Back to Brontë

 

I am very glad to let roads lead me back to the Brontës. I have been eyeing this biography on my to-read stack, and I finally picked it up, and I'm so glad I did. I've read some other biographies of Charlotte, and the Brontës. I have always felt a closeness with Charlotte. She was an avid reader, passionate about writing, creative, independent, had poor eyesight, was always creating stories to figure out life, and was also adaptable with her work. She could take jobs she disliked (governessing, teaching) but kept onwards trying to make it work, whilst her siblings failed at keeping any positions for various reasons. Their lives are filled with tragedy, as they lose their mother and two sisters very young in life. Their father, the minister at the parish church in Haworth, outlived all of them.

This biography delightfully focused a lot on her (and her siblings) literary genius and challenges. I love learning more about them all. They are endlessly fascinating to me. Living in Yorkshire, in the small village of Haworth, the siblings grew up (Charlotte, Anne, Emily, and  their brother Branwell) creating stories, poems, and news articles of their created worlds. They were all keen to know all about the political occurrences going on in their youth - newspapers brought that to them. Their teenage writings are so enjoyable, especially Charlotte's which explore themes relational, political, wealth, power, status. They take place in a parallel world that feels like the future or history, and at the same time fantasy. 

The Brontë children's profoundly visual imaginations fed avidly on them all, and by the age of thirteen Charlotte already had a very developed "list of painters whose works I wish to see," which included "Guido Reni, Julio Romano, Titian, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Correggio, Annibal Caracci, Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolemeo, Carlo Cignani, Vandyke, Reubens, Bartolemeo Ramerghi."

I don't even know who many of those artists are, but now my own interest and list has grown. Still, Charlotte feels like my friend from the past. She was author, poet, writer, thinker, independent woman, plain yet engaging, quiet, introverted in public, didn't like the spotlight as she became famous, hid behind her books, but engaged with other famous authors of her day. She wrote a few letters back and forth with Robert Southy, the Poet Laureate, and he replied to her, reviewing her poems and offering some kind advice. He even offered her to come visit him. She met many times with William Makepeace Thackery. She met Charles Dickens and his books had some influence on her writings. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wondered about her. It was so interesting to read about the context of their time - relating to the other authors at that time developing their books.

The three sisters took such a chance with publishing their books. They wrote through hard times, suffering, loss of family members (Anne and Emily died so young, ages 29 and 30, respectively), and they drew from personal experiences to build into their characters. They had imaginations to pull a story together as they had for all those years of sibling collaboration with the Angria and Glass Town stories. They created something new in their books, models we still use today, and are often required reading for English classes. They were so influential that we try to replicate them today. We never can, of course, we don't live in the 1830s- 1850s, and they had actual experiences to draw from.

They were wanting to make their way in the world not by some revolution but subtlety through their books, using male-sounding names to get their books published: Currier, Action, and Ellis Bell they were. It wasn't until years later when the fame of the authors (One author? Society was not sure) of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey was brought into question and Charlotte decided to show up suddenly in London with Anne, to show her publisher who they really were (it was a shock to him, needless to say). Very talented young women writers. It's always good to go back to Brontë.

Spooky Season

 

It's fun to read seasonally - as the air changes along the blustery northern winds the seasonal shifts reminds us that we live in a world of perpetual change. We might grow comfortable in the hot, humid air and long days of sunshine, but under our noses a spooky season is coming. It creeps up on you. Suddenly you notice that the sun has shifted in the sky, and that window of yours no longer basks in the summer sunshine, as shadows cross it all day. You then start to realize that the sun is setting earlier each night, and rising later in the morning. Then, overnight, the winds bring in some cooler air and you wake up with a little shiver under your thin covers. 

It's spooky season, or Autumn as I generally notate. With it brings those tales of mystery and murder, dark nights and spooky encounters. It was perfect that on my recent visit to Pressed Books & Coffee I spotted this paperback Edgar Allan Poe collection of short stories. It has a wonderfully atmospheric cover with the spooky mansion and lighted windows. I realized I did not have a collection so I brought it home with me. I have read some of these stories over the years, of course, but none stick out to me as much as my first reading of " The Cask of Amontillado". To read it again now was to revisit that first encounter.

I was in seventh grade English class, and we were assigned readings, per usual. One of them was the short story by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado". I had no idea what I was in for, except that it was a tale of revenge, which is stated in the first line, but I was already feeling the sense of the grotesque from the next paragraph of this tale.

It must be understood, that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good-will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation. 

I will never forget the spooky feeling the story left me with. I had chills. The almost playful countenance of the narrator, following along as he is leading his victim to his death is truly spine-tingling. If you want some chills you can go read the short tale. It was my first encounter with a truly spooky, evil intended tale of revenge and murder. My introduction to Poe and the literary genre of horror left an indelible mark of both appreciation of such word-weaving, and intrigue of formulating such tales. I noticed there's a way to tell such a tale by revealing only just so much information at a time to leave the reader hanging on to see the next page. The reader knows what might be happening, but it's so thrilling they can't stop reading to see if that horror actually unfolds. That's a foundational tool of a good author.

This book isn't just filled with murder stories, there are also a couple of the first detective stories, these that pre-date Conan Doyle's Sherlock, and I can see many aspects of Sherlock Homes, which were such fun to encounter in these tales of solving a murder.

He makes, in silence, a host of observations and inference. So, perhaps, do his companions; and the difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe. Our player confines himself not at all; nor, because the game is the object, does he reject deductions from things external to the game. 

So happy spooky season! I mean, have a great, thrilling reading time! 

Visiting with the North Wind

 

Nothing went wrong at the back of the north wind. Neither was anything quite right, he thought. Only everything was going to be right some day.

