Campbell_Brontës and Power

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Bront Studies, Vol. 30, March 2005

The Bront Society 2005 doi: 10.1179/147489304x18795

THE BRONTS AND POWERBy Ian Campbell

Keywords: Emily Bront, Charlotte Bront, Power, Thomas Carlyle, Jane Eyre,Wuthering Heights

The text of the Annual Address given at Haworth in June 2004

I would like to talk about the Bronts and power. They lived in an age of power;they wrote powerful characters and interpersonal situations into their novels; theyportrayed power in human character and interaction. Often portrayed as novelists onthe margins of their society and their country, they have happily been rescued from thatposition by decades of recent criticism. It is possible to ask how, and why, they findpower fascinating.

In his groundbreaking book The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski devotes a chapterto the wonders of the industrial revolution, and entitles it The Drive for Power.

Power is a new preoccupation, in a sense a new idea, in science. The Industrial Revolution, the Englishrevolution turned out to be the great discoverer of power. Sources of energy were sought in nature:wind, sun, water, steam, coal. And a question suddenly became concrete: Why are they all one? Whatrelation exists between them?1

In a different sense from Professor Bronowski, I hope to pursue this question. Certainlythe Bronts were aware of that industrial revolution which brought power to thecountry: they could hardly avoid seeing it from Haworth and from their travels around.Yet, in a sense, they shared with Carlyle the advantage ofnot seeing it; they did not live(as Elizabeth Gaskell or Dickens did) daily in the scene of industrial production, seeing,

hearing, and smelling the process of power and its production. Rather, like Carlyle, theyobserved the complex human effects of the industrial process from a certain distanceand, like Carlyle, gained a sharpness and originality of perception which might havebeen harder in Manchester or in London.

In his celebrated Signs of the Times (1829) Carlyle asked what power was, and impor-tantly pursued two themes the Bronts were later to make their own: how power affectsthe individual, and how the individual with power relates to society as a whole. WroteCarlyle:

We figure Society as a Machine, and that mind is opposed to mind, as body is to body; whereby two,or at most ten, little minds must be stronger than one great mind. Notable absurdity! For the plaintruth, very plain, we think, is, that minds are opposed to minds in quite a different way; and one manthat has a higher Wisdom, a hitherto unknown spiritual Truth in him, is stronger, not than ten menthat have it not, or than ten thousand, but than all men that have it not [. . .]2

Address correspondence to Ian Campbell, Professor of Scottish and Victorian Literature, University of Edinburgh,David Hume Tower, George Square, Edinburgh eh8 9jx. Email: [email protected]


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Charlotte had a healthy disrespect for some of Carlyles eccentricities (Now Carlyle is agreat man, but I always wish he would write plain English; and to imitate his German-isms is, I think, to imitate his faults3). Nevertheless, she would have respected his power,in his essays and above all in Sartor Resartus, to articulate the dilemma of the individual

surrounded by the manifestations of industrial power, yet unsure of the results of thatpower on the me which walked through them.

In midst of their crowded streets and assemblages, I walked solitary; and (except as it was my ownheart, not anothers, that I kept devouring) savage also, as the tiger in his jungle [. . .] in our age ofDown-pulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in aDevil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility: it was onehuge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference to grind me limb from limb.O, the vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death!4

With its errors of emphasis and eccentricity, this is still powerful writing, indicating the

dilemma of the conscious soul battling against the power of a world beyond control,even beyond comprehension. Inevitably, the comparison between Teufelsdrckh andHeathcliff has to be made: each is an outsider to his own society, each possessed of asuper-human power within, ill adapted to the mechanical world without, each sufferingbut giving power to the psychological fiction they find themselves in.

Wuthering Heights was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely materials. Thestatuary found a granite block on a solitary moor: gazing thereon, he saw how from the crag might beelicited a head, savage, swart, sinister; a form moulded with at least one element of grandeur power.

He wrought with a rude chisel and from no model but the vision of his meditations. With time andlabour, the crag took human shape; and there it stands colossal, dark, and frowning, half statue, halfrock: in the former sense, terrible and goblin-like; in the latter, almost beautiful, for its colouring is ofmellow grey, and moorland moss clothes it; and heath, with its blooming bells and balmy fragrance,grows faithfully close to the giants foot. (p. 322)5

Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know; I scarcely think it is. Butthis I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise prin-ciples, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without anywarning of revolt, there comes a time when [. . .] it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you have a Pluto

or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as Fate or Inspiration direct. Be the workgrim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. (p. 322)

Thus wrote Currer Bell, long after the event when Wuthering Heights had achievedfame. The relationship between the creative gift, not always under the authors control,and the naked power of the character created has always been the fascination of themajor Bront novels. How could they create? How could they sustain such creation?

