Culturally Speaking#
In the late 1840s and early 1850s, Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters, albeit writing originally under the pseudonymous surname “Bell”, as well as nonsense poet Edward Lear, were all publishing contemporary, and often very innovative, new works.
Dickens was resident on the Island, in Bonchurch, during the summer of 1849, and Edward Lear was a friend of Tennyson, at least for a time, and visitor at Farringford, during the 1850s.
At the end of that summer, in the last week of September, “Shirley”, a new book from Currer Bell, the author of “Jane Eyre” a couple of years earlier, was announced, for publication later on in October.
Currer Bell’s groundbreaking novel “Jane Eyre” was first published in 1847, but I’ve found no contemporary links of them having visited the Island.
Reading through some early reviews of Jane Eyre, the lead character’s early life in the less than pleasant Lowood School, with its poor fare and micro-management by a controlling clergyman, Mr. Brocklehurst, seems to attract the attention of several of the literary critics.
“Not merely a work of great promise”, October 1847
https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0002115/18471023/030/0011?browse=true Atlas - Saturday 23 October 1847
Jane Eyre; an Autobiography. Edited by CURRER BELL 3 vols. London: Smith, Elder, and Co.
This is not merely a work of great promise; it is one of absolute performance. It is one of the most powerful domestic romances which have been published for many years. It has little or nothing of the old conventional stamp upon it; none of the jaded, exhausted attributes of a worn-out vein of imagination, reproducing old incidents and old characters in new combinations; but is full of youthful vigour, of freshness and originality, of nervous diction and concentrated interest. The incidents are sometimes melodramatic, and, it might be added, improbable; but these incidents, though striking, are subordinate to the main purpose of the piece, which depends not upon incident, but on the development of character; it is a tale of passion, not of action; and the passion rises at times to a height of tragic intensity which is almost sublime. It is a book to make the pulses gallop and the heart beat, and to fill the eyes with tears.
Jane Eyre tells her own story. She is an orphan child, outwardly adopted but inwardly repudiated by a hard, unfeeling woman, her aunt, who outrages the affections of the child, and would fain crush her spirit. The little girl turns at times against her oppressor; and resistance strengthens the hatred and stimulates the cruelty of the bad woman. Jane is sent to a charitable institution, where she spends eight years of her life, emerging thence, at the age of eighteen, in the character of a governess. Here the interest of the story commences. The history of Jane’s life at the Lowood institution is, perhaps, unnecessarily lengthened out. There is an air of truth about it; and we do not doubt that the character of Ellen Burns—a youthful inmate of the asylum, who is the very incarnation of Christian charity and forbearance—is an especial favourite with the writer. Helen Burns is just one of those idealities in which young writers are fain to revel—conjuring up with the enchanter’s wand beings who belong to a higher sphere and a purer atmosphere than this—dream-children, with the unspotted hearts of babyhood and the wisdom of adolescence. Creations such as these are very beautiful, but very untrue.
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We know not whether this powerful story is from the pen of a youthful writer; there is all the freshness and some of the crudeness of youth about it, but there is a knowledge of the profoundest springs of human emotion, such as is rarely acquired without long years of bitter experience in the troubled sea of life. The action of the tale is sometimes unnatural—but the passion is always true. It would be easy to point out incidental defects; but the merits of the work are so striking that it is a pleasure to recognise them without stint and qualification. It is a book with a great heart in it; not a mere sham—a counterfeit.
We do not know who “Currer Bell” might be, October 1847
Weekly Chronicle (London) - Saturday 23 October 1847
LITERARY CHRONICLE. JANE EYRE. An Autobiography. Edited by Currer Bell. 3 Vols.—London: Smith and Elder.—What we have to say about this work, may be summed up in a vary few words—it is the most extraordinary production that has issued from the press for years. We know no author who possesses such power as is exhibited in these three volumes—no writer who can sustain such a calm, mental tone, and so deeply interest without having recourse to any startling expedients, or blue-fire colouring, so prominent in modern literature. We do not know who “Currer Bell” might be, but if the name is not assumed, and if this is his first production, he might make his own terms with his booksellers in future, for his name will stand very high in literature. We were tempted more than once to believe that Mrs. Marsh was veiling herself under an assumed editorship, for this autobiography partakes greatly of her simple, penetrating style, and, at times, of her love of nature; but a man’s more vigorous hand is, we think,perceptible. The character of Jane Eyre is illustrated in the first few pages of the book, when as a little child in the nursery she undergoes the persecution of her aunt (for she is an orphan) and the whole household. A mind formed of strong affections, quiet observation, and great moral courage, she bears in silence, not without occasional outbursts, the persecution she undergoes, until she is transplanted by her kind aunt to an orphan asylum founded by the class of bitter Christians who impose upon the weak and helpless the miseries of the body in order to purify their souls. Here she remains several years, and a picture is painted of the stagnant life of such institutions with a rare fidelity.
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The orphan daughter of a clergyman, November 1847
Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser - Tuesday 16 November 1847
Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. Edited by Currer Bell. In three volumes. London: Smith, Elder, and Co., Cornhill.
