PROSE
Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre
The University of Texas at Austin
“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you, – and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!”
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Why this book?
Jane Eyre is so much a part of the literary landscape that its status as a ground-breaking masterpiece is sometimes overlooked. Published in 1847, it remains one of the defining works of modern English literature, as daring in its own time as the work of modernists such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf in the twentieth century.
The story
Brontë presents her heroine as fiercely independent in a world where there is no place for a free-thinking female. Jane Eyre, the plain, orphaned child becomes sharpened through her struggles in the hands of tyrannical mother-substitutes, malignant boarding schools, demeaning poverty and an egotistical, impenetrable employer. But what continues to intrigue readers (and audiences of multiple film and TV dramatisations) is not just Jane’s indomitable spirit but the other strange scenes and lives crammed into this nineteenth century novel of social criticism and Byronic heroes. The hidden, voiceless character of Mr. Rochester’s first wife, who even in her silence greatly impacts Jane’s story, has consistently captured the attention of readers including critics and other writers.
The writing
The extraordinary literary brilliance of the Brontë family – notably the sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne – was fostered by the free access they enjoyed to their father’s extensive library at the isolated Yorkshire parsonage which was their home. Jane Eyre, the first of Charlotte Brontë’s novels to be published, is replete with gothic elements: brooding landscape and architecture, human cruelty, romance threatened by dark secrets, fear, apprehension and erotic possibility. The author deftly blends realism and a compelling account of her heroine’s interior consciousness as she struggles with her passions and seeks to realise her true self. The book remains as compelling and fresh today as it must have seemed to its first Victorian readers.
“The writer has us by the hand, forces us along her road, makes us see what she sees, never leaves us for a moment or allows us to forget her. At the end we are steeped through and through with the genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Brontë. Remarkable faces, figures of strong outline and gnarled feature have flashed upon us in passing; but it is through her eyes that we have seen them.”
Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader, 1925
The reading
At more than 500 pages, this novel is longer than previous texts in the Challenge. Sub-titled ‘An autobiography’ it tells the story of Jane from childhood to adulthood in a way that feels modern in its intimacy and immediacy. As always, we encourage slow reading to appreciate the crystalline quality of the writing, but we know that the page-turning plot and sheer length may demand a faster approach to this book!
Some themes and questions it may be helpful to consider:
- The job of governess was one of the very few jobs available to ‘respectable’ women in the Victorian era; to what extent is the position of the ‘outsider’ on the ‘inside’ valuable in revealing the truths about a society?
- What do we learn about Victorian attitudes towards both slavery and madness?
- Do we see Jane Eyre, with her desire for self-expression, independence and equality, as a true feminist?
- Does Charlotte Brontë convince us that Jane achieves a happy ending?
Recommended edition: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Penguin Modern Classics, ISBN: 9780141441146.
The author
Charlotte, born in 1816, was the eldest of the three Brontë sisters and the last to die. Although her first novel The Professor was rejected for publication the second, Jane Eyre, was an immediate popular success on publication in 1847. It was followed by Shirley in 1848 and Vilette in 1853, while The Professor was finally published posthumously in 1857.
In 1854 she married her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, and became pregnant shortly afterwards. She died during her pregnancy in March 1855.
Content courtesy of Toby Brothers, Founder and Director of the London Literary Salon & Nicky Mayhew, Associate Director.
POETRY
Alice Oswald
Dunt: a poem for a dried-up river
Bone figurine of a water nymph, a symbol of spring. A pitcher rests on her right knee, with water pouring out. Her right arm is resting on the pitcher. Photo courtesy of the Corinium Museum, Cirencester.
Dunt is available in Alice Oswald’s award-winning collection Falling Awake, ISBN: 9781910702437. It can also be read on the Poetry Foundation website and you can listen to an evocative reading of the poem by Samuel West here.
When reading, try to consider both the poet’s and your own relationship to the poem and to the character of the nymph. Do you take an overall message from the work?
About Alice Oswald:
Poet and classicist Alice Oswald was elected as the Oxford University Professor of Poetry in 2019. She lives with her family in Devon and has published collections including Dart, which won the 2002 T.S. Eliot Prize, Woods etc. (Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize), A Sleepwalk on the Severn (Hawthornden Prize), Weeds and Wildflowers (Ted Hughes Award), Memorial (Warwick Prize for Writing), and Falling Awake, which won the 2016 Costa Poetry Award and the Griffin Prize for Poetry.
