I Am in Love with Ulysses S. Grant

The Man

I realize this infatuation may only be a passing fancy, but I have begun reading the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. It is a two-volume set, consisting of 552 pages (although I’m reading it on a Kindle which results in never having a true feel for where you are in a book.) In any event, I’ve set out on a journey to plumb this man’s soul. It’s nice to have a long read to look forward to. 

Grant wrote these memoirs at the very end of his life, as he was dying of throat cancer. Seems to me a meaningful vantage point from which to ponder one’s place in history. A man of humble beginnings, Grant had enormous successes and enormous failures. Some of these would alter the fate of a nation; others the fate of a people. Some brought him shame and financial ruin.

Grant Booster

Mark Twain characterized Grant’s account as “a great, unique and unapproachable literary masterpiece,” a war memoir comparable in stature to Julius Caesar’s.  (There’s hyperbole for you, to be expected since Twain was involved in publishing and selling the book.) Fifty years later, holding court underneath her Picasso’s, Gertrude Stein claimed Grant’s book to be one of the greatest written by an American. Walt Whitman said of Grant, “In all Homer and Shakespeare there is no fortune or personality really more picturesque or rapidly changing, more full of heroism, pathos, contrast." (I cannot resist also including this quote from Whitman, just because it makes me smile: "I do not value literature as a profession. I feel about literature what Grant did about war. He hated war. I hate literature.")

Of course not everyone was a fan of the man. Henry James sniffed that Grant’s prose was “hard and dry as sandpaper.” Matthew Arnold held that Grant’s use of English was “without charm and without high breeding.” But let them say what they like. Dying and nearly destitute, Grant clung to life and churned out up to fifty pages a day so that profits from the book might provide for his family. He finished the manuscript and died five days later.

A curious man. I am in love with his voice. It was anti-Victorian, not flowery and verbose but spare, direct, even acerbic. Yet not cynical, at least not by modern standards. The amusement and wit is gentler, forgiving, and always demonstrating a clarity and intelligence that I admire. 

At his best?

They say Grant had great courage and coolness under fire. It certainly showed during the Battle of Fort Donelson. It was while researching the performance of Gideon Pillow (perhaps the worst general in the Civil War) in that battle that I first ran across Grant’s wry recollections. It was no doubt what set me on a course, six months later, to delve into his memoirs.

My question at the moment: how does an aware, intelligent man of his caliber, a great strategist and imperturbable tactician (unruffled by bolting horses or bullets flying  overhead), make such astonishing, bonehead errors of judgment? His presidency was one of the most corrupt on record, and some of the worst excesses of the Reconstruction happened on his watch. He went on to end his life in financial ruin due to lax oversight and further poor judgment. And yet he says this about the Mexican-American War (with which I am in complete agreement):

“I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory.”

I cannot but believe Grant was a moral man. Moral in, I suppose, my complex, rather torturous definition of the term. (You have to see all the complexities, the good and the bad, the dark and the light, and all the murky grey areas in between where things are never clear and people try and fail, and maybe don’t try so hard and fail but have to be forgiven anyway because, in the end, kindness is the only true religion. And with all this, knowing the tragedies and the pettiness and the failures and the sadness, knowing your own failures and the reefs you’ve foundered on, you still most days attempt the right thing, that which will cause the least suffering and most well-being for all. You strive for what your conscience can best live with, because there is, in the end, no other choice. And if you can do all this without bitterness, with even a sense of humor, by god, you’re a saint.)

(I have not often managed to live up to this definition.)

I wish Lincoln had lived to write his autobiography. He could be hysterically funny and I’m sure such a book would be a rollicking good time (not unlike Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography which is a hoot.) I’m also a fan of Robert E Lee and wish he’d written memoirs so I could hear his voice without all the mythologizing and interpreters, though in his writing Lee is invariably such a gentleman and so circumspect that perhaps little of his inner personality might have shown through.