- At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald

A young boy, Diamond, wakes up in the middle of the night feeling his bed shaking and blasts of the north wind. He wondered if the house would fall down. The wind was getting in through a small chink in the wall, and blew about him all night. The other side of his wall was the north wind.

I felt a lot like Diamond the other night as Hurricane Milton swept through Florida, bringing the north wind slamming against the wall of my bed as well, causing me to go without sleep and wonder about my home falling down. This story came to my mind during the long night of the hurricane's visit, so I decided to pick this book up again to re-read. It was quite perfect timing. I love when a situation is more personal and pressing and a book speaks to its reader in a recast deeper light. The illustrations are stunning as well, from Arthur Hughes in the Pre-Raphaelite tradition of the late 1800s.

The North Wind is personified as a beautiful women with long, flowing hair. She can shift herself to different appearance and sizes, showing up to Diamond differently each time. Sometimes a tiny breeze blowing the petals of a primrose. Sometimes as a giantess lifting him up to the sky for a big task. She takes him into the sky on adventures to view her work, the things she is told to do. As the North Wind, she obeys her Creator, no matter how cruel it may seem to other unknowing eyes. 

This book is the perfect avenue by which MacDonald can deal with tough questions of suffering, good/bad, and what is nature if it is not good or bad? From the angle of a child asking the North Wind question after question, each reader finds they are asking the same questions. Why would the wind, if it were good, blow a mighty squall to destroy a ship and kill many people? Why would the wind sweep the dark streets of London, causing a little girl to topple over as she tried to broom the walkways?

"But you're kinder to me, dear North Wind. Why shouldn't you be as kind to her as you are to me?
"There are reasons, Diamond. Everybody can't be done to all the same. Everybody is not ready for the same thing."

Everybody is not ready for the same thing. The wisdom in that. There are reasons, and we cannot possibly know all the reasons. We cannot see all things and what is to come. The North Wind does what she is told, it might mean something that seems to be cruel, and yet she knows she is part of a bigger story and she is playing her role. It's a difficult idea to grapple with, and George MacDonald does it so well through fantasy, using a child to be the image of innocence and the question factory that we are deep within. 

Is the wind good, bad, or exempt from such a label? How do we judge good and bad? Diamond accepts North Wind freely and quickly but then pauses when she does something to him that seems cruel. Yet later in the story you read how that event impacted something later, which would not have come to pass if not for the event caused by the wind. Here we play our part that browse ideas of God's sovereignty, being above all time and space, yet allowing suffering to take place. We cannot understand fully.

Through a fantasy story, MacDonald uses a beautiful way to showcase such questions. Instead of abstract ideas you cannot grasp, you meet a young boy and the personified wind, and have a few adventures to explore wisdom higher than us. These are the stories that sit with us for years, providing wisdom beyond the tale and come out again later in new senses of clarity. 

In a Castle by the Sea

 

Lucy knocked on the library door and receiving no answer lifted the latch and walked in. Mr. Gwinne's library resembled a clearing in a forest, but the open space was by no means uncluttered, having a minor undergrowth of books piled on the floor, like the stumps of felled trees. Around the clearing great bookcases loomed from floor to ceiling here and there, as though light shone faintly through massed leaves, and ominous with motionless power. The light in the room was dim and green because of a creeper outside the window. It softly illumined Mr. Gwinne's bald head, bent over a writing table stacked with books and papers. He would have nothing touched on his table and a pleasing silver lichen of dust grew all over it. His bald head, Lucy thought, looked like a mushroom. She picked her way cautiously towards him, careful not to knock against the tree stumps of books, for some of them were very perilously balanced. 

- The Child From the Sea, Elizabeth Goudge

This is the book I found at my library for $.50 and I have been reading since I got it, for a month or so. At 598 pages, it is a bit of a chunky one. But when you are in the hands of Elizabeth Goudge, you know you are going to get a long journey with characters you get to know, and the passing of time will lead you to inner growth and development of these characters. Through sensitive storytelling and gleams of radiant wisdom sprinkled throughout, it's not without heartbreak and trials. This story occurs in the turbulent 17th century England, and follows the life of Lucy Walter, who becomes the secret wife of Charles II. Before you get to see all the royal relationships, spies, deception, decapitations, and captures, you grow up with Lucy in Wales, with her family living in a castle by the sea. 

You follow Lucy as she is young and spunky, growing into herself. You appreciate her honesty, and her willingness to venture out in the world on her own. She has a big heart anyone would admire. 

I love this extended metaphor of a library as part of a forest of trees. She enters the library of her grandfather and wants to borrow a book. Goudge takes such a simple scene and makes it remarkably memorable, which is what she does so well in her storytelling. 

The innocence of childhood is lost when Lucy meets Charles, young and charming, they fall in love and get married in her castle chapel by a layperson (legal, not legal?, that becomes a big issue), and she then lives as part of (but not really part of) the royal family and all the drama unfolds. She is hidden, a secret wife. When war comes and it's not safe to be in England, they all flee and her husband becomes consumed with his role. Soon, as history knows, his father Charles I is be-headed and Cromwell take over parliament. Charles is the rightful king, but it's years before he is able to return to the throne. And along the way, the family breaks and is fractured by rumors, drama, misunderstanding, and disloyalty. 

You see the human side of these historical figures. Goudge brings them out so well. You feel you know them. This story doesn't end well, as Lucy only lives to age 28. She endures such suffering as does the king. At the end of the book, there are beautiful reminders of the trials we bear, from Dr. Cosin. Words that can enrich our own lives with some spiritual wisdom.

All we are asked to bear we can bear. That is a law of the spiritual life. The only hindrance to the working of this law, as of all benign laws, is fear. 
- The Child From the Sea, Elizabeth Goudge