Virginia Woolf on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre & Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights | NOVEL ANALYSIS

hello and welcome to close reading classic literature with me dr octavia cox today i'm going to be looking at virginia woolf's commentary on charlotte bronte's jane eyre which was first published in october 1847 and emily bronte's wuthering heights published in the same year december 1847 and this is from wolf's collection of essays from the common reader published in 1925. the common reader was published by the hogarth press and the hogarth press is the press the publishing house that virginia woolf ran with her husband leonard wolfe from their dining table virginia woolf is a celebrated novelist in her own right you may have heard of mrs dalloway for example published in 1925 or to the lighthouse or orlando or the waves published later 1931 but virginia woolf is also an astute literary critic wolf then is a practicing novelist and in this essay we see her examining and analyzing other novelists which i think is really revealing both in terms of understanding wolf if you're interested in wolf and understanding the brontes charlotte bronte and emily bronte if you're interested in jane eyre and wuthering heights so in the essay that i'm concentrating on today on charlotte bronte's jane eyre and emily bronte's wondering heights virginia woolf i think really gets to the heart to the essence you might say of what makes these two novelists so majestic and so intense and what we are drawn to in them as readers what wolf particularly focuses on is working out and interrogating what is the the core of these two writers what makes them so distinctively themselves what are their writings most intrinsic qualities they're quintessences if you will wolff also discusses the fundamental issues that difference between the two sisters so the difference in aim in scope and in the focus of their writing and i think the inner set a wolf captures something really helpful in understanding the two novelists so let's see then if you agree with virginia woolf's analysis of charlotte bronte's jane eyre and emily bronte's watering heights so wolfe starts by talking about charlotte bronte and she looks at the biography and how the biography impacts on how we interpret her novels we find it difficult to kind of dissociate charlotte bronte from the image of the yorkshire wars the wild yorkshire wars that she lived on and wolff writes when we think of her we have to imagine someone who had no lot in our modern world we have to cast our minds back to the 50s of the last century to to a remote parsonage upon the wild yorkshire moors in that parsonage and on those moors unhappy and lonely in her poverty and her exaltation she remains forever these circumstances as they affect her character may have left their traces on her work so you can see the qualities that charlotte bronte's biography we might bring to our understanding of her work so the wild yorkshire moors the unhappiness and the loneliness and the poverty and the exaltation wolf goes on to describe charlotte bronte as an exhilarating read that you feel exhilarated when you read jane eyre she says nor is this exhilaration short-lived it rushes through the entire volume without giving us time to think so for wolf then jane eyre is not about thinking but about being swept up in the story it gives you no time to think and it rushes you through the the feeling in the exhilaration of the storytelling for wolf charlotte bronte prioritizes the expression of the self and it's that quality that expression of the self that is made sort of awe-inspiring made sublime and here we might think of the high romantic term the egotistical sublime so that's a term that was coined by john keats in a letter of october 1818 and he uses it in reference to william wordsworth but more generally it can be applied to a kind of high romanticism which promotes the ego to the sublime so the egotistical sublime is thinking about the self the ego in terms of inspiring or or or sort of greatness so if something is sublime then it's awe-inspiring it's a kind of greatness beyond comprehension a greatness beyond reason a greatness beyond understanding and the egotistical sublime promotes the ego promotes the self to this kind of sublime level which is beyond comprehension so wolff writes the writer has us by the hand forces us along her road makes us see what she sees this is the idea of the the egotistical sublime never leaves us for a moment or allows us to forget her that she's an author who's very present in her writings for wolf at the end we are steeped through and through with the genius the vehemence the indignation of charlotte bronte so we have this idea of a particular sublimity to charlotte bronte's genius and also a sense of indignation and indignation is a kind of immediate feeling indignation is a is a sort of immediate floor if you fear kind of immediate fury if you feel indignation if you feel indignant that i think is a quite immediate emotion so if you're indignant about something then you're feeling in that moment a kind of fury a kind of anger a kind of hot emotion indignation might cool into something like resentment so resentment is a kind of colder passion or a longer passion even if it's just as intense it doesn't have the immediacy i think that is implied in the word indignant and that matters we'll see why that comes to matter later in the way that wolf continues to describe charlotte bronte wolfe then goes on to compare charlotte bronte to novelists of a fundamentally