But what is left to posterity, mostly due to a pressing need for cash, is the account of a man who, as a West Point cadet, just wanted to become a math professor and who probably would’ve been happier, when all was said and done, had that happened. But his soul, his demons, his moral center? Does the arc of the universe indeed bend towards justice, kindness, redemption? Ah, that’s why I read. And why I write. To find out.

Watch Out for Peaks Ahead

They can be pretty from afar

We are at an interesting crossroads in history where a perfect storm of crises is going to create significant, rapid change. Many commonplace parts of modern society will hit their peak and then not instantly disappear, but undergo a decline. How slow or swift the decline will be depend on the circumstances as well as various levels of corruption and/or government intervention (assuming the two aren’t synonymous.) Sometimes the peak may be a temporary one, if we can manage to reorganize ourselves and our resources in a sensible manner.  Some of the descents, however, are permanent or at least will last for several generations.

The financial crisis is all around us and will last at least another five years, if not ten. World Peak Oil already happened in 2005 (U.S. Peak Oil was in 1971), and world crude oil production is in gentle decline hidden by demand drop due to the recession. The oil crunch will strongly hit in 2013 (or sooner, if anyone decides to airstrike Iran.) And then there’s climate change, the ultimate humdinger that’s awfully hard to predict anything about except that it will likely cause drought, famine, flooding, forced migrations, massive species extinction and a lot of death. But given its uncertainty and longer timeframe (ooh, maybe fifteen or twenty years before the real onslaught of effects) let’s not worry about that one just yet.

 

Let’s get back to our immediate Peaks—Finance and Oil—and the other Peaks related to them that have appeared or are soon to appear on the near horizon.  Now perhaps you believe Peak Oil is a hoax made up by oil companies and/or environmentalists. Perhaps you think the financial crisis is on the way to recovery and another happy finance bubble is around the corner. Even so, just as an intellectual exercise, let’s pretend there’s less oil and financial wealth ahead for the vast majority of the human race. What would be the result?

Less liquidity, less energy, for starters. Which will lead to:

*Peak Credit, which will lead to

US Consumer Debt Levels

*Peak Consumer Debt

*Peak GDP

*Peak Housing

*Peak College,

*Peak Exotic Vacations,

*Peak Vegas

and *Peak Stuff. 

(Basically, any activity or item financed by home equity loans for the past decade will shrink.) This will lead to

*Peak Self-Storage,

*Peak Housing Square Footage

*Peak Lawns and Peak Yards

Which leads to *Peak Lawn Gnomes, *Peak Pink Flamingos, *Peak Lawn Mowers and *Peak Lawn Pesticides

It doesn’t necessarily lead to Peak Remodeling. Nor Peak Housing Density. Nor Peak Urban Infill. Nor Peak Family Camping. Nor Peak Knowledge, Peak Community College, or Peak Internet Connectivity. Anything that can be transferred digitally—data, news, movies, video games, magazines, books, music, etc.--probably will not peak soon, though its hard copy form probably already has. This is not to say there will be much profit in any digital media, however.

As the rate of oil pumped out of the earth slows below demand, all oil-importing countries are going to see some significant shifts. They will include:

*Peak Plastics, (which will lead to Peak Product Packaging, Peak Recycling, and Peak Cheap Plastic #@$% from China)

*Peak Paved Roads and Peak Asphalt

*Peak Internal Combustion Engines

*Peak Cars (which will lead to Peak Home Garages, Peak Auto Mechanics, Peak Gas Stations)

*Peak Commute Distance and Vehicle Miles Traveled

US Vehicle Miles Traveled

*Peak Auto Weight

*Peak Trucking Freight

*Peak Bottled Water

*Peak Soda Pop

*Peak Human Body Fat

*Peak Suburbia, Strip Malls and Parking Lots

*Peak Blueberries in February from South America

*Peak Chain Restaurants

*Peak Resorts

*Peak Downhill Skiing

*Peak Gasoline-powered toys (jetskis, speed boats, snowmobiles, etc. except where they provide actual economic benefit.)

