The annual June Weekend began on Friday with a well-attended lecture in the Baptist Centre given by eminent Dickens biographer Professor Michael Slater. The subject was Charles Dickens and the Brontës. The event was part of the 2012 Dickens bicentenary celebrations and took place on the eve of the anniversary of Dickens' death.
Equipped with an edition of Bleak House and little else, Professor Slater began by pointing out that there is a complete lack of evidence that any of the Brontës ever met Dickens, and not much to say about their opinions of him, even though just about everybody in their time read his works. We can speculate, of course, and we do know that Charlotte Brontë was averse to the caricaturing style and was wary of showiness and too much self promotion: reports of all those lavish London dinner parties at the Dickens household, with pineapples studding the table, would have aroused her disapproval.
Nevertheless, significant connections have been made: few important novelists of the nineteenth century were particularly interested in children, or the way they were treated. Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë stand out as different here. Lowood and Dotheboys Hall spring to mind, and Wackford Squeers and Brocklehurst have often been put together (misleadingly) in the same club. The young Jane Eyre could be compared and contrasted with Esther Summerson quite profitably, and it has been argued that Bleak House was an influence on Villette. Professor Slater read a few paragraphs from Chapter 3 in which Esther remembers her childhood doll, the only 'person' she felt able to talk to. Miss Barbary, Esther's strict godmother, later revealed as her aunt, could be lined up alongside Jane's aunt...
Theatre audiences in 1848 watching a Jane Eyre adaptation which had been rushed on to a stage not long after the book's publication were addressed by a servant at Lowood who spoke about the terrible Yorkshire schools which were full of unwanted children from the South - showing that Lowood was perceived by the playwright(s) as equivalent to Dotheboys Hall, revealed Dr Patsy Stoneman in question time. The Yorkshire Schools were closed down because of the outrage provoked by Dickens, but Cowan Bridge survived Jane Eyre.
Equipped with an edition of Bleak House and little else, Professor Slater began by pointing out that there is a complete lack of evidence that any of the Brontës ever met Dickens, and not much to say about their opinions of him, even though just about everybody in their time read his works. We can speculate, of course, and we do know that Charlotte Brontë was averse to the caricaturing style and was wary of showiness and too much self promotion: reports of all those lavish London dinner parties at the Dickens household, with pineapples studding the table, would have aroused her disapproval.
Nevertheless, significant connections have been made: few important novelists of the nineteenth century were particularly interested in children, or the way they were treated. Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë stand out as different here. Lowood and Dotheboys Hall spring to mind, and Wackford Squeers and Brocklehurst have often been put together (misleadingly) in the same club. The young Jane Eyre could be compared and contrasted with Esther Summerson quite profitably, and it has been argued that Bleak House was an influence on Villette. Professor Slater read a few paragraphs from Chapter 3 in which Esther remembers her childhood doll, the only 'person' she felt able to talk to. Miss Barbary, Esther's strict godmother, later revealed as her aunt, could be lined up alongside Jane's aunt...
Theatre audiences in 1848 watching a Jane Eyre adaptation which had been rushed on to a stage not long after the book's publication were addressed by a servant at Lowood who spoke about the terrible Yorkshire schools which were full of unwanted children from the South - showing that Lowood was perceived by the playwright(s) as equivalent to Dotheboys Hall, revealed Dr Patsy Stoneman in question time. The Yorkshire Schools were closed down because of the outrage provoked by Dickens, but Cowan Bridge survived Jane Eyre.