different sort those who look outwards so wolff writes the characters of a jane austen or of a tolstoy so that's um leo torstoy author of anna karenina war and peace and so on the characters of a jane austen or other tolstoy have a million facets compared with these they live and are complex by means of their effect upon many different people who serve to mirror them in the round so austin and tolstoy are authors who look outwards they look on many different people and they look in the round sort of they look at everything external to them and according to wolf they have a million facets compared to what charlotte bronte brings to her writing so the characters of jane austen or of tolstoy they their characters move hither and this whether their creators watch them or not and the world in which they live seems to us an independent world which we can visit now that they have created it by ourselves and this is really i think a sense that you get when you read austin that she creates this world in which the characters seem to live and exist outside of whether or not the narrative voice happens to notice that they have done a particular thing or not they seem to exist outside of what we are explicitly told about them so according to wolf then austin and tolstoy create worlds where the characters seem to exist beyond the author as well as the narrative voice within the text itself not so for charlotte bronte wolfe says that charlotte bronte in contrast has a a a narrowness of vision she goes on to call it i don't think she means this as a criticism i think it's more a narrowness of vision or a kind of intensity of focus might be a more positive spin on it a real kind of intensity and urgency to the narrow focus the narrow vision that she happens to have like a thomas hardy charlotte bronte has as i've said this intense egotistical for the wolf focus thomas hardy is more akin to charlotte bronte in the power of his personality the power of his personality and the narrowness of his vision so likewise then for wolf charlotte bronte has a power her personality has a power and her vision has a intensity and narrowness a focus to it wolff then goes on to describe charlotte bronte's essential force she does not attempt to solve the problems of human life she is even unaware that such problems exist and this is in contrast to a writer perhaps like you know a satirical writer like jonathan swift someone who is writing to change society someone who wants to change the social political whatever it power structures and actively interrogate those and actively bring about change through their writing for wolfe charlotte bronte is not one of those writers she's not attempting to solve the problems of human life and the human life there i think is important because the problems of human life suggest perhaps the structures of society or the structures of power dynamics or something like that that need to be solved she does not attempt to solve the problems of human life so that's not to do with the kind of essence of humanity that's to do with living virginia woolf continues all her force and it is the more tremendous for being constricted goes into the assertion i love i hate i suffer so for wolf the power of bronte is the intensity of feeling and conveying the intensity of that feeling and describing that passion and about the passion of the individual i love i hate i suffer the kind of egotistical sublime going back to that idea the idea of the individual and their feelings and how intensely they feel those feelings that for wolf is the main feature or the essential force of charlotte bronte's writing for the self-centered and self-limited writers have a power denied the more catholic and broad-minded so in this sense broad-minded being those who focus on um external people the self-centered and self-limited writers look within so self-centered self-limited that means confined to the individual their impressions so the self-centered and sub-limited writers impressions are packed and strongly stamped between their narrow walls again this idea of the narrowness of the vision nothing issues from their mind which has not been marked with their own impress such writers look within themselves for inspiration and all their writing then is an expression of self even if that self is uh filtered as it so happens in two different characters charlotte bronte has an obstinate integrity wolf writes and writes a prose which takes the mold of her mind entire so this goes back to the idea of the egotistical sublime which i was talking about which was coined as i've said by john keats in the same letter so in a letter of october 1818 keats writes about the chameleon poet or the chameleon writer and he alludes particularly to shakespeare but i think it applies to to novelists like austin as well who focus to a much greater extent on character so the chameleon poet inhabits external entities the i the sort of imagery of the comedian poet is that they take on whatever is around them and they they put on the dress of whatever it is that they're sort of adopting at that time according to keith it could be that they fill up the sun or that they fill up the moon or whatever it is but for um a writer like austin a novelist that means that they inhabit their characters and they sort of allow their characters to go to the fore to be at the forefront rather than the authorial self so in that letter keats writes that the chameleon poet has as much delight in conceiving ann iago as an imogen those are references to shakespeare's plays iago is from othello and he's symbolic of a kind of