*Peak RVs

*Peak Air Conditioning

*Peak Airports, Planes and Air Travel

But not peak rail, bicycle, boat travel or freight.  Not Peak Public Transit. Not peak energy efficiency. Not peak alternative energy. Not peak vegetable gardens, chicken and goat raising, or beekeeping. Not Peak Food, Water, or Energy Prices. Not Peak Ceiling Fans, Peak Attic Insulation, Peak Solar Hot Water Systems. Not Peak Resiliency or Peak Self-Sufficiency by any means.

US Health Costs compared to rest of world

As people and governments grow poorer we will soon experience

*Peak Healthcare

*Peak Pharmaceuticals

*Peak Lifespan in the US

*Peak ADD and ADHD

*Peak tranquilizers and anti-depressants

*Peak Prisons

*Peak Medicare, Social Security and Welfare

*Peak Washington D.C.

But not Peak Food Stamps (otherwise too much social unrest). Probably not Peak Lottery as it’s a way for people to gamble cheaply. Not Peak Retirement Age (for a while). And not Peak Family, Peak Community, Peak Relationships. These will be on the increase. Unfortunately, not Peak Homeless, Peak Crime, or Peak Disease. Sadly, probably not Peak World Population until Peak Famine hits first. Does Peak Energy lead to Peak Fertilizer which very quickly leads to Peak Food, even here in the U.S.? Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Long term, Peak Arable Land due to climate change is going to be bad enough.

As I said above, many of these peaks don’t have to be permanent.  They could be temporary downslopes creating local peaks until we retrench, reorganize in a way that makes sense given our resources, and then we can go forward again. Some of these Peaks in my view are beneficial; some are going to cause a lot of suffering that is doubly sad due to the fact that, with some foresight, we could have avoided them. In general with this list I’m not saying what should happen, just what is likely to happen as I gaze into the Peak Crystal Ball.

The Great Beaufort "Skedaddle"

They were at church when the word came. In the pews of Saint Helena’s in Beaufort, South Carolina, master and slave alike heard that an enormous Yankee fleet was massing off Point Royal Sound a mere ten miles away. If Confederate defenses didn’t hold, the town would have to evacuate in a matter of hours. It was time to pack and to pray.

View of Beaufort, Dec 1861

In 1861, Beaufort was one of the wealthiest, most cultured cities in America. The town boasted not only a library of three thousand volumes but also some of the most erudite, educated men in the South. Having built their elegant Greek Revival mansions with ballrooms, chandeliers and two-story piazzas, planter families gathered here each summer to escape the heat and ague of their Sea Island plantations, as well as socialize and talk politics.  Secession politics. For more than a dozen years cries for secession had risen from Beaufort, much of them led by its native son, rabble-rousing, fire-eater Robert Barnwell Rhett, remembered as the “Father of Secession.”

The Confederacy knew full well that Port Royal might be a target for a Northern base, but they couldn’t be sure other sites weren’t also in the running and so were somewhat lackadaisical in establishing defenses for Port Royal Sound. During the summer of 1861, local plantations reluctantly provided slaves to begin construction of two forts to guard the Sound’s entrance: Fort Walker on Hilton Head Island and Fort Beauregard on Phillips Island. But not only were the forts still incomplete by November, the artillery installed fell far short of what was originally proposed and even farther short of what was needed when the Yankees came calling.

Plans had been underway in the North to take a Southern port since early summer, with Lincoln himself involved in the selection. After all, to implement the “Anaconda Plan”—a tight blockade of the Southern coastline intended to cripple the Confederate economy—U.S. Navy warships needed a place to refuel with the coal that gave them power. Port Royal was one of the choicest deepwater ports on the Southern coast. That a massive Northern fleet was poised to sail was common knowledge to anyone who could read a newspaper once The New York Times published the details in the article, “The Great Naval Expedition,” on October 26^th. The only unknown was the destination, a secret that, remarkably, was successfully kept.  It wasn’t until they were at sea that the captain of each vessel opened a sealed envelope telling him where his ship was headed.