This is one of the most striking works which has for many years past come under our observation. It is full of originality of remark and character, and of vivid and occasionally powerful description. The writer has evidently studied well the human heart. although she (or he) evidently prefers the delineation of those phases of it, which least frequently come under the notice of an ordinary observer. …
Jane Eyre is the orphan daughter of a clergyman; and is consigned at an early age to the protection of an aunt,the widow of her mother’s brother, in whose family, and by whose ill natured children, she is ill-treated and regarded as an incumbrance. Ultimately she is sent to a charity school, the presiding genius of which is a certain Mr. Brocklehurst, a neighbouring clergyman; and here, for the consideration of £15 a-year paid by her aunt, she receives a tolerable education, at the cost of having to submit to a short supply of food, and clothing little removed from that of a pauper. The character of Mr. Brocklehurst,—a gentleman of the Squeer’s class, but with more hypocrisy in his disposition,—is most racily sketched and a more amiable character, that of Miss Temple, a superior teacher in the establishment, is very pleasingly described.
The fate of one of the poor neglected children—Mary Burns—for wham such establishments as Lowood House appear to be especially designed, is thus beautifully told. Helen has been one of those inmates to whom Jane Eyre has especially attached herself; and has been for some months sinking gradually in consumption:—
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Tolerable teachers, intolerable fare, November 1847
Manchester Examiner - Tuesday 16 November 1847
LITERARY EXAMINER.
Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. Edited by Currer Bell, 3 vols. London: Smith, Older and Son, 1847.
Currer Bell is one of those three brothers Bell, who lately published in concert, a volume of rhymes;— with success it would seem, to make the name, on the title-page of an anonymous book, a respectable passport for it into the literature of the day. The work so introduced, is not, as: might be fancied from its title, an authentic narrative of anybody’s life. It is a novel—a very clever and striking one, moreover, though written in the quiet, sober style of the old school, and, in its interest, entirely independent of contemporary commotions and discussions.
The heroine begins her story pretty far back in her life,— when she is quite a little girl,— an orphan one, moreover, sheltered and fed, but miserably treated, by a wealthy widow lady, her relative, who with her children nearly worry to death the timid little unfortunate outcast. The wretchedness of a shy and tormented child, in such a situation, is vividly portrayed; not less so the sudden outburst with which when goaded to desperation, she turns on the protective widow lady, who in astonishment and almost fear packs her off to school. “Lowood Institution,” to wit, a picture, drawn to the life, of an English proprietary girls school,— with its tolerable teachers, intolerable fare, and the pastoral superintendence of a neighbouring clergyman, who with wife and daughters drowned in finery, comes every now and then to inspect, and order here a ribbon, there a curl, to be cut away, for sanctity’s sake. It is at Lowood that Jane’s turbulence gets calmed down,—the only touch of direct philosophy in the book, and not a very happy one,—by the example of meekness in a fellow pupil, and the precepts of a good head governess. Nay, so good does she herself become, that on the removal of the latter to another “sphere of usefulness,” Jane is made head of the establishment. But after a few years, she wearies of the monotony of her situation, and, wanting another, straightway does, what those who want that or anything else, should always do, namely, advertise. The advertisement is answered; all things go well; and in a few weeks, the young lady of eighteen, impassioned and clever, quiet and demure though she looks, ends herself transported to “Thornfield,” a squirearchal manor house in the “North Midland Counties,” with a little French girl for her pupil, and for other companion only an old lady who keeps things trim during the long absence of Mr. Rochester, the owner.
[Continues...]
Bad sanitary circumstances and an insufficient supply of food, November 1847
Morning Post - Wednesday 03 November 1847
LITERATURE.
Jane Eyre; an Autobiography. Edited by Currer Bell. Three Vols.— Smith, Elder, and Co.
This novel many of the features which secure popularity to a work of fiction. The characters introduced are strongly marked, the incidents are various, and of a kind which enlist the sympathies, the style is fresh and vigorous, and scarcely anything is overdone. There is no regular plot: but, what is better, a thrilling interest is excited in each division or department of the story; the several parts hang together with sufficient closeness to constitute continuity, and to admit of a winding-up at the close.
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Such treasonable acts could not be tolerated. Mrs. Reed arranged for banishing the rebel to a distant part of the country to become an inmate of Lowood institution, a seminary partly charitable and partly not, famous for “breaking in” haughty dispositions by accustoming the pupils to endure privation, especially such as arise from cold and hunger. The Rev. Mr. Brocklehurst, under the character of “treasurer” exercised the entire control over the discipline and domestic economy of the establishment; and in the discharge of his arduous duties displayed a combination of qualities such as might have been expected, had he fallen heir to the departed spirits of Squeers and Pecksniff.
Lowood School was attended by several teachers, and a description of their peculiarities, the system of tuition. and the hardships to which the pupils were exposed in attempting to climb the hill of knowledge, occupies several interesting chapters. Bad sanitary circumstances, combined with an insufficient supply of food, invited the entrance of typhus fever, and so great was the mortality among the pupils, that an inquiry took place, and the Rev. Mr. Brocklehurst’s management having been found wanting, he was supplanted, and a better order of things introduced. …