Rather coyly, the exhibit seeks to revise the understanding of Charlotte Brontë the person as a meek and dour maid whose shyness bordered on misanthropy provided to posterity by Elizabeth Gaskell. Instead, Brontë emerges as quietly confident; from an early age, she knew that she wanted to be a great author. Rejections only seem only seem to have to hardened her resolve. It was she who urged her sisters, Emily and Anne, into a joint publication, Poems by Acton, Curer and Ellis Bell. This collection would soon be followed by Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.
Considering Brontë and her legacy as I left nineteenth century England and emerged into 2016’s New York, it was only natural to think about how well her vision of women “standing equal as we are” with men has been realized. The election cycle, slouching towards its end, has questioned feminism’s progress profoundly. Even as the possibility of America’s first female executive nears actuality, it appears that true gender equality is still not ours to claim. The wage gap still gapes at 80% for white women and 54% for women of color. Women are still called selfish for choosing not to become mothers, even though there is still no comprehensive policy on maternal leave. Women’s humanity is still being reduced to our anatomy by men as prominent as the Republican nominee. Much of the backlash that came from within his own party opened was predicated on phrases like, “I have a wife, a daughter, a mother…” While it is important that Republicans took their nominee to task for his comments, the real insult was not that these men have female relatives. As Samantha Bee noted, 100% of men do. It was instead that the comments diminish women to the sum of their parts, once again assigning them roles in a male’s supporting cast instead of “free human beings, with independent wills” they are, to paraphrase Brontë herself.
In this context, books like Jane Eyre still seem revolutionary despite their age. Even though it was criticized for being too angry and dramatic by critics as esteemed as Virginia Woolf (an author who herself felt she had to tamp down on emotion, or be dismissed as too feminine), the book’s emotion is well warranted and more than balanced by the intelligence of its main character; Jane thinks just as much as she feels. She is a fully realized human being who refuses to be defined solely by sex or status. This led some critics to decry the book’s author as having no understanding of the role of women in society, prompting Charlotte Brontë to reveal her identity. If the book was not recognized as being written by a woman, Brontë declared it was a failure. Her femininity was undivorceable and, indeed, nothing that should have needed to be obscured, even if this made critics turn on her book.
America’s female politicians and public figures have not always been as comfortable with their gender’s place in politics and culture, at times even trying to avoid the word “feminist”. I hope this election cycle, depressing as it has been, will remind us all that “women’s rights are human rights”. Books like Jane Eyre and artists like Charlotte Brontë stand as testament to this fact, even if society doesn’t always remember it.
Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will is on view at the Morgan Museum and Library through January 2, 2017.