The Great Naval Expedition en route

The fleet that set out on Oct 29^th would prove to be the largest U.S. naval and amphibious expedition in the entire nineteenth century.  It included 17 warships, 25 colliers, 33 transports, 12,000 infantry, 600 marines, and 157 big guns. Port Royal, with its two cobbled-together forts supplied with only 2500 men, 4 gunboats, and 39 guns between them, didn’t stand a chance.

Bombardment of Port Royal

Nature came to the South’s aid in the form of a storm that sank some of the Northern fleet along the way, and then rough water delayed the day of the final attack. But when November 7^th dawned clear and calm, the water so still it was glassy, enough of the North’s warships were available to commence battle. Union ships concentrated their enfilade on Fort Walker. To the soldiers inside, the sound of artillery was deafening. By noon, only three of Fort Walker’s water battery guns were still operational; by 2:30 p.m., all powder was gone. The time had come to abandon the fort. The command at Fort Beauregard, concerned about being trapped on Phillips Island with no line of retreat, quickly followed suit. Thankfully, casualties on both sides were light. Accounts vary, but the Confederates finished the day with between 11 and 59 killed and an equivalent number wounded or missing, while the Union fleet saw 8 dead and 23 wounded.

Even with the enormous attacking naval force, Sea Island planters had been so confident in the defending forts manned with recruits from their very own Beaufort Volunteer Artillery that many watched the battle from shore on nearby Saint Helena Island. But when Confederate cannons grew silent and cheers reverberated from the Northern ships, they knew something had gone dreadfully wrong. They hurried home to evacuate, no doubt pained to leave bolls of valuable Sea Island cotton still unpicked in the fields.

When news of the battle’s outcome reached Beaufort, a kind of panic ensued. Facing an invading army of Yankees was too dreadful to contemplate; flight was of the essence. But what to take, what to leave behind? The daguerreotypes? The silver? Of course the family bible must be packed. Some loaded up carriages, hoping to stay ahead of the Yankees on the long overland route to safety. But Beaufort was lucky that day—there was a steamer anchored in the river that could take hundreds swiftly to Charleston. However, it had only so much room. Furniture, clothing, horses, and the vast majority of their most valuable property—slaves—would have to be left behind. In the tumult, even food and dinner dishes were abandoned on dining room tables, testament to the haste involved. That evening the steamer departed overflowing with Beaufort’s white citizenry along with every jewel and sentimental item they could squeeze on board. Legend has it that when Yankee forces arrived two days later to occupy the town, they found just one white man remaining in Beaufort, and he was dead drunk.

What must the deserted slaves, who spoke Gullah, their own Sea Island patois, have thought as the laden steamer chugged away from Beaufort’s dock? Did they realize that history had unexpectedly turned a corner right in front of them, and that now, after centuries of captivity as a people, they were suddenly free? Perhaps the political ramifications didn’t sink in that night, but before the first Yankees arrived, clothing and other finery had been looted (liberated?) from the grand homes, and food and liquor thoroughly consumed in an understandable celebration of events. 

Five generations now free (1862)

It is estimated 8-10,000 slaves were left behind in the Sea Islands when the white population fled. They were soon joined by thousands of others who escaped to the region once they realized that Northern occupation meant freedom.  They all needed food and shelter, and since the Emancipation Proclamation had yet to happen, their legal status, beyond being “contraband,” was unclear. The Army asked for help and received it in the form of the Port Royal Experiment. Financed and organized by Northern abolitionist charities, the Experiment worked as a test case to create self-sufficiency among the former slaves. Its success points to what Reconstruction might have been if less corruption and more competence had been at its helm.  Northern missionaries and teachers flocked to the Sea Islands to create schools and aid societies. Former slaves were allowed to farm the confiscated plantations and were paid $1 per 400 lbs of cotton they were able to harvest.  The Penn School on St. Helena Island was one of the earliest schools established for freed slaves and can be visited as part of the Penn Center today.

