by his discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it seemed to me . . . that the eloquence to which I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of disappointment – where moved troubling impulses of insatiate yearnings and disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John Rivers – pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was – had not yet found that peace of God which passeth all understanding: he had no more found it, I thought, than had I; with my concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol and lost elysium[.] (.iv.–)

Though St John is a model clergyman when it comes to visiting the sick and providing education for the young – those two essential parochial duties – he does little to comfort his parishioners’ souls. The occurrence in his sermon of those Calvinist doctrines which were so abhorred by all the Bronte¨s is telling in itself, made worse by the absence of ‘consolatory gentleness’ and the presence, at a deeper level, of the preacher’s own inner disquiet. Contemporaneous manuals for clergymen insisted on the necessity of offering enlightenment and comfort in a spirit of love and tenderness, warning clerics against allowing personal concerns to mingle with their addresses from the pulpit. In this vital part of his ministry St John cannot but fail: he does not love his flock, and his own mind is far from serene. It may seem harsh to criticise a clergyman for the absence and

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presence of feelings of which he cannot be expected to be master. After all, love does not come to order, and a restless temperament cannot be wished away. But the policy of blanket repression of every human feeling save ambition which St John adopts does him as little credit from a religious point of view as from a romantic–secular one, and the same applies to the reason for his discontent: the conviction that his unique talents are wasted in a rural parish (.iv.). Any good-enough colleague would have told him to pray for the qualities he lacks, notably empathy for his fellow men and patience to serve them and God faithfully in a position where he would be able to support his sisters (as a well-educated brother was still expected to do in the early nineteenth century). When Jane grants him goodness and greatness, she adds, significantly, ‘but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views’ (.ix.). That accusation comes close to charging St John with breaking Christ’s most important commandment respecting the dealings of human beings with one another: ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’ The implications of his neglect of ‘little people’ are sombre indeed; those who fail to succour ‘one of the least of these . . . shall go away into everlasting punishment’ (Matthew :, –). By that token, his case is a desperate one – but there are other factors which may be held to redress the balance.                 St John Rivers the missionary may not be inspired by love of his Indian converts, his ‘race’; but his work on their behalf is carried out in a spirit of fidelity and devotion (.xii.). Jane’s description of what St John accomplishes in India confirms his assessment of his abilities: He entered on the path he had marked for himself; he pursues it still. A more resolute, indefatigable pioneer never wrought amidst rocks and dangers. Firm, faithful, and devoted; full of energy, and zeal, and truth, he labours for his race: he clears their painful way to improvement; he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it. He may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet: but his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart . . . His is the exaction of the apostle, who speaks but for Christ, when he says – ‘Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.’ (.xii.)

The comparison of St John to Mr Greatheart, Christiana’s wise and valiant guide in the second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress, and to one of the

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Evangelists makes the missionary appear in a different light from the discontented rural parson. However impure his motives may have been, his choice was doubtless the right one. An inability to evince tender feelings towards individuals matters less when one is faced with colossal obstacles to the welfare of multitudes. Here St John’s forcefulness is put to good use, and his on-the-brink frustration back at Morton seems understandable. Jane’s allusion to Mark : strikes a note of promise; Christ’s exhortation to those that would follow him is itself followed by the assertion that whosoever shall lose his life for Christ’s sake shall save it and by the question of what it shall profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his soul (Mark :–). Applied to St John the missionary, who surrendered every worldly advantage and took the burden of crushing labour on himself, these Biblical passages do much to offset the grim implications of the fact that key New Testament texts on love and concern for ‘little people’ could not be applied to him. In the context of the Christian individual’s right and duty to turn his/her life to the best possible use, which were so keenly felt by the Victorians, St John’s decision to dedicate himself to missionary work fulfils every conceivable demand. He may have chosen God’s work on the theologically unsound understanding that a heavenly crown awaits him at the end; but choose it he did, and it is still God’s work. The thought of what could have happened if he had joined his abilities to the forces of darkness is terrifying; Heathcliff’s local evildoing would have seemed trivial in comparison to the large-scale disasters which gifts like St John’s could have brought about. He is the only person who comes close to assuming control of Jane Eyre’s fiercely independent spirit, a circumstance which is as good a testimony as any to his charismatic and persuasive powers, and his intellect is as sharp and vigorous as his zeal is inexorable. As Jane herself says, he is ‘of the material from which nature hews her heroes – Christian and Pagan – her lawgivers, her statesmen, her conquerors: a steadfast bulwark for great interests to rest upon’ (.viii., italics added). Shortly before she draws this conclusion, understandably annoyed with St John for pointedly rejecting ‘domestic endearments and household joys’, ‘[t]he best things the world has’ in Jane’s view (.viii.), she called him ‘pagan’ to his face (‘You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher’). St John contradicts that imputation in cool, reasoned terms: ‘No. There is this difference between me and deistic philosophers: I believe; and I believe the Gospel. You missed your epithet. I am not a pagan, but a

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Christian philosopher – a follower of the sect of Jesus. As his disciple, I adopt his pure, his merciful, his benignant doctrines. I advocate them: I am sworn to spread them. Won in youth to religion, she has cultivated my original qualities thus: – From the minute germ, natural affection, she has developed the overshadowing tree, philanthropy. From the wild, stringy root of human uprightness, she has reared a due sense of the Divine justice. Of the ambition to win power and renown for my wretched self, she has formed the ambition to spread my Master’s kingdom; to achieve victories for the standard of the cross. So much has religion done for me; turning the original materials to the best account: pruning and training nature. But she could not eradicate nature: nor will it be eradicated ‘‘till this mortal shall put on immortality.’’’ (.vi.)

This passage was alluded to above, as evidence that the call which St John experienced was not heart-felt and hence suspect in the eyes of an Evangelical Anglican. It can, however, be quoted in his defence, too. To start with, he asserts – and there is no reason to doubt his sincerity at this point – his belief in the Gospel. This is the first condition that must be fulfilled by those who would be saved; hardly any nineteenth-century writer on the problematics of salvation omits to emphasise that he/she who believes in Jesus Christ will have eternal life. And while St John is anything but a philanthropist – a lover of mankind – in the literal sense, he devotes all he has and is to the practical improvement of humanity under the auspices of Christianity, and he undertakes the commitment freely. It fits in perfectly with the nineteenth-century improvement ethos: St John’s chosen path towards self-improvement entails clearing ‘[the] painful way to improvement’ (.xii.) of others, people suffering from material distress and social oppression. As his sister Diana, the only person in his vicinity who is as strong-minded as he, admits in tears, his decision is ‘right, noble, Christian’ (.iv.). Arguably, what goes for Jane should go for her cousin, too: he is surely as entitled as she to strive for improvement as best he can, unhampered by social convention (such as a gentleman’s obligation to support his sisters). As Jerome Beaty points out in an excellent analysis which places God in the centre of Jane Eyre’s authorial world, ‘St. John’s way [is not] wrong or antilife, as many modern readers would have it’; it is just ‘not Jane’s way’.                 Philanthropy is usually defined in terms of concrete secular endeavour, and Jane’s account of St John’s efforts stresses their practical character.

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It is natural to doubt that St John does as well when it comes to winning souls for Christ, that primary duty of the Evangelical clergyman constantly reiterated in clerical manuals. He certainly has none of the warm, joyous spirituality that made the Moravians such successful missionaries. In the early nineteenth century, however, British people with an interest in and knowledge of mission work in India maintained that the best approach to Christianising the Indians consisted in leading by example. There was less point in ‘the public preaching of the Christian tenets’ than in ‘the . . . gradual developement [sic] of the error of existing systems, by the promulgation of Christian morality . . ., especially if done in schools’. This kind of work suits St John perfectly: his moral superiority and consistency are beyond question, and his prodigious efforts must command universal respect. It has been suggested that Charlotte Bronte¨ chose India as St John’s destination so as to balance an ‘Eastern’ colonial prospect against the ‘Western’ sphere which produced Bertha Mason and Uncle Eyre’s wealth. There were far less sophisticated reasons for that choice, though. Nineteenth-century Evangelicals took a particular interest in Indian missions, and there is a related reason, too: Henry Martyn, often mentioned as a model for St John (though no comparative analysis has, as far as I am aware, been undertaken before), was a missionary to India, and Martyn was a man with a particular standing in the Bronte¨ family. Though four years younger than Patrick Bronte¨, Henry Martyn was a Fellow at St John’s College when Patrick Bronte¨ studied in Cambridge. He became something of a sponsor for the Irish sizar, persuading wealthy Evangelicals with Wesleyan affiliations to support Bronte¨ financially. Martyn was from Cornwall, like the Maria Branwell who was to become Mrs Patrick Bronte¨. A brilliant student (Senior Wrangler in ), Martyn was marked out for a distinguished academic career when he came under the influence of Christianity, partly as personified by Charles Simeon. The year of Patrick Bronte¨’s arrival in Cambridge, , was also the year of Martyn’s spiritual crisis. As a scientist and mathematician, he had not taken a great deal of interest in religion before; but intense study of the Bible – the book of Isaiah especially, also a favourite of Charlotte Bronte¨’s – brought about a conversion. A few years after becoming Simeon’s curate, Martyn set sail for India as Chaplain to the East India Company. It was a natural choice for a disciple of Simeon’s, the latter being particularly interested in missionary work on the Subcontinent. A superb linguist who ‘read grammars as

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other men read novels’, Martyn is still known for his translations, among them Hindustani/Urdu versions of the New Testament and the Book of Common Prayer. Worn out by hard work in an unfavourable climate, Henry Martyn died of a fever in Persia, on his way home, in . The parallels to St John Rivers are clear and numerous. As some scholars have noted, St John bears the name of Martyn’s, and Patrick Bronte¨’s, Cambridge college. As a Cambridge man with Calvinist sympathies and a belief in missionary work (not uncontroversial at the time), educated for the ministry just after , St John must be envisaged as belonging to the Simeonite camp. Charlotte Bronte¨ will have been aware of the circumstances pertaining to Martyn’s life that were recapitulated above, and of others too, including the opposition of family and friends to Martyn’s career choice and the fact that that choice cost him the love of his life (his fiance´e refused to accompany him). Charlotte is also likely to have known that the strongest influence on Martyn in , after the Bible and besides Simeon, was the journal of the American missionary David Brainerd, already referred to above. Brainerd, whose missionary work was among the American Indians, had died of tuberculosis in , not yet thirty years old (Martyn himself lived to be thirty-one; St John Rivers dies aged about forty). Like Martyn, Brainerd was a learned man with a frail constitution, and the two men shared ‘a love for the souls of men that nothing could quench’. The latter circumstance provides a starting-point for a review of differences between Henry Martyn and St John Rivers. The most significant of them is found in Martyn’s Evangelical devoutness and his awareness of the dangers of pride and ambition; like St John, Martyn was an extremely able man and could not help knowing it. John Sargent’s popular Memoir of Martyn, which may well have been known to the Bronte¨s, praises the ‘childlike simplicity’ of his faith, the ‘love [that] was fervently exercised towards God and Man, at all times’ and Martyn’s most remarkable trait, his ‘humility’. In all these respects, Martyn was clearly superior to the tyrant at Morton. A diffident and rather ineffectual preacher while still at home, Henry Martyn wrote a number of admired sermons during his years overseas and friends saw to it that they were published after his death. These sermons often discourse on Biblical passages which also feature in the Bronte¨ novels. Several of these passages are classical set texts (for instance, ‘Rejoice, O young man’, etc. from Ecclesiastes :, and I John

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: on God’s love, important Biblical loci in Anne Bronte¨’s two books). Others are less frequently referred to in devotional literature, among them Rom. :– which Lucy Snowe remembers in her determination to accept that for her, the Kingdom of God cannot be won except ‘through much tribulation’. Martyn also distinguishes between a fondness for ‘those . . . who think with us’, in which there is no merit whatever, and Christian love; Helen Burns, we remember, tries to instruct Jane Eyre along similar lines. Such resemblances are probably fortuitous, though; these were issues of constant interest and many other contemporary writers dealt with them as well. But Martyn’s warnings to zealous people not to deceive themselves about the mainspring of their actions strike a note which sounds uncomfortably relevant to St John Rivers: [The deceitful heart] tells us . . . that we have Zeal; which zeal is often no other than bitterness and ill temper. We are violent against the misconduct of others; not because they have sinned against God, but because they trouble and interfere with ourselves. We are zealous for Christ, and the spread of his Gospel; but cannot rejoice if the work be not done by ourselves and friends: nay, are often so wicked as to wish the work may not be done at all, if it cannot be done in our own way. Now if our zeal is of this nature, it is evidently pure worldliness.

It is tempting to speculate that the extent to which Henry Martyn and St John Rivers differ is an authorial comment in itself; but it must not be forgotten that only a man who knew, and had surmounted, the perils of religious vanity could have written these lines. We do not know for certain that the arrogance which St John Rivers articulated at Morton would not have abated after some years of extreme exertion in India, although it is hard to believe that St John could ever have attained the humility of Brainerd and Martyn. One thing that Charlotte Bronte¨’s missionary does have in common with these two predecessors is the phrase with which he announces his readiness to meet Christ. As many commentators have observed, the last lines in Jane Eyre refer to the last-but-one verse of the Bible: ‘He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus’ (Rev. :). In a biography of Brainerd published in , a book which refers to Henry Martyn’s connexion with the American missionary as a wellknown fact, the author describes how Brainerd repeatedly uttered the words ‘Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly’ when he felt death approach-

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ing. On board his ship to India, pondering what lay ahead of him, Martyn wrote the following entry in his own diary: Sept.  – Sunday. ‘He that testifieth these things saith, behold – I come quickly – Amen – even so – come quickly, Lord Jesus!’ Happy John! though shut out from society and the ordinances of grace: happy wast thou in thy solitude, when by it thou wast induced thus gladly to welcome the Lord’s words, and repeat them with a prayer.

Welcoming the end of earthly life in the words of St John the Divine was by no means unusual in the early nineteenth century, though, so this parallel between the two missionaries and St John in Jane Eyre may be coincidental. Still, Rev. : was clearly a central text for Martyn; his sermon on Rev. : quotes a number of Scriptural passages, including ‘Surely I come quickly!’, to end with the italicised, ‘Amen! even so, come Lord Jesus!’                   :                 The bride in the Apocalypse joins the Spirit in saying ‘Come’ (Rev. :), and the verb is often used in highly charged situations in Jane Eyre, as critics have noted. Sally Shuttleworth’s contention that Jane’s exclamation ‘I am coming: wait for me!’ in the mysterious-summons episode constitutes Charlotte Bronte¨’s ‘daring’ and ‘overtly . . . sexual’ rewriting of Rev. : may be mentioned as a matter of curiosity; with rather more reason, Janet Gezari reminds us of Jane’s and Rochester’s respective exclamations, ‘I wish he would come! I wish he would come!’ and ‘Oh! come, Jane, come!’ before and after the revelation of the attempted bigamy (.x. and .i.). I think it is significant that Jane Eyre ends in a plea so resonant with love, both in its Biblical context and in that of the novel itself. The shift from the happy domesticity of the Rochesters to the dying missionary has puzzled readers for generations. It has been viewed as a diversion from the main focus of the story, ‘a coda . . . added to salve the writer’s conscience’ by seeming to allow that St John’s noble martyrdom outshines the idyll at Ferndean. Technical reasons have been considered, too. In her analysis of the ending of Jane Eyre, Carolyn Williams points out that ‘[t]he one thing an autobiographical narrator cannot do . . . is to narrate her own death’ and that Jane herself must, as it were, be left in medias res on earth. This would perhaps have made for a somewhat lame winding-up. The neatest ending to the story of a life is,

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undeniably, a death; and as Empson said, death is ‘the trigger of the literary man’s biggest gun’. A splendid death makes a satisfactory conclusion, and here was one for the taking. After all, St John’s demise was always his goal; he may be regarded as an embodiment of a Pauline verse with peculiarly Haworthian connotations: ‘For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain’ (Phil. :). However, such considerations, though pertinent to some degree, fall far short of solving the puzzle, and other considerations must be brought to bear on it as well. Both Jane and St John have, as Beaty says, chosen the paths in life that were right for them. Both have sought and received Divine guidance and been faithful to the claims of their God-created selves. The union of Jane and Rochester was made possible by the latter’s voluntary subjugation to Divine authority, and their wedded bliss is, as Barry Qualls has pointed out, described in ‘God-validated’ words. Theirs is not the lesser fulfilment; it is the fulfilment of God’s will through the sacrament of marriage. The Rochesters’ human love is in perfect harmony with Divine love and hence as close to perfection as any earthly thing can be. The interrelationship of human and Divine love is a central factor in the Bronte¨ fiction as a whole and never more so than in Jane Eyre. If love is the answer, what about St John? It was argued above that love for God and Jesus is lacking in his religion as Jane conceives it at Morton, to say nothing of love for mankind. Has anything changed in that respect when the focus swings back to him as he joyfully relinquishes his hold on life? While it is true that Jane Eyre does not actually describe any ‘change of heart’ on St John’s part, his own words do suggest one. Borrowed from the apostle of love whose name St John bears, they are part of a celebration of love, concluding the narrative that describes the ultimate union of Creator and creation. St John’s plea expresses an eager yearning for Christ as well as that unquestioning acquiescence in God’s will which is the peculiar characteristic of saved souls. The Christian, it seems, has finally got the better of the man; he is ambitious still, but his old restlessness, the ‘fever in his vitals’ (.iv.), is gone. Like Rochester, so different from him in so many ways, he has submitted to the Divine order, and now he is preparing to meet his true love, Jesus Christ. But if St John does change so that his imminent death becomes an integral part of a love story, a story in which – to quote Beaty again – the religious and love themes merge and interact, why does Jane not say so? The best answer to that question may be another query: how could

The enigma of St John Rivers



she have done? She is not didactically explicit when it comes to her own spiritual growth from irreligious child to Christian woman whose faith sustains and guides her through extreme trials; and on the terms of the novel, it is difficult to see how Charlotte Bronte¨ could have placed a convincing ‘conversion’ story in her heroine’s mouth. Framing a corresponding explanation with regard to her cousin’s spiritual development on the basis of transcontinental correspondence seems an even taller order. Charlotte Bronte¨ makes Jane pass on what she can and does know, including a quotation from one of St John’s letters. It is not unreasonable to conclude that Charlotte felt her readers must be content with that. Many readers have not been, however, and there will probably always be a number of people who agree with Thackeray that St John is an interesting failure (though for a wide variety of reasons, including some that Thackeray would not have thought of ). The question of whether St John actually achieves his ambition remains open, and I believe Charlotte Bronte¨ deliberately left it so. The ending of Jane Eyre is not a closure so much as a balancing of the book, which leaves the reader to contemplate two very dissimilar patterns of human endeavour under the Heaven to which both assign ultimate power. It does not seem necessary to prefer one to the other or to pronounce a verdict on either. Whatever happens to St John Rivers he does not, within the framework of Jane Eyre, face perdition: despite his enduring lack of humility and charity, the crucial Evangelical virtues, he is a character in a book which denies eternal punishment and experiments with the notion of the ‘equality of disembodied souls’ (.vi.). Jane Eyre has consistently portrayed the operations of a God who, in the reformed Rochester’s words, tempers judgement with mercy (.xii.) and who – as, interestingly enough, both Rochester and St John affirm, quoting I Sam. : – sees not as man sees (.ix. and .xi.). The Bronte¨ fiction as a whole reflects a reliance on Divine forgiveness which transcends the views that prevailed in the authors’ time, even among eschatologically optimistic divines. Readers may judge how they like, or join Charlotte Bronte¨ in waiving the judge’s privilege. More than anything else, the mixture of extreme qualities that is St John Rivers thus illustrates the radical enquiry into religious thought, feeling and conduct which is so characteristic of all the Bronte¨ works. It is in evidence, for instance, when Emily Bronte¨ stands back from articulating a definite scenario for Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s afterlife and when Anne Bronte¨ refrains from even suggesting whether Helen



Clerics

Huntingdon’s hopes for her husband’s ultimate salvation are likely to be fulfilled. The Bronte¨ spirit of religious enquiry has always affected readers – even readers not fully aware that it was a religious challenge they were responding to – in very different ways. Rooted in personal faith, unchecked by external prescriptions or considerations of propriety, and uninhibited by any urge to attain absolute answers, it will surely continue to excite and unsettle new generations as it has done for a century and a half.

Notes

           Grace Elizabeth (G. Elsie) Harrison’s The Clue to the Bronte¨s (London: Methuen, ) offers valuable pointers but has a distorting Methodist bias.  See below, p.  n. .  As Charlotte Bronte¨’s copy of the Pense´es has not been available to me – it is not in the Haworth Parsonage Museum – , and as the Pense´es is a uniquely problematic work from an editorial point of view, I have used a highly regarded and easily available English translation, A. J. Krailsheimer’s revised Pascal Pense´es (London: Penguin, ). References to Thomas a` Kempis’ De Imitatione Christi are, however, always to Charlotte’s Wesley translation, Extract of the Christian’s Pattern: or, a Treatise on the Imitation of Christ (London, n.d.). (On the power exercised by this work even in the nineteenth century, see Book Fourth, ch.  (‘A Voice from the Past’) in The Mill on the Floss, , where George Eliot devotes several pages to The Imitation of Christ.)  Vernon Storr, The Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century – (London: Longman, Green and Co., ), pp. –. The quotation-within-the-quotation is from The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, vol. I, ed. Frederick Maurice [son] (London: Macmillan,  – this is the fourth edition), p. . See also Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England: From Watts and Wesley to Maurice, vol.  (Princeton University Press, ), pp. ff.  The Bronte¨s and Their Background: Romance and Reality was first published in  (London: Macmillan). The introductory paragraph of ch.  points out that ‘discussions of the Bronte¨s’ religion have been few and unsatisfactory. General studies of the Bronte¨s have tended to minimise the part played by religion in their lives, or to portray it in too crude colours’ (p. ; for an instance of Winnifrith himself in deep waters, see p.  on salvation through faith and works respectively, with reference to Methodists and Evangelicals). Another fairly extensive, and very useful, examination of the Bronte¨s and religion is found in the chapter called ‘Matters of Belief’ in Barbara Prentis, The Bronte¨ Sisters and George Eliot: A Unity of Difference (London: 



Notes to pages –

Macmillan, ), pp. –; see also the chapter on ‘Tragedy, Death and Eschatology’ (pp. –). Arthur Pollard offers a helpful review of the subject in ‘The Bronte¨s and their Father’s Faith’, in Raymond Chapman (ed.), Essays and Studies (London: John Murray, and Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Humanities Press ), pp. –. Some of the best published scholarly work on Charlotte Bronte¨ in a religious context is supplied in two articles by Marion J. Phillips in BST: ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Favourite Preacher: Frederick Denison John Maurice (–)’, vol. , part  (), –, and ‘Charlotte Bronte¨ and the Priesthood of All Believers’, vol. , part  (), –. Phillips’ thesis ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Concepts of Transcendence and of Authority in Religion as Manifested in Her Correspondence’ contains much careful discussion of influences on Charlotte’s views; it was presented at King’s College, University of London, in . The ‘background’ chapter on religion in Felicia Gordon’s A Preface to the Bronte¨s (London and New York: Longman, ) is informative and well balanced. The chapter on religion in Valerie Grosvenor Myer’s Charlotte Bronte¨: Truculent Spirit (London and Totowa, N.J.: Vision and Barnes & Noble, ), pp. –, is full of insight and stimulating perspectives. Christine Alexander’s The Early Writings of Charlotte Bronte¨ (Oxford: Blackwell, ) successfully challenges the notion that religion is absent from Charlotte’s juvenilia; see, for instance, pp. , –, – and  n. .  Gordon, A Preface, p. .  On biographical approaches to the Bronte¨ works, see Earl A. Knies, The Art of Charlotte Bronte¨ (Athens: Ohio University Press, ), ch.  (pp. ff.).  Most of the ones in print still have to be read in the Shakespeare Head edition by T. J. Wise and J. A. Symington, The Bronte¨s: Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence (BLL; see ‘Abbreviations and editions’). However, Charlotte’s letters up to  are available in a superior edition from the Clarendon Press by Margaret Smith, The Letters of Charlotte Bronte¨ with a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends, vol. I: – ().  See below, p. .  See Bentley’s The Bronte¨s (London: Home and Van Thal, ), pp. –.  See J. Hillis Miller, The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century Writers (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap/Harvard University Press, ), pp. –. A number of later writers have argued along the same lines. See further p.  below.  See below, pp. ff.  See Sally Shuttleworth, Charlotte Bronte¨ and Victorian Psychology (Cambridge University Press, ), pp.  and n.  See pp.  and – below. On the religious superiority of the innocent child to theologically sophisticated adults, see Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part One, – (first published by A. and C. Black in ; I have used the SCM paperback edition of ), p. .  Two representatives, both valuable to the Bronte¨ student, might be mentioned: Robert Lee Wolff, Gains and Losses: Novels of Faith and Doubt in Victorian

