Cleopatra's Nose

Cleopatra's Nose. 39 Varieties of Desire is a collection of essays for The New Yorker by Judith Thurman. Among them, there's one about Charlotte Brontë:

Cleopatra's Nose
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub Date: 10/2007
ISBN: 0-374-12651-8

Cleopatra’s Nose is an exuberant gathering of essays and profiles representing twenty years of Judith Thurman’s celebrated writing, particularly her fascination with human vanity, femininity, and “women’s work”—from haute couture to literature to commanding empires. The subjects are iconic (Jackie, the Brontës, Toni Morrison, Anne Frank) and multifarious (tofu and performance art, pornography and platform shoes, kimonos and bulimia); all inspire dazzling displays of craft, wit, penetration, and intelligence.

Here we find explorations of voracity: hunger for sex, food, experience, and transcendence; see how writers from Flaubert to Nadine Gordimer have engaged with history; meet eminent Victorians and the greats of fashion. Whether reporting on hairstyles, strolling the halls of power, or deftly unpacking novels and their writers, Thurman never fails to provoke, inspire, captivate, and enlighten. Cleopatra’s Nose is an embarrassment of riches from one of our great literary journalists.

We suppose that the article on Charlotte Brontë is this one:

Judith Thurman, A Critic at Large, "READER, I MARRIED HIM", The New Yorker, March 20, 1989, p. 109

Abstract A CRITIC AT LARGE about Charlotte Bronte(who published 3 novels under the pseudonym Currer Bell)& her biographers. Because Bronte had achieved notoriety in equal measure with glory, Elizabeth Gaskell, Bronte's first biographer & friend, set out to vindicate Bronte. The next century of biographers take a less defensive, & restricted view of Bronte. Writer tells about Brontes life at Haworth in Yorkshire with her ailing, tyrannical father, Rev. Patrick Bronte & her 5 sisters & brother. At age 14 Bronte had catalogued 22 volumes of poetry & prose. Bronte & her sister Emily left Haworth briefly to attend boarding school in Belgium. There Bronte met Constantin Heger the teacher with whom she fell in love. Her version of the experience is the subject of "Villette," one of the best studies of claustrophobia & depression in literature. Various critics point to Bronte's "morbid passion," "rancor," & "aggressive stoicism." If rancor compromised Bronte the artist, it didn't compromise Bronte the woman. At age 38 she married Arthur Nicholls, her father's curate. She died 9 months later. The question for readers to ponder is what Bronte would've made of ordinary happiness. For Bronte maintained as she had in "Villette" that some beings were born to suffer, and that it was nobler to "submit faithfully" to such a fate than to pine for a sweeter one.

Categories: Books, Charlotte Brontë