machiavellian manipulation and almost in the complete contrast is imogen she's from cymbeline and she's the epitome basically of a kind of virtuous put upon uh figure and the chameleon poet delights in both of those and lives in both of them and delights in in playing with the machiavellian and the manipulative as in aniago but also just as much delights in playing with the virtue and the put uponness of a character like imogen and both those characters are just as believable you don't get a sense of an author of a self-centered and self-limited author behind those characters they sort of stand believably as characters as wolf said earlier those characters seem to us to live in an independent world which we can visit that has been created so that they they seem to be alive beyond the text in which they happen to inhabit virginia woolf continues that we read charlotte bronte for her poetry and poetry here means not literally poetry is in a form but poetry as in the kind of high romanticism idea of the poetical and the poetical is uh essentially what is sublime what suggests this kind of awe-inspiring greatness that's slightly unfathomable slightly untouchable and that there are some things which are inherently more poetical than other things and so wolfe is is drawing on that and saying we read her for that quality in her that slight poetical unfathomableness other worldliness and part of the poetry that we read her for is her untamed ferocity and primal energy so this is what wolff writes we read charlotte bronte not for exquisite observation of character so we don't read her for her characters her characters are vigorous and elementary elementary here means um [Music] primal i suppose they're not drawn with a kind of fine brush the famous ostinian fine brush that she works on on a small piece of ivory not that kind of character but vigorous and elementary not for comedy hers is grim and crude not for a philosophic view of life so we don't need her for her characters or for her comedy or for you know philosophy for some grand ideas hers is that of a country person's daughter her philosophy is but for her poetry probably that is so with all writers who have as she has an overwhelming personality so that as we say in real life they have only to open the door and make themselves felt so you feel her authorial character you feel charlotte bronte as you are reading the text that it is the the stamp of charlotte bronte all over it she isn't removed from the text going back to the idea of the communion poet isn't removed from the text in a way that you might feel in a in a shakespeare play for example there is in them so writers like bronte some untamed ferocity perpetually at war with the accepted order of things which makes them desire to create instantly rather than to observe patiently so this is going back to the idea of solving the problems of human life or not and what these the aim or focus of a writer is that bronte is not a writer who observes patiently and we might think of this more as a writer like jane austen who has narrative voices who are far more detached therefore their voices far more detached from the action wolf here is saying that charlotte bronte returning to the idea that charlotte bronte is not writing to change society to change the problems of human life which you might say to some extent that austin does she writes satire so wolfe talks about bronte's desire to create instantly and that is the sense of immediacy i think that you get with wolf's earlier point about the indignation that her writing is about instantaneous feeling and pouring out of the feeling of the moment and you know jane eyre is in the first person it is an autobiography it says that in the title of the book jane eyre and autobiography and you do get a real sense when you read it of a kind of emotional intensity and immediate emotional intensity and that being a real part of the purpose of the novel and understanding what the novel means what it's about this very archer rejecting half shades and other minor impediments wings its way past the daily conduct of ordinary people and allies itself with their more inarticulate passion so something deeper within than the surface level of polite articulation and the conduct of ordinary people and austin very much is a writer who focuses on the conduct of ordinary people and in the articulation and the subtleties and the nuances of the articulations of ordinary people which she observes patiently and unpicks dextrously wolf is saying that bronte is not charlotte bronte is not one of those writers it makes them poets or if they choose to write in prose intolerant of its restrictions that is the restrictions of prose that they're intolerant of those restrictions and i think you can see that for example in the uh the uh episode of the telepathy which happens towards the end of jane eyre where mr rochester calls out in the middle of the night jane jane jane and jane eyre sort of telepathically magically hears him from miles and miles and miles away now that you might say is breaking the restrictions of prose writing of novel writing because it is unrealistic because it breaks the rules of realism but for charlotte bronte wolfe is suggesting that that just doesn't matter that the passion the point of that moment is more important so suggesting that these are two souls who hear each other you know across space and time essentially that these two souls who communicate when they're apart from each other that they are fundamentally united not to be together even if they aren't physically together that is the point that