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Authors: Elizabeth Gaskell
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appeased Southey and was reassuring to Gaskell as well. Throughout the Life Gaskell anxiously repeats that Brontë did not cultivate the literary arts at the expense of the domestic ones. “Never was the claim of any duty, never was the call of another for help, neglected for an instant,” Gaskell protests (p. 246). She often counterweights discussions of Brontë’s professional engagement with examples of her fulfilling her duty to her father and other dependents. “ ‘The right path is that which necessitates the greatest sacrifice of self-interest—which implies the greatest good to others,’ ” Brontë counseled Nussey when she was torn between staying at home to care for her aging mother and going out to “ ‘governess drudgery,’ ” as Brontë called it. “ ‘I recommend you to do what I am trying to do myself,’ ” Brontë adds, showing signs of a character in conflict, a struggle to be dutiful (p. 237).
In Gaskell’s discussion of Jane Eyre’s composition history, she relates the anecdote of Brontë’s “breaking off in the full flow of interest and inspiration in her writing,” to “carefully cut out the specks in the potatoes” that had been missed by the aging and nearly blind Tabby (p. 246). Rather than diminishing Brontë’s stature as a professional, as some contend, these details make the reader appreciate the divided nature of her labor. Examples such as this may have won Brontë a belated place in the hearts of Victorians who saw in her sacrifice “the martyr’s pang, and the saint’s victory,” but they impress today’s reader instead with the constraints under which she produced enduring literary classics (Easson, p. 381).
Gaskell, who had to meet the needs of four growing daughters, the manifold responsibilities of a minister’s wife, and the demands of her rescue work, complained to her friend Charles Eliot Norton of the household mundanities that harassed her away from writing:
If I had a library like yours, all undisturbed for hours, how I could write! ... But you see everybody comes to me perpetually. Now in this hour since breakfast I have had to decide on the following variety of important questions. Boiled beef—how long to boil? What perennials will do in Manchester smoke, & what colours our garden wants? Length of skirt for a gown? Salary of a nursery governess, & certain stipulations for amount of time to be left to herself (The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, letter 384).
Although she couches it in the neutral wish for a private library, Gaskell’s point is that if she were a man, and thereby liberated from the domestic responsibilities that divide her focus, she would be a better, or at least a more prolific, writer.
The Brontë—Gaskell correspondence evidences an ongoing conversation about women’s changing role. “ ‘Men begin to regard the position of woman in another light than they used to do,’ ” Brontë observed in her first letter to Gaskell. “ ‘They say... that the amelioration of our condition depends on ourselves. Certainly there are evils which our own efforts will best reach; but as certainly there are other evils—deep-rooted in the foundations of the social system—which no efforts of ours can touch’ ” (pp. 356—357). A letter written a month later suggests that the friends shared what was, for their day, quite a progressive position on women’s labor: “ ‘Why are you and I to think (perhaps I should rather say to feel) so exactly alike on some points that there can be no discussion between us?’ ” Brontë wrote to her future biographer. “ ‘Your words on this paper express my thoughts.’ ” The subject under discussion was Harriet Taylor’s article “The Enfranchisement of Women,” which appeared in the Westminster Review in 1851 and was attributed to J. S. Mill. Brontë opposed many aspects of it, but she embraced its treatment of the question of women’s employment, “ ‘especially’ ” the contention “
In Gaskell’s discussion of Jane Eyre’s composition history, she relates the anecdote of Brontë’s “breaking off in the full flow of interest and inspiration in her writing,” to “carefully cut out the specks in the potatoes” that had been missed by the aging and nearly blind Tabby (p. 246). Rather than diminishing Brontë’s stature as a professional, as some contend, these details make the reader appreciate the divided nature of her labor. Examples such as this may have won Brontë a belated place in the hearts of Victorians who saw in her sacrifice “the martyr’s pang, and the saint’s victory,” but they impress today’s reader instead with the constraints under which she produced enduring literary classics (Easson, p. 381).
Gaskell, who had to meet the needs of four growing daughters, the manifold responsibilities of a minister’s wife, and the demands of her rescue work, complained to her friend Charles Eliot Norton of the household mundanities that harassed her away from writing:
If I had a library like yours, all undisturbed for hours, how I could write! ... But you see everybody comes to me perpetually. Now in this hour since breakfast I have had to decide on the following variety of important questions. Boiled beef—how long to boil? What perennials will do in Manchester smoke, & what colours our garden wants? Length of skirt for a gown? Salary of a nursery governess, & certain stipulations for amount of time to be left to herself (The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, letter 384).
Although she couches it in the neutral wish for a private library, Gaskell’s point is that if she were a man, and thereby liberated from the domestic responsibilities that divide her focus, she would be a better, or at least a more prolific, writer.
The Brontë—Gaskell correspondence evidences an ongoing conversation about women’s changing role. “ ‘Men begin to regard the position of woman in another light than they used to do,’ ” Brontë observed in her first letter to Gaskell. “ ‘They say... that the amelioration of our condition depends on ourselves. Certainly there are evils which our own efforts will best reach; but as certainly there are other evils—deep-rooted in the foundations of the social system—which no efforts of ours can touch’ ” (pp. 356—357). A letter written a month later suggests that the friends shared what was, for their day, quite a progressive position on women’s labor: “ ‘Why are you and I to think (perhaps I should rather say to feel) so exactly alike on some points that there can be no discussion between us?’ ” Brontë wrote to her future biographer. “ ‘Your words on this paper express my thoughts.’ ” The subject under discussion was Harriet Taylor’s article “The Enfranchisement of Women,” which appeared in the Westminster Review in 1851 and was attributed to J. S. Mill. Brontë opposed many aspects of it, but she embraced its treatment of the question of women’s employment, “ ‘especially’ ” the contention “
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