Charlotte Brontë, Autobiography, and the Image of the Hero
Abstract Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was one of the many real-life heroes, probably the pre-eminent one, in Charlotte Brontë's life and works. He was a masculine type that attracted her, as both woman and writer, from a very early age; but she was not alone in her admiration of what Carlyle called 'the great ones of the earth'. The paper argues that Charlotte's response to historical characters like the Duke of Wellington is not only part of a cultural dynamic of hero-worship that provided a ready context for 'veneration' but is also part of the complex self-fashioning that we all experience in the process of identity formation. Wellington and his various mutations can be traced in her writing from the juvenilia to Shirley in particular, and can be seen as an evolving critique on the hero. They also reflect an important element of Charlotte Brontë's personal narrative and indicate the way hero-worship helped to mould her ambition, her love of politics and her idea of integrity.
Charlotte Brontë: A radical Tory
Although it is well known that Charlotte Bronte had pronounced political views and interests from childhood onwards, few academics have examined her preoccupation with politics, in the sense of public life and government affairs, at any length. Insofar as critics and scholars have considered her political opinions, they have found her Toryism hard to reconcile with the rebellious spirit in evidence throughout her mature fiction—a spirit that was felt by more than one contemporaneous reviewer to be akin to that of Radicalism. This article shows that there is no contradiction: Charlotte Bronte's political opinions were rooted in her ardent patriotism and love of freedom, both of which passions are compatible with Tory values. In her writings, veneration for the traditional British institutions, and for the Duke of Wellington as the preserver of Britain's ancient liberties, coexists with awareness of the right of women as well as men to carve out independent and meaningful lives for themselves. In the latter respect, she may be said to have adopted a radical stance. (Less)
Shoeless Joe: Fantasy and the Humor of Fellow-Feeling
In his essay on Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Thomas Carlyle writes of a humor that manifests itself in smile rather than laughter. "Richter is a man of mirth," says Carlyle, whose humor is "capricious . . . quaint . . . [and] heartfelt" (15). The three adjectives represent for Carlyle the essence of what he terms "true humor" because they suggest Richter's enormous respect for humanity. "True humor," he goes on to say, "springs not more from the head than from the heart; it is not contempt, its essence is love; it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper" (17). These smiles are not Hobbesian smirks of superiority1 but genuine signs of compassion for, sympathy toward, and empathy with the object of the humor. Carlyle further provides a direct link between humor and both pathos and nobility; the link is the smile of the caring man. For Carlyle, this smile is one of "fellow-feeling":