About Dunt
The object that inspired Dunt is on display in the Corinium Museum in Cirencester. The museum’s website has an excellent blog post by Rebecca Preedy about the figurine, which I have quoted from below:
This small bone figurine housed in the museum dates to the Romano-British period. It depicts a naked woman, her head turned to look to her right-hand side and a vase of water tipped to flow elegantly over her raised knee. This isn’t an accidental spillage, however. The woman is a water nymph. But what exactly is a water nymph, and why were they so important to the Romans?
In mythology, water nymphs were divided into three categories: Oceanids of the ocean; Nereids of fresh and sea water; Naiads of flowing water. The nymph we see here probably falls into the last category, with the vase on her knee representing the water that was sacred to her. Naiads were responsible for sources of water such as rivers, wells and springs.
A nymph that had authority over such a vital aspect of nature was naturally seen as an important part of the Roman ecosystem. Like any other member of the mythological world, it was therefore necessary to placate nymphs in order to ensure that they would continue to favour the town with their gift. After all, the aqueducts brought in the water, but it was the nymphs who kept the springs running! The Romans would often honour the nymphs with structures called nymphaea, a sort of shrine consecrated in their name.
Rebecca Preedy
River Writing
With her second collection Dart in 2002 and her fourth book A Sleepwalk on the Severn, the subject of rivers has always attracted Oswald as a poet. In a podcast from Tin House, she talks about her interest in water and says:
“What I love about water is that it’s evidently not human nor is it animal nor even vegetable, but it does seem to have an intelligence. It reflects you back and it seems to have a voice, a narrative voice, it sometimes has a beginning and end, and sometimes throws you into formlessness. It challenges all my edges and understandings but also offers me a way of looking at looking I suppose.“
Sound Carving
Alice Oswald’s writing is strongly established in the oral tradition of poetry. She is known for taking as much care as to how her poetry sounds aloud as to how it’s written on paper. The sound quality of her poems is hugely admired, but how her poems achieve this arresting sonic quality is more difficult to analyse or express. In Samual West’s introduction to his reading of the poem (see link above), you can hear how he tries to find words for the way her poems work, and then gives up – so this is something to think about, but not to the point where it detracts from enjoyment!
Oswald has explained that she sees her work not as poems so much as “sound carvings”, saying “I like the idea that sound carving suggests there’s something there already.”
I’ve noticed that she describes her work as if sound and the physical world are closely related, even the same, here are more quotes from the Tin House interview:
“I love to draw the feeling of the sound that I can hear in my head before I write something, I will anyway often start a poem with these curled loops and phrases that go across the page or I might get a few words then I’ll just finish it with a line, the process is to try and hear what it is that I’ve drawn.
For me, there is a kind of just a lovely heaviness to monosyllabic words that I feel mostly my sentences need that sandy weight in the bottom of them. It doesn’t have the status of a thought or a decision but my particular taste is for those Earthy words that will tie the Latin polysyllables so that they don’t fly off.“
The River Dunt
If you want to trace the course of the river Dunt, it’s useful to know its other names, the Daglingworth Stream and the Duntisbourne. This stream joins the River Churn which flows into the Thames at Cricklade. So for those who live in London, water from the Dunt does reach us here before it travels on to the sea.
Although the Dunt is much reduced, it does still exist and an online search will reveal videos showing crossings at various fords and pictures of places that have been named for their relationship to the river.
Waterbody description:
Catchment area 22.4km2, length 11.1km. Not designated artificial or heavily modified.
The Daglingworth stream begins north of Duntisbourne Abbots and winds itself between the agricultural hills of Duntisbourne Leer, Middle Duntisbourne and through Daglingworth. It flows into the north of Cirencester joining the Churn within the Bathurst Estate.
The geology is mainly limestone formed approximately 166-168 million years, with occasional mudstone bedrock. There are opportunities to explore the geology to divert the flow away from sinkholes or use them in flood events. Currently flood meadows are used to slow the flow during these times.
Content courtesy of Caroline Hammond, Poet and Salon Facilitator.