Notes to pages –  





 



England (London: John Murray, ), and Elisabeth Jay, Faith and Doubt in Victorian Britain (London: Macmillan, ). See further p.  below. See BLL, .. On the potential effect on Charlotte Bronte¨ of Newman’s libertarian pathos and his rejection of the sacerdotal caste, see Phillips, ‘Priesthood’, –. It is significant that what Charlotte objects to in Froude’s work is its morbidity (it is a pretty lurid tale), not its unorthodoxy – see Storr, The Development, pp. –, on Froude and Newman; nor did Charlotte allow Harriet Martineau’s agnosticism to cloud her enjoyment of Martineau’s company or her appreciation of the latter’s tireless labours in good causes and her exemplary personal conduct. The only recorded biographical detail with a bearing on Emily’s religion is Mary Taylor’s much-quoted account of Emily’s curt approval of Mary’s reply to a would-be religious persuader, to the effect that her religion was between God and her (‘That’s right’; see BLL .). Stevie Davies’ insistence on Emily’s ‘apostasy’ is uncorroborated by such material, biographical and literary, as we possess, and her idea that Wuthering Heights constitutes a ‘two-pronged attack on the foundation of Christian religion’ is incomprehensible to me (Emily Bronte¨: Heretic, London: The Women’s Press, , p. ). Barbara Prentis has, among other things, adduced Emily’s French essays – now easily available, and commented on, in Sue Lonoff’s The Belgian Essays Charlotte Bronte¨ and Emily Bronte¨: A Critical Edition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, ) – as indications that ‘her essential fidelities were to Christian orthodoxy’ (a claim which, in my view, errs in the opposite direction); see Prentis’ The Bronte¨s and Eliot, pp.  and . A more sceptical stance is articulated by Lance St John Butler in Victorian Doubt: Literary and Cultural Discourses (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, ), pp. –. See below, p. . See Raymond Chapman, Faith and Revolt: Studies in the Literary Influence of the Oxford Movement (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, ), p. .                        -           

 Religious Trends in English Poetry, vol.  (New York: Columbia University Press, ), p. .  Quoted from Wesley’s Journal in John Williamson’s A Brief Memoir of the Rev. Charles Simeon, M.A. (London, ), pp. –.  See Annette B. Hopkins, The Father of the Bronte¨s (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, ), pp. –; John Lock and Canon W. T. Dixon, A Man of Sorrow: The Life, Letters and Times of the Rev. Patrick Bronte¨ (London: Nelson, ), pp. –; and Juliet Barker, The Bronte¨s (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ), pp. –.  The following works have been particularly helpful in supplying information on Evangelicalism in the Church of England and on early nineteenth-



Notes to pages –

century religion and theology in general: Chadwick, The Victorian Church; Bernard M. G. Reardon, From Coleridge to Gore: A Century of Religious Thought in Britain (London: Longman, , subsequently reprinted); L. E. ElliottBinns, Religion in the Victorian Era (London: Lutterworth Press, ; I have used the  reprint); Storr, The Development; J. H. Overton, The English Church in the Nineteenth Century (London, ); John Tulloch, Movements of Religious Thought in Britain during the Nineteenth Century (London, , subsequently reprinted); S. C. Carpenter, Church and People, – (London: SPCK, ); Alec R. Vidler, The Church in an Age of Revolution (London: The Penguin – formerly Pelican – History of the Church, ; I have used the  reprint); Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England; Ian Bradley, The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (London: Jonathan Cape, ); Elisabeth Jay (ed.), The Evangelical and Oxford Movements (Cambridge University Press, ), and Faith and Doubt; Doreen M. Rosman, Evangelicals and Culture (first published in ; I have used the Gregg Revivals reprint of ); Peter Toon, Evangelical Theology –: A Response to Tractarianism (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, ); and D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the s to the s (London: Unwin Hyman, ).  See Williamson, A Brief Memoir, p. .  Mr Bronte¨ himself wrote about the nature of and way to conversion; see Kate Lawson, ‘Patrick Bronte¨’s ‘‘On Conversion’’ ’, BST vol. , part  (), –.  The Branwell family were Methodists, and many of the Church of England clergymen in the Dewsbury area were strongly influenced by Calvinism. See, for instance, Barker, The Bronte¨s, pp. –, where the impact of Ellen Nussey’s Calvinism on Charlotte is also discussed.  Isaac Milner was revered as the leading intellectual of the Cambridge Evangelicals at the time when Patrick Bronte¨ was at St John’s.  John Venn [son], ed. by Henry Venn [grandson], The Life and a Selection from the Letters of the Late Rev. Henry Venn, M.A. (London, ), pp. –.  See, for instance, the examples quoted in Barker, The Bronte¨s, pp. –, and pp. – in Valentine Cunningham, Everywhere Spoken Against: Dissent in the Victorian Novel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ).  See Bronte¨ana: The Reverend Patrick Bronte¨, A.B., His Collected Works and Life, ed. J. Horsfall Turner (Bingley, ), p. . His public feud with the Baptist minister John Winterbotham does not show him in a favourable light; see Andrew Elfenbein, ‘The Argument between the Rev. Winterbotham and the Rev. Bronte¨’, BST vol. , part  (), –. Cf. Michael Baumber, ‘William Grimshaw, Patrick Bronte¨ and the Evangelical Revival’, History Today  (Nov. ), –, esp. .  It should be borne in mind that there were several different branches of Methodism in the early nineteenth century, Primitive Methodism ranking below Wesleyan Methodism socially. For a review of the different Methodisms, see William Gibson, Church, State and Society, – (London:

Notes to pages –



Macmillan, ), pp. –.  See Harrison, The Clue to the Bronte¨s, p. . Harrison maintains that there will have been anti-Bunting feeling in Haworth Parsonage on account of his treatment of a family friend, John Fennell. (Her contention is supported by Cunningham in Everywhere Spoken Against, pp.  and .) See also Lock and Dixon, A Man of Sorrow, pp. –. Harrison’s Haworth Parsonage: A Study of Wesley and the Bronte¨s (London: The Epworth Press, ) suggests that Patrick Bronte¨ may have addressed a laudatory poem to Bunting in  (pp. –; see also pp. –).  Both Charlotte and Anne used the expression in their fiction. In Jane Eyre, St John Rivers employs it in praying for the granting of his wishes respecting Jane (.ix.); and in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Arthur Huntingdon, courting Helen, declares his willingness to act so piously that her aunt will regard him ‘as a brand plucked from the burning’ (xx.).  See further pp. f. below.  Notably in the one from Brussels where Charlotte deplores the ‘mummeries’ of the Roman Catholic Church, employing such strong terms of censure as ‘idiotic’ and ‘a most feeble childish piece of humbug’, concluding, ‘I consider Methodism, Dissenterism,´ Quakerism & the extremes of high & low Churchism foolish but Roman Catholicism beats them all’: Smith (ed.) Letters, pp. – (BLL .). On Charlotte Bronte¨’s antiCatholicism, see below pp. ff. See Elfenbein, ‘The Argument’, on class snobbery as evinced by Patrick Bronte¨ against a Dissenter colleague.  See G. Kitson Clark, The Making of Victorian England (London: Methuen, ; I have used the  University Paperbacks edition), pp. –. These tensions are vividly illustrated in the novel written by Charlotte Bronte¨’s friend Mary Taylor: Miss Miles, or a Tale of Yorkshire Life  Years Ago (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, , with an introduction by Janet H. Murray); see, for instance, pp.  and .  See Peter C. Hammond, The Parson and the Victorian Parish (London: Hodder and Stoughton, ), pp. –; A. Tindal Hart with Edward Carpenter, The Nineteenth-Century Country Parson (circa –) (Shrewsbury: Wilding, ), p. ; and P. T. Phillips (ed.), The View from the Pulpit: Victorian Ministers and Society (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, ), p. . A contribution to the latter volume, Elliot Rose’s ‘W. F. Hook and the Dark Satanic Mills’, is informative on the relatively relaxed stance towards Dissenters adopted by one of the best-known churchmen in the ‘Bronte¨ region’; see especially pp.  and .  Pp. –. The book was reprinted by Garland (New York and London, ) as no.  in the series called Victorian Fiction: Novels of Faith and Doubt.  Smith (ed.), Letters, p.  (BLL .–).  Ibid., p.  (BLL .–).  See the Revd Matthewson Helstone’s ironic reproaches in Shirley (.i.). For a more detailed discussion of the relevant parts of Shirley, see pp. ff. below.



Notes to pages –

 BLL, ., to W. S. Williams.  See below pp. f.  For enlightening discussions of the Bronte¨s as an Evangelical family, see two BST contributions, Ruth Hook’s ‘The Father of the Family’, vol. , , part  (), –, and Joan Quarm, ‘Purified by Woe – On Faith and Suffering’, vol. , parts  and  (), –.  See Rosman, Evangelicals and Culture, p. , and John Clive, Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ), p. . On Evangelical domesticity, see also Bradley’s The Call to Seriousness, pp. –. There is a fine one-page portrait of an Evangelical home in Robin Gilmour’s The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, – (London: Longman, ), p. . (Gilmour’s ability to summarise complex processes accurately, concisely and sensitively makes this book the ideal launching-pad for a student of the age.)  Death in the Victorian Family (Oxford University Press, ), p. .  See Rosman, Evangelicals and Culture, p. .  Ibid., pp. –. Christine Alexander’s introduction to An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Bronte¨, vol.  (Oxford: Basil Blackwell for the Shakespeare Head Press, ), repeatedly stresses the atmosphere of liberality and tolerance in which the Bronte¨s grew up and which Charlotte’s juvenilia reflect; see, for instance, p. xix: ‘We are made aware of a sense of humour and of a tolerance that belies the common biographical assumption that Charlotte’s childhood was grim and forbidding.’  In Thornycroft Hall, Emma Jane Worboise wrote one of several nineteenthcentury rebuttals of Charlotte Bronte¨’s picture of Cowan Bridge as Lowood. Elisabeth Jay has considered the two works and the issues they raise against the background of nineteenth-century Evangelicalism in The Religion of the Heart: Anglican Evangelicalism and the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), pp. –. A single quotation from Wilson’s Teacher’s Visitor, May–Dec. , might be quoted in support of the Ehrenretter: ‘I need not add, that the . . . law of love forbids the use of punishment in the Sunday-school. I do not like to see a stick in the hands of the Teacher, either in church or school, much less to hear the sound of it’ (p. ). See further pp. f. below.  Such as William Wilberforce, who supported Patrick Bronte¨ in his youth; see Wilberforce’s A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System, p.  in the  Glasgow edition with an introductory essay by David Wilson. First published in , this was one of the most widely read Evangelical treatises during the Bronte¨s’ childhood, and it is hard to imagine that it could have been unknown to them (it might be noted that there was an edition (of ) in the Ponden Hall library). Incidentally, their father’s The Maid of Killarney, which appeared in , condemned certain social amusements, such as card-playing, dancing and theatricals. If those were indeed Patrick Bronte¨’s views as a young man, he became more tolerant as his children grew up. (Jay has pointed out that The Maid of Killarney advocates restraints on the reading

Notes to pages –

    



  



of young girls which the author did not practise on his own daughters; see The Religion of the Heart, p. .) The Evangelicals were not of course alone in disapproving of the theatre; for instance, Blaise Pascal regarded it as a potent danger to impressionable minds. See Pense´es  (), p.  in Krailsheimer’s translation. See below, pp. ff. See above, p. . See Bronte¨’s funeral sermon for Weightman, p.  in Horsfall Turner, Bronte¨ana. See Lock and Dixon, A Man of Sorrow, pp. –. Several attempts to rehabilitate Aunt Branwell, so often believed to have planted fears of damnation into little Anne’s mind, have been made over the past forty years. The evidence is summarised and judiciously commented on in Joseph Le Guern’s comprehensive and informative study, Anne Bronte¨ (–): La vie et l’oeuvre,  vols. (Paris: Librairie Honore´ Champion, ); see especially pp. – in vol. . Barker’s The Bronte¨s continues this trend; but it is worth pointing out that Barker did not by any means initiate it. See William Scruton, ‘Reminiscences of the Late Miss Ellen Nussey’, BST part  (), –, and Le Guern, Anne Bronte¨, vol. , p. n. Charlotte Bronte¨ does not seem to have been a great admirer of the Moravians, however; in Shirley the Moravian preacher is called ‘Mr. Langweilig’ (.vii.). On the possibility that Anne may have known of La Trobe through Mercy (Mary) Nussey, see Barbara Whitehead, Charlotte Bronte¨ and Her ‘Dearest Nell’: The Story of a Friendship (Otley, W. Yorks.: Smith Settle, ), pp. , ,  and . P.  in the aforementioned A Practical View edition. On Charlotte’s religious crisis at Roe Head, see Alexander, The Early Writings, pp.  and . See Wilberforce’s A Practical View, pp. –.              ¨               

 On Tractarian features in the delineation of Mr Hatfield in Agnes Grey, see pp. ff. below.  The Test Act was finally abolished in , and the Emancipation Act was passed in the following year. These steps had been preceded by much heart-searching (and some changes of stance) at all levels of the body politic. See Chadwick, The Victorian Church, pp. –.  The Pope’s decision to establish Roman Catholic dioceses in England in  was taken as a threat and an affront by many Britons, including easy-going and liberal-minded ones, who regarded this measure as a grossly impertinent act on the part of the Pope to restore Roman Catholic dominion in the country. See ibid., pp. –; Walter Ralls, ‘The Papal Aggression of : A Study in Victorian Anti-Catholicism’, Church History . (),



Notes to pages –

–; and Gibson, Church, State and Society, pp. –.  The letter is easily accessible in Richard J. Helmstadter and Paul T. Phillips (eds.), Religion in Victorian Society: A Sourcebook of Documents (New York and London: University Press of America, ), pp. –.  Chadwick, The Victorian Church, p. . See also Elliott-Binns, Religion in the Victorian Era, pp. – in the  reprint.  BLL . (quoted from a letter written to W. S. Williams and dated ‘Nov. th, ’).  For instance, the intelligent and far-seeing clergyman and missionary Edward Bickersteth, a popular and highly respected Evangelical writer on theological matters who will have been known to the Bronte¨s, wrote, in , that there had been ‘about  [Roman Catholic] chapels in Great Britain’ forty years earlier and that their number had grown to  by . See Bickersteth’s Remarks on the Progress of Popery, Including Observations on Its True Character (London; I have used the third edition of ), p. .  On Tractarians and clerical dress, see p.  below.  John Henry Newman. Elliott-Binns quotes the relevant passages from Newman’s Prophetical Office of the Church (p. ); see p.  in Elliott-Binns’ Religion in the Victorian Era. Gayla McGlamery has placed the agitation caused by Newman’s defection in the context of Anglican anti-Catholicism around ; see ‘ ‘‘This Unlicked Wolf-Cub’’: Anti-Catholicism in Charlotte Bronte¨’s Villette’, Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens  (), –.  P. ; the previously quoted phrase occurs in a note on p. .  Pp. –.  For two examples of this genre, see Charlotte Elizabeth [Tonna], Falsehood and Truth (Liverpool, ), and Elizabeth Sewell, Margaret Percival (London, ). The following works provide encyclopaedic information on religious fiction in nineteenth-century England: Margaret M. Maison, Search Your Soul, Eustace: A Survey of the Religious Novel in the Victorian Age (London and New York: Sheed and Ward, ); Cunningham, Everywhere Spoken Against; Wolff, Gains and Losses; and Elisabeth Jay, The Religion of the Heart. The charming epithet (‘this Mother of Harlots’) occurs in an anonymous sermon ‘delivered in a Parish Church in London By a Clergyman, M.A. of Oxford’, which was published as Popery and Protestantism Compared (London, ), p. . Writing before the time of Catholic emancipation, the clergyman in question strenuously warned against such measures and reminded his audience that Roman Catholics were dangerous, having sworn ‘to condemn and anathematise all heretics’ (pp. –n.). Interestingly, Coleridge predicted that Popery would ‘[rush] in on us like an inundation’; see the second note to Aphorism  in ‘Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion’, Aids to Reflection (first published in ), ed. John Beer (London and Princeton: Routledge and Princeton University Press, ), p. . (This is vol.  in the Bollingen edition of The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. All subsequent references to Aids to Reflection are to this edition.)  Edward Norman, Roman Catholicism in England from the Elizabethan Settlement to

Notes to pages –



the Second Vatican Council (Oxford University Press, ), p. .  A sub-heading in Anon., Popery and Protestantism Compared, p. .  See, for instance, Edward Bickersteth’s The Promised Glory of the Church of Christ, quoted in Michael Hennell, Sons of the Prophets: Evangelical Leaders of the Victorian Church (London: SPCK, ), pp. –, and Protestantism Endangered, p. n.  See Popery Not ‘The Old Religion’, by a Member of the Church of England (London, ), p. .  P.  in his Progress of Popery.  See Smith (ed.) Letters, p.  (BLL .). A similar attitude is expressed in the didactic tale of Frank Faithful, ‘By a Clergyman’, called Steepleton; or, High Church and Low Church, Being the Present Tendencies of Parties in the Church (London, ); see ch. xv, ‘The Continental Tour: A Peep at Popery’.  BLL .–; letter dated ‘June th, ’. Robert Bernard Martin includes this letter in his discussion of Charlotte Bronte¨ and Roman Catholicism in The Accents of Persuasion: Charlotte Bronte¨’s Novels (London: Faber and Faber, ), pp. –; see also pp. –.  See Barker, The Bronte¨s, pp. – and . On the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Bill in – and the impact of ‘the Catholic question’ on the family in Haworth, see the second volume of Charlotte Bronte¨’s ‘Tales of the Islanders’, pp. – in Alexander’s edition of Charlotte’s juvenilia, and Alexander’s The Early Writings, pp. –. Thomas Arnold incurred the censure of many Church of England adherents by maintaining that it would be unjust not to emancipate the Roman Catholics and that Protestant oppression in Ireland had caused the Irish to cling to a faith they would otherwise gradually have abandoned of their own accord; see The Christian Duty of Granting the Claims of the Roman Catholics (Oxford, ), especially pp. , ,  and .  Barker, The Bronte¨s, p. . Arthur Pollard remarks that Patrick Bronte¨’s ‘inborn, Irish-Protestant hostility to Roman Catholicism never waned’: ‘The Bronte¨s’, p. . On Charlotte Bronte¨ and Roman Catholicism, see also Enid Duthie, The Foreign Vision of Charlotte Bronte¨ (London: Macmillan, ), passim.  BLL .; see also the letter to W. S. Williams, dated ‘March th, ’, p. . Pollard has commented on the difference in tone in Charlotte’s letters on Roman Catholicism; see ‘The Bronte¨s’, p. .  See Norman, Roman Catholicism, p. .  See her letter to Mrs Gaskell (August ), BLL ..  Vol. , p.  (the book was published in ). Margaret Percival is also subjected to a three-tiered approach from her would-be converters: they start by shaking her confidence in her Church and go on to appeal to her feelings and her taste.  This in some ways remarkable work appeared in . Harris felt obliged to remain in the Roman Catholic Church but did what she could to deter others from following her course. Newman ‘replied’ to her book in his

     





 







Notes to pages –

fictionalised story of a young man’s conversion to Roman Catholicism, Loss and Gain, which was published in . Pp.  and  in this didactic work of fiction, which appeared in . On the Bronte¨s and the Bible, see pp. ff. below. For instances in contemporary religious fiction of the seductive powers of Roman Catholic worship, see Newman’s Loss and Gain, pp. ff., and Charlotte Elizabeth’s Falsehood and Truth, pp. ,  and . Significantly, it is M. Paul, not Lucy, who thus acknowledges the role of the independent mind in man’s quest for the Divine. See xxxiii.–. Sensing that Lucy warms to his simple devotion, he says, ‘Donnez-moi la main! I see we worship the same God, in the same spirit, though by different rites’ – an important moment of recognition for them both. For an illuminating comment on this ultimate reconciliation, see Cynthia A. Linder, Romantic Imagery in the Novels of Charlotte Bronte¨ (London: Macmillan, ), p. . As the preceding discussion has shown, I take an entirely different view of the ‘war of the creeds’ in Villette from the one advanced by Rosemary Clark-Beattie in ‘Fables of Rebellion: Anti-Catholicism and the Structure of Villette’, ELH  (), –. Still, Clark-Beattie’s attempt to read the anti-Catholicism in the novel as a projection of Lucy’s state of subjugation under an arbitrary and ultimately merciless Protestant God, and under a society (that of England) which makes a martyr of her, is an exciting and ingenious piece of criticism. See, for instance, Elliott-Binns, Religion in the Victorian Era, pp. –. A fascinating account of such processes is supplied by David Newsome’s The Parting of Friends: A Study of the Wilberforces and Henry Manning (London: John Murray, ). Vol. , ch. , p. . The Jesuits were in fact suppressed for almost half a century after , but after the reconstitution of the order they were soon back again as ‘the spearhead of [Roman Catholic] missionary advance’; see Vidler, The Church in an Age of Revolution, p. . (Incidentally, Lucy directs an insult both against the Society of Jesus and against Mme Beck in maintaining that the latter’s first name ought to have been ‘Ignacia’ (viii.).) On Jesuit ‘scares’ in polemical English pamphlets around , see McGlamery, ‘Wolf-Cub’, –. See Winnifrith, The Bronte¨s and Their Background, p. ; Gordon, A Preface, p. ; and Lyndall Gordon, Charlotte Bronte¨: A Passionate Life (London: Chatto and Windus, ); I have used the  Vintage paperback edition of the latter, where the passage referred to occurs on p. . McGlamery rightly stresses the genuine surprise and pain felt by Charlotte Bronte¨ when she found herself accused – by Harriet Martineau among others – of expressing virulent antipathy to Roman Catholicism: ‘WolfCub’, –. See below, pp. f. It must be remembered, though, that she expressed

Notes to pages –



particular approval of Lord Russell’s attack on the Tractarians in her letter to Williams, quoted on p. , and that she commended the publication by Smith, Elder in  of the verse satire ‘A Paper Lantern for Puseyites’. On the latter, see Phillips, ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Concepts’, pp. –.  These qualities are peculiarly mortified by the ‘lecture pieuse’ in Mme Beck’s establishment (xiii.). See also the letter to Smith: BLL ..                     See, for instance, Anon., Protestantism Endangered, p. . The sister of the ‘hero’ of Harris’ From Oxford to Rome committed the error ‘of mistaking Romanism for Catholicism’ (p. ), and a Protestant mother in Charlotte Elizabeth’s Falsehood and Truth corrects her daughter’s choice of words, referring to ‘Papists’ as ‘those whom you erroneously term Catholics’ (p. ; see also pp.  and –).  See Hennell, Sons of the Prophets, pp. –. Characteristically, the Tractarians disapproved of this close collaboration of the Anglican and Lutheran Churches; see Yngve Brilioth, The Anglican Revival: Studies in the Oxford Movement (London: Longmans, Green and Co., ), pp. –.  See Storr, The Development, pp. –, and Reardon, From Coleridge to Gore, pp. –.  This is the ‘John Russell’ letter mentioned above (BLL .). Arnold had died prematurely in .  See below, pp. ff. Charlotte Bronte¨ has been said to have disapproved of the Quakers, but passing references to the Society of Friends in her books lack animus; see Jane Eyre .i. and .ix. as well as Shirley .iv.. Maybe the absence of frenzy in the religious life of the Friends has something to do with this.  An Anglican bishop of Jerusalem was required to agree with it, just as a Lutheran one must accept the Thirty-Nine Articles; see Hennell, Sons of the Prophets, p. . In item  of the Conclusion to Tract , John Henry Newman – at that time, in , still an Anglican – said that the Thirty-Nine Articles are ‘principally drawn’ from Melanchthon’s writings. See ‘Remarks on Certain Passages in the  Articles’, Tracts for the Times, vol.  (London, ), pp. –. Cf. F. D. Maurice on Melanchthon and his relationship with Luther: The Kingdom of Christ, vol. , ch. ii, section iii; I have used the early twentieth-century Everyman’s Library edition (London: Dent, n.d.), pp. –.  See Phillips, ‘Priesthood’, –, and Margaret Smith’s commentary on the relevant letter, pp. – in Letters. Five years later, Charlotte heard him preach and approved; see BLL .,  and .  Cf. above, p. .  See Charles Richard Sanders, Coleridge and the Broad Church Movement (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, ), pp. –.  See Storr, The Development of English Theology, pp.  and –, Reardon,