Yankees at home on a Beaufort piazza (1862)

The Union Army found Beaufort a pleasant setting for officer’s quarters, administrative offices and hospitals.  Because the Army occupied Beaufort until the end of the war, the fine mansions, while suffering damage, were not burned to the ground like so many other Southern towns and surrounding Sea Island plantations. To this day Beaufort’s centuries-old live oaks and antebellum charm remain. Port Royal turned out to be as advantageous a harbor as the Union had hoped and did much to strengthen the potency of the blockade. After the war, most planter families—their sons dead, their plantations burnt, their Beaufort homes sold in government auctions for back taxes (often without their knowledge)—never returned. The civilization that was antebellum Beaufort vanished into the night with that last steamer.

It is rare that the wheel of fortune spins as violently as it did on November 7, 1861. The town that had advocated so fiercely for secession was the first to feel the brunt of an occupying army. A people remarkable for their wealth lost almost everything in a matter of hours. A region that so defiantly insisted that its way of life—slavery—was non-negotiable ended up being the first to have a colony of former slaves experiment with what it meant to be free. The Great Skedaddle indeed.

Photos above are from (in order):  Library of Congress, Library of Congress, Harper's Weekly 11/9/1861, Harper's Weekly 11/30/1861, Library of Congress, Library of Congress. 

The Civil War--A Rough Beast Slouches

In 1849 things were good in Beaufort, South Carolina and about to get better. Over the next decade Britain’s demand for Sea Island cotton would go through the roof with prices to suit.  From 1850 – 1860 a great many of Beaufort’s grand houses were built as the money flowed in. Though friction with the North was increasing and inflammatory talk about secession was escalating, they were adamant  that their way of life was not negotiable. What was just around the corner for the white population of Beaufort—collapse, calamity and ruin--no one saw coming.

Conundrum

The seeds for the Civil War were sown long before 1861.  Even our founding fathers knew they’d embedded a desperate conundrum into the Constitution with its express protection of both human rights and slavery in the same document.  Benjamin Franklin foresaw much when he said, "Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils."  Thomas Jefferson knew trouble lay ahead when he said about slavery, “We have the wolf by the ear and feel the danger of either holding on or letting him loose.”  Patrick Henry wrote, "I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we do is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery."

The Triumvirate at Work

Pity their descendants as they might, the problem that was too thorny for these great men to solve was left for a future generation to suffer through. Two economic systems fought for dominance—the South’s agricultural economy made possible by slave labor and the North’s industrial economy with its denser population and huge influx of immigrants.  Both wanted to expand into the western territories, the South to preserve the delicate balance of power in Congress, the North to populate the vast plains and the west with their burgeoning population. The entire first half of the 19^th century was spent in compromise to prevent these two forces from tearing the country apart.  The great triumvirate of Webster, Clay and Calhoun plied their wiles in the Senate year after year to preserve the young nation. But in the end the internal contradictions of the competing ideologies and economic systems were too much. The center could not hold. As Yeats notes so often happens with war, “a blood-dimmed tide” was loosed upon the world. 

The Wages of Rhetoric

Did antebellum Beaufort have no inkling as events began to spin in an ever-widening gyre? Could they not see that the rhetoric they cheered would turn into fields of blood and mud? Perhaps no one, Northerner or Southerner, could have anticipated half a million lives would be lost. Indeed both sides expected the conflict to end in a matter of months. Perhaps Jefferson was right that  both holding on to slavery or letting go involved disaster. But could the South have transitioned away from a slave economy in a way less catastrophic and destructive? Could they have avoided the rough beast slouching towards them? This is what Beaufort 1849 explores.  

Those who believe their way of life is not negotiable may find, indeed, that history does not negotiate.

  

THE SECOND COMING (William Butler Yeats)
    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.
    
    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Beaufort Angel Oak

According to Beaufort sources, any oak tree that has grown until its limbs touch the ground is an angel oak. Here is a very fine Beaufort specimen obviously cherished and accommodated by the people who are its custodians.  (I won't say owners. Owners of the house come and go.  The oak remains.)

