The Professor

By -

The Professor, by Charlotte Brontë

I know I'm posting a lot and it's a little crazy, but I'm trying to get a lot of reading in before the semester starts and I go back to work. So bear with me, I'll disappear soon enough.

I picked up Charlotte Brontë's first novel, The Professor, at the library--I've enjoyed her books, but I've never read this one. It's written from her own experiences of studying and teaching in a Belgian school and her unrequited love for her married teacher.

The story is about a young Englishman, an orphan, who doesn't get along with any of his relations and ends up teaching English in Brussels. He is surrounded by people he doesn't care much for (in fact he is practically a misanthrope), but a hard-working young teacher catches his eye. As they get to know one another, they find mutual sympathy in an un-English country.

The heroine is quite unusual for her time. As you might expect, she is plain. She is also very intelligent and hard-working, and she insists on working even after her marriage, and after bearing a child. She is a middle-class working mother. I'm not sure I've ever run into that in a Victorian novel before. She is Brontë herself, so I suppose she represents what Bronte herself wished for: the intelligent teacher for her husband, and a fulfilling professional life as well.

I'm afraid Brontë displays quite a bit of typical English prejudice in the book, though to be fair, flaws in the English national character are also highlighted. The protagonist complains of Flemish dullness, French immorality, and English waste, and makes innumerable comments on physiognomy and character. The anti-Catholicism is awful (the heroine turns out to be Swiss-English and a Protestant). So that was a serious flaw in the book; it was much more constant here than in most other Victorian novels I've read.

Brontë wrote this novel with the determination to make it completely realistic. Her protagonists are not beautiful or socially successful. They have to work hard for their living, and there are no romantic coincidences or anything like that. It's not a long book and I read it quickly. I enjoyed it, and sympathized with the characters, but it's definitely not my favorite Brontë novel. That would be Jane Eyre, and if you bring in the other sisters, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Comments

  1. EnbrethilielJanuary 15, 2011 at 6:45 AM

    +JMJ+

    Is this the one in which a Jesuit priest tells the Protestant girl to stay Protestant because she is so fresh and wonderful that way? =P (I had to read an excerpt from a Charlotte Bronte novel in uni, but I can't remember whether it was this one or Vilette.) I guess there's some irony in the fact that some real Jesuits did start saying that after Vatican II.

    And I've noted some of that "typical English prejudice" in other Victorian novels--and its natural offspring, "typical New England prejudice," in some American classics as well. But I suppose books from the same period written in other languages display the same mix of national pride and tolerant xenophobia.

    What's most interesting to me, however, is that Charlotte Bronte wanted to make The Professor as realistic as possible. I know that she was criticised for the mental telepathy in Jane Eyre and had to defend herself by saying that such things have happened in the past and would be likely to happen to characters such as Jane and Mr. Rochester. So I'd be interested to know what Bronte thinks falls under the realm of complete realism!

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanJanuary 15, 2011 at 5:45 PM

    Wow, that Jesuit priest must be in Villette--it wasn't in The Professor.

    I expect you're right about other nations' literature as well. And it's to be expected--I don't normally pay attention, but this case was really unusual in its constant harping on national types. I was surprised.

    In the introduction, Bronte writes that she didn't want to make anyone unusually beautiful, and her protagonist was going to have to earn all his own money. I guess she was rebelling against the romantic tropes of the novels of her day (maybe she was thinking of Evelina!).

    ReplyDelete
  3. JeanJanuary 15, 2011 at 5:59 PM

    Oh! I just remembered this cool youtube video--Bronte lovers, enjoy: Bronte Sisters Power Dolls.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousMarch 4, 2011 at 9:16 AM

    This does sound incredibly similar to 'Villette'. I guess it goes to show how autobiographical much of Charlotte Bronte's work is.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more