Notes to pages –

From Coleridge to Gore, p. , and The Life of Maurice, vol. , pp. –.  See, above all, Charlotte and Anne’s prefaces to the second editions of Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.  See, for instance, Overton, The English Church, pp. –.  Charles Simeon was the butt of ridicule owing to his neglect of consistency and logic. For example, his idea that faith may be ‘an act of God in the soul’ elicited the following vicious comment from a critic, ‘What! God believes God, and man is therefore justified!’ See The Accuracy of the Rev. Charles Simeon’s ‘True Test of Religion in the Soul’ Questioned, a sermon by ‘A Member of the Church of England’ (London, ), p. .  The failure of Anglican Evangelicals to maintain and develop ‘an Apostolic and Universal Church’ was held against them by many writers on religious topics in the first half of the nineteenth century. See, for example, Gresley, Portrait of an English Churchman, pp. –.  Quoted by Overton, The English Church, pp. –. Overton, like many subsequent writers, draws attention to the frequency with which Evangelically reared children abandoned their parents’ faith in adulthood.    ¨                                 See BLL ..  This volume, published in  and written by the man who baptised the three sisters and was a distant relative by marriage, was among the books in the small library of Haworth Parsonage; see n.  below. (As a man, however, Morgan does not seem to have been a great favourite with the sisters; a letter from Charlotte Bronte¨ to Ellen Nussey calls him ‘fat’ and ‘prosy’. See Donald Hopewell’s review of Lock and Dixon, A Man of Sorrow, BST vol. , no. , part  (), .) In the Pastoral Visitor (which Patrick Bronte¨ contributed to and which printed a highly commendatory review of his The Cottage in the Wood), Morgan recommended works by the illustrious Nonconformist divines Richard Baxter and Philip Doddridge: vol.  (– ), . (The review of Bronte¨’s work is in vol. , –.)  The references to Morgan’s book are found on pp. – and  in part .  The subscribers to Morgan’s volume include ‘Mr and Miss Branwell of Penzance’ as well as the Revd John Buckworth, under whom Patrick Bronte¨ had served as curate in Dewsbury and who took six copies, and Patrick Bronte¨ himself, whose meagre funds extended to two. Leading Evangelical names are found among the subscribers, for instance William Wilberforce and Edward Bickersteth. On Morgan and Buckworth, see also Phillips, ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Concepts’, pp. –.  The supplies of literature that might have been available to the Bronte¨s have been the subject of much discussion. One source was suggested by Clifford Whone in ‘Where the Bronte¨s Borrowed Books: The Keighley Mechanics’ Institute’, BST, vol.  (), –. Ian Dewhirst had his doubts about it, though; see ‘The Rev. Patrick Bronte¨ and the Keighley

Notes to page 











Mechanics’ Institute’, BST, vol. , no. , part  (). Winnifrith mentions the Ponden Hall library, the Keighley Mechanics’ Institute, Ellen Nussey’s store and Mr Robinson’s library at Thorp Green (p.  in The Bronte¨s and Their Background). With regard to the first two, Barker points out that there is no proof that the Bronte¨s ever used them, let alone to a considerable extent; she proposes circulating libraries at Keighley as more likely providers of borrowed literature. See The Bronte¨s, pp. –. The other homes where Charlotte and Anne worked as governesses will also have owned collections of religious works, if less comprehensive than that of the ‘squarson’ Robinson who married a daughter of the high-profile Evangelical divine Thomas Gisborne, a friend of Wilberforce’s. On Coleridge’s theology, see, for instance, Storr, The Development, pp. –; Sanders, Coleridge and the Broad Church Movement; Basil Willey, ‘Coleridge and Religion’, in R. L. Brett (ed.), S. T. Coleridge (London: G. Bell and Sons, ), pp. –; Reardon, From Coleridge to Gore, pp. –; Stephen Prickett, Romanticism and Religion: The Tradition of Coleridge and Wordsworth in the Victorian Church (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –; and David Jasper, Coleridge as Poet and Religious Thinker (Macmillan, ). See Robinson’s Emily Bronte¨ (London: W. H. Allen and Co., ), p. . Eanne Oram drew attention to the possibility of such a connexion in her article ‘Emily and F. D. Maurice: Some Parallels of Thought’, BST vol.  (), –. Tom Winnifrith dismisses Oram’s suggestion of a direct link as relying on ‘extremely fragile’ primary evidence and proposing ‘oversubtle’ parallels: see The Bronte¨s and Their Background, pp. –. Charlotte Bronte¨’s approval of Maurice’s ‘earnest’ preaching is recorded in a letter to James Taylor, dated ‘Haworth, November th, ’; see BLL .– as well as Phillips’ ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Favourite Preacher’ and ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Concepts’, pp. – and –. For instance, Fraser’s praised Robert Southey’s edition of The Pilgrim’s Progress, with a Life of John Bunyan (London, ) in the most enthusiastic terms, commending the author’s absence of fanaticism and his ‘[pure] religious sentiments’: vol.  (Feb.–July ), . Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection is often referred to as a source of wisdom and sound theology in another review in the same volume, of an edition of Byron’s Cain (ff.). (It is an interesting piece in that it claims that Cain is not, properly speaking, irreligious – a claim many would have contested.) Coleridge is quoted as having said that ‘[i]t is . . . stated historically, that ‘‘in one man Adam all died’’ – and ‘‘in one man all are made alive’’ ’ (). Cf. Anne Bronte¨’s ‘A Word to the Calvinists’, p.  in Edward Chitham’s edition of The Poems of Anne Bronte¨: A New Text and Commentary (London: Macmillan, ): ‘[a hope] / That as in Adam all have died / In Christ shall all men live’ (ll. –). (Both Coleridge and Anne Bronte¨ of course quote  Cor. :.) See, for instance, ‘The Witchfinder’, a story of illicit passion, sorcery and revenge, as well as of mercy and forgiveness, in Blackwood’s vol.  (),

    

  

 

  

Notes to pages –

– and –, and a tale on the ‘Separate Existence of the Soul’ in Fraser’s vol.  (), –. Blackwood’s vol.  (), . Juliet Barker describes Charlotte’s great excitement on going to visit Arnold’s home years after his death: The Bronte¨s, p. . See above, p. . The first reference to Arnold in Charlotte’s surviving correspondence occurs in a letter to Miss Wooler dated ‘August  ’; see BLL .. See Phillips, ‘Priesthood’, –; Phillips quotes pertinent passages from Arthur Penrhyn Stanley’s The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D.D., which Charlotte Bronte¨ read in . (Phillips’ ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Concepts’ is informative on Arnold, too; see pp. –.) For Maurice’s view of the ministry, see The Kingdom of Christ (),  vols. vol. , ch. iv, section v; Maurice begins by deploring the bullying element in any ‘sacerdotal caste’. Christian Life, Its Course, Its Hindrances, and Its Helps: Sermons, Preached Mostly in the Chapel of Rugby School (London, ), pp. l–li. See the note following p. lxviii in Christian Life. Cf. pp. f. above on Villette and the Roman Catholic priesthood. A passage from Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is relevant here, too; Helen Huntingdon proclaims her powerlessness when it comes to interceding for her dying husband before God and begs him to let Jesus Christ ‘plead for’ him (xlix.). See below, pp. f. Annex to A Letter to the Editor of The English Review (London, ), pp. –. Hare became one of the leading so-called Broad Churchmen; see Merrill Distad, ‘Julius Charles Hare and the ‘‘Broad Church’’ ideal’, in P. T. Phillips (ed.), The View from the Pulpit, pp. –. See J. Robert Barth, S.J., Coleridge and Christian Doctrine (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ), pp. –. Cf. the second note on Aphorism  in ‘Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion’, Aids to Reflection, p. . Cf. Gresley, Portrait of an English Churchman, pp. –, and Arnold, Christian Life, pp. –. Cf. pp. –f. below on Emily’s self-sufficiency. It is noteworthy that the girl Helen in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall also disputes Bible interpretations while pointing out that she does not ‘know the Greek’ (xx.). See Phillips, ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Favourite Preacher’, on Maurice and independent judgement: –.             

 See above pp. –.  Discourses of the Love of God and the Use and Abuse of the Passions in Religion (London, ), p. . The Doctrine of the Passions, whose emphasis on self-governance seems particularly relevant to the tension between reason and feeling in Charlotte Bronte¨’s writings, was a preliminary to the Dis-

Notes to pages –



courses and came to be printed separately from them (cf. n.  below). On the use of Biblical idiom in this passage, see below, pp. –. The Bronte¨s and Their Background, pp. –. See below, pp. –. The excerpts are taken from the following works, in the order given in the text: Isaac Watts, Discourses of the Love of God, Discourse  (‘Divine Love is the Commanding Passion’), p. ; Henry Venn, The Complete Duty of Man (first published in ), pp. – in the  edition (there was an older edition in the library at Ponden Hall); G. W. Woodhouse, Practical Sermons (London, ), part , pp. – and – (this work was also owned by Patrick Bronte¨); William Wilberforce, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System, p.  in the Glasgow edition of ; Thomas Erskine, Remarks on the Internal Evidence for the Truth of Revealed Religion, pp. – in the third edition (Edinburgh, ); Thomas Arnold, Christian Life, pp.  and ; and William Morgan, Christian Instructions, Preface, pp. v–vi (Morgan goes on to quote extensively from  John ).  The last sentences, as scholars have noted, come from James :. On Charlotte Bronte¨’s use of Scriptural language, see below, pp. f.  See above, pp. –.  See further pp. – below. Jay has discussed Rochester’s repentance in the context of Evangelical thinking on conversion; see The Religion of the Heart, pp. –.  The passage illustrates dangers discussed by Isaac Watts in The Doctrine of the Passions Explained and Improved (London, ), Section , pp. – (‘Rules to moderate excessive Love to Creatures’). See also Myer, Charlotte Bronte¨, pp. –.  See below p. .  By contrast, John Maynard claims that ‘God comes in here rather oddly’: Charlotte Bronte¨ and Sexuality (Cambridge University Press, ), p. . John Hagan shows that Jane’s flight is the necessary action of an independent person who abandons superstition for a life of faith and trust in God; see ‘Enemies of Freedom in Jane Eyre’, Criticism  (), –.  ‘We love him, because he first loved us’:  John :.  Nicholas R. Needham, Thomas Erskine of Linlathen: His Life and Theology – (Edinburgh: Rutherford House Books, ), p. .  See pp. – below.  See chs. vi–viii, especially pp. , , , , , ,  and .  See W. Robertson Nicoll on Charlotte Bronte¨ and Anne Mozley, BST part  (), –, and Ruth Hook, ‘The Father of the Family’, . According to Penny Boumelha, religion has ‘less power to console, reconcile or justify’ in Shirley than in Charlotte’s other novels; see Charlotte Bronte¨ (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, ), p. .  On the absence of vindictiveness in Edgar’s attitude, see below, p. .  The last two quotations are from Woodhouse’s Practical Sermons, part , pp. – and .    



Notes to pages –

 To quote a single instance, Helen Huntingdon’s joy as she leaves ‘prison and despair’ behind her on running away from her husband is such that she can ‘hardly refrain from praising God aloud for [her] deliverance’ (xliv.). And yet she is virtually destitute, burdened with responsibility for her little son and her faithful servant; her prospects are most uncertain, and she must live in fear of being discovered by her husband or an emissary of his.  See, for instance, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, xxxvi.: ‘But it is wrong to despair; I will remember the counsel of the inspired writer [Isaiah] to him ‘‘that feareth the Lord and obeyeth the voice of his servant, that sitteth in darkness and hath no light; – let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God!’’ ’  Woodhouse, Practical Sermons, part , p.  (in a sermon entitled ‘Comfort to the Faithful’).  Hebrews :. For an example from the Evangelical sphere, see Henry Venn’s letter to a bereaved parishioner in The Life of Henry Venn, pp. –.  Quoted from Smith (ed.), Letters, pp.  and .  While the occasional Evangelical divine would frown on Pilgrim’s Progress as being a Dissenter work, the religious writers demonstrably known to the Bronte¨ family – William Morgan among them – had no hesitation in recommending this Haworth favourite. On the presence of Pilgrim’s Progress in Jane Eyre, see Michael Wheeler, The Art of Allusion in Victorian Fiction (London: Macmillan, ), pp. –. Barry V. Qualls draws attention to correspondences between Charlotte Bronte¨ and Bunyan in The Secular Pilgrims of Victorian Fiction: The Novel as Book of Life (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. , , ,  and .  See below, pp. –.  The Life of Maurice, vol. , pp. –.  See, for instance, Storr, The Development, pp. , , , , –, ,  and .  On the absence of Christ in Emily Bronte¨’s writings, see Prentis, The Bronte¨s and Eliot, pp. –, and Irving H. Buchen, ‘Emily Bronte¨ and the Metaphysics of Childhood and Love’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction . (June ), .  Letters, p. . In their comment on the Shirley passage, the editors Rosengarten and Smith suggest that the Athanasian Creed displeased Charlotte Bronte¨ in that it ‘contains clauses on the damnation of non-believers’ (p. ). While its condemnatory fervour was surely offensive to Charlotte Bronte¨, it must be borne in mind that the Creed is predominantly concerned with the nature of the Trinity, about which ‘believers’ might well have different ideas. On the debate about the Athanasian Creed somewhat later in the nineteenth century, see Michael Wheeler, Death and the Future Life in Victorian Literature and Theology (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. ff. Charles Simeon’s dislike of the Athanasian Creed is interesting; see Douglas Webster, ‘Simeon’s Pastoral Theology’ in Arthur Pollard and Michael Hennell (eds.), Charles Simeon (–): Essays Written in Commem-

Notes to pages – 

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 

 



  

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oration of his Bi-Centenary by Members of the Evangelical Fellowship for Theological Literature (London: SPCK, ), p. . Prickett, Romanticism and Religion, p.  (the references are to p.  in Mary Moorman, Wordsworth: The Later Years –, Oxford, ). Margaret Smith’s note to the relevant Bronte¨ letter states that John Henry Newman regarded St Athanasius as a ‘heroic champion against the Arian heresy’ (pp. –n.); but in Loss and Gain, Newman showed that he knew the attribution to Athanasius to be spurious, devoting an entire chapter (vii) to exploring the standing of the Creed in contemporary religious debate (pp. –). The Life of Maurice, vol. , p. ; see also the appendix on the Athanasian Creed in The Kingdom of Christ, vol. , pp. –. In his annotation on The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Herbert Rosengarten observes the kinship of these two scenes, but does not comment on it (p. ). On the importance of the sky to Charlotte Bronte¨, see Alexander, The Early Writings, pp. –. Michael Wheeler applies this quotation to two climactic scenes in Jane Eyre; see pp.  and  in English Fiction of the Victorian Period, – (London: Longman, ). Prickett clarifies these contradictions in his excellent chapter on ‘Wordsworth and the Language of Nature’ in Romanticism and Religion, pp. –. Keble’s much-read The Christian Year expresses a sense of Nature as directly reflecting its creator; see, for instance, G. B. Tennyson, ‘ ‘‘So Careful of the Type?’’ Victorian Biblical Typology: Sources and Applications’, in Raymond Chapman (ed.), Essays and Studies, pp. –. See, for instance, Vidler, The Church in an Age of Revolution, pp. –, and Storr, The Development, pp. – and . See, for instance, The Prelude, Book , – and –; Coleridge’s ‘Frost at Midnight’; and Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’. M. H. Abrams’ seminal essay ‘The Correspondent Breeze: A Romantic Metaphor’ was first published in the Kenyon Review,  (), –; a revised version appeared in a collection of essays edited by Abrams, English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays in Criticism (Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. Aphorism  in ‘Moral and Religious Aphorisms’, Aids to Reflection, p. . In respect of Hare, it should be mentioned that Charlotte Bronte¨ expressed approval (qualified, it is true, by her veneration of Pascal) of his Guesses at Truth (, published jointly with his brother Augustus); see BLL .. See below, pp. f. See below, pp. –. For discussions of the moon as mother in Jane Eyre, see Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, ), pp. – and –; and Adrienne Rich, ‘Jane Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman’, in On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, – (New York: Norton, ), pp. –. Further analyses of the female element in Jane’s experiences of Nature are found in Margaret





 



Notes to pages –

Homans’ essay ‘Dreaming of Children: Literalization in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights’, in Juliann E. Fleenor (ed.), The Female Gothic (Montreal and London: Eden Press, ), pp. –; and Carolyn Williams, ‘Closing the Book: The Intertextual End of Jane Eyre’, in Jerome McGann (ed.), Victorian Connections (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ), pp. –, especially pp. –. For a reading of religion versus Nature in Charlotte Bronte¨’s fiction which differs from the suggestions put forward in this chapter, see Qualls, Secular Pilgrims, pp. –. On the moon in Jane Eyre, see also Robert B. Heilman, ‘Charlotte Bronte¨, Reason and the Moon’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction  (March ), –, and Enid L. Duthie, The Bronte¨s and Nature (London: Macmillan, ), pp. –. Mrs Gaskell recalled that Charlotte Bronte¨ defended the incident on the grounds that ‘it [was] a true thing; it really happened’ (ch. xix, p.  in the Everyman edition, the  reprint, of Mrs Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Bronte¨, ). See p.  in M. Smith’s commentary on Jane Eyre and pp. – in Duthie, The Bronte¨s and Nature. The pivotal function of this scene in the novel is well brought out by Ruth Bernard Yeazell in ‘More True than Real: Jane Eyre’s ‘‘Mysterious Summons’’ ’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction  (–), –. See also Kathleen Tillotson, Novels of the Eighteen-Forties (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), p. ; Martin, Accents of Persuasion, p. ; and Jerome Beaty’s recent analysis of the scene in Misreading Jane Eyre: A Postformalist Paradigm (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, ), pp. –. See Luke :. See, for instance, Maurice, The Kingdom of Christ, vol. , ch. iv, section vi, pp. –. The clerical writers in Patrick Bronte¨’s ‘set’ believed implicitly in the miracles as historical truth; see, for instance, John Buckworth’s Series of Discourses, Containing a System of Doctrinal, Experimental, and Practical Religion, p.  in the second edition (Leeds, ). Blackwood’s took issue with Hume’s argument against miracles in an interesting discussion in , vol.  (–). Prickett, Romanticism and Religion, p. .               

 See the section on ‘Anxiety’ in Walter E. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind – (New Haven: Yale University Press and London: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –, especially pp. –. Houghton repeatedly refers to Charlotte Bronte¨’s reaction to Harriet Martineau and H. G. Atkinson’s atheistic Letters on the Law of Man’s Social Nature and Development (); see pp. –,  and –. (The relevant letter is in BLL ..) Lance St John Butler’s more recent Victorian Doubt deals extensively with belief and unbelief in nineteenth-century England, and Robin Gilmour supplies a useful summary on pp. – in The Victorian Period. See also Rosemary Ashton, ‘Doubting Clerics: From James Anthony Froude to Robert Elsmere via George Eliot’ in David Jasper (ed.), The Critical Spirit and the

Notes to pages –



Will to Believe (London: Macmillan, ), pp. –, and Michael Wheeler’s contribution to the same volume, ‘ ‘‘Can These Dry Bones Live?’’ Questions of Belief in a Future Life’, pp. –, especially pp. –.  See above, pp. –.  See, for instance, ‘Despondency’, ‘A Hymn’ (‘Eternal power of earth and air’) and ‘A Prayer’ (‘My God! O let me call Thee mine!’), pp. –, – and  respectively in Edward Chitham’s edition of The Poems of Anne Bronte¨.  Cf., for instance, Morgan, Christian Instructions, vol. , p. : ‘[P]ray to God for repentance, faith, and holiness. They are his gifts, wrought by the Spirit; and he is infinitely more ready to give his Holy Spirit to them that ask, than a father is to give food to his child.’ See also Thomas Arnold, Christian Life, pp. –, where faith is said to be ‘God’s gift, to be sought for and retained by constant prayer and watchfulness’. Pascal also referred to faith as given by God; see no.  (), p.  in Krailsheimer’s edition.  See above, p.  and p. n below.  The Victorian Church, pp. –.  Most recently () by Stevie Davies in Emily Bronte¨: Heretic.  From the poems ‘The Philosopher’ and ‘Plead for Me’, pp.  and  in Janet Gezari’s edition of Emily Jane Bronte¨: The Complete Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin, ). Arthur Pollard speaks of Emily’s ‘grasp of God’ as ‘[transcending] in egotistic certainty and self-possession anything that might be considered as orthodoxly Christian’; see ‘The Bronte¨s’, p. .  From Charlotte Bronte¨’s ‘Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell’, p.  in the World’s Classics edition of Wuthering Heights. Charlotte Bronte¨ has been getting a bad press recently as lacking in understanding of her sisters and their work and being over-zealous in disseminating her own views on them and it, for more or less selfish purposes. While it is perfectly possible to challenge her opinions (notably, as far as I am concerned, about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall), I find this intolerant attitude on the part of distant posterity disturbing.  P.  in Gezari’s edition. On the ‘positiveness’ of Emily Bronte¨’s poetry, see Herbert Dingle, The Mind of Emily Bronte¨ (London: Martin Brian and O’Keeffe, ), pp. –. Stevie Davies disagrees with this view, claiming that ‘[t]he contemptuous and retaliating thrust of ‘‘No coward soul’’ is defensive’; see p.  in Emily Bronte¨: Heretic. (Davies, whose reading is partly based on her contention that ‘Serene self-confidence does not have to boast’, does not consider the implications of ‘Faith and Despondency’.)  ‘Faith and Despondency’, pp. – in Gezari’s edition.  Baumber, ‘Grimshaw, Bronte¨ and the Evangelical Revival’, . For some representative views on Emily Bronte¨’s paganism, see Stevie Davies, Emily Bronte¨: Heretic; Eva Figes, Sex and Subterfuge: Women Novelists to  (London: Macmillan, ), p. ; and V. S. Pritchett’s New Statesman article ‘Implacable, Belligerent People of Emily Bronte¨’s Novel, Wuthering Heights’ (,  June ); I have read the latter in Richard Lettis and William E. Morris, A



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 

 

 

Notes to pages –

Wuthering Heights Handbook (New York: Odyssey Press, ), pp. –. Elizabeth Rigby’s notorious review of Jane Eyre called the Catherine– Heathcliff (‘Heathfield’) relationship ‘odiously and abominably pagan’: Quarterly Review  (Dec. ), quoted from Miriam Allott (ed.), The Bronte¨s: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, ), p. . Sartor Resartus, Book , ch. vii (‘The Everlasting No’), p.  in P. C. Parr’s edition of Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdro¨ckh in Three Books (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ). I think it possible, even likely, that Charlotte Bronte¨ had read Sartor Resartus, or at least parts of it (it was serialised in Fraser’s in –), by the summer of  when she wrote to W. S. Williams mentioning Carlyle’s ‘Germanisms’ (letter dated  June ; BLL .). This ‘peculiarity of style’ (an expression used by Charlotte Bronte¨) occurs in other works by Carlyle, too, but it is especially conspicuous in Sartor Resartus which abounds in would-be English translations of Teufelsdro¨ckh’s ‘original’ German expressions. Qualls’s chapter on Charlotte Bronte¨ in Secular Pilgrims explores parallels between Carlyle and Charlotte at length. Incidentally, Mrs Gaskell refers to Sartor Resartus in ch. xvi of Mary Barton (; p.  in the  Penguin Popular Classics edition). As Storr points out in The Development, pp. – and note, Newman gleefully highlighted the confusion of Evangelical divines over this vital doctrine in Loss and Gain. John Buckworth described the doctrine as follows: ‘[T]he merit of the Saviour is the procuring cause of our justification’; hence ‘it is necessary that we should believe in him, before we can be actual partakers of that blessing. Believing in the Redeemer, therefore, is the means by which we are brought into a justified state’; see Series of Discourses, p. . The doctrine is also expounded in Maurice’s The Kingdom of Christ, vol. , ch. ii, passim; see especially pp. –, , , –, ,  and . A good modern explication is provided by Stephen Neill in Anglicanism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, ; I have used the third edition of ), pp. –. ‘Music on Christmas Morning’ (‘Music I love’), p.  in Chitham’s edition of the poems of Anne Bronte¨. Her creator pokes gentle fun at her ineffectiveness in this respect. Gilbert Markham, not noticeably consoled by Helen’s insistence that the seemingly star-crossed couple will ‘meet in Heaven’, responds to her visions of collective love with an irony that cannot be overlooked: ‘But can you, Helen, contemplate with delight this prospect of losing me in a sea of glory?’ (xlv.). For a censorious view of ‘Helen’s sanctimonious behavior and religious zeal’ at Huntingdon’s deathbed, see Laura C. Berry, ‘Acts of Custody and Incarceration in Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’, Novel . (Fall ), . See above, pp. –. On Rochester’s conversion, see Marianne Thorma¨hlen, Rochester: The Poems in Context (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. The Bronte¨s probably knew the story, either from Bishop Burnet’s account or from the numerous references to it made by generations of clergymen. Incidentally,

