There's no use in weeping,
Though we are condemned to part:
There's such a thing as keeping
A remembrance in one's heart.
~ Parting by Charlotte Brontë
On the morning of March 31, 1855 the church bell tolled to let the villagers of Haworth know that Charlotte Brontë had died. Much has been said and written about the cause of her death. Nowadays most biographers agree that she did from Hyperemesis gravidarum - extreme sickness in the early stages of pregnancy. Much has also been said and written about her last months - the brief nine months she was married to her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. Our weekly quote, and her last letters to her friends, witness to her extreme happiness even to the last moments. After losing all of her siblings to TB she had left solitude behind and was beginning to see life in a completely new way.
Many 'what-ifs' remain concerning how her writing would have evolved after her marriage. She hadn't written much lately. Some go as far as saying she would have dropped it altogether, and turned to the usual life a curate's wife led. But who can seriously believe that the mind who wrote Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette and endless tales that she never saw in print would have given up a lifetime activity? No, once she had settled down to her new life, she would have taken up her pen again and written away - perhaps somewhat differently, perhaps of new subjects, perhaps with new viewpoints. But, oh, she would have written! and shown the critics she wasn't just Charlotte Nicholls, but still powerful, 'coarse', passionate Currer Bell.
So, today, at BrontëBlog we would like to pay tribute to a unique mind, to a woman who still 151 years after her death influences the way we see the world, the manner we look at books. A woman who helped shape modern literature.
We mourn the loss of one, whose like, we hope not ever to see again - and as you justly state we do not mourn alone -
~ Patrick Brontë
Categories: Reminder, Charlotte_Brontë
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