Read: The Professor

Dear Readers,

I have just finished The Professor by Charlotte Bronte!

It took me a while, but I loved it. The reason I spun my tires a bit on this, was because the beginning was a sombre and slow affair. Just to note! Spoiler alert!

Now it was about a young man who came from a steady, but loveless upbringing. Unable to fulfil the promise required to remain in the family’s good graces, he left to seek out his own financial stability. He goes on a quest to find a stable job that both pays him well and an employer that treats him well. Eventually, he finds himself in Belgium, and matters of the heart startle the young relationship virgin.

It really is a rags-to-riches story about a young man who has to work for his livelihood and stability in his life. Never handed anything but had to work for everything. No stroke of luck or gracious gesture bestowed by Fate to make him rich or elevate his standing. Just hard work and careful planning.

Along the way, he falls in love, and this is where I found it really exciting and intriguing. The complicated human relationships that Charlotte portrays so well. Well, I won’t spoil it too much. I hope you can read it. It starts very plainly, but it does ramp up and then winds down to a happy ending. So, in the end, it is very heart-warming. I felt very happy to have read it and closed it with a contented sigh, like something comforting had been added to my life.

A very interesting thing that I wanted to note was the blurbs in the beginning. Both the introduction and the preface. Charlotte and her sisters, Emily and Anne, were all very talented writers. I have actually seen their names bandied around, but I’m not sure I’ve ever actually read any of their works.

I have read Charlotte’s first famous work, Jane Eyre. Uh, er... read... more like watched, heard, and looked at Jane Eyre. As in I’ve seen movies, heard audiobooks, and looked at the graphic novel. I did start Jane Eyre when I was younger, but I struggled with the language and the length. In the end, I just gave up. But I will one day start and finish the Jane Eyre book, and you will be the first to hear about it. Stay tuned!

Anyway, sorry, back to The Professor. The Professor, like Jane Eyre, definitely portrayed how sombre and serious Charlotte was. In fact, in the introduction, it told how Charlotte outlived all of her siblings and died at the ripe old age of... thirty-eight?

Life is hard, especially back then when they didn’t have modern medicine or systems in place to improve humans' quality of life. I think she must’ve felt that. And it came through in what she wrote. Things would start bad; they would experience hardships, and at some point, there would be a weak flame of hope. Then it would be smothered, and reality would come crashing down. But through the main characters' hard work, they could turn it around and muster a happy ending.

Even for Charlotte, in her life and writing career. She was born into an impoverished family and worked to provide financial relief for her family. One of the positions she took to accomplish this was an English teacher in Brussels. And this was, apparently, where she drew inspiration for The Professor and another of her pieces, Villette.

When you read this piece, it really does feel like the characters were real people that she noticed and silently studied in her class. She shows such a talent for describing people realistically. Both their bad points and... mildly attractive points. In fact, I don’t remember her ever describing someone as stunningly gorgeous or breathtakingly handsome or any description even a percentage of those adjectives. She is always so realistic.

When reading it, you can see how there is a lot more of her in this piece than in Jane Eyre. Even the blurb on the back puts it in her words: “... as good as I can write. It contains more pith, more substance, more reality, in my judgement, than much of Jane Eyre.” – Charlotte Brontë.

It is such a shame that “her first completed novel was rejected repeatedly and didn’t get printed until two years after her death”, according to the introduction in the front of the book. It's very sad... that this work that she had poured much more of herself into, more so than her more famous works, would be judged as “lesser than” in her lifetime. Especially, since the preface states that it was written before her two more famous works, Jane Eyre and Shirley. She didn’t get to see one of her cherished works published and shared with her readers. I think that would be gut-wrenching if I were in her shoes...

The preface shows a piece written by the wife of the publisher. Essentially, she says that she appreciates how realistic The Professor is. It tells the story of an unremarkable man from a lowly place who “should never get a shilling that he had not earned”, rising up to a stable life through his hard work and conscious decisions. It shows that exciting stories happen to even ordinary and normal people.

She even goes on to mention how people would prefer to have “liked something more imaginative and... elevated, unworldly.” But she defends the stories about the average person having happiness and excitement in their own, relatively boring, lives.

After this moving piece by the publisher's wife, convincing him of The Professor’s eligibility for publication, the publisher himself consents to the publication. Noting that because of the rejection of The Professor, Charlotte reworked it to have a female lead. This was how Villette came about. As a fellow writer, I think, having to rework a piece that your heart was in because other people decided it wasn’t good enough, that would’ve left a hole in my chest. I hope she didn’t have that when she passed away...

I realise that I haven’t actually analysed her skill in crafting her novel, but I’ve learnt a lot about how a story about an average, hard-working person can be just as entertaining as an elusive master-of-disguise hero saving people during the French Revolution. (I’m thinking about the Scarlet Pimpernel from an earlier post).

My dad has always appreciated stories about or based on real, normal life and people. He says it's because he finds it comforting. I always thought that if you’re going to read fiction, make it as imaginative and fantastical as possible. Because, to me, real life is really boring and depressing. I read fiction to escape normal life. But reading The Professor has made me reconsider. I’m not sure I’m convinced, but... The Professor has pulled me halfway there.

Something I will quickly note about Charlotte’s style of writing, is that she uses a lot of older English words that we’ve kind of lost in modern times. I think I will try to use more of these wonderful descriptive adjectives in my works. Many of these words “hit the nail right on the head” in describing what we would use a whole expression to convey. I hope to use them in the future.

Sorry for the rambling. I hope this post hasn’t been too boring and long. If you get a chance, I recommend The Professor. It takes a few chapters to get into it, and you may have to Google some words, but I definitely felt like something was added to my life after reading it. I hope you get that same feeling too.

The next book that I have set my sights on is The Phantom of the Opera! Dramatic, right? I can’t wait.

Until our paths cross again! Goodbye.