I want to write about Anne Carson's 'The Glass Essay', and I will, but I want time to do it properly (which means I'll probably never do it), so I'm going to write, shortly, about another book for now.
It's Charlotte Brontë's Villette. I haven't finished it yet but almost, and as it is so long, I have quite a few pages to muse on. How fitting, to read Charlotte Brontë's rather autobiographical work shortly after reading 'The Glass Essay', about Emily Brontë. It makes me compare the two and realise that both wrote heavily on things like loneliness and freedom, but very differently.
After visiting the Brontë house and reading some diary entries and letters of Charlotte's there, as well as reading some quotes of her in 'The Glass Essay', I have been keeping a slightly negative, or less admiring, view of Charlotte lately. But that view have been reassessed again. Charlotte was so modern? She was so business-like and ambitious and pragmatic and I say this having read very little on her biography. But from what I gather about her - her publishing hers and her sister's writing, creating their public personas, writing and thinking and maintaining - she seems much that way. I think she would fit well today, in a way (perhaps she would feel it too crowded; not that loneliness is lacking today). Emily Brontë on the other hand feels like a creature stuck in time, or rather place, and how could she be anything anywhere but on the moors in the 19th century? When Emily writes about freedom, she writes about freedom of the soul, a wild sort, freedom from self and the material world. (It's so attractive, Emily's freedom, but difficult to find and pinpoint; somehow tied to a mood or an environment.)
Charlotte's idea of freedom is something more like independence. All her heroines are obsessed with being independent (and surely herself as well). Jane Eyre had do everything on her terms; she had to be free to make the choice and to make the right choice. She would go with her uncle - cousin? - to be a missionary but not as a wife; she must maintain her independence of heart and self. Lucy Snowe is even more stoic about her independence. It's a point of pride for her. Lucy Snowe would rather suffer anything than lose her independence, be it poverty, loneliness, boredom, restlessness, hunger, cold, death. She keeps her lowly job as a teacher in the cold empty school house, rather than be at someone else's will as a lady's companion. In her quiet and loneliness and unhappiness (because, independent and lonely, she is always desperately unhappy; also, seemingly by choice). she decided the way out is to start her own school (I know not yet if she succeeds). She cannot even entertain the thought of being someone's friend or lover before having that for herself. That quest for being an own and living for herself makes her feel so modern. That being despite this ridiculously lonely, stern, dogmatic, morally superior character she is. I love Lucy Snowe, I do, but her self-sacrifice is actually ridiculous.
As with most period literature (can you call it that?) I rather drown in it and start thinking and behaving the same way as the protagonist (especially when it is in first person). Villette is inspiring. The pleasure Lucy takes in being lonely - and yes - independent, despite being miserable. The pride taken in not giving in to hopes and dreams or to other's pity, but to know what's best for yourself and living by that despite it all. Yes, despite the loss of love. Lucy Snowe knows that hope is the most dangerous emotion; that it bites.
I really love Villette, despite it being slow to read and nothing at all happens. It clarifies something about freedom and pride, but I am not entirely sure what exactly. Only I am now back to admiring Charlotte Brontë and her freedom-seeking, brave, honest heroines. I wish I was more like them, I guess.
At some point, soon hopefully, will I read Anne Brontë and see what she has to say about independence and loneliness. I think, though, that she does not really write about that? But what do I know. She is a Brontë after all, and lives as much on the moors and on writing as Charlotte and Emily did.
