Every Time This Biographer of the Brontë Family Calls Them Unemployable

We’ve landed in Michigan and my childhood Midwestern accent is coming back in full folksy force. Also, the Chatner is offering a special 20% off deal for the next year to anyone who becomes a paying subscriber this week.

I’m a little more than halfway through historian Juliet Barker’s 2012 biography of the Brontë siblings, The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors.¹ The book usually gets positioned as a necessary corrective against centuries of accumulated myths, which I always find attractive because I love thinking of myself as a bold truth-teller who cuts against received wisdom, so of course I’m having a great time.

Possibly the best part of the book is the nonstop stream of reminders that all of the Brontë children, and not just Branwell, were categorically and catastrophically unemployable. Especially Charlotte! This should not have come as a surprise to me, since Villette could only have been written by someone incapable of getting along with others,² but the degree to which she could turn even the mildest job into a classical martyrdom is pretty remarkable, not to mention relatable. I got in a lot of trouble at my first summer job at Portillo’s for refusing to cover up my eyebrow piercing with a Band-Aid and for ordering extra bread with my staff meal, so I can appreciate what they were going through.

That’s certainly not the primary focus of the book, but it’s an exhaustive 2,000-pager, so their collective allergy to working comes up a lot:

Well, at least they’re together:

“Christmas 1839 therefore saw the whole Brontë family reunited in Haworth, all four children having failed to hold a job and all four now unemployed.”

It wasn’t:

“The advertisement must have leapt off the front page of the Leeds Intelligencer when Branwell picked up the newspaper on 21 December. Here, surely, was the ideal job for him.”

It didn’t:

“The fact that he had lost his job paled into insignificance beside the fact that a professional literary career seemed now to be opening out before him.”

Not for long!

“Now, too, [Charlotte] had a new occupation for, after a break of more than eighteen months, she had at last found herself a job.”

“I’ve done the research and her bosses were actually really nice”:

“Charlotte obviously found some comfort for her own wounded pride in attacking the supposed vulgarity of her employers, but she was being extremely unjust to them. The Whites went out of their way to make her happy…The fact that her job grew easier with time — to her evident surprise — wrung no concessions from her.”

Worrying about all the wrong things, that’s another fault of yours:

“Charlotte seemed more troubled by the fact that she was unable to assist Miss Wooler...than about her own failure to secure another job. In fact, she seems to have been rather too comfortable at home, as the cheerful, gossipy tone of her letters to Ellen suggests.”

At least Branwell is working, Charlotte!

“Despite Charlotte’s derision, Branwell had at least secured a job….he was to join the Leeds and Manchester Railway as the ‘assistant clerk-in-charge’ at the new station of Sowerby Bridge.”

CHARLOTTE:

“Charlotte did not tell her aunt quite all the truth. Far from simply putting off the plan to take over Miss Wooler’s school, it seems it had been abandoned altogether.”

!!!!

“Charlotte claimed that it was her wish to commence a school, as indeed everyone now expected her to do. She had sufficient money and qualifications for the undertaking but, she asserted, there was now an insuperable barrier to her attaining the objective for which she had striven so long: her father’s health…Though this argument has been universally accepted by Charlotte’s friends and biographers, it was disingenuous. It would obviously have been a greater comfort to Patrick to know that his children were all well placed to earn their livings than to have them unemployed at home and dependent on his own inadequate salary.”

I had to put the book (my phone) down for a moment after reading this sentence:

“There was no need for Charlotte to remain at home. Her father’s ill health was simply a convenient excuse.”

Guess who’s coming home again:

“Patrick at least had the comfort of learning from Branwell and Emily that they were both doing as well as could be expected in their first employment. The shock must therefore have been all the greater when Charlotte announced that she had finally given her notice to Miss Wooler and would not be returning to Dewsbury Moor after the Christmas holidays. As she had been on the brink of giving up at least twice before, her family might have thought that this was simply another futile gesture, but Charlotte stuck to her resolve.”