The distinguished American critic J. Hillis Miller, in The Disappearance of God, haswritten illuminatingly of the state of mind of a century when the power of the machine

was visible, growing, all-penetrating, and the power of the human being was becomingmore and more of an enigma. The disappearance of God is not about blank atheism,the God is dead of Nietzsche, as it is often interpreted. God still lives, but, as Holderlinsaid, he lives above our heads, up there in a different world.

There was a time when things were different, when it seemed that God dwelt in the human world. . .Butfor Kafka and for other writers who belong to his spiritual family the Word now is nowhere to befound. The lines of connection between us and God have broken down, or God himself has slipped


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away from the places where he used to be. He no longer inheres in the world as the force bindingtogether all men and all things. As a result the nineteenth and twentieth centuries seem to many writersa time when God is no more present and not yet again present, and can only be experienced negatively,as a terrifying absence.6

The terrifying absence is an excellent formulation. Enough has been quoted to not onlyshow that the world of power the Bronts (and Carlyle) inhabited was a world of terror,but also that the human condition involved a grasping for reason and reassurance, divinepower if it was there or any power if the divine could not be found. In both WutheringHeights andJane Eyre some of the most unforgettable moments are that grasping; thatdesperate wish to grasp; and, worst of all, that sense that there is nothing there to grasp.Sometimes it may be simply the inexplicable, the death of Heathcliff and the astonishingresponse of both Nelly and Hareton:

I hasped the window; I combed his black long hair from his forehead; I tried to close his eyes toextinguish, if possible, that frightful, life-like gaze of exultation, before any one else beheld it. Theywould not shut; they seemed to sneer at my attempts, and his parted lips and sharp, white teeth sneeredtoo. (p. 254)

But Nelly, as always, beneath her faux nave description, delivers the material for ourimagination to work.

Taken with another fit of cowardice, I cried out for Joseph. Joseph shuffled up and made a noise, butresolutely refused to meddle with him. Th divils harried off his soul, he cried, and he muh hev hiscarcass intuh t bargain, for owt Aw care! Ech! What a wicked un he looks girnning at death! and

the old sinner grinned in mockery. I thought he intended to cut a caper round the bed; but suddenlycomposing himself, he fell on his knees, and raised his hands, and returned thanks that the lawfulmaster and the ancient stock were restored to their rights.

I felt stunned by the awful event; and my memory unavoidably recurred to former times with a sortof oppressive sadness. But poor Hareton, the most wronged, was the only one that really sufferedmuch. He sat by the corpse all night, weeping in bitter earnest. He pressed its hand, and kissed thesarcastic, savage face that every one else shrank from contemplating; and bemoaned him with thatstrong grief which springs naturally from a generous heart, though it be tough as tempered steel.(p. 254)

The irrationality of Heathcliffs death is as powerful as the irrationality of Haretonsresponse. The central characters death, the removal of his astonishing power from thecircle whose lives he dominates, does not bring peace, nor does it bring a logical expla-nation. It suggests the varieties of power within varieties of human character. It seeks toimpose no lesson or message and indeed Professor Miller, writing elsewhere aboutWuthering Heights, has argued cogently that,

Charlottes preface of 1850 confidently tells the reader, before he has even read the novel, what the textis to mean. The difficulty is that she presents in fact at least four incompatible readings, citing chapterand verse for each interpretation she proposes, without apparent awareness that they differ from one

another. Her readings, moreover, function to throw the reader off the track. They attempt to shiftthe blame for the novel away from Emily by reducing its meaning to something Charlotte imaginesVictorian readers will accept.7

But the text will not permit this.The opening of this discussion was about the power of the time and the Bronts

relation to that power. The scope of the characters in the novels, the power they mani-fest and the hidden power they suggest make them far greater than the remote settings


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they inhabit, or the assumptions people might make about their gender or social class.A familiar passage is Jane Eyres final surrender to Rochesters passionate proposal ofmarriage before she discovers the truth about Bertha Mason. A re-reading of the passagein the context of power concealed and exposed, power suggested in the power of Nature

without, and in Rochesters moral dilemma within, suggests why the novels are boundby neither time nor convention, nor by distant setting. Even the question of MrsFairfaxs power should be discussed. As generations of students have pointed out, sheassuredly had the power to stop the bigamous marriage but chose rather to keep silent.

And if I loved him less I should have thought his accent and look of exultation savage; but, sitting byhim, roused from the nightmare of parting called to the paradise of union I thought only of thebliss given me to drink in so abundant a flow. Again and again he said, Are you happy, Jane? andagain and again I answered, Yes. After which he murmured, It will atone it will atone. Have I notfound her friendless, and cold, and comfortless? Will I not guard, and cherish, and solace her? Is therenot love in my heart, and constancy in my resolves? It will expiate at Gods tribunal. I know my Makersanctions what I do. For the worlds judgment I wash my hands thereof. For mans opinion I defyit.

