There's a new movie coming out ('To Walk Invisible') exploring the lives of the Bronte sisters and I'd really love to see it; then they can make one about the life of L.M. Montgomery. I was really disappointed with 'Becoming Jane,' not because it was a bad movie, it was really well done, but rather it didn't end like one of her novels (and yes, I know they probably shouldn't change history to satisfy my sense of justice and need for happy endings!). I've never been a huge biography fan for just such a reason: we expect the happy ending right now but we don't know, in most cases, how the ending really does happen, even if it is really the end, or more likely it is just the beginning of another story and what we want as the happy ending (the marriage of Miss Austen) may actually turn out to be a bad ending for other reasons (would she have become a famous authoress or would the world have been deprived of her genius?) but it is fascinating to read the fictional works of certain authors and guess at what their real life experiences must have been like. Good writing is a window, though often of stained glass, upon the soul of the author, the briefest glimpse into the very heart of their being. That's why books can be such good friends: they have a soul, a connection, a living, vibrant pulse behind the words rather than just a collation of facts and cold, unfeeling ideas, which is why you never befriend a newspaper or get chummy with a magazine. And of course we all have very different ideas of what makes an attractive friend, thus our varied taste in literature.
Looking over my list of dearest literary companions, I discover that I'm an anglophile out of place and time, and of the ladies on that list (Austen, Montgomery, C. Bronte, Alcott) I find passionate souls that are full of wit, wonder, and vibrancy but who have also lived through things with a quiet courage that defies comprehension, horrible things that seep into their writing and oppress their eventually triumphant heroines who shine out the stronger, even if in their own personal lives there never was such a happy ending, but for us, their grateful readers, we have only to pick up our favorite volume to relive that 'eucatastophy' time and again. Were these remarkable ladies triumphant over bigotry or suppression based upon their sex, an institutionalized evil that worked against female authors at the time? Is it of this I speak? I know nothing of their struggles in that arena, rather I think a more insidious evil was theirs to overcome, one that haunts many of us without our even knowing it. Our society is in full rabid cry against sexism, racism, homophobia...choose your form of institutionalized bigotry, which in general is no bad thing, but what it overlooks is the tyranny of the domestic and its tragic effect on each and every one of us.
Our home lives shape us dramatically, telling us what is 'normal' and 'good' and 'right.' No family is perfect and all fall short in some aspect or other; we also each have choices and decisions to make about our own lives so we cannot blame everything on our parents, but those who play a significant role (or abdicate those roles) in our young lives have a dramatic effect on how we think, act, and behave as adults. Broken homes, abuse, abandonment, neglect, lack of discipline, indifference, no or too much responsibility, spoiling, harshness, lack of love, instability...you can survive it, but it warps you. Perhaps that is why I love these authoresses so much: they write about such things, their characters (and they themselves) have lived through it and still manage to thrive. It gives me hope, it gives hope to each and every one of us. There aren't any grand explosions or swashbuckling adventures in these tales; no dragons or unicorns or wizards. But their heroines overcome obstacles no less daunting, and are perhaps the more honorable for it, though there are no crowds to cheer or kings to grant favor and titles when they return triumphant. Perhaps no one knows but their own small, quivering self.
How can I write such stuff? Have I proof? What historical facts do I know of these women's lives? I know little to nothing but what is revealed in their fictional works, what I myself have lived through, and how your own personal experience can effect your writing. You could perhaps talk to a number of people and do extensive research on the subject and come up with a feasible fictional example of abuse and neglect, privation and fear. But these ladies write with the knowledge of someone who lived through it, neither did they have access to sociological studies, the internet, great libraries, or the chance to personally interview hundreds of such victims. They are survivors, or closely acquainted to survivors, of the worst hardships domestic life can offer up. Not murder per say, but the slow and gradual working of despair on a sensitive heart by those that should love it best, but they are not worn down and destroyed, rather they rise up, if only in the realm of words, and say that life is good, family wonderful, and the world still beautiful even amidst their disquiet life.
I just reread Montgomery's 'The Blue Castle,' and came away thinking she had written my biography (except my in-laws aren't fabulously wealthy). She lived through something. Austen's Lady Catherine is too superb a character to have sprung solely from the realm of imagination, I wonder who the inspiration was? 'Jane Eyre' is likewise haunted by grim visions of a gothic domestic scene known only to those who have dwelt long therein. All of Alcott's 'little women' wrestle with exactly what happiness is, exploring many shades of the domestic scene and the triumphs and perils attendant thereunto. I can't wait to hear the full tale behind the tales one day, at least I hope that I will! They give such hope to those who suffer and endure in silence, those who struggle day to day just to cope and survive, let alone smile, but we are promised so much more than smiling: our weeping shall turn to joy. They have seen that far off dawn of hope through the bitter winds and rain of night, they have heard the strains of fair music from a far country echoing faintly in grim and silent lands, and they have passed those hints, that hope, that fleeting joy on to us, who yet struggle through the 'slews of despair,' who wander aimlessly in the 'valley of the shadow of death.'
They perhaps did not have the expected happy ending that we all demand, but they certainly wrote them and we, their blessed heirs, can rejoice thereat. I think of my own grandmother, unable to have children herself, adopting three kids out of the foster care system: abused and neglected by their biological parents, afflicted with various mental and emotional hindrances. One dying young, another a drunk to this day, the third a selfish manipulative monster who blamed everything on them. She did not see her own happy ending during her lifetime, but without her efforts, my own life would be rather dreadful: we owe much of our 'happy middle' to her perseverance through the greatest afflictions that can try a mother's heart. So stand strong, even when life and everyone you love seems determined to destroy you, when no one knows your pain and struggle and heartache. Even if you can't see a happy ending on the horizon, know that your struggles are not unseen, your efforts and courage are not vain, as long as you stay true, good can yet come of it, be it a story beloved by generations or great grandchildren who are happily oblivious to the grim reality that was life as usual to generations past.
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