The granddaddy of all angel oaks is the one that deserves capital letters, Angel Oak, and it lives on Johns Island near Charleston. (It is thought to be 1500 years old and one of the oldest living organisms east of the Mississippi River.)

These oaks have weathered hurricanes and floods, witnessed centuries of human cares and concerns, the generations passing beneath their limbs.  All trees have their own energy, personality, if you will. These trees have wisdom.

Beaufort 1849 Now Available on Apple iBooks

Find Beaufort 1849 on Apple iBooks, available through the iBooks app or the iTunes Bookstore.  Available in six countries--Australia, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, United States. Can be downloaded to the iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch.

Just out of curiosity, do you use an e-reader?  Which one? (Leave a comment!) I've been using a Kindle lately, though I do still peruse regular books.

Eternal Jane Eyre

I recently watched again the new film version of Jane Eyre directed by Cary Fukunaga. Is it the quintessential Jane Eyre for all time? Hard to say, but it is very fine on a number of fronts. The casting for Jane and Rochester are quite good (Jane is young, small, and plain, but not homely); the cinematography, especially of the moors, is marvelous; they’ve portrayed the brooding gothic manor of Thornfield perfectly; and the costuming is impeccable. The gypsy fortune teller scene is left out (how is this possible?) but the River’s part of the story is interesting and woven in well with the rest, an uncommon achievement. Of the five or so versions of Jane Eyre that I’ve seen, I’d say this is my favorite. Two thumbs up from me.

When this movie came out in March, The New York Times had a nice piece on how Jane Eyre had been filmed at least 18 times for cinema and another 9 times for television. Holy cow. It may be one of the most filmed books ever. Obviously, Jane Eyre has a quality that makes us revisit her again and again, with Janes and Rochesters of all sorts trotting across both the screens of our culture and the mental screens of our minds.

Just wrong for the part

There have been gothic Janes (1943), happy Janes (1934), old Janes (1970), musical stage Janes (2000—I saw it! I liked it!) and even a Katherine Hepburn stage Jane (1937). (Evidently she was awful. The playwright who wrote the stage adaptation demanded she be removed from the cast.) And let’s not forget Zombie Jane (I Walked With a Zombie, 1943, infused with voodoo, supposedly inspired by Jane Eyre. I’ve got to see this. Wonder if it’s on Netflix?)

Happy Jane

The happy Jane version of 1934 (available in bits and pieces on Youtube) bears only a passing resemblance to what Brontë wrote, but it has its amusements. Jane is a buxom, platinum blonde who could double for Jean Harlow. Rochester is an affable English gentleman with intense, longing stares. Thornfield Hall is Georgian palace downstairs and Eastlake Victorian upstairs. And the costuming! No corsets for this Jane, her high-waisted dresses no doubt made her look fashionable in the 1930’s but are entirely wrong for the 1840’s. After spending many hours pouring over fashion plates in Godey’s Lady’s magazine, I confess I admire period flicks that pay attention to detail. In the new Jane Eyre, Rochester wears spiffy silk waistcoasts, (I’d love to see them come back in fashion!) although they could be even bolder in color. And Jane’s dresses hit the mark beautifully. Corsets may be a nasty business, but worn correctly they convey the constrained female reality of the time.

Jane meets Rochester

Over the years, some versions of Jane Eyre have emphasized the gothic horror of the novel, some the tormented Rochester, some the romance, some the proto-feminism, some the perfidy of the aristocratic class, some the oppression of the servants (with new servant characters created!) Each generation accentuated the theme that resonated most with the prevailing sensibility. Or perhaps each generation projected on Jane the meaning it wished. Like all great art, Jane Eyre has a thousand facets in which to see one’s reflection.

Though it might come as a surprise, Jane Eyre was controversial when first published by “Currer Bell,” as can be seen in the pages of Beaufort 1849. It is passages such as this that were startling in 1847:

“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. . . . Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.” (Ch 12)

In Beaufort 1849 Aunt Winnie sniffs this theme out in Jane Eyre before her fingers even touch the book, so of course she doesn’t want her self-willed niece to read it. The last thing Cara needs is encouragement to exercise her faculties or escape from confinement. That she will receive exactly such encouragement from Jasper Wainwright is part of what makes Winnie instinctually dubious about him from the beginning.

