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In 1842 Charlotte and Emily Brontë travelled to Brussels to study at the Pensionnat Heger, a school for young ladies run by Madame Zoë Heger. There the sisters studied French literature under the instruction of Madame’s husband, Constantin Heger. This connection with the dynamic and rigorous Monsieur Heger had the most profound influence on Charlotte Brontë’s life and work. After Charlotte left the pensionnat on New Year’s Day 1844 she was unable to forget Monsieur Heger. At first she wrote to him every fortnight and then, on Madame Heger’s insistence, she attempted to limit herself to a letter every six months. These letters to Constantin Heger are increasingly unguarded expressions of her torment as she waited for replies that dwindled and then halted altogether.
What language are the letters written in?
All four surviving letters to Heger are written in French – the language in which he tutored Charlotte – though the post script to the last letter she ever sent him is in English. In her parting words to Heger, she declares that the French language is ‘most precious to me because it reminds me of you – I love French for your sake with all my heart and soul’. Biographer Lyndall Gordon and scholar Sara Dudley Edwards have speculated that writing in a foreign language allowed Brontë the licence to express feelings that she mightn’t have voiced in her native English.Why were the letters torn up and repaired?
Of the four remaining letters, three were torn up. The first has been mended with strips of paper; the second and third have been sewn back together; the fourth is intact, though the name and address of a Brussels shoemaker has been scribbled in the margin. Critics have speculated that Monsieur Heger tore up the letters, only for Madame Heger to retrieve them from his wastepaper bin and piece them together again.bl.uk/collection-items/letters-from-charlotte-bront-to-prof-constantin-heger
Biographer Lyndall Gordon and scholar Sara Dudley Edwards have speculated that writing in a foreign language allowed Brontë the license to express feelings that she mightn’t have voiced in her native English.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenIndeed and let's not forget also the boxes and boxes of French novels the Taylors lent her when Charlotte was a girl. It was ever the language for such matters . The importance of these letters can't be overstated
I really can't fault Madame Heger for any of her actions, even if she indeed did spy on CB ...not when Madame was confronted by a love sick Bronte on the loose in her school and then these amazingly inappropriate letters come in that begin in supplication and end in demands . A love sick Charlotte Bronte was a knife point aimed at Madame's throat . So I cannot fault Madame Heger for protecting her husband and school by any means she found necessary.
Instead of ceasing to write back , what if the Hegers wrote to Patrick Bronte in order to get the letters to stop? They could have and many would have. They were far kinder than that...but CB couldn't see it, indeed would not allow herself to see how gently they were handling this power keg. The Heger family inspire respect at every turn from the 1840's to 1913 when these letters passed from their hand's to history