{"id":7653,"date":"2016-10-30T17:16:35","date_gmt":"2016-10-30T21:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/?p=7653"},"modified":"2016-10-30T17:16:35","modified_gmt":"2016-10-30T21:16:35","slug":"charlotte-bronte-an-independent-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/2016\/10\/30\/charlotte-bronte-an-independent-will\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlotte Bront\u00eb: An Independent Will"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"charlotte_bronte_coloured_drawing\"<\/a>
Painted by Evert A. Duyckinck, based on a drawing by George Richmond [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>On a day with a most steely sky, I made my way to The Morgan for its (relatively) new exhibit, <\/span>Charlotte Bront\u00eb: An Independent Will<\/span><\/i>. Housed in a room on the museum\u2019s second floor, the exhibit features paraphernalia of a life lived just 200 years ago. Tiny books filled with impossibly small handwriting, lap desks, and a dress just large enough for a preteen are all on display, sketching out the physicality of Bront\u00eb\u2019s life. They both anchor the author in the real world while making the modernist feminism of her masterpiece <\/span>Jane Eyre <\/span><\/i>all the more startling. Those quotidian objects attesting to a largely unremarkable nineteenth century life are laid out side-by-side with letters that course with a biting wit and an obvious frustration at the roles society forced on middle class women. Bront\u00eb took work as a governess and teacher by turns, though neither job was \u201csuited to her talents or temperament\u201d – rather, this employment was the only kind available to her. As such, she always met her pupils with a pained smile, malcontent simmering just beneath the surface. Despite being disagreeable, the work did provide Bront\u00eb the economic freedom necessary to cultivate her literary talents. The correspondence the Morgan lays out shows just how pointed her sharpened pen could be. In response to a critic providing feedback on one of her earlier efforts, Bront\u00eb challenges his assumptions about gender and which pursuits are appropriate for women. In this way, the explosive pronouncements of gender equality laced throughout <\/span>Jane Eyre <\/span><\/i>are contextualized.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather coyly, the exhibit seeks to revise the understanding of Charlotte Bront\u00eb the person as a meek and dour maid whose shyness bordered on misanthropy <\/span>provided to posterity by Elizabeth Gaskell<\/span><\/a>. Instead, Bront\u00eb 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, <\/span>Poems by Acton, Curer and Ellis Bell<\/span><\/i>. This collection would soon be followed by <\/span>Jane Eyre <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Wuthering Heights<\/span><\/i>.   <\/span><\/p>\n

Considering Bront\u00eb and her legacy as I left nineteenth century England and emerged into 2016\u2019s New York, it was only natural to think about how well her vision of women \u201cstanding equal as we are\u201d with men has been realized. The election cycle, slouching towards its end, has questioned feminism\u2019s progress profoundly. Even as the possibility of America\u2019s first female executive nears actuality, it appears that true gender equality is still not ours to claim. The <\/span>wage gap still gapes<\/span><\/a> at 80% for white women and 54% for women of color. Women are <\/span>still called selfish<\/span><\/a> for choosing not to become mothers, even though there is still no comprehensive policy on maternal leave. Women\u2019s 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, \u201cI have a wife, a daughter, a mother…\u201d 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, <\/span>100% of men do<\/span><\/a>. 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 \u201cfree human beings, with independent wills\u201d they are, to paraphrase Bront\u00eb herself.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this context, books like <\/span>Jane Eyre <\/span><\/i>still seem revolutionary despite their age. Even though it was criticized for being too angry and dramatic by critics as esteemed as <\/span>Virginia Woolf<\/span><\/a> (an author who herself felt she had to tamp down on emotion, or be dismissed as too feminine), the book\u2019s 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\u2019s author as having no understanding of the role of women in society, prompting Charlotte Bront\u00eb to reveal her identity. If the book was not recognized as being written by a woman, Bront\u00eb 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. <\/span><\/p>\n

America\u2019s female politicians and public figures have not always been as comfortable with their gender\u2019s place in politics and culture, at times even trying to avoid the word \u201cfeminist\u201d. I hope this election cycle, depressing as it has been, will remind us all that \u201cwomen\u2019s rights are human rights\u201d. Books like <\/span>Jane Eyre<\/span><\/i> and artists like Charlotte Bront\u00eb<\/span> stand as testament to this fact, even if society doesn\u2019t always remember it. <\/span><\/p>\n

Charlotte Bront\u00eb: An Independent Will is on view at the Morgan Museum and Library through January 2, 2017. <\/i>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a day with a most steely sky, I made my way to The Morgan for its (relatively) new exhibit, Charlotte Bront\u00eb: An Independent Will. Housed in a room on the museum\u2019s second floor, the exhibit features paraphernalia of a life lived just 200 years ago. Tiny books filled with impossibly small handwriting, lap desks,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":703,"featured_media":7654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[420,770,800,1261],"class_list":["post-7653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","tag-charlotte-bronte","tag-exhibitions","tag-feminism","tag-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}