Notes to pages –

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it has been suggested – more than once – that Charlotte Bronte¨ named the hero of Jane Eyre after the reformed Restoration rake, and the idea seems perfectly possible. Herbert Rosengarten has pointed to the possibility that Rochester’s family name suggested that of the ‘worthless old reprobate’ Wilmot in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (see p.  in the World’s Classics edition). Coleridge, Aphorism  in ‘Prudential Aphorisms’, Aids to Reflection, p. . The last things in Christian eschatology are death, judgement, heaven and hell. Michael Wheeler has organised the first part of Death and the Future Life under those four headings. See also Geoffrey Rowell’s ground-breaking study Hell and the Victorians: A Study of the Nineteenth-Century Theological Controversies Concerning Eternal Punishment and the Future Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ). On the idea of universal salvation in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, see below pp. ff. Vol. , pp. –. I have discussed this point at somewhat greater length in ‘The Villain of Wildfell Hall: Aspects and Prospects of Arthur Huntingdon’, Modern Language Review . (Oct. ), –. Much commentary on religious dimensions in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, especially with reference to the relationship between Helen and Arthur Huntingdon, has started out from Inga-Stina Ewbank’s seminal discussion in Their Proper Sphere: A Study of the Bronte¨ Sisters as Early-Victorian Novelists (London: Edward Arnold, ), pp. –. For an example from a book admired by Charlotte Bronte¨ (see BLL ., ,  and ), see Alexander Harris, Testimony to the Truth; or, The Autobiography of an Atheist (London, ), pp. –. Phillips’ thesis devotes plenty of space to Charlotte’s engagement with Harris; see pp. –, – and – in ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Concepts’. See, for instance, Morgan’s Christian Instructions, vol. , pp. –, and Woodhouse’s Practical Sermons, vol. , p. . An eighteenth-century example which will also have been known to the Bronte¨s is Henry Venn’s The Complete Duty of Man; see p. . See p.  above. See further pp. – below. See, for instance, pp. – in Anon., Popery and Protestantism Compared. Cf. the last lines of ch. xiv in vol.  of Jane Eyre (p. ). Fletcher wrote passionate denunciations of Antinomians – so passionate, in fact, that even some of his admirers found them a little exaggerated. In a letter to Charles Kingsley, dated  July , F. D. Maurice argued that Baptists were sometimes ‘practically Antinomians’, and ‘a very vulgar brutal sort’, too. See The Life of Maurice, vol. , p. . Hartley was of course dangerous enough – his attack on Moore might well have been fatal – but by satirising him Charlotte Bronte¨ invalidates his motives. His name, a juxtaposition of that of the disciplinarian archangel with the surname of the associanist philosopher David Hartley, is surely an element in that satire. See also pp. f. below. As Earl Knies has said, ‘[h]ere, in this conversation,

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 

Notes to pages –

are the central issues of the novel’; see The Art of Charlotte Bronte¨, p. . The word ‘arrogate’ signals a serious transgression; cf. a similar sentence from Geraldine Jewsbury’s Zoe¨: The History of Two Lives (originally published in ; I have used the  Virago reprint): ‘It is not fitting that a worm like me, should arrogate a power that belongs alone to your Maker’ (p. ; this is the pious Clotilde’s austere reply to Horace O’Brian’s plea for pardon). See further p.  below. M. A. Blom, who argues that Jane Eyre’s chief passion is her ruthless egoism, regards this often-quoted passage as ‘an idea after the fact, which offers [ Jane] a rationale for refusing to enter into an illicit relationship which would establish her social inferiority’: ‘ ‘‘Jane Eyre’’: Mind as Law Unto Itself’, Criticism  (Fall ), . (Blom develops this view in Charlotte Bronte¨, Boston: Twayne, .) Robert Keefe and John Maynard have observed that St John constitutes a far more serious threat to Jane than any other would-be persuader; see respectively, Charlotte Bronte¨’s World of Death (Austin: University of Texas Press, ), p. , and pp. ff. in Charlotte Bronte¨ and Sexuality. For another good commentary on the St John conflict, see Judith Williams, Perception and Expression in the Novels of Charlotte Bronte¨ (Ann Arbor and London: UMI Research Press, ), pp. –. See Maynard, Charlotte Bronte¨ and Sexuality, pp. –, –n. and – n. for comments on and well-argued rebuttals of the ‘castration school’ in Jane Eyre criticism. Another sure-footed Charlotte Bronte¨ critic, Thomas Vargish, has also rejected this critical approach and contributed the following fine summary of Rochester’s conversion: ‘His repentance should not be seen as a feeble submission to circumstances or as a hopeless collapse under the incessant blows of the divine rod, but as a characteristic though tentative redirection of his large and generous impulses and thus not a failure of will but its proper and effectual mastery.’ See The Providential Aesthetic in Victorian Fiction (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ), pp.  and –. Vargish agrees with the view put forward in Martin’s Accents of Persuasion that Jane Eyre is ‘at bottom . . . largely a religious novel’ (p. ). The failure of Edward Crimsworth to convince in this role is surely part of the explanation for the fundamental unsatisfactoriness of which many have complained with regard to The Professor. On the absence of a moral focus in Wuthering Heights, Dorothy Van Ghent’s analysis remains unsurpassed. First published in Nineteenth-Century Function  (Dec. ), –, it was reprinted in her The English Novel: Form and Function (New York: Rinehart and Co., ), pp. –. (It has also been included in more than one compilation of Wuthering Heights criticism.) See Francis Fike, ‘Bitter Herbs and Wholesome Medicines: Love as Theological Affirmation in Wuthering Heights’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction . (Sept. ), . On Joseph’s position in relation to the other people at Wuthering Heights,

Notes to pages –    

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

  



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see Jacques Blondel, Emily Bronte¨: Expe´rience spirituelle et cre´ation poe´tique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, ), pp. –. See Wheeler, Death and the Future Life, pp.  and . A point stressed by Blondel; see Emily Bronte¨, p. . See further pp. ff. below. As far as I am aware, this pair of opposites has not been mentioned during the numerous attempts – some of them decidedly over-ingenious – made in recent years to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as a corrective response to Wuthering Heights. Herbert Rosengarten, editor of the World’s Classics edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, reminds us of the similarity between this wish and Clarissa Harlowe’s hopes in respect of Lovelace; see p. . In one of the best critical analyses of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Juliet McMaster draws attention to Helen’s ‘hubris’ and ‘arrogance’ in believing herself ‘good enough for two’; see ‘ ‘‘Imbecile Laughter’’ and ‘‘Desperate Earnest’’ in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’, Modern Language Quarterly  (Dec. ), . With the exception of the contention that moral soundness and a good social position (the qualities of the unfortunately named Mr Boreham) are sufficient virtues in a middle-aged man to persuade a young, lively girl to marry him. As an active match-maker, Mrs Maxwell is hardly a success. Here, Anne Bronte¨ is employing irony to good effect – had Helen’s aunt been less rigidly conventional in these matters, she would have had a better chance of averting the Huntingdon disaster. The letter is not in BLL, but is accessible in the second edition of Winifred Ge´rin’s Anne Bronte¨ (London: Nelson and Sons, ), p. . See also Le Guern, Anne Bronte¨, vol. , pp. –. BLL ., letter dated  February . John Wesley’s Journal mentions two exponents of the idea of ‘the noneternity of hell’; one expected hell to last for , years, the other (one ‘Mr Stonehouse’) for  million. See the entry for  August , easily accessible in Elisabeth Jay’s selection from the Journal published by Oxford University Press in  (p. ). Naturally, Wesley disapproves of, and ridicules the beliefs of, these men, who ‘promote the cause of infidelity more effectually than either Hume or Voltaire’. They belonged to an extensive tradition which included such famous names as Thomas Burnet; see D. P. Walker’s The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, ) and Philip C. Almond’s Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England (Cambridge University Press, ), especially pp. –. Charlotte Bronte¨’s dislike of what she regarded as Rousseau’s sentimentality is apparent in Villette, xxxiv. and xxxviii.. Anti-Rousseau feeling may have something to do with the naming of the evil fairy inVillette, Mme Walravens, and of Rochester’s paramour Ce´line Varens in Jane Eyre: Rousseau’s better-known mistresses were named Louise de Warens and The´re`se le Vasseur.



Notes to pages –

 Mark :. Cf. above, p. .  I have found no evidence in support of Winnifrith’s suggestion that it was Emily who inspired her sisters with the doctrine that salvation would ultimately be granted to everyone; see The Bronte¨s and Their Background, p.  (see also Prentis, The Bronte¨s and Eliot, p. , where a similar view is expressed). True, two stanzas from the poem beginning ‘Thy sun is near meridian height’ (entitled ‘Written in the Gaaldine Prison Caves to A. G. A.’ in Gezari’s edition of Emily Bronte¨’s poems, p. ) reject eternal punishment, but that merely shows that this view was known to Emily as well as to her sisters. Winnifrith is, however, surely justified in emphasising Patrick Bronte¨’s belief in damnation for unrepentant sinners (pp. –); it is difficult to perceive a basis for Juliet Barker’s idea that Mr Bronte¨ was the origin of the idea of universal salvation in the family (The Bronte¨s, pp. –n.), though he clearly believed that the chance was open to all.  Rosengarten, p.  in his edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.  See above, p. .  See Le Guern, Anne Bronte¨, vol. , p. .  In her absorbing book on Dickens and the Bible, Janet L. Larson draws attention to the connexion between belief in Hell and lack of compassion, a connexion which seems to operate in the context of the Bronte¨ fiction as well, notably in the case of Mr Brocklehurst. See Larson’s Dickens and the Broken Scripture (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, ), p. .  See Edward Chitham, A Life of Anne Bronte¨ (Oxford: Blackwell, ), p. . On Branwell’s preoccupation with Cowper and ‘The Castaway’, see Winifred Ge´rin, Branwell Bronte¨ (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, ), pp.  and .  On ‘To Cowper’ and ‘A Word to the Calvinists’, see Le Guern, Anne Bronte¨, vol. , pp. –. See also Jay, Faith and Doubt, pp. –.  Vidler quotes a memorable comment on Universalists and Unitarians in New England: ‘ ‘‘[T]he Universalists believed that God was too good to damn them, while the Unitarians held that men were too good to be damned.’’ ’ (The Church in an Age of Revolution, p. ).  Jane West, Letters to a Young Lady, in Which the Duties and Character of Women Are Considered  vols. (London, ), vol. , pp. –. (Letter  in vol.  is also anti-Calvinist.)  Ibid., vol. , pp. –.  ‘A Word to the Calvinists’, pp. – in Chitham’s edition of Anne’s poems.  This is clear from, among other things, his funeral sermon on William Weightman. See Le Guern, Anne Bronte¨, vol. , p. n.  See Christian Instructions, vol. , pp. –. On Charles Simeon’s belief that Christ died for all, see Douglas Webster, ‘Simeon’s Pastoral Theology’, p. .  See, for instance, Alec R. Vidler, The Theology of F. D. Maurice (London: SCM Press, ), p. .

Notes to pages –



 See John Tulloch, Movements, pp. –, and Reardon, From Coleridge to Gore, pp. – and –.  Vidler says that Maurice was never a Universalist; see p.  in The Theology of F. D. Maurice. See also David Young, F. D. Maurice and Unitarianism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), pp. –.  Quoted from an extract from the Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Council on  October ; vol. , p.  in The Life of Maurice.  Theological Essays, ed. Edward F. Carpenter (London: James Clarke and Co., ), p. .  Sir James Stephen, son of the James Stephen of the Clapham Sect and father of Leslie Stephen, was censured for unorthodoxy in respect of eternal punishment in his Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography ( vols., London, ); see pp. – in vol. .  By the end of the nineteenth century, it had become more acceptable; see Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, p. . But see Wheeler, Death and the Future Life, p. , on the ai0 x! mio| debate in the s and s. Cf. also Jay, The Religion of the Heart, pp. –. Guy Kendall has shown that Charles Kingsley evolved views very similar to Anne Bronte¨’s, including a conception of an intermediate, purifying state; see Charles Kingsley and His Ideas (London: Hutchinson and Co., ), pp. ff.  Theological Essays, p. .                 As I have explained elsewhere, I find it difficult to refer to the ‘love’ of the adult Catherine and Heathcliff without resorting to inverted commas; see ‘The Lunatic and the Devil’s Disciple: The ‘‘Lovers’’ in Wuthering Heights’, Review of English Studies  (), –. Their childhood relationship, however, merits that designation without qualifications, and so does the state of mind in which Heathcliff approaches death.  See The Providential Aesthetic, pp. –.  See below, pp. – and –.  For a recent commentary on this scene, see Elizabeth Hollis Berry, Anne Bronte¨’s Radical Vision: Structures of Consciousness (English Literature Studies, University of Victoria, ), pp. –.  Many contemporary writers invoked it – among them, as Michael Wheeler has pointed out, Elizabeth Gaskell in Mary Barton; see Wheeler’s Death and the Future Life, pp. –, and The Art of Allusion, pp. –. For an analysis of the story in Mary Barton, see Monica Correa Fryckstedt, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton and Ruth: A Challenge to Christian England (Uppsala: Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia , ), pp. –.  The Decline of Hell, pp. –. The following discussion relies heavily on Walker’s book.  Thomas Burnet used the word ‘howling’ of the ‘unhappy crowd’ in Hell in the passage from De statu mortuorum & resurgentium Tractatus where he sardonically



Notes to pages –

attacked the ‘abominable fancy’; see Walker, The Decline of Hell, p. .  Inga-Stina Ewbank’s view of Helen’s conduct at Huntingdon’s deathbed is more balanced than Laura Berry’s (‘Acts of Custody’, –) but still critical; see Their Proper Sphere, pp. –.  See Death and the Future Life, passim. Wheeler notes the relevance of the Bronte¨s in this context on p. .  In the letter, written after Huntingdon’s death, where Helen describes her universalist belief, she speaks of ‘the erring spirit’ passing through ‘purging fires’ (xlix.). As Tom Winnifrith has observed, Charlotte Bronte¨ attacked the doctrine of purgatory in Villette, ch. xxxvi; see The Bronte¨s and Their Background, p. .  Apart from ch. xlix, the scenes from the club where Huntingdon and his boon companions carouse contain relevant references; see ch. xxii, pp. , ,  and , and cf. p. n.–below.  See the quotation from Maurice’s Theological Essays on p.  above.  ‘A Word to the Calvinists’, ll. – (p.  in Chitham’s edition of Anne’s poems).  See below, p. n.  As in the poems beginning ‘Blessed be Thou’ (pp. – in Chitham’s edition) and ‘Music I love’ (pp. –).  ‘The Three Guides’, ibid., pp. – in Chitham’s edition.  See below, pp. ff.  See below, pp.  and ff.  See the last exchange between Helen and Jane quoted above, p. . See also Helen’s words on the heavenly reward and the world of spirits, .viii..  See Almond, Heaven and Hell, pp. –.  Many writers dealt with it as a certainty; see Wheeler, Death and the Future Life, pp. – and –.  For a useful commentary on these pages in Jane Eyre, see Judith Williams, Perception and Expression, p. .  It was not, of course, an unprecedented one; carved on many tombstones in earlier times, it occurs in young Charlotte’s Henry Hastings and features in one of Branwell’s ink drawings. See Alexander, The Early Writings, p. , and Christine Alexander and Jane Sellars, The Art of the Bronte¨s (Cambridge University Press, ), p. .  The exact wording of Isaiah : runs: ‘And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.’ The worm-and-fire phrases are relentlessly iterated in Mark :–. Nineteenth-century tract writers did not weary of repeating these stock attributes of Hell. For one example from the Bronte¨ sphere (John Buckworth’s and Henry Martyn’s sermons offer others), see Morgan’s Christian Instructions, vol. , p. : ‘Did you solemnly consider how awful it must be to die and go to hell – to that place where the worm dieth not, and where the fire shall not be quenched?’

Notes to pages –    

 

  

 



The third notable allusion to Hell is a metaphorical one; see below, p. . See further pp. ff. below. Book , chs. ii and vii–viii; pp. – in Charlotte Bronte¨’s copy. Secular Pilgrims, p. ; cf. R. B. Martin, Accents of Persuasion, pp. –. Christina Crosby acutely remarks that, in Villette, Charlotte Bronte¨’s ‘most pressing concern is not the state of her heroine’s soul, but the state of her mind’; p.  in Crosby’s The Ends of History: Victorians and the Woman Question (New York and London: Routledge, ). While I find Crosby’s typological reading of Villette less than convincing as a whole, it is an original and stimulating discussion which brings the religious dimensions in the text, above all its appropriation of the Bible and M. Paul’s redeemer function, into focus. I have dealt with the problem of sympathy in Wuthering Heights, and with Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s enormities, at some length in ‘The Lunatic and the Devil’s Disciple’; see especially –, – and –. See, for instance, Van Ghent, The English Novel, pp. –, and Dietmar M. Treichel, In extremis: Modelle der Todeserfahrung im englischen Roman des . Jahrhunderts (Scott, Emily Bronte¨, Dickens) unter Beru¨cksichtigung des Buches Hiob (Osnabru¨ck, ; inaugural dissertation at Heidelberg University), p. . The latter work contains a thoughtful exploration, from a variety of viewpoints, of the significance of Catherine’s death. See ‘The Lunatic and the Devil’s Disciple’, –. The History of the Devil, as well Ancient as Modern, in Two Parts (London,  – this is the second edition; the first appeared the year before), p. . Cf. pp. – above. There are a number of intriguing connections between Hogg’s book and Emily Bronte¨’s, especially with regard to narratological matters and the themes of demoniac possession, revenge/forgiveness and violence; it might also be mentioned that one incidental figure in the Confessions bears the surname Linton (as does a woman in a piece by Hogg on ‘Fairies, Brownies, and Witches’ for Blackwood’s vol. , , ). On Branwell’s adaptation of Hogg’s story, see Barker, The Bronte¨s, pp. ,  and . The fact that Hogg’s book was intimately known to the Bronte¨ children as adolescents testifies to the licence with which they were allowed to read anything they fancied, in contravention of Isaac Watts' advice, in section . of The Doctrine of the Passions, not to expose children to ‘frightful stories of witches and devils’, ‘for these things will hang about the imagination, and people the mind with foolish terrors’. Daphne du Maurier suggests that Branwell’s study of the Confessions had precisely that effect. See The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte¨ (London: Gollancz, ); I used the Penguin edition of , where the reference to Hogg occurs on p. . See Baine’s Daniel Defoe and the Supernatural (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, ), p. . Emily Bronte¨, p. . In their extensive discussion of ‘Emily Bronte¨’s Bible of Hell’, Gilbert and Gubar regard Emily as a ‘daughter of Milton’ who boldly corrected her sire; see Madwoman, pp. –.

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Notes to pages –

 A review in Fraser’s (vol. , Dec. , –) asserts that Scott’s work has been greatly praised by ‘all newspapers, journals, gazettes, &c. &c.’ (), though this particular reviewer found it disappointing.  See above, pp. f. Although not directly concerned with the Bronte¨s, Stephen Prickett’s recent Origins of Narrative: The Romantic Appropriation of the Bible (Cambridge University Press, ) transmits a sense of the nature and scale of the reorientations that took place in the early nineteenth century. For a Bronte¨ student, the discussions of the Hare brothers are particularly illuminating.  The History of the Devil, pp.  and .  While I have no evidence that Emily Bronte¨ read Defoe’s The History of the Devil, there are striking correspondences between this book – known and reprinted well into the nineteenth century; little Maggie Tulliver is reading the  illustrated edition in ch.  of The Mill on the Floss – and Wuthering Heights. One example might be quoted: a friend of the narrator’s happens upon his lady love when she is in a fearful temper over a servant’s ‘provoking’ behaviour. She cannot control her passions and curses her ‘Lover’ as well as the wretched servant. This woman, the narrator finds, ‘was a mere Apparition; and had it not been for that accidental Disorder of her Passions, which discover’d her Inside, she might indeed have cheated any Man, for she was a lovely Devil as ever was seen; she talk’d like an Angel, sung like a Syren, did every thing, and said every thing that was taking and charming: But what then? it was all Apparition, for she was a mere Devil. It is true, my Friend marry’d her, and tho’ she was a Devil without doubt, yet either she behav’d so well, or he was so good, I never could hear him find Fault with her’ (p. ). Perhaps the same would have applied to Catherine and Edgar, had Heathcliff not returned to add his powerful diabolical qualities to hers. Catherine’s fit of rage in vol. , ch. viii (pp. –; she pinches Nelly, hits Edgar and shakes little Hareton) is a parallel to this woman’s uncontrollable fury. It might be added that Heathcliff, who knows Catherine best and is the book’s foremost authority on devilry, more than once imputes diabolical qualities to her (even to her face: ‘ ‘‘Are you possessed with a devil . . . to talk in that manner to me, when you are dying?’’ ’( .i.)). An investigation of possible parallels between dreaming in Wuthering Heights and Defoe’s conception of the ‘reality’ of dreams would probably yield interesting results. Defoe’s The Secrets of the Invisible World laid open, or A General History of Apparitions (first published in ) was read and commended in the early nineteenth century by, among others, Scott and Blackwood’s (vol. , , –). Defoe’s supernatural tale of ‘a hand at the casement’ (ch. viii, pp. – in the  edition of Defoe’s Apparitions) is highly suggestive when viewed in relation to Lockwood’s dream of the child Catherine at the window.  With the proviso that Heathcliff’s feeling for Hareton prevents him from being a perfect Oriental demon; see ‘Editor’s Preface to the New Edition of Wuthering Heights ()’, here quoted from p.  in the World’s Classics

Notes to pages –

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      

 

 

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edition. According to Nina Auerbach, Heathcliff ‘seems less a fully realized demon than a stricken Frankenstein monster, unable to live independently of the women who create him’; see Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ), p. . Pritchett called Heathcliff ‘Lucifer without the mind and with a mere appetite for property’; see ‘Implacable People’, pp. –. This is a much-quoted and -expounded passage; see, for instance, Winnifrith, The Bronte¨s and Their Background, pp. –. Winnifrith supplies a careful inventory of references to Heaven and Hell in Emily Bronte¨’s poems as well as in Wuthering Heights (pp. –). Ibid., p. . The ‘wholeness’ of the child Catherine has been stressed by several critics; see, for instance, Mary Visick’s The Genesis of Wuthering Heights (The Hong Kong University Press, ; I have used the second edition of ), p. . The Bronte¨s and Their Background, pp. –. For a totally different, and in my view far more convincing, reading, see Malcolm Pittock, ‘Wuthering Heights and Its Critics’, Critical Survey  (Summer ), –, especially –. See ‘The Lunatic and the Devil’s Disciple’, . For historical surveys and analyses, see Norman T. Burns, Christian Mortalism from Tyndale to Milton (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ) and Almond, Heaven and Hell. See Almond, Heaven and Hell, pp. –. The links between Socinianism and Unitarianism are so close that some prefer to use the latter concept as a designation for the followers of Fausto Sozzini (Faustus Socinus) in Britain and America. See, for example, Wolff, Gains and Losses, p. . Both Hobbes and Locke entertained such notions; see Almond, Heaven and Hell, p. . Winnifrith discusses Socinian annihilationism in connexion with Branwell’s writings, pointing to several parallels; see The Bronte¨s and Their Background, pp. –. Another indication that Emily Bronte¨ was familiar with these matters is found in .xx.: when Heathcliff threatens Nelly with haunting her if his instructions regarding his burial are disobeyed, he tells her that if she fails, she will find ‘that the dead are not annihilated’. For examples, see pp. , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  and  in Gezari’s edition of Emily Bronte¨’s poems. P.  in Gezari’s edition. For other references to the peculiar strength of childhood love, see pp.  and . Irving Buchen, who also quotes ‘The Death of A. G. A.’, has important things to say about children and love in ‘Emily Bronte¨’, –. In a perceptive critique of the novel, John T. Matthews has drawn attention to the significance of outward oppression for the strength of the childhood alliance between Catherine and Heathcliff; see ‘Framing in ‘‘Wuthering Heights’’ ’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language . (Spring ), –. The article is reprinted, in a slightly abridged version, in Patsy Stoneman (ed.), Emily Bronte¨ Wuthering Heights: A New