charlotte bronte is trying to make in that moment the archer of that the and so the half shades and the minor impediments of the restrictions of prose writing don't matter to her at all in that moment so going back to the past the daily conduct of ordinary people then we can see this as a rejection in some sense of realism for wolf wolf then starts to compare charlotte bronte and emily bronte especially in their use of nature imagery hence it is that both emily and charlotte are always invoking the help of nature because they are intolerant of the restrictions of conventional novelistic prose writing that they draw on nature they invoke the help of nature they both feel the need of some more powerful symbol so nature as a symbol of something else not an accurate depiction of the natural world but nature as a symbol as a powerful symbol of the vast and slumbering passions in human nature than words or actions can convey so it's kind of outside of the particulars of words and actions outside of the particulars of ordinary everyday life sort of beyond the mere human and invoking nature as a symbol of something inarticulate beneath both charlotte bronte and emily bronte according to wolff she both of them calls in nature to describe a state of mind which could not otherwise be expressed but neither of the sisters observed nature accurately as dorothy wordsworth observed it so this is not real life nature but nature as symbol and they don't observe it accurately as dorothy wordsworth observed it or paint it minutely as tennyson painted it so they don't articulate they don't observe nature accurately and they don't paint it minutely instead nature is a symbol they seized those aspects of the earth which were most akin to what they themselves felt or imputed to their characters and so their storms their moors their lovely spaces of summer weather are not ornaments applied to decorate a dull page or display the writer's powers of observation they carry on the emotion and light up the meaning of the book so the symbol of nature the way that nature as a symbol is brought into both of their works carry on the emotion and light up so they elucidate they illuminate the meaning of the book the symbolism of the nature is part of the meaning of the book it's not a kind of extra decoration on the top that symbolism is part of understanding what they are both writing about and essentially we can call this pathetic fallacy so pathetic fallacy was first coined after both of these books had been published it was coined by john ruskin in his book modern painters from 1856 and as the name suggests it was about painting about landscape of nature rather than necessarily initially about writing but it came to be applied to writing because it's a very useful term it means essentially it's a kind of assuming an equation between the writer's mood and the world around them or the writer's mood and the environment around them george eliot a novelist or a victorian novelist also has a very apt definition i think which she came out with in 1856 too in a review of ruskin's modern painters she said pathetic fallacy is the transference to external objects of the spectator's own emotions so seeing in nature the individual the ego's feelings and in some sense if you accept that this is how you also view the brontes then the pathetic fallacy applies because the characters sort of impress their own feelings on nature and nature becomes an external symbol of the internal complications storms that are going on within the characters i think it's also just worth briefly pausing on the fact that these are all happening quite close together in terms of time you know it's only less than 10 years between the these idea of these ideas of pathetic fallacy being articulated and having works like the brontes be published very essentially then for virginia woolf the meaning of charlotte bronte's work and emily bronte's work is rather a mood than a particular observation so the meaning of their texts is about creating a mood virginia woolf then goes on to compare what she thinks is the fundamental difference between charlotte bronte and emily bronte and she even says wuthering heights is a more difficult book to understand than jane eyre because emily was a greater poet than charlotte and i was talking about the poetical before and that idea of the unfathomable and the poetical being describing that mysterious sublime something that we give the word poetical to and wolff here is using that same term to say that fundamentally emily is more poetical than charlotte which is why warren heights is fundamentally more poetical than jane eyre wolfe continues when charlotte wrote she said with eloquence and splendor and passion i love i hate i suffer her experience though more intense is on a level with our own so despite everything i've just said about real life and going outside the bounds of ordinary people etc what wolf is saying here is that that there is still some sense of real life that charlotte bronte's novels involve a kind of heightened reality but they still operate recognizably within some kind of recognizable world but for wolf emily bronte had a greater scope and a greater ambition she calls it than that but there is no i in wuthering heights there are no governesses there are no employers that's the idea of the kind of heightened reality so jane eyre is about a governess and we can see the power dynamics of rochester and jane eyre as governors and blanche ingram and so on but in modern heights there are no governances there are no employers employers again that's you know a kind