Jenan Alhamli
Jul 10, 2017 · 6 min read

The Raw Head Journal: On Charlotte Brontë’s Scriblomania*

Attic room, which was reportedly occupied by a madwoman, in a Medieval house rumoured to be the inspiration behind Bertha, the madwoman character in Jane Eyre. (Source: Daily Mail)

Last night, I did indeed lean upon the thunder-wakening wings of such a stormy blast, as I have seldom heard blow, and it whirled me away like heath in the wilderness for five seconds of ecstasy. And as I sat by myself in the dining-room while all the rest were at tea, the trance seemed to descend on a sudden, and verily this foot trod the well-shaken shores of Calabar, and these eyes saw the defiled and violated Adrianopolis, shedding its lights on the river from lattices whence the violator looked out and was not darkened.

At the age of nineteen, Charlotte Brontë, the eldest of 4 siblings — having survived her two elder sisters, had to be sent back to the school where she once studied, only to be a teacher at it this time. The reason behind this new position was so that her sister Emily, then Anne, could study without paying the fees, as the parson’s tight financial situation did not allow him to pay the fees of his two youngest daughters.

Charlotte didn’t like the idea of leaving the comfort of her home to the demanding job of a teacher, it did not only deprive her of her easy lifestyle but it also took her away from her fictional African kingdom, which she built, along with her younger siblings-her brother Branwell and sisters Emily and Anne, setting up its cities, castles, characters and circumstances to bear witness to their ripe imagination, especially that of Charlotte’s. Glass Town Saga, as they named their tale of this vast paracosm, was started when she was 13, only to be left later on by Emily and Anne as they started their own project. And so when she had to go to Miss Wooler’s school at Row Head, she didn’t trust leaving the fate of the Kingdom of Angria in the hands of her brother, especially her beloved Maria. The events of this epical legend, as narrated in different stories and poems, unfold between the Angrian King, Duke of Zamorna and Alexander Percy, Duke of Northangerland and their ongoing feud, that could not be put off with the King marrying Mary Henrietta, the daughter of the Duke, nor the appointment of the latter as his Prime Minister. This feud resulted in a failed rebellion by Percy leaving him in exile, Mary was caught in the crossfire between the two most beloved men in her life. Branwell cared more about the wars and bloodshed, whereas Charlotte gave more attention to the romance and the social scene in Angria. And so when she leaves for Row Head, all she could think about was the fate of her beloved imaginary world in the hands of her hard-hearted brother, who indeed wreaks havoc on their fictional kingdom and ends up killing Mary.

In an effort to reclaim what she had lost forever, Charlotte began writing a journal there, which later became known as the ‘Roe Head Journal’, it usually starts with her actual setting and then delves into Angria or any other vision that comes her way. While she appears to be submissive to all the decisions that Branwell made regarding Angria — as noted in the quote chosen above (describing the postwar scene, which was instigated by him), she could not help but return Maria back to life, in one of her diary entries. It seems from the way she wrote her journal, and describing it in it, that it didn’t seem to be an effortful task, on the contrary, it was a smooth process, whereby Charlotte held the pen and closed her eyes in what she described — quote above, as a “trance”. As a result, her writing on papers covered every corner while words laid upon words, making it ever more difficult for scholars to transcribe.

As you read her journal, you could almost swear that she just had at least a puff or two before she set her mind free. Her dwam-like writing style, takes the unintended reader from the gloomy and suffocating environment of the school to wherever her mind wills to be, or with no definite beginning nor ending. Her diary entries might begin with where she was at the time of its writing furbished with the day and the time and properly ends with a note of how she has to stop as she was called back to reality by a fellow teacher or a proper end to an anecdote and signed with a date. But in many cases her entires abruptly begins with a vision that should be pieced out as the entry evolves on, and ends with no proper ending leaving us hanging wondering two centuries on what could have possibly made her stop so suddenly. Her journal contains references to a voice that urges her to write on, to her brother Branwell and her dismay of his handling of Angria, as Wiggins, the satirical portrait of him, or as Henry Hastings, an Angrian durnken author and introductions to numerous characters, cities and events.

Following her stream of consciousness, we are warned, in one instance, of Charlotte’s austere willingness not to disclose a character’s name which she seems to deem unattractive because of her moorish features, and yet just as you flip the page, sure enough, her name pops up complementing, the details that brought Jane Moore to life.

Her vivid and fertile imagination was both a source of pleasure and guilt, as she loathed the company of her fellow teachers but at the same time felt that that was an act of shame. In a letter to her friend Ellen Nussey, Charlotte spoke of her inner secretive world and her outer monotonous world, both of which clash when the reveries of the former batter the redundancies of the latter. Charlotte further adds that if Ellen were to find out what went on inside Charlotte’s secretive world she would “pity” and probably “despise” her for it.

At the age of twenty-three, Charlotte decided that it was time to say “Farewell to Angria”, the essay in which she acknowledges the urgency with which she had to walk away from that “web of childhood”, albeit an uneasy decision. She realized, at the same time, that it was time for her “to write purely realistic fiction.”

In 1857, the first biography of Charlotte Brontë was published. In it, it’s authoress Elizabeth Gaskell talks of the “possession” that takes over Brontë as she wakes up one morning after long periods of time, that could take many months, of creative drought. And yet, she could not sit down to her musings before finishing all her tasks. Gaskell even tells of how she would have to go over the supper’s peeled potatoes, because the old short-sighted maid missed a few spots.

Charlotte may not have been known for taking criticism very lightly, not from her editors, reviewers nor even her sisters. Gaskell, who had visited the Brontës in preparation for her book, tells the readers about the Brontë sisters evening gatherings which were dominated by reading to each other their newly written literature and exchanging their comments. Charlotte tells Gaskell that her sisters remarks were not always welcome, but that it was on of these evenings that she decided that Jane Eyre would be a “plain, small and unattractive”.

Prior to the publication of Jane Eyre, Charlotte, writing under the pen name Currer Bell, tells her publishers that accepting their recommendation of adding “an autobiography” to the title was a concession not to be taken for granted, for if she has spoken her whole mind she “might indeed made it far more exquisitely painful.”

Refusing to give in to the suggestions and criticism of her sisters, publishers and reviewers, might have been Charlotte’s way to save her independent realm of thought that she regarded as very personal; those comments that came her way were viewed by her as attempts to restrain her freedom in that private realm of hers. As one modern reviewer put it “writing *** in a sort of trance, she was able to act out that passionate drive toward freedom which offended agents of the status quo,”

In what might seem as a last ditch effort to preserve the sovereignty of her realm, Charlotte writes to her publisher “I hope no one will be at the trouble to make portraits of my characters” who “are mostly unattractive in look and therefore ill-adapted to figure in ideal portraits.”, and considered any such attempts as “futile”. I wonder what would the Victorian Charlotte Brontë make of the 40+ visual adaptations of the characters of her most famous novel?


“[O]nce upon a time I used to spend whole days, weeks, complete months in writing … but at present my sight is too weak for writing — if I wrote a lot I would become blind.”

  • *Scriblomania: a neologism used by Charlotte at the beginning of her diary entry “I’m just going to write because I cannot help it.”
  • The book I used in writing this article is Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Norton Critical Edition (third edition) edited by Richard J. Dunn, 2001.
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