But what had befallen the night? The moon was not yet set, and we were all in shadow: I couldscarcely see my masters face, near as I was. And what ailed the chestnut tree? It writhed and groaned,while wind roared in the laurel walk, and came sweeping over us [. . .]

The rain rushed down. He hurried me up the walk, through the grounds, and into the house; but wewere quite wet before we could pass the threshold. He was taking off my shawl in the hall, and shakingthe water out of my loosened hair, when Mrs. Fairfax emerged from her room. I did not observe her atfirst, nor did Mr. Rochester. The lamp was lit. The clock was on the stroke of twelve [. . .] When Ilooked up, on leaving his arms, there stood the widow, pale, grave, and amazed [. . .] loud as the wind

blew, near and deep as the thunder crashed, fierce and frequent as the lightning gleamed, cataract-likeas the rain fell during a storm of two hours duration, I experienced no fear [. . .]

Before I left my bed in the morning, little Adele came running in to tell me that the great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had been struck by lightning in the night, and half of it split away(p. 22425).8

The mystery of Janes attraction to Rochester is the equipoise between his demon-strated power masculine, social, eccentric, individual and the total power of Janescontrol. Janes quiet speeches, her obstinate refusal of his lavish gifts, her knowingaddress of him as Sir when he proffers love are the exercises of a power which const-

antly wrestles with his. It is, therefore, all the more surprising when she bursts forth intoan open admission of her feelings. Significantly, her image of her abused self is one of themachine:

I tell you I must go! I retorted, roused to something like passion. Do you think I can stay to becomenothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton? a machine without feelings? And can bear to havemy morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do youthink, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! Ihave as much soul as you, and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty andmuch wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am

not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh it is my spirit that addresses your spirit: just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood atGods feet equal, as we are! (p. 222)

Roused to something like passion, Jane reveals that she has power too, not only thepower of self-control (which Rochester has to learn, very late, and at great cost) but alsothe power of simmering anger and self-esteem. We, the readers, know this because wehave eavesdropped on her earlier outbursts against Mrs Reed at Gateshead,


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moments, never pinned down and never explained. At the end, power remains anenigma, one which gives power to their depiction of human beings and continues beyondthe end of the novels when it imagines or refuses to imagine unquiet slumbers forsleepers in that quiet earth.

References

1 Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man (London: BBC, 1973 [1990]), p. 280.2 Quoted in Thomas Carlyle, Selected Writings, ed. by Alan Shelston (London: Penguin, 1971), p. 78.3 The Shakespeare Head Bront: The Bronts: their Lives, Friendships & Correspondence in Four Volumes , ed. by

T. J. Wise and J. A. Symington (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1932), Vol. 4, p. 222.4 Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, ed. by R. L. Tarr (Strouse edn, University of California Press, 2000), p. 124.5 Quotations from Wuthering Heights are taken from the edition by W. M. Sale Jr and R. J. Dunn (New York:

Norton Critical Editions, 1963; 3rd edn, 1990).

6 J. Hillis Miller, The Disappearance of God, (New York: Harvard, 1963; Schocken, 1965), pp. 12.7 J. Hillis Miller, Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels (Cambridge, MA, 1982), p. 382.8 Quotations from Jane Eyre are taken from the edition by Richard J. Dunn, Norton Critical Edition, 2nd edn

(New York: Norton, 1987).9 W. A. Craik, The Bront Novels (London: Methuen, 1968), p. 8. See also: Ruth Y. Jenkins, Reclaiming Myths of

Power: Women Writers and the Victorian Spiritual Crisis, (Lewisburg: Brucknell University Press, 1995).10 Graham Holderness, Wuthering Heights (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1985), p. 76.11 For example, there is a whole re-evaluative literature to be explored in such contributions as Villette: Contempo-rary Critical Essays, ed. Pauline Nestor (Houndmills: Macmillan: New Casebooks, 1992), especially the article byTerry Eagleton, Myths of Power in Villette, pp. 10720 (In the end, Villette has neither the courage to be tragic norto be comic; like all of Charlottes novels, although in its conclusion more obviously than any, it is a kind of middle-

ground, a half-measure (p. 118)). The Wuthering Heights: Contemporary Critical Essays, ed. by Patsy Stoneman(Houndmills: Macmillan: New Casebooks, 1993), reprints on pp. 11830 Terry Eagletons Myths of Power inWuthering Heights. The Marxist analysis offered in Terry Eagletons Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of theBronts, 2nd edn (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1975) is a persuasive and important alternative to the ideas of powerexplored here. Another important critic, Robert Bernard Martin, in The Accents of Persuation: Charlotte BrontsNovels (London: Faber, 1966) writes (p. 19) of the change in critical discussion now that Charlotte Brontsnovels are worthy of rigorous examination rather than rhapsodic appreciation. This paper tries to add to thatexamination.

Biographical Note

Ian Campbell is Professor of Scottish and Victorian Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He is one of the

editors of the team producing the complete edition of the letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle.

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