Charlotte Bronte is a Cow

I've been reading quite a bit lately, and I've been revisiting some books, including Vanity Fair and Persuasion. References to Persuasion have been popping up lately, so it seemed suiting to go back and reread it. It's perhaps my favorite of Jane Austen's novels, I think only because my somewhat childish romantic/martyr-like side identifies with Anne Elliot. I've posted parts of my favorite passage below, when Anne is speaking to Captain Harville about the nature of male and female sentiment, and Captain Wentworth's letter to Anne, a letter written while overhearing the aforementioned conversation. Every time I read this particular chapter, I become rather giddy.


Copied from http://www.austen.com/persuade/

"Yes. We certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions."

Captain Wentworth's letter to Anne:

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone I think and plan.--Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes?--I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice, when they would be lost on others.--Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in
F. W.
I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening, or never."

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Being a Wikipedia junkie, I read the entry for Jane Austen. I was a little shocked by Bronte's and Twain's comments on Austen. I've never been a big fan of the Bronte sisters (although I admit, I do not mind Jane Eyre), and I have a love-hate relationship with Mark Twain dating back to seventh-grade English.

Copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen

Charlotte Brontë criticized the narrow scope of Austen's fiction:
"She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him with nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her: she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood… What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study: but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death—this Miss Austen ignores… Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless) woman, if this is heresy—I cannot help it."

Mark Twain's reaction was revulsion:
"Jane Austen? Why, I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other book."