Lynn Reid Banks and the Brontes III

Path to the Silent Country is interesting because Charlotte's life in her last few years was more lively and interesting than in her younger days. She had a social life... she was trying to broaden her field of writing and she eventually got married. However she was not really all that social, and while she did enjoy going to London and meeting new people, her shyness and her lack of worldly experience made it stressful for her at times. She was fond of George Smith and half wished she might marry him. But she knew that he was too much of a social creature to suit her and that his mother wanted him to marry a pretty young woman with money, not a woman like Charlotte who had no money apart from her earnings as a writer and who was older than him and plain. By now, her good friend Mary Taylor had gone to New Zealand where she opened a shop and made a new life for herself - . Charlotte loved Mary because she was intelligent and unconventional and able to understand Charlotte's ambitious intelligent nature. Ellen Nussey was a nice woman but not at all clever or independent minded. Charlotte still spent most of her time in Haworth, looking after her father and she was thrown into the company of Mr Nicholls because he was also supporting Patrick Bronte. She still did not like him much, finding him narrow minded and rather dull. But he surprised her when he bought her books to read and seemed to enjoy them very much, laughing at the caricatures of himself and the other curates... He seemed more humorous and willing to laugh at himself than she had expected. Patrick still was not all that fond of Arthur but he was grateful for all his help.. but he himself was inclined to think that Irish curates were fond of boasting about their grand origins, when they were probalby nearly as poor as he had been when he came over from Ireland. When he began to get hints that Arthur was in love with Charlotte, he got annoyed and felt that as a famous writer, she could marry better than a curate with no money. However he also was afraid of her marrying. He did not want to be left alone if she found a husband and he also felt that she was delicate and not strong enough for marriage and pregnancy. She had had overtures from Mr Taylor, who worked with George Smith but he was due to go to India for several years and Patrick felt that if she married him, it would not be until she was past the danger of child bearing. Charlotte's second novel, Shirley did not do so well, and she embarked on Villette, which was inspired by her time in Brussels and her love for M Heger. When she published Villette, it did reasonably well but Lucy is a depressing character and it was not so big a success as Jane Eyre. It also scandalised some people that the heroine was in love with 2 different men during the course of the novel. In addtion, she had an argument with her friend Harriet Martineau, who criticised the emphasis on love in the book - how all the female characters seemed to be obsessed with love and passion... and she felt that women should have other interests. Charlotte felt hurt at the criticism and broke off her friendship.