   

  



  

    

Notes to pages –

Casebook (London: Macmillan, ), where the relevant observations are found on pp. –. Pp. – in Gezari’s edition. ‘Shall Earth no more inspire thee’, p.  in Gezari’s edition. See Gezari’s commentary, p. . Like many other Bronte¨ critics, including Winnifrith, Gezari also points to the relevance of Emily Bronte¨’s Brussels essay ‘Le Papillon’. See pp. – in Sue Lonoff’s new edition of the Bronte¨s’ French devoirs (Belgian Essays) for a transcript of ‘Le Papillon’ and pp. – for Lonoff’s commentary. That was how the handsome and luxurious interior of the Grange looked to the peeping children (.vi.). See Eva Figes’ lucid review of the dying Catherine’s sentiments in Sex and Subterfuge, pp. –. Speaking of Heathcliff’s love for Catherine, she called it ‘a sentiment fierce and inhuman: a passion such as might boil and glow in the bad essence of some evil genius; a fire that might form the tormented centre – the ever-suffering soul of a magnate of the infernal world: and by its quenchless and ceaseless ravage effect the execution of the decree which dooms him to carry Hell with him wherever he wanders’ (p.  in the World’s Classics edition). This difference has been noted by, among others, Mary Visick, The Genesis, pp. – and J. F. Goodridge in Emily Bronte¨: Wuthering Heights (London: Edward Arnold, ), p. . Surely, however, Malcolm Pittock is right in castigating the Wuthering Heights critics in corpore (with the exception of Ewbank) for their callousness in respect of Linton Heathcliff (‘Wuthering Heights Critics,’ ). On Hareton and Cathy as children of love, see Lord David Cecil, Early Victorian Novelists: Essays in Revaluation (London: Constable, ; I have used the  reprint), p. . See below, pp. f. See below, pp. ff. Shirley .i.. Cf. Wheeler’s discussion of the indeterminacy of Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend with regard to Headstone and Riderhood: Death and the Future Life, pp. –. In Shirley, Caroline realises, ill as she is, that these things cannot be known to human beings and tries to put her trust in God, pleading desperately for faith; see above, p. . See, for instance, .xv.– and .xx.–. Nelly muses that his heart may have been turned to an ‘earthly hell’ (.xix.). This not often quoted passage, a typical authorial interpolation of a kind that becomes more common in the later novels, testifies to Charlotte Bronte¨’s exalted view of the highest forms of literature. See Almond, Heaven and Hell, p. . The History of the Devil, p. . Discourses of the Love of God, pp. –. The following excerpt from Watts has a Browneian ring, too: ‘Hope is the most alluring Spring of Love. Terror and slavish Fear stand opposite to this holy Affection: Such Fear has Torment

Notes to pages –



in it, and so far as we fear God as an Enemy we are not made perfect in his Love’ (p. ).  The view that Hell is above all the loss of God gained currency during the early nineteenth century; see Wheeler, Death and the Future Life, pp. –. It has a long history, however; in the ‘Why, this is hell’ speech in Dr Faustus, Marlowe’s Mephostophilis says, ‘Thinkst thou that I who saw the face of God, / And tasted the eternal joyes of heaven, / Am not tormented with ten thousand hels, / In being depriv’d of everlasting blisse?’ (., quoted from Roma Gill’s edition of The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe, vol. : Dr Faustus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), p. ).  See above, p. .  The Cathy–Linton ‘heavens’ are of course envisaged as experiences granted by Nature; see pp. –.  See Barry Qualls’ fine analysis of Rochester’s struggles with his self: Secular Pilgrims, pp. –. As Qualls says, Rochester would ‘much prefer to take Jane to the moon’ to prevent interference from others; he actually says so (.ix.–).  Anne Bronte¨’s Radical Vision, pp. –.  It should be pointed out, however, that he describes Helen as an ‘angel’ to his future brother-in-law in his account of her nursing Huntingdon (xlix.). Nelly Dean also uses ‘angel’ as a term of endearment for young Cathy.  On the Hell-fire Club in xxii.–, see Herbert Rosengarten’s commentary, p. .  Critics have commented on the savagery of this attack, and Gilbert does not mend matters by later telling his unfortunate victim to ‘go to the d – l . . . and say I sent you’ (p. ).  Pp.  and ; on the connotations of these expressions, see the commentary by Herbert Rosengarten and Margaret Smith, p. .  See, for instance, E. D. H. Johnson, ‘Daring the Dread Glance: Charlotte Bronte¨’s Treatment of the Supernatural in Villette’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction  (), –; Vargish, The Providential Aesthetic, pp. –; Helene Moglen, Charlotte Bronte¨: The Self Conceived (New York: Norton, ), pp. –; and Lisa Surridge, ‘Representing the ‘‘Latent Vashti’’: Theatricality in Charlotte Bronte¨’s Villette’, Victorian Newsletter  (Spring ), –. For an analysis of Vashti in the context of nineteenth-century psychology, see Sally Shuttleworth, Charlotte Bronte¨, pp. –.  In this the Bronte¨s resemble Coleridge. While he would have wished Hell to be simply a deprivation of life, Coleridge was forced to admit that the Scriptural evidence against that view was too strong. Ultimately, though, he adopted a view of the last things which was based on the idea of love and concluded that being shut out from God’s presence was the worst Hell imaginable. See Barth, Coleridge and Christian Dogma, pp. –, and Coleridge’s comment on Aphorism  in ‘Aphorisms of Spiritual Religion’, Aids to Reflection, pp. –n.



Notes to pages –                  

 Charlotte Bronte¨’s letter to W. S. Williams of  October , BLL, .. She has been severely criticised for her want of pity for Branwell, especially in recent years – an attitude which suggests that the moralists are themselves fortunate enough never to have had addiction in the family.  See, for instance, Barker, The Bronte¨s, p. .  William Madden takes a first step towards discerning such a genre in an illuminating article, ‘The Search for Forgiveness in Some NineteenthCentury English Novels’, Comparative Literature Studies  (), –. Madden includes Wuthering Heights in his fairly heterogeneous collection, as well as Middlemarch, Lord Jim, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and The Pickwick Papers, but devotes most of his space to The Heart of Midlothian.  His proposal to Shirley was, as she says and he acknowledges, spoken as by ‘a brigand who demanded [her] purse, rather than like a lover who asked [her] heart’ (.vii.).  ‘The Search for Forgiveness’, –.  Verses –. See also Matthew :– (The Lord’s Prayer) and Luke :–.  P.  (ch. xxv).  See above pp. –. It is significant that the Devil’s ascendancy over Robert Wringhim in Hogg’s Confessions is accomplished as Robert finds that he cannot pray.  Helen is ever consistent; before her departure from the marital home, she had told Huntingdon that she would forgive him when he tired of his sinful ways and showed himself truly repentant (xxxiii.).  It is, of course, as many commentators have pointed out, what Jesus says to the woman taken in adultery (John :).  See above, p. .  See, for instance, Ewbank, Their Proper Sphere, pp. –, and W. A. Craik, The Bronte¨ Novels (London: Methuen, ), pp. –. Elizabeth Langland’s chapter on the novel in Anne Bronte¨: The Other One (London: Macmillan, ), pp. –, contains thoughtful appraisals of Gilbert’s actions and character development.  Among the critics who have considered this scene, R. B. Martin has contributed a particularly illuminating commentary; see Accents of Persuasion, pp. –. Jerome Beaty has observed that Jane finds the aftermath of passion unpleasant; see Misreading Jane Eyre, p. .  P.  in Madwoman. As Carla Kaplan points out in a recent book, ‘feminist criticism has had . . . a romance with Jane Eyre’: The Erotics of Talk: Women’s Writing and Feminist Paradigms (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), p. . A helpful compilation of such criticism is supplied in Kaplan’s notes, pp. –n. .  For a noteworthy exception see Jerome Beaty, ‘Jane Eyre at Gateshead: Mixed Signals in the Text and Context’, in James R. Kincaid and Albert J.

Notes to pages –

 





 



Kuhn (eds.), Victorian Literature and Society: Essays Presented to Richard D. Altick (Ohio State University Press, ), p. . Sally Shuttleworth aligns this statement with Jane’s repugnance at the idea of a past relationship between Rochester and Mrs Poole (Charlotte Bronte¨, p. ). Kathleen Tillotson noted the scene in passing, with an apt one-line comment: ‘[T]he large gestures of romance are explicitly avoided’ (Novels of the Eighteen-Forties, p. ). Jane never does love an enemy, nor does she show any desire to learn to do so; as she herself knows only too well, she is no Helen Burns (.vii.). See Martin, Accents of Persuasion, p. . Unlike Tom Winnifrith, I cannot see that Mrs Reed ever really repents, and it takes great optimism to believe in her salvation. See The Bronte¨s and Their Background, p. . Judith Williams does not; see her discussion of the ‘sterile hell’ of which the dying woman is the centre, pp. – and – in Perception and Expression. It is noteworthy, too, that the reviewer of Jane Eyre for the Christian Remembrancer  (April ) stated, ‘We are compelled to see and acknowledge beyond the possibility of doubt, that Mrs. Reed dies without remorse, without excuse, and without hope.’ The review (abridged) is most easily accessible in Miriam Allott’s Critical Heritage volume, pp. –; the quoted passage is on p. . The habitual character of that mind is illustrated by the fact that Mrs Reed stonily rejected the child Jane’s anguished plea for forgiveness during the red-room incident (.ii.). The horrors of that experience remain so vivid to the narrator that her acknowledgement of the desirability of forgiving the cruel woman who would not forgive her lacks warmth: ‘Yes, Mrs. Reed, to you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering. But I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did: while rending my heart-strings, you thought you were only up-rooting my bad propensities’ (.iii.). Many critics have discussed elemental imagery in Jane Eyre; the best-known analysis of the fire element is David Lodge’s chapter ‘Fire and Eyre: Charlotte Bronte¨’s War of Earthly Elements’ in Language of Fiction: Essays in Criticism and Verbal Analysis of the English Novel (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, ). Cf. Helen Burns (.vi.): ‘I can . . . clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can . . . sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last.’ The implication that most modern readers wholeheartedly approve of Jane Eyre, including her rage, needs to be qualified: some critics do not see any growing maturity in her, and she has been accused of vanity and egotism. See, for instance, Robert James Merrett’s article ‘The Conduct of Spiritual Autobiography in Jane Eyre’, Renascence . (Autumn ), –, which takes a grim view of Jane as a spiritual being (see, for example, p.  on her forgiveness of Mrs Reed). A judicious summary of Jane’s growth into mature integrity under the ‘formative influence’ of Helen Burns’s personality is provided by Harriet Bjo¨rk in The Language of Truth: Charlotte Bronte¨ and the Woman Question (Lund: CWK Gleerup, ; now available through Lund University Press), p. . See also Lawrence Jay Dessner, The Homely

  



 



 



Notes to pages –

Web of Truth: A Study of Charlotte Bronte¨’s Novels (The Hague: Mouton, ), p. . Many commentators have indicated this cause of death; see, for instance, John Hewish, Emily Bronte¨: A Critical and Biographical Study (London: Macmillan, ), p. , and Stevie Davies, Emily Bronte¨: Heretic, p. . Terry Eagleton has recently taken up the idea, addressed before by himself and others, that Heathcliff may have been conceived as a waif created by the Irish Famine; see Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture (London and New York: Verso, ), pp. –. He may seem unduly harsh to Isabella, to whom he assumes the same attitude (‘there is nothing to forgive’) as St John does to Jane; but there is an important difference in that he does not regard her actions as an offence against him. The child’s habit of not complaining led the girl Nelly to believe that he was ‘not vindictive’; but, as she says to Lockwood, ‘I was deceived, completely, as you will hear’ (.iv.). John Sutherland’s characterisation of Heathcliff before his departure from Wuthering Heights; see Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Great Puzzles in NineteenthCentury Literature (Oxford University Press, ), p.  in the World’s Classics paperback edition. (In his highly enjoyable analysis of this particular ‘puzzle’, Sutherland omits a factor which actually supports his personal belief that Heathcliff did kill Hindley: Heathcliff himself knew that Hindley’s constitution was strong and that he was unlikely, if not unable, to kill himself with drink (.ix.–) – the cause of death Heathcliff claims, against Joseph’s evidence.) Terry Eagleton also feels that Heathcliff was ‘in general an admirable character’ until he was rejected by Catherine; see Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Bronte¨s (London: Macmillan, ), p. . One of the most remarkable things she says to Heathcliff is an unabashed reference to an ambitious programme for marital relations with Edgar. Asked whether Isabella is her brother’s heir – anything but an idle question – Catherine airily replies, ‘I should be sorry to think so . . . Half-a-dozen nephews shall erase her title, please Heaven!’ (.x.). Heathcliff’s scheme to obtain Thrushcross Grange by way of Isabella begins at this moment – an ominous circumstance and difficult to reconcile with the idea of his wholehearted devotion to Catherine’s well-being. But then, he never thinks of her in such terms; see above. Later, when Cathy begins her childish flirtation with him, he points out that he has taken her part against Heathcliff ‘a hundred times’, incurring the latter’s anger (.xviii.). This passage is a strong candidate for the distinction of being the funniest piece of Bronte¨ prose, and the competition is hard, not least in view of Jane Eyre’s displays of mordant wit and the delicious touches of dry irony in Agnes Grey. Several discussions of this kind have appeared in Nineteenth-Century Fiction; see, for instance, Edgar Shannon Jr, ‘Lockwood’s Dreams and the Exegesis

Notes to pages –



of Wuthering Heights’,  (), –, and Ronald E. Fine, ‘Lockwood’s Dreams and the Key to Wuthering Heights’,  (), –. Frank Kermode’s lecture/essay ‘ ‘‘Wuthering Heights’’ as Classic’ contains some important pages on the dreams in the book. It was first published in The Classic: T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures (London: Faber and Faber, ) and is now easily available in Stoneman’s New Casebook on Wuthering Heights, where the relevant passage occurs on pp. –.  Craik, The Bronte¨ Novels, p. . It should be added, however, that this statement comes after pages of illuminating criticism of vengeance in Wuthering Heights. Another discerning analysis of the motif is Thomas Vargish’s ‘Revenge and Wuthering Heights’, Studies in the Novel  (Spring ), –; see especially pp. – on Catherine’s ‘return’ to Heathcliff. See also Matthews, ‘Framing’, –.  ‘Editor’s Preface to the New Edition of Wuthering Heights’, here quoted from p.  in the World’s Classics edition of the novel. William Madden maintains that Emily Bronte¨ did ‘place the capacity to forgive at the very center of her novel’; see ‘Wuthering Heights: The Binding of Passion’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction . (Sept. ), . (The entire article is of interest in this connexion; see especially pp. ,  and –.)  A fine analysis of forgiveness after intercession in Little Dorrit is provided by Janet Larson in Dickens and the Broken Scripture, pp. –.              Comment on Aphorism  in the ‘Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion’, Aids to Reflection, p. .  See Bradley, The Call to Seriousness, ch. .  See Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, Letter , p.  in the  Bell edition of Aids to Reflection and the Confessions (the only edition of the latter that was available to me) and Shirley .iv.. As an illustration of the impossibility of nailing Coleridge down to a consistent system of thought, see his comment on the classical exhortation ‘Know Thyself’ in the small poem ‘Self-Knowledge’ (its last line exclaims, ‘Ignore thyself, and strive to know thy God!’; a similar attitude is articulated in Biographia Literaria, .). Charles R. Sumner, in the extended version of his The Ministerial Character of Christ, Practically Considered (originally published in London in ), quotes Richard Baxter’s The Mischiefs of Self-Ignorance, and Benefits of Self-Acquaintance, insisting that everybody has a duty to face what he or she is. (This version was only available to me in a Swedish translation, called Christi la¨roembete (), where the relevant passage occurs on p. , towards the end of ch. .) Looking back to Thales, Thomas a` Kempis emphasises man’s duty to know himself at the opening of The Imitation of Christ (pp. –). Pascal constantly stresses the duty of self-knowledge, too; see, for instance,  (), p.  in Krailsheimer’s edition.  Published by Smith, Elder in ; vol. , pp. viii–ix.



Notes to pages –

 ‘Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.’  See especially Book , ch. ii, pp. –.  See further p.  below. Cf. John Kucich, Repression in Victorian Fiction: Charlotte Bronte¨, George Eliot, and Charles Dickens (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), p. .  The relevant passages are from .x.–, , and .xi.–. Thoughtful feminist analyses of religion in Shirley have been provided by Kate Lawson, in ‘The Dissenting Voice: Shirley’s Vision of Women and Christianity’, Studies in English Literature –  (), –, especially –, and by Ruth Jenkins, Reclaiming Myths of Power: Women Writers and the Victorian Spiritual Crisis (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, ), pp. –.  The Imitation of Christ, Book , ch. xxxix, p.  in Wesley’s translation; Section  in the ‘Universal Directions’ in Watts’s The Doctrine of the Passions (p.  in the Haworth copy).  On the importance of independence in Charlotte Bronte¨’s fiction, see Ewbank, Their Proper Sphere, pp. – and , and Bjo¨rk, The Language of Truth, pp. –, –, – and . Charlotte Bronte¨’s spirited friend Mary Taylor castigated her (‘You are a coward and a traitor’) for not insisting on all women’s right to do the work of their choice; see Joan Stevens’ edition of Taylor’s letters, Mary Taylor Friend of Charlotte Bronte¨: Letters from New Zealand and Elsewhere (Auckland: Auckland and Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. In her own novel, Mary Taylor deals extensively with the subject of women and work; see Miss Miles, pp. , ,  et passim.  Cf. Aphorism  in the ‘Introductory Aphorisms’, Aids to Reflection: ‘Last and highest, come the spiritual, comprising all the truths, acts and duties that have an especial reference to the Timeless, the Permanent, the Eternal: to the sincere love of the True, as truth; of the Good, as good: and of God as both in one’ (p. ).  See Basil Willey’s chapter on Arnold in Nineteenth-Century Studies: Coleridge to Matthew Arnold (London: Chatto and Windus, ; I have used the  Penguin reprint), pp. –.  This dimension in the parting salutation is easier to appreciate if one imagines it exchanged for ‘Good luck to him!’ Barry Qualls regards the last pages of Shirley as ‘a lament for all that the world of the millowner has replaced’; see Secular Pilgrims, p. . Susan Gubar goes even further in distrusting the ostensibly happy ending, calling the novel’s conclusion a ‘ridiculous fantasy’; see ‘The Genesis of Hunger, according to Shirley’, Feminist Studies  (),  (subsequently included in The Madwoman in the Attic).  See, for instance, Jane Eyre .iv. and .i.–, and Villette xxi. as well as xxiii.–. On the reason–feeling polarity in Charlotte Bronte¨’s novels, see p.  above, and ,  and –. below. Much good criticism has been devoted to this subject; see, for instance, Martin, Accents of Persuasion; Robert Heilman, ‘Charlotte Bronte¨, Reason, and the Moon’; John Kucich,

Notes to pages –

     

 







‘Passionate Reserve and Reserved Passion in the Works of Charlotte Bronte¨’, ELH  (Winter ), –; and Pauline Nestor, Charlotte Bronte¨ (London: Macmillan, ), pp. –. Cf. Pascal on the civil war between reason and passion in man, No.  () in Series  in Krailsheimer’s translation, pp. –. Cf. above, p. . Preface to the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, p.  in the World’s Classics edition. See above, pp. – and . I except Catherine the elder in Wuthering Heights, whom I find difficult to regard as a heroine in any other sense than the purely technical one of ‘central character’. Maria Frawley stresses the importance to Anne Bronte¨ of self-development; see Anne Bronte¨ (New York and London: Twayne/Prentice Hall, ), pp. –,  and –. Thomas Arnold, Christian Life, p. . In Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, Coleridge called Holy Writ ‘the appointed conservatory, an indispensable criterion, and a continual source and support of true Belief ’ (Letter , p.  in the  edition) but rejected the notion that the Bible ‘not only contains, but constitutes, the Christian Religion’. See above pp. f. On the importance of the Bible to Charlotte Bronte¨ in Brussels, see Sue Lonoff’s introduction to her edition of the Belgian essays, pp. lxiif. Jenkins’ thesis ‘The Influence of Anxiety: Bricolage Bronte¨ Style’ was presented at Rice University in . Jenkins argues that Charlotte Bronte¨ ‘subverts traditional Christian interpretation of the Bible’ (p. ) and rewrites Scripture in order to ‘script’ a life for herself that would transcend the possibilities open to a woman in her time. Although I do not agree with Jenkins that Charlotte rejected ‘the narrow, male-dominated Christianity of her day’ (p. ), I find many of his readings stimulating and challenging in constructive ways. David Norton, A History of the Bible as Literature, vol. : From  to the Present Day (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. Norton analyses the Psalms contexts that end the second volume of Jane Eyre and are discussed below from a somewhat different perspective. K. A. Jenkins draws on his doctoral research (see the preceding note) for a useful survey of patterns and personages in Jane Eyre, ‘Jane Eyre: Charlotte Bronte¨’s New Bible’, published in Diane Long Hoeveler and Beth Lau (eds.), Approaches to Teaching Bronte¨’s Jane Eyre (New York: MLA, ; it might be added that another contribution to the same volume, Susan Van Zanten Gallagher’s ‘Jane Eyre and Christianity’, is a sound review of the subject which reminds readers that the novel has been regarded as both Christian and anti-Christian, in its own day and ours). In view of the crucial importance of the Book of Job to centuries of theodicy debate, it is noteworthy that Thomas Arnold said it was ‘a portion of the

 

 

 

 

Notes to pages –

Scripture with which many of us probably are little familiar’: Sermons, Chiefly on the Interpretation of Scripture (London, ), p. . Patrick D. Miller Jr, in Bernhard W. Anderson (ed.), The Books of the Bible, vol. : The Old Testament / The Hebrew Bible (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, ), p. . Similar points were made by early Protestants; see Suzanne Trill, ‘‘Speaking to God in His Phrase and Word’’: Women’s Use of the Psalms in Early Modern England’, in Stanley E. Porter (ed.), The Nature of Religious Language: A Colloquium (Sheffield Academic Press, ), p. . By this token, Master Brocklehurst joins the other religious hypocrites in the fiction of the Bronte¨s; see above pp. –. On this variant of intertextual study, see Claes Schaar, The Full Voic’d Quire Below: Vertical Context Systems in Paradise Lost (Lund: Liber ), ch.  (Introduction), especially pp. –. See also Marit Fimland, ‘On the Margins of the Acceptable: Charlotte Bronte¨’s Villette’, Literature and Theology . (), –; Fimland draws on her master’s-thesis research (University of Tromsø, /) on Charlotte Bronte¨’s use of the Bible as narrative, especially the Eden and Exodus motifs, from an intertextual point of view. See pp. – above. Jenkins discusses this web of allusions on pp. – in ‘The Influence of Anxiety’. Besides Jenkins’ thesis, the following works should be mentioned: Michael Wheeler, ‘Literary and Biblical Allusion in ‘‘The Professor’’ ’, BST vol. ., part  (), –; see also Wheeler’s The Art of Allusion, pp. ff. Qualls’s Secular Pilgrims examines Biblical and Bunyanesque language in the Bronte¨ novels (see especially p. ). Other Scriptural allusions in the part of Jane Eyre discussed above are addressed, briefly but illuminatingly, by George P. Landow in Victorian Types Victorian Shadows: Biblical Typology in Victorian Literature, Art, and Thought (Boston and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, ), pp. –. On Biblical dimensions in Villette, see Vargish, The Providential Aesthetic, p.  (‘the entire novel lies in the shadow of Pauline doctrine’), and Christina Crosby, The Ends of History, pp. – (Crosby devotes particular attention to Old Testament typology). Alexander demonstrates the relevance of the Bible to Charlotte’s juvenilia in The Early Writings; see, for instance, pp.  and –. Another important analysis is M. Joan Chard, ‘ ‘‘Apple of Discord’’: Centrality of the Eden Myth in Charlotte Bronte¨’s Novels’, BST vol. , part  (), –. In ‘Charlotte on the Plain of Shinar: Biblical Connections in Shirley’, BST  (), –, Linda B. Figart stresses the humorous aspects of Charlotte Bronte¨’s use of the Bible. On Charlotte’s adaptation of the Bible to her personal experience, see Irene Tayler, Holy Ghosts: The Male Muses of Emily and Charlotte Bronte¨ (New York: Columbia University Press, ), pp. ff. See also the review on pp. f below of the cup-and-platter allusion in Shirley. See above, pp. ff. As Herbert Rosengarten points out in the commentary in the World’s

