Holding the Key to Charlotte's Code.

I said in a recent post that the principal delight in reading Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley lies in reading between the lines to discover the nature of Charlotte Brontë. Over the past few nights I’ve come to realise that there is a quality to be discovered by reading the lines themselves: she has the most marvellous and mischievous sense of humour.

I never noticed it in her better known novels, Jane Eyre and Villette, yet here it is in all its glory. It’s a subtle, dry, ironic sort of humour, sometimes softly stated and sometimes sharply. Who could not, for example, fail to raise a smile at her choice for the heading of Chapter XVIII:

WHICH THE GENTEEL READER IS RECOMMENDED TO SKIP, LOW PERSONS BEING HERE INTRODUCED

I suspect that plenty of people would fail to raise a smile, and that’s the beauty of it. It gives the impression of a cipher devised to be intelligible only to those whose instrument of perception is tuned to the same key. And that feels like a compliment to those of us who see her eyes so clearly that we discern the glint in them.