She saw how things were going for Charlotte and read the signs:

“[Emily’s] six short months as a teacher at Law Hill were to be her first and last experiment in earning her own living.”

Possibly too lenient:

“It must have been a matter of considerable concern to Patrick that within three months all three of his children who had ventured out into the world had given up their employment…Nevertheless, he showed a quite remarkable leniency and did not push them into seeking new posts.”

Once again Charlotte LIED in the MAIL:

“Charlotte may have told rather less than the truth when she described her sole failings as being ‘shy and sometimes melancholy.’ According to Mrs Sidgwick, ‘Miss Brontë often went to bed all day and left her to look after the children at a time when she was much occupied with her invalid father’…As Mrs Sidgwick was also into the last few weeks of her fifth pregnancy, she had every right to remonstrate with her recalcitrant governess.’”

It’s called a sabbatical:

“Anne, too, had gone back to work after allowing herself only the briefest of holidays after her dismissal from Blake Hall. This was in stark contrast to Charlotte, who had been unemployed since July 1839 and still showed a marked reluctance to find a new post.”

It’s called a furlough:

“Branwell found himself unemployed once more.”

Does anything ever restrain Charlotte?

“With all her family gainfully employed, Charlotte had nothing to restrain her.”

In addition to being dishonest and lazy, Charlotte Brontë was a massive sexist³:

“Charlotte’s disillusionment was also reflected in a significant shift in her attitude towards Madame Heger, repeating the familiar pattern of her relationships with previous employers. From being grateful and appreciative of her kindness, Charlotte had now begun actively to dislike her — but, typically, blamed it on Madame Heger’s attitude towards herself…Just as she had done at the Sidgwicks’ and the Whites’, Charlotte directed all her venom at the mistress and found every excuse for the master.”

So nothing unusual for her:

“Charlotte’s desperation can be measured by the fact that she made no excuses for returning home and, more significantly, that she had no prospective employment lined up in England.”

And they’re not poor, they’re middle-class:

“The whole concept of the Brontës’ poverty has been greatly exaggerated…[Charlotte’s] education and inclination both led her to want a life of leisured luxury in which she could pursue her reading and writing at will. The necessity of earning her own living thus produced a gnawing resentment which had poisoned her relations with her employers in the past and embittered her future prospects. She seems to have been unable to appreciate the advantages she had, including that of a comfortable home. By comparison with most of her father’s parishioners, the Brontës enjoyed enormous wealth.”

Stop, stop, she’s already dead, et cetera:

“Indeed, it is curious that Emily should ever have gained the reputation for being the most sympathetic of the Brontës, particularly in her dealings with Branwell, as all the evidence points to the fact that she was so absorbed in herself and her literary creations that she had little time for the genuine suffering of her family.”

Hardly right, and yet!

“Anne’s departure for Blake Hall, however, had goaded Charlotte into making an effort to find a place for herself as a governess. It was hardly right that only the youngest of the Brontë children should be out earning her own living.”

What are younger sisters for, if not to implicitly criticize everything about your way of life merely by the counterexample of their own conduct:

“As if to prove that lack of will alone stood in the way of Charlotte obtaining a new post, Anne, though less well qualified, had found herself a new place without any difficulty.”

Branwell is honestly come across as a total middle-of-the-pack layabout compared to Charlotte:

“Branwell was dismissed at midsummer 1840, having kept his post as a tutor for only six months.”

And there you have it:

“Charlotte’s attitude had been largely responsible for her unhappiness as a private governess.”

The Brontës: They’re just like us!

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1. The only way I’m getting any reading done with a newborn and a cross-country move is by downloading library books onto my phone and reading them twenty pages at a time before wandering off and doing chores. I love doing chores in the Midwest! I was doing chores in the Midwest in 1997 and I’m doing them again now, and it’s much more fun when you’re in charge of what chores get done and in what order. Long-term, my plan is to secretly work the rest of the Lavery-Woodruff family around to having dinner every night at 5:30. I think I can pull it off.

2. To be clear, I adore Villette.

3. Again I want to stress that none of these things make me love her any less