of relationship and power dynamic that operates in the real world there is love but it is not the love of men and women emily was inspired by some more general conception so it's not the love of recognizable men and women of particular individuals it's some broader conception of love and hate and suffering if we go back to what wolf said about charlotte bronte the impulse which urged her emily to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries she looked out upon the world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book that gigantic ambition is to be felt throughout the novel a struggle half thwarted but of some superb conviction to say something through the mouths of her characters which is not merely i love or i hate but we the whole human race and you the eternal powers the sentence remains unfinished so emily bronte according to virginia woolf is trying to say something beyond humanity about the universe love life joy as abstract terms almost rather than as experienced or filtered through a particular character or a particular individual that she tries to articulate suffering as an abstract concept or love as an abstract concept or hate as an abstract concept and she cites the quotation from chapter 16 this is where um catherine kathy earnshaw has died and nelly dean is kind of reflecting on on death so wolfe says that in the presence of the dead i see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break and i feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter the eternity they have entered where life is boundless in its duration and love in its sympathy and joy in its fullness it is this suggestion of power underlying the apparitions of human nature and lifting them up into the presence of greatness that gives the book its huge stature among other novels this is fundamentally for wolf emily bronte's genius that she articulates something beyond the mere human and that even though she doesn't necessarily answer the question she she asks the question is she trying to say something about we the whole human race and you the eternal powers even if that remains unfinished the sentence isn't closed the answer isn't given she's still asking those questions that ambition is everywhere for wolf throughout the novel and that's why wuthering heights has such a huge stature among other novels because it has this ambition to be bigger than the mere human for virginia woolf emily bronte's characters are unlike us but that they're unlike real people but that's part of understanding what the novel is about emily's emily bronte's characters might be impossible both rights in terms of realism but they are so full of gusto so full of um a kind of vital quality they are so vivid that they transcend reality how we are allowed to ask can there be truth or insight or the finer shades of emotion in men and women who so little resemble what we have seen ourselves but even as we ask it we see in heathcliff the brother that a sister of genius might have seen so a sister of genius that term already sort of puts emily bronte outside of the ordinary if you are a poetical genius as wolf sees bronte then you wouldn't look at a character or a figure like heathcliff with the eyes of an ordinary person so we see the character of heathcliff through the eyes of an otherworldly poetical genius and so of course of course heathcliff doesn't resemble a person in real life because he's being described by someone who is themselves poetical and otherworldly he is impossible we say but nevertheless no boy in literature has a more vivid existence than his so he a more vivid a more life a more full of life existence than his even though he is impossible so it is with the two catherines never could women feel as they do or act in their manner so they're utterly unlifelike we say all the same they are the most lovable women in english fiction now i'm not sure i agree with wolf on that particular bit i don't find them lovable at all myself but i can see what she means about them having a kind of vivid energy which makes them seem alive or seem full of energy even if they don't act as we do or feel as we do they aren't like ordinary people essentially then for virginia woolf emily bronte creates writing that lives beyond mere facts and reality and creates a truth beyond the real and the tangible a greater realism than what might actually exist in the real world so wolfe closes by saying it is as if she could tear up all that we know human beings by and fill these unrecognizable transparencies with such a gust of life that they transcend reality hers then is the rarest of all powers she could free life from its dependence on facts so that there's something living in her novel that is beyond real life with a few touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body by speaking of the more make the wind blow and the thunder roar for virginia woolf then i think we can say that emily bronte describes a truth about being alive divorced from the realities of living thank you very much indeed for watching remember if you like what i do here on my channel where i analyze classic literature and even sometimes analyze an analysis of classic literature as i have done today then do please subscribe and if you've enjoyed the video then do please press the like button it does help me out as i've said many times before in youtube's algorithm and i'd love to know your thoughts on virginia woolf's assessment of emily bronte and charlotte bronte do you agree with her do you think that her assessment fails in any way let me know your thoughts in the comments below