She says ‘I have no medium… between absolute submission and
determined revolt.’
The reason I find this credible is because my mother was
very similar, and I always assumed it was because she’d had a childhood which
was both abusive and emotionally arid. It seemed to me that such a person will
become naturally inclined to the utmost pliancy because they need to be liked
and/or accepted, and yet switch suddenly to anger and stubbornness when they
feel that a level of disrespect or presumption has gone beyond a certain line.
That’s how my mother was.
So could something like this be true of Charlotte Bronte?
She was only around six when her mother died, and her father is said to have
been a strong, just, devout sort of man, but not warm or overtly loving towards
his children. Might it be that she had a great need of warmth as a child, and
found only cold correctness in the one man she loved? It’s interesting to note
that there appear to be similarities between the Rev Patrick and St John Rivers. May we speculate, therefore, that one was
modelled on the other. Of course we may, but we’ll never know.
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