“Mediocrity in the sensations”: Charlotte Brontë and the Yorkshire Marriage

Sanders, Valerie

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-34855-7_4

Valerie Sanders⁴

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture ((PNWC))

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Abstract

In a letter of 1840 to her friend Ellen Nussey, Charlotte Brontë ironically advises that “mediocrity in the sensations is superlative wisdom,” especially in the context of the “Yorkshire marriage” based on wealth, rather than the mutual affinity she sets as her personal ideal. Drawing on the language of embodied subjectivity, this essay focuses on the way Brontë explores, via references to bodily sensation and material objects, the alienating experience of observing the courtship of other people. It considers the purpose of the “thumbnail” marriage sketches in her fiction and her use of brutal imagery to capture the mysteries of sexual attraction as she witnessed them around her.

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Notes

1.
Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, 9 April 1851, in Margaret Smith, Letters, vol. 2, 599.
2.
See Smith’s biographical summary of Taylor’s life in Smith, Letters, vol. 2, liii–lv.
3.
Brontë to Nussey, [5 December 1849], in Smith, Letters, vol. 2, 299.
4.
Brontë to Nussey, [5 December 1849], in Smith, Letters, vol. 2, 299.
5.
William A. Cohen, “Material Interiority,” 445.
6.
Cohen, Embodied, 6.
7.
Brontë, The Professor, 98–100. Subsequent citations are referenced by page number in the text.
8.
Ulrika Maude and David Hillman, eds., Cambridge Companion to the Body, 1.
9.
Maude and Hillman, eds., Cambridge Companion to the Body, 3.
10.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 81.
11.
Merleau-Ponty, World of Perception, 82. This title is Davis’s translation of Phenomenology (originally Causeries in French).
12.
Merleau-Ponty, World of Perception, 86–7.
13.
Brontë to William Smith Williams, 12 May 1848, in Smith, Letters, vol. 2, 64.
14.
Brontë to Nussey, 19 June 1851, in Smith, Letters, vol. 2, 643.
15.
Cohen, “Material Interiority,” 476.
16.
Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 13.
17.
Bourdieu, “Conclusion,” 468.
18.
Bourdieu, “Conclusion,” 468.
19.
Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 13.
20.
Brontë to Nussey, 20 November 1840, in Smith, Letters, vol. 1, 233–4. Subsequent citations are referenced by page number in the text.
21.
Brontë to Branwell Brontë, 1 May 1843, in Smith, Letters, vol. 1, 317.
22.
Brontë to George Smith, 12 May 1851, in Smith, Letters, vol. 2, 615.
23.
Brontë to Mrs. Elizabeth Smith, 20 May 1851, in Smith, Letters, vol. 2, 618.
24.
Juliet Barker, Brontës, 953.
25.
Brontë to Nussey, 5 May 1851, in Smith, Letters, vol. 2, 611.
26.
Brontë to Nussey, 23 April 1851, in Smith, Letters, vol. 2, 609. For further information on the women Revd. Brontë proposed to by letter, see Barker, Brontës, 106–15.
27.
Brontë to Nussey, 11 April 1854, in Smith, Letters, vol. 3, 240.
28.
Brontë to Nussey, 15 December 1852, in Smith, Letters, vol. 3, 93.
29.
Brontë to Nussey, 15 December 1852, in Smith, Letters, vol. 3, 93.
30.
Brontë, “Emma” (1854) in Unfinished Novels, 98.
31.
Brontë, Jane Eyre, 150. Subsequent citations are referenced by page number in the text.
32.
C. Brontë, Villette, 573. Subsequent citations are referenced by page number in the text.
33.
Lyndall Gordon, A Passionate Life, 153.
34.
Brontë to Nussey, 24 April 1845, in Smith, Letters, vol. 1, 391.
35.
Brontë to Nussey, 24 April 1845, in Smith, Letters, vol. 1, 392.
36.
Brontë to Nussey, 8 December 1851, in Smith, Letters, vol. 2, 726.
37.
Brontë to Nussey, 28 July 1848, in Smith, Letters, vol. 2, 92.
38.
Brontë, Ashworth in Unfinished Novels, 30. Subsequent citations are referenced by page number in the text.
39.
Brontë, Shirley, 81–2. Subsequent citations are referenced by page number in the text.

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University of Hull, Hull, UK
Valerie Sanders

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Faculty of Humanities, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
Justine Pizzo
Faculty of Humanities, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
Eleanor Houghton

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Sanders, V. (2020). “Mediocrity in the sensations”: Charlotte Brontë and the Yorkshire Marriage. In: Pizzo, J., Houghton, E. (eds) Charlotte Brontë, Embodiment and the Material World. Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34855-7_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34855-7_4
Published: 10 June 2020
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-34854-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-34855-7
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