Elizabeth Rigby--no fan of Jane

Aunt Winnie’s misgivings reflect a wider strain of criticism of the time. Shortly after Jane Eyre appeared, Elizabeth Rigby, British author and art critic, laid into our poor Jane with a vengeance. “The impression she [the character, Jane] leaves on our mind is that of a decidedly vulgar-minded woman--one whom we should not care for as an acquaintance, whom we should not seek as a friend, whom we should not desire for a relation, and whom we should scrupulously avoid for a governess.”

Ouch. And it gets worse. She accuses little Jane of being unworthy, uninteresting, pedantic, affected and unlovable. She calls her “an unregenerate and undisciplined spirit.” And the very worst accusation: Jane Eyre is anti-Christian, fomenting class warfare and even revolution. “There is throughout it a murmuring against the comforts of the rich and against the privations of the poor, which, as far as each individual is concerned, is a murmuring against God's appointment--there is a proud and perpetual assertion of the rights of man, for which we find no authority either in God's word or in God's providence--there is that pervading tone of ungodly discontent which is at once the most prominent and the most subtle evil which the law and the pulpit, which all civilized society in fact, has at the present day to contend with. We do not hesitate to say that the tone of mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated every code human and divine abroad, and fostered Chartism and rebellion at home, is the same which has also written Jane Eyre.”

And so Elizabeth Rigby has put her finger on the element that endears the book most to me: Jane’s assertion that she—small, plain and poor as she is—still has a right to be the center of her life, the heroine of her own story. She has the right not only to be “discontented” but to express the truth and object to what is unjust even if that means “murmuring against God’s appointment.” From childhood on, Jane demands to be treated with the consideration and respect due every single person on earth. That this was viewed as heretical, unchristian and subversive doesn’t surprise me. “A proud and perpetual assertion of the rights of man” echoes the opening of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, and I’m sure this wasn’t a document Elizabeth Rigby was fond of either.

Here is Jane with Rochester, her conventional superior in every way (age, size, wealth, power, position, sex): “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! . . . . I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!” (Ch 23)

Jane is profoundly egalitarian in a society that was profoundly elitist. She asserts a worldview that was diametrically opposed to the power structure circumscribing her life. And yet it is her determined voice that echoes unwavering and insistent across a century and a half, while the armada of other, less vulgar books published at the time have sunk into obscurity. It’s no wonder Charlotte Brontë’s creation made Elizabeth Rigby uncomfortable: Jane Eyre challenged the very cornerstone of her civilization. I would say writing it was an act of great courage, although Brontë might not have considered it so. She might have just thought it necessary. She wrote in one of her letters: “Imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised . . . When she is eloquent, and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation?”

Charlotte Brontë

By the end of Brontë’s short life (she died at thirty-eight) even though Jane Eyre was quite popular, she could have had no indication that her small, plain heroine had made any difference to class structure, political thought, or the course of history. Today British aristocratic privilege is almost eradicated from the earth, its power eviscerated through war and the impossibility of profiting indefinitely from endless empire. Elizabeth Rigby, while she rates an entry in Wikipedia, is remembered primarily for her criticism of Jane Eyre as an acute example of critical judgment blinded by cultural bias.

Martin Luther King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” I hope this is true but I can’t be certain. Clearly, however, history bends towards irony of an acerbic nature. I expect subversive Jane will keep popping up on our screens and stages (this outspoken orphan who will not flinch from the truth) as long as we pretend charity but offer little, as long as we create hierarchies of wealth and power that preclude human worth and dignity, as long as we hide our monsters in the attic and pretend they’re not there. And we won’t even know why Jane, in whatever guise—Gothic or feminist, Harlow or mouse—keeps materializing with her fierce indignation before us.

Perhaps justice is a dish best served poetic.