Notes to pages – 



    

 





Classics edition of the novel (p. ), this is a reminiscence of Psalms : (’Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat’). Vol.  (January ), –; easily accessible in Miriam Allott’s Critical Heritage volume, where the quoted passage occurs on p. . (More than a century later, Sylve`re Monod was similarly censorious, accusing Charlotte Bronte¨ not only of quoting Scripture incorrectly but of turning sacred texts to profane uses; see ‘L’Impre´cision dans Jane Eyre’, Etudes Anglaises . (), –.) It is worth observing that the Church of England Quarterly reviewer’s censure coexists with praise of Shirley’s ‘moral tendency’. In a sermon on James : Thomas Arnold, always orientated towards practical application, said that ‘what St. James [means] ... is ... that the Christian who would truly serve God in Christ, must serve Him not in word but in deed; and he selects especially two classes of good deeds, which form ... the very essence of this service, those of charity and purity’: Sermons on the Interpretation of Scripture, p. . On the narrator in Shirley, see Knies, The Art of Charlotte Bronte¨, pp. –. Vol. , p. . See David Jasper, ‘Living Powers: Sacred and Secular Language in European Romanticism’, in Stanley Porter (ed.), The Nature of Religious Language, pp. –. See Gerald Hammond, ‘In the Belly of the Whale: The Rise and Fall of Religious Language in the Early Modern Period’, in Porter (ed.), The Nature of Religious Language, pp. –. On Coleridge and Arnold, see J. Estlin Carpenter, The Bible in the Nineteenth Century: Eight Lectures (London: Longman, Green and Co., ), pp. –; on Maurice, see J. W. Rogerson, The Bible and Criticism in Victorian Britain: Profiles of F. D. Maurice and William Robertson Smith (Sheffield Academic Press, ), pp. – and . See, for instance, ‘Janet’s Repentance’ in George Eliot’s Scenes from Clerical Life (pp. – in the Clarendon edition of ). Juliet Barker quotes an account of Branwell in church which, if true, indicates that he found his own way of dealing with the situation: ‘he read with avidity during the service some book which was not the Prayer-book’. See p.  in Barker’s The Bronte¨s. In Shirley .v., Louis Moore prides himself on the ability to ‘see things as they are’. Caroline Helstone strives to adhere to that principle, too (‘Her earnest wish was to see things as they were’: .x.). The phrase was continually referred to from the late eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth century. The full title of William Godwin’s novel Caleb Williams, which problematises the relationship between an individual’s obligations to the concepts of truth and justice and to his fellow humans, was Things as They Are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams. On the origin of the expression ‘things as they are’ in Voltaire’s L’Inge´nu and its subsequent fortunes in Britain around , see Josie Dixon, ‘Revolutionary Ideals and Romantic Irony: The Godwinian Inheritance in Literature’, in Keith Hanley and



Notes to pages –

Raman Selden (eds.), Revolution and English Romanticism: Politics and Rhetoric (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, ), pp. ff. In religious writing, though, the phrase had a long and distinguished ancestry; an example known to Charlotte Bronte¨ is found in Thomas a` Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, where the first chapter of the second book emphasises that the person whose spiritual sense registers all things as they are (cui sapiunt omnia prout sunt) is truly wise, a wisdom bestowed by God; see p.  in the Wesley translation. Pascal uses the same expression in his thoughts on imagination; see no.  () in Krailsheimer’s translation, p. .  Again, Helen’s thinking is akin to a key passage in The Imitation of Christ. Chs.  and  in Book II discourse on the joys of a clear conscience and the ease with which a person who possesses it can dismiss unjustified censure from others; see pp. – in the Wesley translation. Daniel Margaliouth, who quotes the same lines from Jane Eyre, argues that they convey an ‘ultra-Protestant message’; see ‘Passion and Duty: A Study of Charlotte Bronte¨’s Jane Eyre’, Hebrew University Studies in Literature (), . Harrison calls the portrait of Helen Burns ‘the study of a Methodist child’ (Haworth Parsonage, p. ).  On Kant as the herald of the decline of conscience, see Paul L. Lehmann, Ethics in a Christian Context (New York: Harper and Row, ), pp. – (Lehmann’s whole thirteenth chapter is highly informative). The consequences of Kant’s reasoning on conscience are also outlined in G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica, first published in ; see, for example, pp. – in Thomas Baldwin’s edition from Cambridge University Press (). Regarding views of conscience in nineteenth-century theology, see, for instance, Storr, The Development, pp.  and , and Reardon, From Coleridge to Gore, pp. –, –,  and . An indication of the troubles that were gathering around the conscience concept in the early second half of the nineteenth century is provided by a letter of Charles Kingsley’s from December , in which Kingsley says that he is ‘inclined ... to say that conscience, as much as memory, is a natural law of human nature ... I hear the word as loosely used as I do, nature; and, till it be defined satisfactorily, refuse to give any opinion on the ‘‘rights of conscience,’’ which is the new god of these days’: quoted from Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memories of His Life, Edited by His Wife, vol.  (London, ), pp. –.  On these pseudo-sciences in the fiction of the Bronte¨s, see Wilfred M. Senseman, ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Use of Physiognomy and Phrenology’, BST  (), –, a recapitulation and part-reproduction of an article in Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters  (); Ian Jack, ‘Physiognomy, Phrenology and Characterisation in the Novels of Charlotte Bronte¨, BST  (), –; Annette Tromly, The Cover of the Mask: The Autobiographers in Charlotte Bronte¨’s Fiction (English Library Studies, University of Victoria, ), p.  n. ; Thorma¨hlen, ‘The Villain of Wildfell Hall’, –; and Shuttleworth, Charlotte Bronte¨, pp. –, – et passim.

Notes to pages –



 Blackwood’s  (July–Dec. ), ‘Noctes Ambrosianae’ No. . One reason for the children’s attention to have been drawn to this dialogue is the presence in it of a canine interlocutor named ‘Bronte’.  An interesting example is Mrs John Pugh’s apologia Phrenology Considered in a Religious Light: Or, Thoughts and Readings Consequent on the Perusal of ‘Combe’s Constitution of Man’ (London, ). On the likelihood of Anne Bronte¨’s having read this book, see Thorma¨hlen, ‘The Villain of Wildfell Hall’, –. The difficulties of reconciling Christianity and phrenology were adumbrated by H. G. Atkinson in his and Harriet Martineau’s Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature, p. ; cf. also p. .  ‘Romantic Shadows: Emily Bronte¨’, in Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (London: Penguin Books, ), p. .  Thomas Vargish has pointed out that Heathcliff’s revenge is also characterised by a pettiness that is somehow unworthy of him; see ‘Revenge and Wuthering Heights’, .  In addition to a string of Fausts, Hogg’s Justified Sinner is a typical example.  On the Bronte¨s’ fondness for animals, see Robert Inglesfield’s note to p.  in his and Hilda Marsden’s World’s Classics edition of Agnes Grey, p. , and Hilary Newman, ‘Animals in Agnes Grey’, BST vol. , part  (), –.  Pp. – in Richmond’s sermon; see also pp. –.  Frawley suggests that ‘it is only at this point that [Agnes] can begin to comprehend autonomy’; Anne Bronte¨, p. . On responsibility to one’s own self in Charlotte’s works, see Nestor, Charlotte Bronte¨, pp. –.              ¨      Lance St John Butler, Victorian Doubt, p.  (Butler’s italics).  Dissenter writers had obvious reasons for adopting a critical attitude towards Church of England parsons. On Elizabeth Gaskell’s anti-clericalism, see Fryckstedt, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton and Ruth, p. .  See, for instance, BLL . (letter to W. S. Williams, dated  March ) and . (letter to Miss Wooler, dated  February ). This does not, of course, mean that the parsons in Shirley are literal portraits of ‘real’ men; see William Scruton, ‘Reminiscences of the Late Miss Ellen Nussey’, BST part  (), , and BLL . (letter of  November ). Similar disclaimers are made in Herbert Wroot’s classic examination of ‘Persons and Places’ in Charlotte Bronte¨’s novels, a  supplement to the Publications of the Bronte¨ Society (no.  of vol. ); but this author rooted out a number of real-life ‘originals’ and presented them in an enjoyable and at times informative manner.  See also pp.  and  above.  The conditions described here are supposed to exist in . See Felicia Gordon, A Preface, p. .

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Notes to pages –

 The ensuing outline of church and society, and church and reform, relies on the following books: William L. Mathieson, English Church Reform –  (London: Longman, ); C. K. Francis Brown, A History of the English Clergy: – (London: The Faith Press, ); Olive J. Brose, Church and Parliament: The Reshaping of the Church of England, – (Stanford University Press, ); Hart with Carpenter, The Nineteenth Century Country Parson; G. Kitson Clark, The Making of Victorian England and Churchmen and the Condition of England – (London: Methuen, ); Hammond, The Parson and the Victorian Parish; Carpenter, Church and People; L. E. ElliottBinns, Religion in the Victorian Era; Chadwick, The Victorian Church; and Bradley, The Call to Seriousness. These developments are given plenty of scope in a very useful inventory study by Andrew L. Drummond, The Churches in English Fiction: A Literary and Historical Study, from the Regency to the Present Time, of British and American Fiction (Leicester: Edgar Backus, ). On the poisoning of relations between rural parsons and their parishioners owing to the tithe system and the enclosure movement, see Eric J. Evans, ’Some Reasons for the Growth of English Rural Anti-Clericalism c.  – c. ’, Past and Present  (), –.  See Miller, The Disappearance of God, pp. –. Cf. the conclusion of Fike’s ‘Bitter Herbs’ article with its arresting eclipse-of-God image: p. .  Blackwood’s vol.  (), .  Serially published from  to ; Chadwick notes that it had sold , copies by  (The Victorian Church, p. ). The author was the journalist John Wade, who also wrote The Extraordinary Black Book. The latter, according to Chadwick, sold , copies altogether.  See Mathieson, English Church Reform, pp. –.  See Froude’s Remains, vol. , part I (London, ), letter dated  February , pp. –.  As a point of curiosity, Mrs Lydia Robinson’s eminent father, Thomas Gisborne, was also an open advocate of reform; see his Considerations on Objections Current against Ecclesiastical Establishments, and on the Principles upon which a Reform of the Established Church of England Ought to Be Conducted (London and Edinburgh, ). Gisborne was, naturally enough, pro-Establishment per se but proclaimed that absenteeism and pluralism must disappear (p. ).  Barker quotes the letter; see The Bronte¨s, pp. –. Sixteen-year-old Charlotte, away at school, was opposed to the Reform Bill, but Branwell was in favour; as Barker says, this ‘is a measure of the independence of thought Patrick inspired in his children’ (p. ).  Quoted by Charles Smyth in Simeon and Church Order: A Study of the Origins of the Evangelical Church Revival in Cambridge in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –.  See Barker, The Bronte¨s, pp. –. Cf. Lock and Dixon, A Man of Sorrow, p. .  T. S. Grimshawe, A Memoir of the Rev. Legh Richmond, A.M. (London, ; this is the third edition), pp. –.

Notes to pages –



 See Drummond, The Churches in English Fiction, pp. –. Drummond (p.  n. ) quotes the following revealing passage from Sense and Sensibility: ‘I always preferred the Church [said Edward Ferrars], but that was not smart enough for my family. They recommended the army. That was a great deal too smart for me. The law was allowed to be genteel enough.’ See also Francis Brown, A History, pp. –. John Henry Newman’s disgust at Austen’s clerics is often quoted (here from Drummond, p. ): ‘What vile creatures her parsons are! She has not a dream of the high Catholic ethos.’  Vol. , ch. ix, p.  in John Lucas’  Oxford University Press edition.  Ibid., vol. , ch. iii, p. .  See Kitson Clark, Churchmen, pp. –.  See below, pp. – and n.  In the person, and subsequent legacy, of Aunt Branwell; the Cornish Methodists had a greater respect for Church order than Wesley and were relatively independent of both him and Whitefield. See Horton Davies, Worship and Theology, p. .  See Lock and Dixon, A Man of Sorrow, p. .  See above, p. .  See Lock and Dixon, A Man of Sorrow, pp. –, and Barker, The Bronte¨s, pp. –.  See Alan D. Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England: Church, Chapel and Social Change, – (London: Longman, ), pp. –.  See pp. – and – in Smith’s (ed.) Letters.  The reasons for this are stated above; see pp. ff.  See above, p. .  On the susceptibility of women to charismatic clergymen, see Bradley, The Call to Seriousness, pp. –.  The two quoted passages are from vol. , ch. xiv, p. , and vol. , ch. xv, p. , of The Vicar of Wrexhill. Elisabeth Jay locates Trollope’s book in the context of polemical writing on ecclesiastical matters; see The Religion of the Heart, pp. – and –.  Mrs Trollope turned against Roman Catholic fanaticism, too, in Father Eustace; see p.  above.  As Arthur Pollard pointed out in , ‘So much has been written about [Brocklehurst] and Carus Wilson that it would be superfluous to add more’ (‘The Bronte¨s’, p. ). For a recapitulation of the way in which Charlotte adapted Wilson’s writings to Brocklehurst’s discourse, see Winifred Ge´rin, Charlotte Bronte¨: The Evolution of Genius (Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. Another useful summary of the Carus Wilson and Cowan Bridge and Brocklehurst and Lowood parallel, and of the debate it has generated, is provided by Tom Winnifrith in A New Life of Charlotte Bronte¨ (London: Macmillan, ), pp. –. Illustrative extracts from Wilson’s writings are supplied in BLL .–. See also Anne Hiebert Alton, ‘Books in the Novels of Charlotte Bronte¨’, BST vol. , part  (),  and  n. ; and Ford K. Brown, Fathers of the Victorians: The Age of Wilberforce (Cambridge Univer-



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    

 

  



Notes to pages –

sity Press, ), pp. – and –. Valerie Grosvenor Myer also supplies chilling instances of Carus-Wilson’s religious tuition; see Charlotte Bronte¨, pp. –. Faith and Doubt, p. . See above, p. . An indication that Charlotte Bronte¨ deliberately imparted a fairy-story-ogre dimension to him is found in the description of Jane’s grim interviewer at Gateshead: ‘What a face he had, now that it was almost on a level with mine! what a great nose! and what a mouth! and what large prominent teeth!’ (.iv.). The passage has a distinct ‘the better to eat you with’ flavour. See Keefe, World of Death, p. , and Tromly, The Cover of the Mask, p. . See Rosman, Evangelicals and Culture, pp. – and . The Bronte¨s and Their Background, p. . ‘The Bronte¨s’, p. ; see Wolff’s Gains and Losses, pp. –. See also Robert Inglesfield’s excellent introduction to the World’s Classics edition of Agnes Grey, pp. xv–xvi. Gains and Losses, p.  (‘But why does Anne Bronte¨ dislike him? Because her father was a member of the opposition.’). J. J. Blunt, The Parish Priest: His Acquirements, Principal Obligations, and Duties, p.  in the fifth edition (London, ); the first edition of this classic, which was based on sermons preached in the s and early s, was published in . Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry; with an Inquiry into the Causes of Its Inefficiency; with an Especial Reference to the Ministry of the Establishment, p.  in the third, enlarged edition (London, ). Such visiting was not without its dangers; for instance, some clerics succumbed to the cholera in the early s as a result of attending on sick parishioners. It should be remembered that zeal in this respect was what made Jane Eyre an orphan. Cf. Kitson Clark, Churchmen, pp. –. Horton Davies quotes Charles Simeon: ‘Love should be the spring of all actions, and especially of a Minister’s’; Worship and Theology, p. . Ibid., p. . It should be added, however, that devout prayer, and the Book of Common Prayer, were vital to the Tractarians as well; see, for instance, Chapman, Faith and Revolt, passim. Leading clerics were aware of the unsatisfactory manner in which many of their colleagues read the prayers. For instance, Bishop Charles James Blomfield lamented that a reluctance to adopt a ‘declamatory or dramatic mode’ should have caused priests to read rapidly and indistinctly instead. Blomfield called the offenders ‘Mumble– Matins’; see A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of London at the Visitation in October, MDCCCXLII (London, ), pp. – and , note D. On Mr Bronte¨’s preaching, see the first paragraph of ch. xv in Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Bronte¨, p.  in the Everyman edition ( reprint). According to Patrick Bronte¨’s friend William Morgan, their erstwhile mentor John Crosse of Bradford preached extempore in spite of some people’s calling

Notes to pages –

   

  

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  

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him a Methodist as a result; see Morgan’s The Parish Priest: Pourtrayed in the Life, Character, and Ministry, of the Rev. John Crosse, A.M. (London, ), p. . Legh Richmond also employed and defended this mode of preaching; see Grimshawe, A Memoir, pp. –; so did John Buckworth (see Baumber, ‘Grimshaw, Bronte¨ and the Evangelical Revival’, ). The Nineteenth-Century Parson, pp. –. (It might be pointed out here that Mr Weston’s predecessor as curate under Mr Hatfield was one Mr Bligh, another unsatisfactory cleric.) See Bridges, The Christian Ministry, pp. – and –. Blunt’s Parish Priest, p. . Horton Davies stresses the erroneousness of the customary notion that the Evangelicals neglected the sacraments; see Worship and Theology, pp. –. Even so, the infrequency with which the Eucharist was celebrated around  worried prominent churchmen; for instance, Bishop Blomfield was sorry to find this ‘most appropriate and distinguishing act of Christian worship’ only administered four times a year in certain parishes belonging to his diocese. See A Charge at the Visitation in October, MDCCCXLII, pp. –. Horton Davies, Worship and Theology, pp. –. On Holy Communion under Grimshaw, see also Frank Baker, William Grimshaw – (London: The Epworth Press, ), pp. –. See Alf Ha¨rdelin’s eminent study, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Historico-Ecclesiastica Upsaliensia , ). Both Nancy and the Articles rely on  Cor. :. On the question of the ‘manducatio indignorum’, see Ha¨rdelin, The Tractarian Understanding, pp. –. The Evangelical position is clarified by Douglas Webster, ‘Simeon’s Pastoral Theology’, p. . Translating The Imitation of Christ, Wesley gave plenty of space to Thomas’ views on the Eucharist, including the insistence that the Christian should ‘communicate often’; see Book , ch. iii, pp. ff. In this respect he resembles the similarly unworthy curates in Shirley. See Jay, The Religion of the Heart, pp. –. On the growing awareness in the early nineteenth century of the clergyman’s duty to live in a manner contrasting with that of the laity, see Kitson Clark, Churchmen, p. . Before that, nobody would have thought it odd for a parson to attend a ball; see Hart and Carpenter, The Nineteenth-Century Parson, p. . See A. Tindal Hart, The Curate’s Lot: The Story of the Unbeneficed English Clergy (London: J. Baker, ), pp. –, for some hilarious accounts of the tribulations that both parties could suffer at each other’s hands. Charlotte Bronte¨’s description of the clerics who disapproved of Shirley; see her letter to Miss Wooler of  February , BLL .. The publication of Scott’s Marmion has served as a peg on which to hang the dating of Jane Eyre; see .vi.. France and England were at war until the Peace of Amiens in , which was of short duration; dissatisfied with the outcome, the English government declared war on Napoleonic France



Notes to pages –

again in . Q. D. Leavis noted other anomalies in ‘Appendix: Dating Jane Eyre’; see pp. – in her Collected Essays, ed. G. Singh, vol. I (Cambridge University Press, ).  Sanger’s essay was first published by the Hogarth Press in . It has frequently been reprinted, for instance in William Sale’s Norton edition of Wuthering Heights.  The Bronte¨ Novels, p. .  BLL ., in the  February  letter to Miss Wooler quoted above.  Secular Pilgrims, p. .  See BLL .–, letters of  and  March  to the Smith, Elder manager, James Taylor, and the reader W. S. Williams, respectively.  Vol. , p.  in the Kingsley Letters and Memoirs; the letter is also quoted in BLL .–.  See BLL ., a letter to Ellen Nussey dated  August ; Joan Stevens reproduces it on pp. – in her edition of Mary Taylor’s letters.  For a succinct summary, see Horton Davies, Worship and Theology, pp. –; Chadwick offers a more detailed account in The Victorian Church, pp. –.  Francis Brown is informative on clerical dress; see pp. – in A History.  As many commentators have pointed out, ‘the Propaganda’ was a congregation of cardinals charged with missions and administration in nonRoman-Catholic countries.  In ch. v of The Newcomes, Thackeray described (also in humorous terms) how a ‘trim, prim freshly mangled surplice’ in the pulpit was enough to drive worthy matrons out of churches; Francis Brown quotes the relevant passages on pp. – of A History.  See Willey, Nineteenth-Century Studies, p. .  See, for instance, p.  in the World’s Classics commentary.  See, for instance, Jane Eyre .vii.: ‘[Mr Brocklehurst] would perhaps have felt that, whatever he might do with the outside of the cup and platter, the inside was further beyond his interference than he imagined.’  Smith and Rosengarten state the source of the cup-and-platter image as Matthew : but suggest that the ‘altar’ and ‘temple’ components derive from Exodus :–. Actually, far more relevant Bible parallels occur earlier in Matthew , verses – and –.  During their engagement Charlotte said to a friend, ‘He is a Puseyite and very stiff . . . [but] I shall never let him make me a bigot.’ See Ge´rin, Charlotte Bronte¨, p. , and Anon., ‘Two Letters from Charlotte Bronte¨ to Mrs. Gaskell’, BST vol. . (), –. In a letter dated  April , she told Mrs Gaskell that her reference to baptismal regeneration had caused Nicholls to ‘groan a little’ when he read Shirley – another charming detail which illustrates both his dogmatic streak and her own relaxed attitude.  Myths of Power, p. ; see also p. , where Helstone is said to be the beneficiary of ‘class-solidarity’.  See above, p. .

Notes to pages –

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 ‘The stoutest kind of leather, used for the soles of boots and shoes’ (Smith and Rosengarten’s commentary, p.  in the World’s Classics edition of Shirley).  G. D. Nokes’ A History of the Crime of Blasphemy (London: Sweet and Maxwell, ) repeatedly emphasises the connexion, upheld for many centuries, between seditious talk and behaviour directed against the monarch and the country’s laws on the one hand and attacks on Christianity on the other.  See above, pp. ff.  See pp. ,  and – above.  I find Barry Qualls’ application of the epithet ‘ineffectual’ to Mr Hall incomprehensible (Secular Pilgrims, p. ).  See above, pp. f. and Phillips, ‘Priesthood’, –.  On the suspiciousness of Evangelical Churchmen against their fellow clergymen, see Bradley, The Call to Seriousness, pp. –.  BLL . (letter to W. S. Williams, dated  June ).  See Phillips, ‘Priesthood’, –.  Letter dated  December , p.  in Margaret Smith’s edition of Charlotte Bronte¨’s Letters, vol.  (BLL .).  Cf. Figes, Sex and Subterfuge, p. .                     ‘Bertha and the Critics’, Nineteenth-Century Literature . (Dec. ), .  Elizabeth Imlay, one of the few critics who have devoted whole chapters to St John Rivers; see her Charlotte Bronte¨ and the Mysteries of Love: Myth and Allegory in Jane Eyre (New York, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, ), p. .  BLL .–, a letter dated  July . A fuller, carefully edited transcript of this remarkable letter – remarkable not least because Mary Taylor found Jane Eyre so devoid of ‘moral’ and ‘protest’ – is provided by Joan Stevens in her edition of Taylor’s letters, pp. –.  I may have missed an observation along these lines in the vast critical literature on Jane Eyre, in which case I apologise.  Perception and Expression, p. ; the St John discussion is found on pp. –. See also Myer, Charlotte Bronte¨, p. .  The Religion of the Heart, pp. –. (Unlike Judith Williams, though, Jay views St John’s sainthood as a certainty.)  Pollard, ‘The Bronte¨s’, p. ; see also Gordon, A Preface, pp.  and .  St John can be read as a textbook case of sublimation. John Maynard recently referred to ‘the cold, repressive misuse of sexual energies for their religious aims by sex-powered zealots like St. John Rivers’; see Victorian Discourses on Sexuality and Religion (Cambridge University Press, ), p. .  According to Gilbert and Gubar, St John’s ‘almost blatantly patriarchal name’ recalls ‘the disguised misogyny’ of the Baptist (as evidenced in his resistance to Salome); Madwoman, p. .

