SOURCE: "Art, Death, and the Composition of Shirley," in The Victorian Newsletter, No. 28, Fall, 1965, pp. 22-4.

[In the following essay, Knies examines Brontë's writing timetable in order to challenge other critics ' claims that Anne Brontë 's death brought about changes in the character and fate of Caroline.]

It is a well-known fact that the composition of Charlotte Brontë's third novel, Shirley, was interrupted by the successive deaths of Branwell, Emily, and Anne Brontë; and writers—notably Janet Spens and J.M.S. Tompkins—have argued plausibly that as a result Charlotte altered her original plan while she was writing the novel. Thus, many of the readily acknowledged weaknesses of the novel can be attributed to personal rather than artistic problems. But these theories, as well as the statement in Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë upon which they are based, appear in view of the available evidence to be erroneous.

To review briefly, Mrs. Gaskell states that Charlotte "had nearly finished the second volume of her tale when Branwell died,—after him Emily,—after Anne;—the pen, laid down when there were three sisters living and loving, was taken up when one alone remained. Well might she call the first chapter that she wrote after this, 'The Valley of the Shadow of Death.' '"

Partly on the basis of this comment, Janet Spens constructs her theory that Charlotte's original intention in the novel was "to give Shirley to Robert Moore and to let Caroline die of a broken heart," but that Anne's death in May changed her mind: "Mrs. Gaskell tells us that the first chapter written after Anne's death was the 24th .. . in which Caroline goes down to the gates of death, but returns. Now Louis [Moore] makes his first appearance in the preceding chapter, and up to that point the way has been prepared for the gradual decline of Caroline. It would, I think, have been a greater book, if the author had hardened her heart and gone on." But Charlotte changed her plan because she could not bear "to use in a work of art the clear impression imprinted by the agony of the death of the prototype" and because "it might suggest to the world, should the identity of the Bells ever be discovered, that Anne had died of unrequited love."²

J. M. S. Tompkins accepts the idea that Anne's death caused a change in Charlotte's original plan, but he sees that plan differently. Reading carefully the chapters preceding the one entitled "The Valley of the Shadow of Death," he decides: "Only by a selective and exclusive use of certain features in the book can we believe that Caroline was death doomed at the beginning.. . . We need not, however, believe that her stony path originally led to the altar. There is an alternative. Caroline may have been designed for single life."³ Tompkins notes that Caroline's recovery is in no way dependent upon Robert Moore; rather it is the discovery of her mother that saves her, and this fact suggests that her future was bound up with her mother rather than with Moore. The plot as Charlotte originally conceived it must then have been something like the following:

. . . of the two charming, womanly creatures [Caroline and Shirley] who stand at the beginning of life, one, already more favoured by fortune, was to be blessed by love . . . and the other was to do without. She was not to go uncomforted, but the prize in reserve for her was the prize for which she consciously struggled, not the unanticipated bonus of marriage with Robert Moore, but a retrieved serenity and useful activity, and what was to the Brontës the absolute solace of family love.

Tompkins rightly concludes: "If this was to have been Caroline's lot, much that now hangs loosely on the story . . . would have been very much to the purpose."⁴

This theory is surely an attractive one, removing as it does the burden for Shirley's failure from Charlotte Brontë the artist and putting it on Charlotte Brontë the bereaved sister. Unfortunately, the evidence of the manuscript,⁵ of Charlotte's letters during the period of Shirley's composition, and of Shirley itself makes the theories of both Spens and Tompkins questionable. First of all, Mrs. Gaskell's account of the composition of Shirley is most likely inaccurate: Charlotte had actually completed only one volume of the novel before Branwell died. The end of the first volume is dated in manuscript September 1848, the month of Branwell's death. Furthermore, in a letter to Smith Williams written the following February, Charlotte expresses her regret that she has no completed novel to send him. But in reading Mrs. Gaskell's Mary Barton, Charlotte was "dismayed" to find herself "in some measure anticipated both in subject and incident," and therefore she offers to send Williams her first volume, which she has copied, in order to get his opinion on the matter.⁶ That little of the novel beyond this point was completed at the time is made clear by a letter written to Smith Williams on March 2, 1849: "I am glad that you and Mr. Smith like the commencement of my present work. I wish it were more than a commencement; for how it will be reunited after the long break, or how it can gather force of flow when the current has been checked or rather drawn off so long, I know not" (II, 313).

The manuscript contains no dates other than the one given above, and therefore we cannot be sure exactly when any particular chapter was written. But if the comments in Charlotte's letters at this time are at all reliable, we can get a fairly good idea of her progress. As late as March 2, judging from the letter above, little more than the first volume of Shirley was completed; in other words, Charlotte was not working on the book at all during the period between Branwell's and Emily's death. Anne's sickness evidently prevented her from doing much more before Anne's death in May. On April 2 she writes Smith Williams that she has refused an offer to be a contributor to an American periodical: "When I can write—the book I have in mind must claim all my attention.—Oh if Anne were well—if the void Death has left were a little closed up—if the dreary word 'nevermore ' would cease sounding in my ears—I think I could yet do something!" (II, 320) At some time in this period, however, she must have resumed composition, for in a letter dated April 16 she tells Williams that she tries to write now and then: "The effort was a hard one at first. It renewed the terrible loss of last December strangely. Worse than useless did it seem to attempt to write what there no longer lived an 'Ellis Bell' to read; the whole book, with every hope founded on it, faded to vanity and vexation of spirit." Her only inducement to continue is her desire to please her friends at Cornhill, and she feels that her powers will return "if it would please Providence to restore" Anne (II, 327). The final letter indicating the progress of the book during this period was written about three weeks before Anne's death. Charlotte tells Williams that she can make no promise when another novel will be ready, for neither her time nor her efforts are her own: "That absorption in my employment to which I gave myself up without fear of doing wrong when I wrote Jane Eyre, would now be alike impossible and blamable; but I do what I can, and have made some little progress" (II, 329).

