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A Brief History of Western Culture Michael Peverett |
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF
WESTERN CULTURE
by Michael Peverett
Charlotte
Brontė (1816-1855)
Angria (1826...1834-1839) to The Professor (1845ish)
This is as far as
I've got in my plan of reading all her books in sequence. One of the strangest
things about her was that after the immense output of Angrian novelettes (I
have only read the last five) she went five years without writing anything
except a few poems before embarking on The
Professor (probably not really true, doubtless there were destroyed
abortive novels*NOTE 1). Michael Mason in a very awkward introduction to a
Penguin Jane Eyre argues against the temptation to link the Angrian works with
what came later, apparently because he's worried that critics have always been
a bit sniffy about Jane Eyre and this just plays into their hands. But the
result is a vacuum, I think; it can't be right to discipline Bronte's novels
into something befitting a sober tradition. Anyway.
The Professor is a pretty good book, and it makes you appreciate the value of
actually being a novel, but it definitely isn't a revelation like e.g. Stancliffe's Hotel.
The date 1826 given above is the date when "The Young Men's Play" began, inspired by a gift to the nine-year-old Branwell of some toy soldiers - Charlotte was ten. This would eventually lead to the Glasstown, Verdopolitan and Angria sagas - Angria began in 1834 when she was 18. (Emily and Anne had founded Gondal in 1831.)
Note 1: The recess.
1843: "Letter from a poor painter to a
great lord",
Jane
Eyre and the moon
Jane Eyre is one of the most moon-enchanted of all novels, but the moons are perplexing.
In the opening pages, Jane says (of a Bewick engraving): "I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard with its inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly risen crescent, attesting the hour of even-tide." True, the crescent in Bewick's engraving does imply eventide - because it's a waxing moon (horns pointing to the left) - but by the same token, it implies that it is not newly risen - in fact is soon to set. (A waning crescent, on the other hand, would indeed be newly risen, but would imply dawn.) Well, this is an understandable error perhaps - the sharp crescent of evening may naturally be supposed newly risen, when it is only newly remarked.
(In practical terms a moon in an engraving is always going to be low on the horizon, because otherwise it would be outside the frame.)
At the begining of Chapter 5, the young Jane Eyre is leaving Mrs Reed's house for Lowood. "Five o'clock had hardly struck on the morning of the 19th of January, when Bessie brought a candle into my closet and found me already up and nearly dressed. I had risen half an hour before her entrance, and had washed my face, and put on my clothes by the light of a half-moon just setting, whose ray streamed through the narrow window near my crib." Well, wrong again! A waxing half-moon would have set at midnight; a waning half moon would still be on the rise. On the other hand, a moon that sets between five and six in the morning, like this one, would have to be almost a full moon - say, 90%.
On the evening of
It is, perhaps, salutary to recall that, though there was more time in those days for looking at the moon, this didn't necessarily mean observing it.* But I'm hardly satisfied by this reflection. It's no wonder to be ignorant of the moon's movements - at Charlotte's age, I would have been fully as ignorant myself -, but it does seem remarkable for someone to be so exceptionally aware of the moon as a mobile creature, of the importance of moonlight for getting about at night, etc, and yet (apparently) not to know the pattern of the moon's courses. I don't accept it, really. I'm half-inclined to think that these anomalies reflect a convention of popular gothic literature (in which I'm very ill-read) - a genre the author knew as well as she knew the silver-fork novels that her Angrian inventions make merry with.
"Artistic license," suggested my friend, and that's certainly a theory that bears looking further in to. It's clear that the moon does play out a symbolist kind of parallel to the action: for example, full moons tend to be associated with the breaking out of passionate intensity (Jane) or anguished frenzy (Bertha). Thus in the "going off to school" scene (the second example of the three above), when Jane is rather muted and sensible, a full moon would have struck the wrong chord. A half-moon would strike the right note of mixed and muted feelings, and could be regarded as reasonable artistic license for a moon that, though nearly full, was after all not full.
Whatever the explanation, we are struck by
the mixture, in Charlotte Brontė, of very close observation - the wonderful
description of pine-tree debris clotted together by frost - combined with a
certain proud inattentiveness to fact. I can't resist linking this with how
long the author had been satisfied with her Angrian settings of a Yorkshire
landscape in
*cf. that excellent poet (I shouldn't feel compelled to add, much admired by Wordsworth) Charlotte Smith:
What
glories on the sun attend,
When the
full tides of evening flow,
Where in
still changing beauty, blend
With
amber light, the opal's glow;
While in
the east the diamond bow
Rises in
virgin lustre bright,
And from
the horizon seems to throw
A
partial line of trembling light
To the hushed shore; and all the tranquil deep
Beneath the modest moon, is soothed to sleep.
("Studies by the Sea" (1804), stanza 5)
Am I wrong in supposing that "bow" implies (what it can't be) a crescent?
(2010)
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A Brief History of Western Culture Michael Peverett |
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