Pfordresher concludes his fine study, is nothing less than the distillation of his thesis and the multiple demonstrations of its validity.Īlthough Mr. “Reading ‘Jane Eyre’ we know how much of a personal victory Bronte had achieved through that self-control and how many secrets her composed countenance had concealed.” In her deep mourning dress (neat as a Quaker’s), with her beautiful hair, smooth and brown, her fine eyes, and her sensible face indicating a habit of self-control, she seemed a perfect household image.’ “Īnd how to add his own penetrating insight to this perceptive, respectful portrait: “When the well-known critic Harriet Martineau visited the family home in Haworth in later years she felt ‘something inexpressibly affecting in the aspect of the frail little creature who had done such wonderful things, and who was able to bear up, with so bright an eye and so composed a countenance, under not only such a weight of sorrow, but such a prospect of solitude. And he knows how to express it through the words of those who actually knew her: This is indubitably a teacher and a critic who has enormous respect for Charlotte Bronte.
And so are the readers of this book, which now seems to me a good deal less redundant and a great deal more necessary than I might previously have thought. Pfordresher’s students are fortunate indeed to have a guide like him to Charlotte Bronte’s life and oeuvre who understands how intricately they are intertwined. So if there are people like this strutting their false stuff in the groves of academe, Mr. Make no mistake, it is the small, plain woman who has the upper hand now. Rochester, who had deceived, teased and tormented even as he bewitched her, he is much reduced and physically as well as emotionally in her power.
Had I been able to get a word in edgewise, what I would have said was “you just don’t get it, man!” And what I was thinking was “pity your poor students whom you are so misleading.” Didn’t he realize that perhaps the central point of “Jane Eyre” is that a small, unprepossessing young woman could possess a strength of character and of will so powerful as to be all-consuming and literally terrifying?Īfter all, when she does eventually get the once so formidable Mr.
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