Book
Review: The Professor, by Charlotte Brontë
Almost anyone making a claim to knowledge of
literature is familiar with the name Charlotte Brontë, or ought to be. For
most, the familiarity begins and ends with the novel Jane Eyre, a novel that is considered – and in this blogger’s
opinion, rightly so – as one of the most remarkable works of literature of any
era. However, Charlotte was not only the oldest, but also the most prolific of
the three Brontë sisters, and outlived her younger sisters by about seven
years. Where Emily published the one novel, and Anne two, Charlotte published
three in her lifetime – the aforementioned Jane
Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849), Vilette (1853) and The Professor (published posthumously in 1857).
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| Charlotte Brontë, watercolour by Paul Heger |
William
Crimsworth, the hero of the
relatively short tale (256 pages in my edition), is an orphaned younger son of
a businessman who lost his fortune before his death. Given a good education at
the expense of his maternal relatives, an aristocratic family, he turns down
their condescending offer to join the priesthood and determines that he would
rather be a self-made man. Taking a job in his cruel and brutish elder brother’s
mill does not give William either success or satisfaction, and the taunts of Yorke Hunsden, one of his brother’s
fellow-businessmen force William to take a long, hard look at himself. Finally
breaking the shackles, he departs for Brussels with little more than Hunsden’s
recommendation in his pocket, and finds himself a position teaching English in
a boy’s school run by Monsieur Pelet, a
sly but friendly Frenchman. A second teaching job in the adjoining girls school
follows, and here William meets Mlle Zoraide Reuter, a pretty, well-to-do lady,
proprietor of the school. Mlle Reuter is shrewd and calculating, but
nonetheless Williams almost falls for her carefully-cultivated charms and
calculated flirtations before events direct his feelings in another way,
towards an impecunious lace-mender and student, Frances Henri. William’s feelings for these two women – and,
unusually for the time, their feelings for him – are the primary conflict of
the story as it heads to a resolution.
Storytelling
The book’s language is beautiful, as one might
expect, a felicity when it comes to composition and an ability to strike the
perfect balance between exposition and action being quite the Brontë hallmark.
Language flows like a gentle stream, almost like a lullaby, and I never did
realise when I stopped being a ‘reader’ and seemed to float with the characters
on the paths they chose to take.
From a storytelling viewpoint, what The Professor perhaps lacks, and which
might be another reason it had difficulty finding publishers, is the lack of a
powerful fulcrum to the plot. Interestingly, it is something the writer seems
to be aware of, for there is actually a passage where she mentions, in what
must have been a wry commentary on her own experience, that novels exaggerate
both crises and emotions to generate interest. The book is about William
Crimsworth’s journey to be an independent man without compromising his
principles, and while this may make for a compelling short story, as the
unifying thread for a novel it is not a very powerful ‘hook’, as modern
reviewers might call it, since the obstacles in his path and the characters he
encounters lack the sort of challenges faced by Dickens’ two great male
protagonists in Pip Pirrip or David Copperfield, or even George Eliot’s Daniel
Deronda. Further, the main protagonist, from whose point of view the story is
narrated, is not a particularly likable or sympathetic character, which also
militates against conventional story-telling tropes. In her descriptions of the
native Belgians or even the French there is a touch of English superiority,
even nationalism, easier to forgive then, perhaps, than now.
Yet, at its length and in its honesty, The Professor makes for a very
interesting read. The frankly critical assessment of the students Crimsworth
encounters is both funny and perhaps ground-breaking in completely setting
aside an idealistic view of childhood. No little angels and paragons of
innocence and virtue here, Crimsworth’s male students are often dull and unruly, the
girls unprincipled and unenthusiastic, and both, very very real.
Each character has depth, some more than
others, with those of Hunsden and Mlle Reuter standing out. Hunsden as the
contrarian, intentionally unpleasant rich man who goads Crimsworth and Zoraide
Reuter as the wily and eminently practical proprietor of a girls school are
people easily spotted in real life, and too often do we, as William does for a
while, fail to see the true worth and friendship of the first while falling for
the false comfort offered by the latter. Brontë displays here the ability to
take these real, flawed, headstrong characters and yet make a story that leaves
one with a pleasant feeling. Much of the narrative is ‘tell’, rather than
‘show’, a cardinal sin though it may be considered now, but in the telling as
many hints and deft touches that remind us that this is a work by no ordinary
writer.
Those expecting a reiteration of Jane Eyre will be disappointed; The Professor is more unlike that novel
than it is like. Yet, the passage where Frances Henri truly comes into her own
– where she asserts her desire to continue to work after marriage, is the kind
of writing that reminds us that this was a woman far ahead of her time, and
even though she chooses to narrate this story through a male protagonist, she
remains the Charlotte Brontë we know and love.
You can buy the book here:
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| The Slacker's edition |
A very well written review, as always, Percy. From what I get from your descriptions, this books seems way ahead of its time. I am very intrigued to read this one. Thank you for the review.
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