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Notes to pages –

 A parallel noted by Keefe, World of Death, p. . Jane’s and the Riverses’ uncle Eyre’s first name was John, too.  Thomas Arnold’s sermon on  John  stresses the ‘spirit of love’ in which St John brought human and Divine love together. See Sermons on the Interpretation of Scripture, pp. –. References to St John as the apostle of love abound in the writings of the period; see, for instance, Maurice’s The Kingdom of Christ, vol. , ch. iii, p. .  See The Life of Henry Venn, pp. –, and Maurice, Theological Essays, p. .  Perception and Expression, pp. –.  See Simeon’s The True Test of Religion in the Soul: or Practical Christianity Delineated, a Sermon Preached before the University of Cambridge,  March , and Wilberforce, A Practical View, p. . Brainerd is quoted from Josiah Pratt, The Life of the Rev. David Brainerd (London, ), p. . On the latter, see further pp. f. below.  Many critics have drawn attention to St John’s despotism (the word is repeatedly used in Jane Eyre) towards Jane, and it would be superfluous to add to their discussions. See, for instance, Q. D. Leavis’ introduction to the  Penguin edition of the novel, now perhaps most easily available in Leavis’ Collected Essays, vol. , pp.  and , and Martin, Accents of Persuasion, pp. ff.  Branwell nourished a lasting interest in the Lucifer figure; see Robert G. Collins’ edition of The Hand of the Arch-Sinner: Two Angrian Chronicles of Branwell Bronte¨ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), pp. xxviff. St John’s appearance, it might be added, tells against him in the work of an author whose true heroes are characteristically dark and unhandsome.  See, for instance, Bridges, The Christian Ministry, pp. –.  See above, p. n. on Simeon and pastoral love.  Misreading Jane Eyre, p. . See also Charmian Knight, ‘Reader, What Next? – The Final Chapter of Jane Eyre’, BST vol. , part  (), –, especially  (’The difference between Jane and St John was not of unfaith and faith, but of different interpretations of the same faith, and different vocations within it’).  See above, p. .  Review in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine ( (), ) of Sir John Malcolm’s Political History of India ().  See Imlay, Charlotte Bronte¨, pp.  and . As the continued discussion shows, I agree with those critics who have argued that Jane Eyre presents a favourable view of missionary work. For recapitulations of the post-colonial line in Jane Eyre criticism and a dissenting perspective, see Susan Meyer, Imperialism at Home: Race and Victorian Women’s Fiction (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, ), pp. –. See also Beaty, Misreading Jane Eyre, pp. –.  See ch. , ‘A Mission to the Heathen’, in Bradley’s A Call to Seriousness, pp. –.  See Hopkins, The Father of the Bronte¨s, pp. –; Lock and Dixon, A Man of

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      

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Sorrow, pp. –, Phillips, ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Concepts’, pp. –; and Barker, The Bronte¨s, pp. –. Richard T. France, ‘Henry Martyn’, in Five Pioneer Missionaries (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, ), p. . See, for instance, Phillips, ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Concepts’, pp. –, and Beaty, Misreading Jane Eyre, p. . See Phillips, ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Concepts’, pp. –. As Tom Winnifrith points out in his edition of The Poems of Charlotte Bronte¨ (Oxford: Basil Blackwell for the Shakespeare Head Press, ), Charlotte’s poem ‘The Missionary’ (pp. –) is ‘an interesting preview of St John Rivers’ (p. ); but the speaker’s references to the ‘great sacrifice’ of a beloved woman who ‘[might] not go with me’ suggest Martyn and his lost love far more than St John and Miss Oliver. France, ‘Henry Martyn’, p. . John Sargent’s A Memoir of the Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D. (London, ; this is the third edition), p. ; see also p.  on Martyn’s zeal being tempered with love. In his essay on the Clapham Sect (to which Patrick Bronte¨ owed a great deal), Sir James Stephen describes how Martyn’s dedication to the welfare of ‘the great human family’ ‘partook more of the fervour of domestic affection, than of the kind and gentle warmth of a diffusive philanthropy’; see Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, vol. , p. . Stephen presents an outline of Martyn’s life on pp. –. See Henry Martyn, Twenty Sermons (London, ; this is the second edition), pp. –. On Villette, see above pp. f. See above, p. . Martyn, Sermons, p. . Pratt, Life of Brainerd, pp. ,  and . The reference to Martyn is on pp. x–xi. Sargent, Memoir, p. . To mention a single instance, a dying child in W. Carus Wilson’s The Children’s Friend, vol. , no.  (), –, comments, ‘with a heavenly smile’, on her surviving a convulsive attack: ‘I thought it had been over; come, Lord Jesus, come quickly!’ Sermons, pp. – and . Charlotte Bronte¨, p. . Charlotte Bronte¨ and Defensive Conduct: The Author and the Body at Risk (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ), p. . Hook, ‘The Father of the Family’, . Annette Tromly feels that the ending of Jane Eyre expresses Jane’s implicit dissatisfaction with her own ‘pedestrian’ life; see The Cover of the Mask, pp. –. See ‘Closing the Book’, p. . See also Knight, ‘Reader, What Next?’, where the final paragraphs of the book are shown to impart a sense of onward movement. A favourite with Grimshaw of Haworth, the sentence appears on a teapot, a



     



Notes to pages –

piece of funerary china which belonged to the Bronte¨s, in the Parsonage Museum. (It should not, contrary to a widespread notion, be viewed as a summary characterisation of Aunt Branwell’s religion.) Misreading Jane Eyre, pp. –. Secular Pilgrims, p. . See pp. ff. above. Cf. p.  above. See Misreading Jane Eyre, pp.  and . True, we are given a brief, halting outline, in his own words spoken to Jane, of Rochester’s ‘conversion’; but it is subordinated to and in a sense carried by the mysterious-summons episode and hence less of a challenge than an account of St John’s religious maturation would have been. The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, coll. and ed. by Gordon N. Ray (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ), vol. , p. , letter to William Smith Williams of  October . (Several Bronte¨ critics have quoted Thackeray’s remark.)

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Names of publishers are not supplied in respect of works published before . The place of publication is London unless otherwise stated. For the editions of the Bronte¨ novels that were used in this book, see Abbreviations and editions.             Anon., Popery and Protestantism Compared, . Arnold, Thomas, Christian Life, Its Course, Its Hindrances, and Its Helps: Sermons, Preached Mostly in the Chapel of Rugby School, . Sermons, Chiefly on the Interpretation of Scripture, . Bickersteth, Edward, Remarks on the Progress of Popery, Including Observations on Its True Character, rd edn, . Blunt, J. J., The Parish Priest: His Acquirements, Principal Obligations, and Duties, th edn, . Bridges, Charles, The Christian Ministry; with an Inquiry into the Causes of Its Inefficiency; with an Especial Reference to the Ministry of the Establishment, rd edn, . Bronte¨, Anne, The Poems of Anne Bronte¨: A New Text and Commentary, ed. Edward Chitham, Macmillan, . Bronte¨, Charlotte, An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Bronte¨, vol. I, ed. Christine Alexander, Oxford: Basil Blackwell/Shakespeare Head Press, . The Poems of Charlotte Bronte¨, ed. Tom Winnifrith, Oxford: Basil Blackwell/ Shakespeare Head Press, . Bronte¨, Emily, Emily Jane Bronte¨: The Complete Poems, ed. Janet Gezari, Harmondsworth: Penguin, . Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Aids to Reflection, ed. John Beer, London and Princeton: Routledge and Princeton University Press, ; vol.  in the Bollingen edition of The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Defoe, Daniel, The History of the Devil, as well Ancient and Modern, in Two Parts, nd edn, . The Secrets of the Invisible World Laid Open, or A General History of Apparitions, . Gaskell, Elizabeth, The Life of Charlotte Bronte¨, . Many editions have appeared over the years; the  reprint of the Everyman edn was used for 



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this book. Gresley, William, Portrait of an English Churchman, ; repr. as no.  in Victorian Fiction: Novels of Faith and Doubt series: Garland, New York and London . Grimshawe, T. S., A Memoir of the Rev. Legh Richmond, A.M., rd edn, . Harris, Elizabeth, From Oxford to Rome: and How It Fared with Some Who Lately Made the Journey, . Horsfall Turner, J. (ed.), Bronte¨ana: The Reverend Patrick Bronte¨, A.B., His Collected Works and Life, Bingley, . Kempis, Thomas a`, Extract of the Christian’s Pattern: or, a Treatise on the Imitation of Christ, trans. John Wesley, n.d. Lonoff, Sue (ed.), The Belgian Essays Charlotte Bronte¨ and Emily Bronte¨: A Critical Edition, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, . Martyn, Henry, Twenty Sermons, nd edn, . Maurice, F. D., The Kingdom of Christ, ; the edn used for this book was published by Dent, Everyman’s Library, n. d. []. Maurice, Frederick (ed.), The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice,  vols., th edn, . Morgan, William, Christian Instructions,  vols., . The Parish Priest: Pourtrayed in the Life, Character, and Ministry, of the Rev. John Crosse, A.M., . Newman, John Henry, Loss and Gain, . Pascal, Blaise, Pascal Pense´es, ed. and trans. A. J. Krailsheimer, Penguin, . Sargent, John, A Memoir of the Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D., rd edn, . Sewell, Elizabeth, Margaret Percival, . Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Bronte¨ with a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends, vol. I: –, Oxford: Clarendon Press, . Stephen, Sir James, Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography,  vols., . Stevens, Joan (ed.), Mary Taylor Friend of Charlotte Bronte¨: Letters from New Zealand and Elsewhere, Auckland: Auckland and Oxford University Press, . Taylor, Mary, Miss Miles, or a Tale of Yorkshire Life  Years Ago, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, , with an introduction by Janet H. Murray. [Tonna], Charlotte Elizabeth, Falsehood and Truth, Liverpool, . Trollope, Frances, The Vicar of Wrexhill, . Venn, Henry, The Complete Duty of Man, ; there were many reprints, including one in  which was used for this book. Venn, John (ed.), The Life and a Selection from the Letters of the Late Rev. Henry Venn, M.A., . Watts, Isaac, Discourses of the Love of God and the Use and Abuse of the Passions in Religion, . Wilberforce, William, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System, . Many subsequent editions; the one used for this book was the  Glasgow edn with an introduction by David Wilson. Williamson, John, A Brief Memoir of the Rev. Charles Simeon, M.A., .

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Wise, T. J. and Symington, J. A. (eds.), The Bronte¨s: Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence,  vols., by Basil Blackwell for the Shakespeare Head Press in ; repr. as  vols. in . Woodhouse, G. W., Practical Sermons,  vols., .              Alexander, Christine, The Early Writings of Charlotte Bronte¨, Oxford: Blackwell, . Allott, Miriam (ed.), The Bronte¨s: The Critical Heritage, Routledge and Kegan Paul, . Almond, Philip C., Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England, Cambridge University Press, . Barker, Juliet, The Bronte¨s, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, . Baumber, Michael, ‘William Grimshaw, Patrick Bronte¨ and the Evangelical Revival’, History Today  (Nov. ), –. Berry, Elizabeth Hollis, Anne Bronte¨’s Radical Vision: Structures of Consciousness, English Literature Studies, University of Victoria, . Berry, Laura C., ‘Acts of Custody and Incarceration in Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’, Novel . (Fall ), –. Bjo¨rk, Harriet, The Language of Truth: Charlotte Bronte¨ and the Woman Question, Lund Studies in English no. , Lund: CWK Gleerup, . Blom, M. A., Charlotte Bronte¨, Boston: Twayne, . Blondel, Jacques, Emily Bronte¨: Expe´rience spirituelle et cre´ation poe´tique, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, . Bradley, Ian, The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians, Jonathan Cape, . Brown, C. K. Francis, A History of the English Clergy: –, The Faith Press, . Brown, Ford K., Fathers of the Victorians: The Age of Wilberforce, Cambridge University Press, . Buchen, Irving H., ‘Emily Bronte¨ and the Metaphysics of Childhood and Love’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction . (June ), –. Butler, Lance St John, Victorian Doubt: Literary and Cultural Discourses, HarvesterWheatsheaf, . Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church, Part One, –, A. and C. Black, ; repr. as an SCM paperback in . Chapman, Raymond, Faith and Revolt: Studies in the Literary Influence of the Oxford Movement, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, . Chard, M. Joan, ‘‘‘Apple of Discord’’: Centrality of the Eden Myth in Charlotte Bronte¨’s Novels’, BST vol. , part  (), –. Chitham, Edward, A Life of Anne Bronte¨, Oxford: Blackwell, . Clark, G. Kitson, Churchmen and the Condition of England –, Methuen, . The Making of Victorian England, Methuen ; University Paperbacks repr. in

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. Craik, W. A., The Bronte¨ Novels, Methuen, . Cunningham, Valentine, Everywhere Spoken Against: Dissent in the Victorian Novel, Oxford: Clarendon Press, . Davies, Horton, Worship and Theology in England: From Watts and Wesley to Maurice, vol. , Princeton University Press, . Davies, Stevie, Emily Bronte¨: Heretic, The Women’s Press, . Drummond, Andrew L., The Churches in English Fiction: A Literary and Historical Study, from the Regency to the Present Time, of British and American Fiction, Leicester: Edgar Backus, . Eagleton, Terry, Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Bronte¨s, Macmillan, . Elliott-Binns, L. E., Religion in the Victorian Era, Lutterworth Press, ; repr. . Ewbank, Inga-Stina, Their Proper Sphere: A Study of the Bronte¨ Sisters as EarlyVictorian Novelists, Edward Arnold, . Figes, Eva, Sex and Subterfuge: Women Novelists to , Macmillan, . Fike, Francis, ‘Bitter Herbs and Wholesome Medicines: Love as Theological Affirmation in Wuthering Heights’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction . (Sept.), –. Frawley, Maria, Anne Bronte¨, New York and London: Twayne/Prentice Hall, . Ge´rin, Winifred, Charlotte Bronte¨: The Evolution of Genius. Oxford University Press, . Gilbert, Sandra M. and Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, . Gilmour, Robin, The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, –, Longman, . Gordon, Felicia, A Preface to the Bronte¨s, New York and London: Longman, . Hammond, Peter C., The Parson and the Victorian Parish, Hodder and Stoughton, . Harrison, Grace Elizabeth, The Clue to the Bronte¨s, Methuen, . Hart, A. Tindal, with Edward Carpenter, The Nineteenth-Century Country Parson (circa –), Shrewsbury: Wilding, . Hennell, Michael, Sons of the Prophets: Evangelical Leaders of the Victorian Church, SPCK, . Hewish, John, Emily Bronte¨: A Critical and Biographical Study, Macmillan, . Hook, Ruth, ‘The Father of the Family’, BST vol. ., part  (), –. Hopkins, Annette B., The Father of the Bronte¨s, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, . Houghton, Walter E., The Victorian Frame of Mind –, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, . Jay, Elisabeth, Faith and Doubt in Victorian Britain, Macmillan, . The Religion of the Heart: Anglican Evangelicalism and the Nineteenth-Century Novel, Oxford: Clarendon Press, .

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Jenkins, Keith Allan, ‘The Influence of Anxiety: Bricolage Bronte¨ Style’, Ph.D. thesis, Rice University, . Keefe, Robert, Charlotte Bronte¨’s World of Death, Austin: University of Texas Press, . Knies, Earl A., The Art of Charlotte Bronte¨, Athens: Ohio University Press, . Knight, Charmian, ‘Reader, What Next?’ – The Final Chapter of Jane Eyre’, BST vol. , part  (), –. Langland, Elizabeth, Anne Bronte¨: The Other One, Macmillan, . Lawson, Kate, ‘The Dissenting Voice: Shirley’s Vision of Women and Christianity’, Studies in English Literature –  (), –. Leavis, Q. D., Collected Essays, vol.  (The Englishness of the English Novel), ed. G. Singh, Cambridge University Press, . Le Guern, Joseph, Anne Bronte¨ (–): La vie et l’oeuvre,  vols., Paris: Librairie Honore´ Champion, . Lerner, Laurence, ‘Bertha and the Critics’, Nineteenth-Century Literature . (Dec. ), –. Lock, John and Dixon, W. T., A Man of Sorrow: The Life, Letters and Times of the Rev. Patrick Bronte¨, Nelson, . Madden, William, ‘Wuthering Heights: The Binding of Passion’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction . (Sept. ), –. Martin, Robert Bernard, The Accents of Persuasion: Charlotte Bronte¨’s Novels, Faber and Faber, . Mathieson, William L., English Church Reform –, Longman, . Matthews, John T., ‘Framing in ‘‘Wuthering Heights’’ ’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language . (Spring ), –. Maynard, John, Charlotte Bronte¨ and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, . McGlamery, Gayla, ‘ ‘‘This Unlicked Wolf-Cub’’: Anti-Catholicism in Charlotte Bronte¨’s Villette’, Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens  (), –. McMaster, Juliet, ‘ ‘‘Imbecile Laughter’’ and ‘‘Desperate Earnest’’ in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’, Modern Language Quarterly  (Dec. ), –. Miller, J. Hillis, The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century Writers, Cambridge Mass.: Belknap Harvard University Press, . Myer, Valerie Grosvenor, Charlotte Bronte¨: Truculent Spirit, London and Totowa, N.J.: Vision and Barnes & Noble, . Nestor, Pauline, Charlotte Bronte¨, Macmillan, . Norman, Edward, Roman Catholicism in England from the Elizabethan Settlement to the Second Vatican Council, Oxford University Press, . Overton, J. H., The English Church in the Nineteenth Century, . Phillips, Marion J., ‘Charlotte Bronte¨ and the Priesthood of All Believers’, BST vol. , part  (), –. ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Concepts of Transcendence and of Authority in Religion as Manifested in Her Correspondence’, Ph.D. thesis, King’s College, University of London, . ‘Charlotte Bronte¨’s Favourite Preacher: Frederick Denison John Maurice (–)’, BST vol. , part  (), –.

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Pittock, Malcolm, ‘Wuthering Heights and Its Critics’, Critical Survey  (Summer ), –. Pollard, Arthur, ‘The Bronte¨s and Their Father’s Faith’, in Raymond Chapman (ed.), Essays and Studies, London: John Murray, and Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Humanities Press, , pp. –. Porter, Stanley E. (ed.), The Nature of Religious Language: A Colloquium, Sheffield Academic Press, . Prentis, Barbara, The Bronte¨ Sisters and George Eliot: A Unity of Difference, Macmillan, . Prickett, Stephen, Romanticism and Religion: The Tradition of Coleridge and Wordsworth in the Victorian Church, Cambridge University Press, . Qualls, Barry V., The Secular Pilgrims of Victorian Fiction: The Novel as Book of Life, Cambridge University Press, . Reardon, Bernard M. G., From Coleridge to Gore: A Century of Religious Thought in Britain, Longman, . Rosman, Doreen M., Evangelicals and Culture, ; for this book, the  Gregg Revivals reprint was used. Sanders, Charles Richard, Coleridge and the Broad Church Movement, Durham: Duke University Press, . Shuttleworth, Sally, Charlotte Bronte¨ and Victorian Psychology, Cambridge University Press, . Storr, Vernon, The Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century – , Longman, Green and Co., . Thorma¨hlen, Marianne, ‘The Lunatic and the Devil’s Disciple: The ‘‘Lovers’’ in Wuthering Heights’, Review of English Studies , n. s. (), –. ‘The Villain of Wildfell Hall: Aspects and Prospects of Arthur Huntingdon’, Modern Language Review . (Oct. ), –. Tillotson, Kathleen, Novels of the Eighteen-Forties, Clarendon Press, . Tromly, Annette, The Cover of the Mask: The Autobiographers in Charlotte Bronte¨’s Fiction, English Library Studies, University of Victoria, . Tulloch, John, Movements of Religious Thought in Britain during the Nineteenth Century, . Van Ghent, Dorothy, The English Novel: Form and Function, New York: Rinehart and Co., . Vargish, Thomas, The Providential Aesthetic in Victorian Fiction, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, . ‘Revenge and Wuthering Heights’, Studies in the Novel  (Spring ), –. Vidler, Alec R., The Church in an Age of Revolution, The Pelican/Penguin History of the Church, ; repr. in . Walker, D. P., The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment, Routledge and Kegan Paul, . Wheeler, Michael, The Art of Allusion in Victorian Fiction, Macmillan, . Death and the Future Life in Victorian Literature and Theology, Cambridge University Press, . Willey, Basil, Nineteenth-Century Studies: Coleridge to Matthew Arnold, Chatto and

Select Bibliography



Windus, ; repr. by Penguin in . Williams, Carolyn, ‘Closing the Book: The Intertextual End of Jane Eyre’, in Jerome McGann (ed.), Victorian Connections, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, , pp. –. Williams, Judith, Perception and Expression in the Novels of Charlotte Bronte¨, Ann Arbor and London: UMI Research Press, . Winnifrith, Tom, The Bronte¨s and Their Background: Romance and Reality, Macmillan, . Wolff, Robert Lee, Gains and Losses: Novels of Faith and Doubt in Victorian England, John Murray, .