"Some little progress"—a tantalizingly vague statement. But judging from the tone of the comments above, it is certainly hard to believe that Charlotte wrote her whole second volume in a period of two months, months during which she was a constant nurse to Anne, during which she could not give herself up to "absorption in her employment." It seems hardly likely that "The Valley of the Shadow of Death," the opening chapter of the third volume, was the first chapter Charlotte wrote after Anne's death. The remaining portion of the novel, however, was written quite rapidly, in an attempt to avoid reality by immersion in the fictional world. "Labour must be the cure, not sympathy," Charlotte writes Smith Williams near the end of June; "Labour is the only radical cure for rooted sorrow. . . . Total change might do much—where that cannot be obtained—work is the best substitute" (II, 349). Three months after Anne's death the novel was finished.

While this information about the actual course of the composition of Shirley does not absolutely disprove the theories of Spens and Tompkins, it certainly weakens a conjecture based on the inaccurate information given by Mrs. Gaskell. Anne's death may have changed the plan of the novel, for surely Tompkins is correct when he says that Charlotte is really describing Anne's illness when she describes Caroline's;⁷ yet there is one last bit of evidence overlooked by both Tompkins and Spens in constructing their theories: Louis Moore is first mentioned in the novel not in Chapter XXIII, but as early as Chapter V. He does not appear in person, of course, but it is hard to understand why Charlotte would go to the trouble to describe him in some detail (even down to the fact that he was a tutor in a private family) if she had no intention of using him later.⁸ And this description also occurs in the manuscript, the part dated September, 1848, which Charlotte sent to Smith Williams in February, 1849; Charlotte did not go back and write the passage in after Anne's death, nor does the manuscript give any evidence that she rewrote Chapter XXIII to get Louis into the story, as Tompkins conjectures.⁹ Charlotte may have planned to use him in some way other than she did, but he was obviously a part of her design from the beginning.

Ultimately, then, we are thrown back upon subject matter and point of view when we try to determine the novel's merits. There can be no doubt that the loss of three members of her family, the consequent mental anguish, and the long break in the composition helped to determine the quality of the writing. But it is apparent from the very beginning of the novel that she could achieve at best a moderate success, no matter what personal considerations were involved. For Shirley is Charlotte Brontë's attempt to write a typical Victorian novel, one such as her literary idol Thackeray might write, and her peculiar talent was not suited for such an undertaking. In retrospect, Charlotte herself realized that fact. "You will see that Villette touches on no matter of public interest," she wrote her publisher, George Smith. "I cannot write books handling the topics of the day; it is of no use trying" (IV, 14).¹⁰Jane Eyre and Villette give ample evidence that her vision was primarily private rather than social and that her point of view was more successfully first person than omniscient. Charlotte's failure in Shirley must, in the final analysis, be assessed in artistic, not personal, terms.

Notes

¹The Life of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Temple Scott and B. W. Willett (Edinburgh, 1907), p. 365.

² "Charlotte Brontë," in Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, XIV (1929) 63-64. Anne Brontë is not usually held to be the prototype of Caroline Helstone. The more common view is that Caroline is really a combination of Ellen Nussey and Charlotte herself. For a review of the opinions on this subject, see Herbert E. Wroot, Sources of the Brontë Novels: Persons and Places, Supplementary Part No. 4, Brontë Society Transactions, VIII (1935), 99-101; see also J. M. S. Tompkins, "Caroline Helstone's Eyes," BST, XIV (1961), 21-22. There is also Charlotte's own comment, usually ignored, in a letter to George Smith: "[I] regret exceedingly that it is not in my power to give any assurance of the substantial existence of Miss Helstone . . . she is a native of Dreamland, and as such can have neither voice nor presence except for the fancy, neither being nor dwelling except in thought" (Letters, III, 68).

³ Tompkins, p. 25.

⁴ Tompkins, pp. 27-28.

⁵ British Museum Add. MSS 43477-43479.

⁶The Brontës; Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence in Four Volumes, ed. T. J. Wise and J. A. Symington (Oxford, 1932), II, 305. Future quotations from Charlotte's letters are identified by volume and page in the text.

⁷ Tompkins, p. 22.

⁸Cf. Charlotte's introduction of Michael Hartley in the first chapter of the book and subsequent inconspicuous references to him. At the end of the novel we learn that he is the one who shot Robert Moore.

⁹ Tompkins, p. 23.

¹⁰ The statement is reminiscent of an earlier one made while Charlotte was anticipating with some discomfort the reviews of Jane Eyre: "It has no learning, no research, it discusses no subject of public interest. A mere domestic novel will, I fear, seem trivial to men of large views, and solid attainments" (Letters, II, 151 ). Shirley has taught her that she cannot write a book calculated to please the critics.