Labor Day weekend, I started and finished The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte by Syrie James. As much as I felt like I knew Charlotte Bronte before reading this book, I now realize that I was probably missing a big part of her--her actual personality. Yes, she is similar to Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe, but I think there was more to her than I realized. One of the biggest things that I learned about and that I'm grateful to know about now was her growing friendship and eventual love for her husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls.
The reason why I'm especially grateful to know more about that relationship is because of what I had read previously about how she hadn't really liked him, she'd been in love with her professor, and she'd turned down other offers for marriage, and then looking at her age, 37, when she got married, I always had the thought, "I hope she didn't just marry him out of convenience," even though I know that she wrote to a friend after she was married that she felt her heart was knit with her husband's.
To delve into those concerns a little bit further:
She hadn't really liked him--That is true. She found him close-minded in certain areas. However, she did acknowledge his generous nature to others and his indispensable service for her father as his curate. She also reacted towards him based on incorrect information she had about him. Once she realized the truth of what really happened, she allowed herself to start to become friends with him.
She'd been in love with her professor--That is true. But that was 10 years before she got married. She used descriptions of M. Heger to create Mr. Rochester and M. Paul Emmanuel. However, she buried (literally) that part of her life in order to let herself live. I was particularly touched by a dream she recorded after her sisters had all passed away and they visited her in a dream, telling her that they were dead and couldn't live, yet there she was living and yet she was living as one dead. She needed to leave the past in the past and move on to the living and real. Her sisters told her that she was buried in the past, she needed to move on and leave Belgium behind. I have continually thought about this statement and experience because I wonder, as one who likes to look back at experiences in my life, do I live to much in the past? Am I leaving behind my Belgium (whatever it may be--past hurts, feelings of inadequacy, etc.) and moving on so that I can live and develop fully in the time that I have been given in this life? No, I don't have a secret old love like Charlotte did for her professor, but just like Charlotte, perhaps I, too, need to find more ways to live in and appreciate the present.
She'd turned down other offers for marriage--That is true. This one always intrigued me because on the life lines in the beginning or backs of books written by Charlotte, it mentions those other offers of marriage and I always wanted more information about them. Well here is some information: One of the marriage proposals was in a letter, the other was someone she didn't know but assumed she would want to get married since she wasn't married yet, rejected a marriage proposal from a man in her publishing house who she knew she wouldn't really suit, and then she first rejected her husband's proposal because her father was against it, but later accepted it when she decided to live and give him a shot.
It wasn't that she just "gave in". She really became friends with Arthur and while she couldn't say she loved him when they got married, the respect and friendship she had for him turned to love as she got to know him better, saw him with his family, and he was able to freely show how much he loved and adored her.
What is most tragic to me, is that she died while she was pregnant, probably because she just had horrible morning sickness. After being married for nine months, and being happier in those nine months than she had been in years (and feeling a peace in her life that she had never felt before), she died. That is so sad.
I hope that someday I'll get to talk with Charlotte Bronte (fun note: her last name is pronounced "Brunty"--when her father came from Ireland to England, he was able to write his last name--Brunty--however he wanted, and he tried to make it look more elegant by spelling it with an o and with the e and double dots; but it's just pronounced Brunty). Her books have changed my life. Learning about her life has added to my life, as well.
Also here are the two photographs that Charlotte took with her husband during their honeymoon tour:
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