Index

‘abominable fancy’, the, –, –n Abrams, M. H., n Agricola, Johann,  Alexander, Christine, n, n, n, n, n, n, n Allott, Miriam (ed.), n Almond, Philip C., n, n, n, , , n Alton, Anne Hiebert, n Anderson, Bernhard W. (ed.), n angel metaphor, – anger, , , , , , , –, –, –, , n Anglican Church, condition of circa –, , , , –, –, –, , , –,  animals, cruelty to, –, n annihilationism, see mortalism anti-Catholicism, general, –, , , , , , , , see also Bronte¨, Charlotte, anti-Catholicism anti-Established-Church feeling, , , , , , n Antinomians, , –, , n anti-sacerdotalism, general, , see also Bronte¨, Charlotte, anti-sacerdotalism Apostles Creed, the, ,  apostolic succession, , ,  Arminians and Arminianism, ,  Arnold, Thomas, –, , , , , , , , n, n, n–, n Christian Life, , , n, , , n, n, n, n Principles of Church Reform, , – Sermons, –n, n, n Ashton, Rosemary, n Athanasian Creed, the, , –, –n, , 

Atkinson, H. G., n, n Atonement, doctrine of, ,, , , –, –, , –,  Auerbach, Nina, n Augustine, St,  Austen, Jane, ,  Emma,  Mansfield Park, ,  Northanger Abbey,  Pride and Prejudice, – Sense and Sensibility, , n Baine, Rodney M., , n Baker, Frank, n Baptism, , , n baptismal regeneration, ,  Barker, Juliet, n, n, , n, n, , n, n, n, n, n, n, n, , n Barth, J. Robert, S. J., n, n Baumber, Michael, , n, n, n Baxter, Richard, n, n Beaty, Jerome, , , n, n, –n, n, , n, n,  Bebbington, D. W., n Beer, John (ed.), n Bentley, Phyllis, , n Berry, Elizabeth Hollis, , n, n Berry, Laura C., n, n Bible and Tract Societies,  . As comfort,  as the Christian’s guide, , –, –, , , , , –, ,  historical veracity of, –,– miracles in,  passages from/references to individual



Index books: Genesis ; Exodus , n; Samuel , ; Kings ,; Chronicles ; Job , –n; Psalms –, , , –, –n Proverbs ; Isaiah –, , , n, n; Ecclesiastes ; Jeremiah ; Lamentations ; Jonah ; Matthew , , , , , –, , n, n; Mark , , n, n; Luke –, n, n; John , , n; Romans , ,  Cor. , , n, n,  Cor. ; Phil. ,  Tim. ; Hebrews ; James n, n;  John –, , , , –, n and ; Rev. , , , , – Biblical language and allusions, , , –, , –, , –, –, n, n,  Bickersteth, Edward, , n, n, , n Bjo¨rk, Harriet, n, n Black Books, , ,  Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, , , , , –n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n blasphemy, , , n Blom, M. A., n Blomfield, Charles James, n, n Blondel, Jacques, , –n, n Blunt, J. J., , –, n Boumelha, Penny, n Bradley, Ian, n, n, n, n, n, n, n Brainerd, David, , , n, n Branwell, Elizabeth (‘Aunt’), , , , n, n, n, n Brett, R. L. (ed.), n Bridges, Charles, –, –, , n, n, n Brilioth, Yngve, n ‘Broad Church’ concept, –, n   ¨ ,   principal references only Preface to nd edn of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, , n, n poems, , , , –, , , n, n, n, n, , n, – religious crises, –, , –, , , n universalism, –, – Agnes Grey: –, –, , , , –, n; characters in: Bligh, Mr, n; Bloomfield, Mrs, Jr, ; Bloomfield, Mrs, Sr, –; Bloomfield, Tom, –; Brown, Nancy, –, , , –, , , –; Grey, Agnes, –, –,



, –, , –, , , , , , –, , , , ; Grey, Mrs, ; Hatfield, Mr, , , , , –, n; Murray, Rosalie, , –, , , ; Weston, Mr, , , , , , , , –, , n The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: –, –, –, –, –, –, , ,n, n, , ; characters in: Boreham, Mr, n, Hargrave, Walter, , , –; Hattersley, Ralph, , , ; Huntingdon, Arthur, , –, –, –, –, , , , –, , , , , n, n, n, n; Huntingdon, Helen (ne´e Lawrence), , –, , –, –, –, –, –, , –, , –, –, , , , , –, , , –, n, n, , n, n, n, n, n; Lawrence, Frederick, , , –; Lowborough, Annabella, ; Lowborough, Lord, –, Markham, Gilbert, , , –, , –, , , –, , , n, n, , n, Maxwell, Mrs, –, n; Millward, Mary, ; Millward, Mr, , , , Wilson; Richard,  Bronte¨, Branwell, , , , n, n, n, n, n, n, n   ¨ ,   principal references only juvenilia, n, n poems, n preface to nd ed of Jane Eyre, , n anti-Catholicism, , –, , , , n, n anti-Established-Church sentiments,  anti-sacerdotalism, , n as a sister/commentator on her siblings’ works, , , , , , n, –n, n, n dislike of Athanasian Creed, , n dislike of Rousseau, n dislike of sectarianism and fanaticism, –, –, , , n religious crises, , , –, n sense of time, – universalism, –, – view of literary genius, n Letters: M. Smith ed., , –, , , n, n, , , n, n,n, , n; BLL see ‘Abbreviations and editions’, –, , –, , , , , , n, n, , n, , n, n,



Index

n, , , , n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, , , n, n The Professor: –, , , n Jane Eyre: , , , –, , –, –, –, , –, , , –, –, –, n, n, n, –n; feminist criticism of, , n;, nature imagery in, –, –n, ; the ‘mysterious-summons’ incident in, , , –, –, n, n; characters in: Bessie, ; Brocklehurst, Mr, , , –, , , , –, , , –, n, n, n; Burns, Helen, –, –, , , , –, , –, , –, , , –, , n, n, , , n; Eyre, Jane, , , , –, –, , –, –, –, , , , –, –, , , –, , , –, –, –, , –, , , , –, n, n, , , , n; Eyre, John, n; Fairfax, Mrs, , Hannah, , , Lloyd, Mr, ; Oliver, Rosamund, , n, Poole, Grace; n; Reed, Eliza, ; Reed, family name, ; Reed, John, , ; Reed, Mrs, , –, , n, ; Rivers, Diana, , , , ; Rivers, Mary, , ; Rivers, St John, , , , , –, , , , , –, , , , , – (name –, case against him –, defence of –, as a missionary –, death –), n, n, , , n, n; Rochester, Bertha, ne´e Mason, –; Rochester, Edward Fairfax, , –, , –, –, , –, , , –, –, , , , n, n, n, n; Temple, Miss, , –, , –, Varens, Ade`le, , Varens, Ce´line, n Shirley, , , , , , , , , , –, –, , –, –, –, , , –, –, –, –n, n, n, n, n, , n, ; characters in: Ainley, Miss, , –, , , ; Boultby, Dr, , –, ; Cave, Mary, ; Donne, Mr, , –, ; Hall, Mr (Cyril), , , , –, n; Hartley, Mike, , , n; Helstone, Caroline, , , , –, , , , , , –, ,

, , , , , , n, n; Helstone, James, –; Helstone, Matthewson, , , , , , , , , , –, , –n, n; Keeldar, Shirley, , –, , , , , , –, , , , , n; Macarthey, Mr, ; Malone, Mr, , –; Mann, Miss, ; Moore, Hortense, ; Moore, Louis, –, , n; Moore, Robert Ge´rard, , , , , , , n, n; Pryor, Mrs, , , –, , ; Sweeting, Mr, –; Sympson, Henry, –, ; Yorke, Hiram, , , , ; Yorke, Mrs,  Villette, , –, –, , –, –, , –, , n, n; characters in: Beck, Mme, , , n; Bretton, Graham (’Dr John’), ; Emanuel, Paul, , , –, , , , , n, , n; Fanshawe, Ginevra, , –; Home-de Bassompierre, Paulina, , ; Marchmont, Miss, ; Silas, Pe`re, –, –, , , ; Snowe, Lucy, –, –, , , , , , –, –, , , , –, , , , n; ‘Vashti’, –, n; Walravens, Mme, , n ¨ ,  principal references only juvenilia, n poems, –, –, , n, , , n, –n– stances on religious matters, , –, , , –, n, n, –n, n Wuthering Heights: , , –, , , –, , –, –, , –, , n; church and clergy in, , –, , ; devilry in, –, , n, ; dreams in, –, , , , , n; ethical concerns in, –, –, , –, n; characters in: ‘Branderham, Jabes’, –; Dean, Nelly, , , , –, , , –, –, –, , , , , , n, n, n, n; Earnshaw, Hareton, , , , , , , –, n, n, n; Earnshaw, Hindley, , , , , –, , , n; Earnshaw, old Mr, , , , ; Earnshaw Linton, Catherine, , , , , , –, –, –, –, –, , , , , , n, n, n, , n & , n; Heathcliff, , , , –,

Index –, , , –, , , , , , , n, n, n, , n–; Heathcliff, Linton, , , , –, n; Joseph, , , –, , , , , , , , –n; Linton, Cathy, , , , , , , –, , , n, n; Linton, Edgar, , , , , , , , , , n, n, n; Linton, Isabella, , , , , –, n, ; Lockwood, Mr, , , , , , , , , , n, n; Zillah,  Bronte¨, Maria, ne´e Branwell,  Bronte¨, Patrick, , , –, , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , n, , n, , n, n, n, n, n, n The Maid of Killarney, –n The Cottage in the Wood, n Brose, Olive J., n Brown, C. K. Francis, n, n, n,  Brown, Ford K., –n Browne, Sir Thomas,  Buchen, Irving H., n, n Buckworth, John, n, n, n, n, n Bunting, Jabez, –, n Bunyan, John, ,  The Pilgrim’s Progress, , –, n Burnet, Gilbert, n Burnet, Thomas, , n, –n Burns, Jabez,  Burns, Norman T., n Burns, Robert, ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’,  Butler, Joseph Analogy,  Butler, Lance St John, , n, n, n Byron, George Gordon, Lord,  Cain, , n Calvin, Jean, ,  Calvinism, , , , , , –, , , , , , , , n Campbell, John McLeod,  Carlyle, Thomas, –,  Sartor Resartus, , n Carpenter, Edward, , n, n, n Carpenter, J. Estlin, n Carpenter, S. C., n ‘Catholic’ (term), 



Catholic emancipation (s), , , n, n Catholicism, see Roman Catholicism Cecil, Lord David, n Chadwick, Owen, , n, n, n, n, n, n, , n Chapman, Raymond, n, n Chard, M. Joan, n charity, , , –, , , , –, –, – Charlotte Elizabeth, see [Tonna], Charlotte Elizabeth Chartism,  childhood, –, –, , –, –, , , , , , n, –n Chitham, Edward, n (ed.) n cholera, n Christian Remembrancer, review of Jane Eyre, n Christology, –, –, , n, see also Jesus Christ Church–Chapel controversy, ,– Church Fathers,  Church of England Quarterly Review, , n Church polity, , –, n Church services, dissatisfaction with in Bronte¨ novels, , – Cicero,  Clapham Sect, , , n, n Clark, G. Kitson, n, n, n, n Clark-Beattie, Rosemary, n clergymen in the Church of England, – clerical dress, ,  Clive, John, n Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, –, –, , , –, , , , , , , , , , n, n, n Aids to Reflection, , , , , , n, n, n, n, n, n, n, ‘The Ancient Mariner’,  Biographia Literaria, n Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, , n, n ‘Frost at Midnight’, n ‘Self-Knowledge’, n Collins, Robert G. (ed.), n colonial issues,  compassion, , , –, –,  conscience, , –, n conversion, , , –, n Conybeare, W. J.,  Cowper, William, –, n



Index

Craik, , , n, n, n Crosby, Christina, n, n Crosse, John, –n Cunningham, Valentine, n, n, n curates, employment and status of, , , , ,  Dale, R. W.,  DAubigne´, Jean Henri Merle,  Davies, Horton, n, n, n, n, , n, , n Davies, Stevie, n, n, , n Day of Judgement, the, – Defoe, Daniel, , ,  History of Apparitions, n History of the Devil, , , , , n, n, , n demoniac possession, , , n Dessner, Lawrence Jay, –n Dewhirst, Ian, –n Dickens, Charles, , , n Dombey & Son,  Great Expectations,  Little Dorrit, n Our Mutual Friend, n Dingle, Herbert, n Dissent and Dissenters, , , , –, , , , , n; see also Baptism; Methodism; Nonconformity; Quakers; Unitarianism Distad, Merrill, n Dixon, Josie, n Dixon, Canon W. T., see Lock, John Doddridge, Philip, n Drummond, Andrew L., n, n du Maurier, Daphne, n Duthie, Enid, n, n,  Eagleton, Terry, , n, n ecumenism in the nineteenth century, –,  election, doctrine of, see Calvanism, predestination Elfenbein, Andrew, n, n Eliot, George, , , ,  Daniel Deronda,  The Mill on the Floss, n, n Scenes from Clerical Life, n Elliott-Binns, L. E., n, n, , n, n Empson, William, ‘Ignorance of Death’,  erastianism, –,  Erskine, Thomas, , , , , , n eschatology, , , –, –, ,

–, n eternal punishment, , –, –, , n, n, n,  Eucharist, see Holy Communion Evangelicalism in the Church of England, , , –, –, , –, , –, , –, , , , , , , –, , , , –, , , , , n, n, , , , n, , n,  Evans, Eric, n Evans, Mary Ann, see Eliot, George Ewbank, Inga-Stina, n, n, n, n, n Fairchild, Hoxie Neal, , , , n faith and doubt, , –, , n Farrar, F. W.,  feeling versus reason, , , , , , , , , , , –, –n Fennell, John, n Figart, Linda B., n Figes, Eva, n, n, n Fike, Francis, n, n Fimland, Marit, n Fine, Ronald E., n Fleenor, Juliann E. (ed.), n Fletcher (de la Fleche`re), John, , n forgiveness, –,  France, Richard T., , n,  Fraser’s Magazine, , n, n Frawley, Maria, n, n Froude, J. A., , n Froude, Richard Hurrell,  Remains, n Fryckstedt, Monica Correa, n, n Fullerton, Lady Georgiana, Ellen Middleton, – Gallagher, Susan Van Zanten, n Gaskell, Elizabeth, , , , , n, n, n, n, n Mary Barton, , n, n Ge´rin, Winifred, n, n, n Gezari, Janet, , n, n (ed.), n Gibson, William, –n, n Gilbert, Alan D., n Gilbert, Sandra M., , n, n, –n Gilmour, Robin, n, n Gisborne, Thomas, n, n Godwin, William, Caleb Williams, n Goethe, Wolfgang von, , 

Index Faust II,  goodness, , , , , , ,  Goodridge, J. F., n ‘good works’, , see also useful employment Gordon, Felicia, , n, , n, n, n Gordon, Lyndall, n Gorham case, , ,  grace, , , , –, , , , ,  Gresley, William, Portrait of an English Churchman, , n, n Grimshaw, William, ‘of Haworth’, , n, n Grimshawe, T. S., n, n Gubar, Susan, , n, n, n, –n Hagan, John, n Hammond, Gerald, n Hammond, Peter C., n, n Hanley, Keith (ed.), –n Ha¨rdelin, Alf, n,  Hare, Augustus, n Guesses at Truth, n Hare, Julius Charles, –, , , n, n, n Guesses at Truth, n Harris, Alexander, n Harris, Elizabeth, –n From Oxford to Rome, , n Harrison, Grace Elizabeth, , n, n, n Hart, A. Tindal, , n, n, n, ,  Hartley, David, n Heaven and Hell, see eschatology heaven as a metaphor, – Heger, Constantin,  Heilman, Robert B., n, n hell as a metaphor, –, – Helmstadter, Richard J. (ed.), n Hennell, Michael, n, n,  (ed.), –n Hewish, John, n historical accuracy of the Bronte¨s, – Hobbes, Thomas, n Hodgson, William,  Hoffmann, E. T. A.,  Hogg, James, , , –n, n Confessions of a Justified Sinner, –, , n, n, n Holy Communion, –, –, n– Homans, Margaret, –n honesty, see sincerity Hook, Ruth, n, n, n



Hook, W. F., , , n Hopewell, Donald, n Hopkins, Annette B., n, n Houghton, Walter E., n Hume, David, n, n humility, –, –, , , ,  Imlay, Elizabeth, n, n Inglesfield, Robert, n, n Irving, Edward, , ,  Jack, Ian, n Jalland, Pat, , n Jasper, David, n, n, (ed.), –n Jay, Elisabeth, , –n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n (ed.), n Jenkins, Keith Allan, –, n, , n Jenkins, Ruth, n Jerusalem Protestant bishopric,  Jesuits, , , , , n Jesus Christ, , , , , , , , –, , –, , –, , , , , , , , n, n, n, see also Atonement; Christology Jewsbury, Geraldine, Zoe¨, n John, saints named, –, n John, St, the Baptist, –n Johnson, E. D. H., n justification by faith, , , , –, , n, n,  Kant, Immanuel, ,  Kaplan, Carla, n Keble, John, ,  The Christian Year, n Keefe, Robert, n, n, n Keighley Mechanics’ Institute, –n Kempis, Thomas a`, The Imitation of Christ, –, , –, , , , n, n, n, n, , n, , n Kendall, Guy, n Kermode, Frank, n Kincaid, James R. (ed.), –n Kingsley, Charles, , , n, n, n Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb,  Knies, Earl A., n, –n, n Knight, Charmian, n, n Krailsheimer, A. J. (ed. and trans.), n (first mention) Kucich, John, n, –n Kuhn, Albert J. (ed.), –n



Index

Landow, George P., n Langland, Elizabeth, n Larson, Janet L., n, n La Trobe, James, –, n Lau, Beth (ed.), n Lawson, Kate, n, n Leavis, Q. D., n, n Le Guern, Joseph, n, n, n, ,  Lehmann, Paul L., n Lerner, Laurence, , n Lettis, Richard (ed.), –n Linder, Cynthia A., n Lock, John, and W. T. Dixon, n, n, n, n, n, n, , n Locke, John, n Lodge, David, n Long Hoeveler, Diane (ed.), n Lonoff, Sue, n, n, n Lucifer, , –, n Luther, Martin,  Macaulay, Thomas,  Madden, William, , n, , n Maison, Margaret M., n Malcolm, Sir John, Political History of India, , n ‘manducatio indignorum’, n Margaliouth, Daniel, n Marlowe, Christopher, Dr Faustus, , n Martin, John,  Martin, Robert Bernard, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n Martineau, Harriet, n, n, n, n Martineau, James,  Martyn, Henry, –, n, n, , , , ,  Mathieson, William L., n,  Matthews, John T., –n, n Maurice, F. D., , , , –, , , , , , , –, , , , , n, n, n, n The Kingdom of Christ, , n, n, n, n, n, n Life, , , n, n, n, n, n, n Theological Essays, –, n, , n, n Maynard, John, n, n, , n McGann, Jerome (ed.), n McGlamery, Gayla, n, n,  McMaster, Juliet, n

Melanchthon, Philipp, , n mercy, Divine, , , , , , , , ,  Merrett, Robert James, n Methodism, , , , , , , , , n, n, –n, n Cornish, , n Meyer, Susan, n Mill, John Stuart,  Miller, J. Hillis, n, n Miller, Patrick D., Jr, n Milner, Isaac, , , n Milton, John, , n Paradise Lost, , , ,  missions and missionaries, , – Moglen, Helene, n Monod, Sylve`re, n Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica, n Moorman, Mary, n Moravians, –, –, , n Morgan, William, n, n Christian Instructions, , , , , n, , n, n, n, n, n The Parish Priest, –n The Pastoral Visitor, n Morris, William E. (ed.), –n mortalism, –, n Moses, as author of the Pentateuch,  Mozley, Anne, , n Murray, Janet H. (intro.), n Myer, Valerie Grosvenor, n, n, n, n Napoleonic wars, –n Nature, –, n Needham, Nicholas R., n Neill, Stephen, n ‘neology’ (the new, German-inspired theology), –, , , –, n Nestor, Pauline, n, n Newman, F. W., , n Newman, Hilary, n Newman, John Henry, , , , n, n Loss and Gain, n, , n, n Tract , n Newsome, David, n Nicholls, Arthur Bell, , , , n Nicoll, W. Robertson, n Nokes, G. D., n Nonconformity, , –, , , n, n, see also Baptism, Dissent and Dissenters, Methodism, Quakers, Socinianism, Unitarianism Norman, Edward, , n, 

Index Norton, David, , n Nussey, Ellen, , –, , , , n, n, n, n Nussey, Mercy (Mary), n Oram, Eanne, n Oxford Movement, see Tractarianism Overton, J. H., n, n,  Paglia, Camille, –, n Papal Aggression, , , –n Pascal, Blaise, , , n, n, n, n, n, n, n Peel, Sir Robert, – philanthropy, see charity ‘good works’ and useful employment Phillips, Marion J., n, n, n, n, n, n, , n, n, , n,  Phillips, P. T. (ed.), n, n phrenology, , n Pittock, Malcolm, n, n Plato,  Pollard, Arthur, , n, n, , n, n, n (ed.), –n Ponden Hall, library, n, n, n Pope Pius IX, , , –n Popery and Protestantism Compared, , n, n, n Popery Not ‘The Old Religion’, n Porter, Stanley E. (ed.), n post-colonial criticism of Jane Eyre, n, see also colonial issues Pratt, Josiah, n, n prayer, , , –, –, , , n preaching, modes of, –, , –n predestination, doctrine of, , , –, –, , , see also Calvinism Prentis, Barbara, –n, n, n Prickett, Stephen, n, n, n, n, n Pritchett, V. S., –n, n ‘private judgement’, , n ‘Propaganda’, the, , n Protestantism Endangered, –, n, n Prussia,  Pugh, Mrs John, n pulpit oratory, see preaching, modes of purgatory, , , n ‘Puseyites’, see Tractarianism Quakers, n, see also Dissent and Dissenters, Nonconformity



Qualls, Barry V., , , , n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n Quarm, Joan, n ‘Rachel’, actress, – Ralls, Walter, –n Ray, Gordon N. (ed.), n Reardon, Bernard M. G., n, n, n, n, n, n reason, see feeling versus reason redemption, , –, , –, see also Christology; Jesus Christ; salvation; universalism Reform Bill [–],  Reformation, , ,  religious hypocrisy, , –, , , n repentance, , –, , , –, , , , , , ,  responsibility for one’s own self, , –, , –, –, , , n revenge, – Rich, Adrienne, n Richardson, Samuel, Clarissa, n Richmond, Legh, , , , n, n Rigby, Elizabeth, n Robinson, A. Mary F., –, n Robinson, Edmund, n Robinson, Lydia, ne´e Gisborne, n, n Rochester, John Wilmot, nd Earl of, –, , –n Rogerson, J. W., n Roman Catholicism, –, , , –, , , see also anti-Catholicism Rose, Elliot, n Rosengarten, Herbert, n, n, n, n, n, n, , –n, n, n Rosman, Doreen, n, n, , , n Rousseau, J. J., , n Rowell, Geoffrey, n, n Russell, Lord John, , n Sale, William M., Jr (ed.), n Salome, n salvation, , , , , , –, –, –, , , , , n, see also redemption, universalism Sand, George,  Sanders, Charles Richard, n, n Sanger, Charles Percy, , n Sargent, John, , n, 



Index

Schaar, Claes, n Schiller, J. C. Friedrich von,  Scott, Sir Walter, , n Letters on Demonology, , n Marmion, n Scruton, William, n, n Selden, Raman (ed.), –n self-denial, ,  self-improvement, see responsibility for one’s own self self-knowledge, , n Sellars, Jane, n Senseman, Wilfred M., n Sewell, Elizabeth, Margaret Percival, , , n, n Shannon, Edgar, Jr, –n Shelley, Percy Bysshe, ‘Ode to the West Wind’, n Shuttleworth, Sally, , n, n, n, n, n Simeon, Charles, –, , , , , , , n, –n, n, n, n,  sin, , –, , , –, , , ,  sincerity, , –, , ,  Singh, G. (ed.), n Smith, Elder [publishers], , n, n, n Smith, George,  Smith, Margaret, n, n, n, n, n, n Smyth, Charles, n snobbery in ecclesiastical contexts, –, n, see also Church–Chapel controversy Socinianism, , , n,  soul-sleeping, see mortalism Southey, Robert,  The Curse of Kehama,  (ed.) The Pilgrim’s Progress, n Sozzini, Fausto (Faustus Socinus), n Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, n Steepleton, or, High Church and Low Church, n Stephen, Sir James, n, n Stevens, Joan, n, n Stoneman, Patsy (ed.), –n Storr, Vernon, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n suicide, , – Sumner, Charles R., –, n Surridge, Lisa, n Tayler, Irene, n

Taylor, James, , n, n Taylor, Mary, , , , n, n, n, n, Miss Miles, n, n Tennyson, G. B., n Teufelspakt, , see also Bronte¨, Emily, Wuthering Heights (devilry in) Thackeray, William Makepeace, , , n The Newcomes, n Thales, n theatrical entertainment, rejected as immoral, , –n Thirty-Nine Articles, the, , , –, n Thom, David,  Thomas Aquinas, St,  Thorma¨hlen, Marianne, n, n, n, n, , n, n, n Tieck, Johann Ludwig,  Tighe, Thomas,  Tillotson, Kathleen, n, n [Tonna], Charlotte Elizabeth, Falsehood and Truth, , n, n, n Toon, Peter, n Tractarianism, –, , –, , , , , , , –, , , , –, n Treichel, Dietmar M., n Trill, Suzanne, n Trinity, the, –, see also Christology; Jesus Christ; Unitarianism Trollope, Anthony, Can You Forgive Her?,  Trollope, Frances Father Eustace, , n The Vicar of Wrexhill, –, , n Tromly, Annette, n, n, n truth, , –, , , , –, , ,  Tulloch, John, n, n Turner, J. Horsfall, n, n Unitarianism/Unitarians, , , n, n universalism, –, –, , , , n, n, n useful employment, , –, , ,  Van Ghent, Dorothy, n, n Vargish, Thomas, , n, n, n, n, n, n Venn, Henry, , ,  The Complete Duty of Man, , –, n, n Life, n, n, n

Index Venn, John, , n Victoria, Queen,  Vidler, Alec R., n, n, n, n, , n Visick, Mary, n, n Voltaire, n L’Inge´nu, n Wade, John, n Walker, D. P., , n, n, n Watts, Isaac, , ,  Discourses on the Love of God/The Doctrine of the Passions, , , , , –n, n, , n, –n, n Webster, Douglas, –n, n, n Weightman, William, , , n, n Wesley, John, , , –, , , , , n, n, n, n Journal, n West, Jane, Letters to a Young Lady, , n,  Wheeler, Michael, , n, , n, n, n, n, n, n, n, , n, n, n Whitefield, George, n Whitehead, Barbara, n Whone, Clifford, n Wilberforce, William, , n, n, n A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System, –, , n, n, n, n Willey, Basil, n, n, n



Williams, Carolyn, , n, n Williams, Judith, –, , n, n, n, n, , n Williams, W. S., , , , , , n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n Williamson, John, n, n Wilson, David (ed.), n Wilson, William Carus, , , n, –n The Children’s Friend, n Winnifrith, Tom, , , , –, , , n, n, n, , n, n, n, n, , , , n, n, n, n, n Winterbotham, John, n Wiseman, N. P. S., Cardinal,  Wolff, Robert Lee, , , –n, n, n, n,  Woodhouse, G. W., Practical Sermons, , –, –, n, , n, n Wooler, Margaret, , , n, n, n, n Worboise, Emma Jane, n Wordsworth, William, , , , , , , n,  The Prelude, n wrath, see anger Wroot, Herbert, n Yeazell, Ruth Bernard, n Yonge, Charlotte M., , ,  Young, David, n