In 1993, for example, Charlotte was vilified in the ‘Heroes
and Villains' column of the Independent by the novelist Charlotte Cory,
who worked herself up into a state of outrage against what she saw as the cruel
use of real-life models in Villette, particularly the transformation
of Madame Heger into the evil headmistress Madame Beck. Charlotte’s character
was summed up as ‘bigoted, vengeful, and morally perverse’ and Cory
ridiculed her as the sort of woman “who throws herself at every man who
comes into her orbit with a desperation and obviousness embarrassing to behold’
(the fact that Charlotte refused offers of marriage from three other men before
accepting Arthur Nicholls is not mentioned). This view derives, perhaps, from
Thackeray’s gossipy speculation that all the author of Jane Eyre
really wanted was a man, only she was too plain and past it to get one. Cory’s
character assassination goes on to conclude that Charlotte was so embittered
by her lack of physical attractions that her novel became a mere channel for
pent-up bile and viciousness.
Looking at Thackeray’s comical and faintly misogynistic belittling of Charlotte, one has to wonder whether he felt threatened by her obvious ability and high seriousness about her art. Cory’s motives are harder to fathom. Though a novelist, she is clearly untouched by any feminist reverence for Charlotte as a literary foremother: does she feel the need to rebel against one of the massive icons in whose shadow she has to work? She certainly appears to have mixed feelings about the Brontës, an ambivalence which is perhaps an inevitable correlative of the adoration they still inspire. For while being keen to excoriate Charlotte in print, Cory has also encouraged the hero-worshipping urge to identify with the Brontës, even taking it to a ludicrous – perhaps consciously self-parodying – extreme. An active member of the Brontë Society, she was to be found organising a canine lookalike contest at the society’s annual get-together in Haworth in 1994, in which fans brought along their dogs to see which most resembled the Brontës’ pets Keeper and Grasper.
It is easier to understand why anyone should bother to make vituperative ad feminam attacks on a writer long since dead when one realises the strange extremes of enthusiasm which still exists at the lunatic fringes of the Brontë Society. The 1994 annual general meeting of the society was interrupted – to the great embarrassment of its officers – by a vociferous monologue from a man who claimed to receive regular messages from Charlotte’s ghost. An ex-Hell’s Angel who said he had been converted to Christianity by Gaskell’s Life, he believed he had been saved by the protective figure of the saintly Charlotte, and he wanted to register his disgust at a newspaper article (presumably Cory’s) which had attacked his idol and called her ugly.
A fly on the wall would have gained the impression that a shot of much-needed
iconoclasm was required if Charlotte was to be saved from the clutches of her
eccentric admirers. Yet, as we have seen, iconoclasm had been a common biographical
pos for a substantial part of the twentieth century.....Yet if Charlotte attracted
such negative approaches it was testimony to her enormous staying power as an
icon. The Brontes had become such a permanent feature of the cultural landscape
that they could by now withstand any assault.