The Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan

The Taste of Sorrow is a historical novel that retells the lives of the Brontë sisters, from their early childhoods until shortly after Charlotte’s wedding. As some of you might remember, earlier this year I read and fell head over heels in love with Morgan’s Passion, which is about the lives of four women who were involved with the Romantic poets. I approached these two books from two very different perspectives, though, because while I had read several biographies of Mary Shelley, Byron and the rest of the Romantic gang before, I only knew the very basics about the Brontës’ lives.

Jude Morgan explains in a short interview included in my edition of the book that he tried hard not to deviate from the known facts of Charlotte, Emily and Anne’s lives. What he did inevitably fill in were the personal gaps: the feelings and motivations driving these three women’s actions. But biographical or historical accuracy is not the reason why I loved The Taste of Sorrow. I appreciate knowing that it’s there, but because of my limited knowledge, I wouldn’t have noticed it if it had been absent. Still, I agree with Violet when she says that this and Passion are the best books based on real historical figures she’s come across to date. It’s not so much a matter of how true to life they are, but of how well Morgan makes the people he writes about come to life.

I remember that one of the first things I ever read about the lives of the Brontës was a short essay by a Portuguese writer describing how Emily, a strong and resourceful woman, had simply “given up” and allowed herself to die after her brother Bramwell’s death. This conjures a tragic and semi-heroic image of sacrifice; of a distressed damsel allowing herself to fade away because her grief is too much to bear. (On a side note, where do I join the queue to kick the shins of those who claim that Bramwell wrote all the novels? Just asking.) Fortunately, Morgan’s approach in The Taste of Sorrow is the polar opposite of this. There is nothing romantic or heroic about tuberculosis killing several members of the same family one after another. There’s nothing pretty or glorified in his description of their illnesses and deaths. It’s messy and it’s ugly and it terrifies them – understandably so, because they were human beings and they wanted to live.

But of course, their premature deaths are far from the only thing the book is about. The Taste of Sorrow is a novel that completely respects Charlotte, Emily and Anne’s humanity. We can’t of course know if the characters we find in the pages of this book actually match the human beings they were, but nevertheless, they are human beings - complex, flawed, easy for readers to love. They also aren’t crazy or slightly “damaged” geniuses, or world-changing heroines, or characters in a melodrama. They’re just three women who lived isolated lives, who needed to earn their living, and who from a very early age turned to stories for comfort.

Returning to the issue of accuracy—which I suspect might matter more to other readers than it did to me—I would venture to say that Jude Morgan did a great job of extracting the likely human beings who lurk behind the Brontës' novels. This is inevitably arguable, because not all readers would imagine the same person based on their stories—but Morgan’s version of the person who wrote Jane Eyre, for example, matches my own perfectly. His Charlotte felt absolutely right to me, and this no doubt contributed to how much I connected with this book.

When it comes to themes, The Taste of Sorrow is unavoidably about being a woman in nineteenth-century England and having a rich intellectual life. Anne, Emily and Charlotte don’t necessarily attempt to change the world, but they do very much feel its limitations and restrictions (which again puts me in mind of what I was saying last week about these subtle, less overtly political novels still being very much feminist texts). Morgan deals with the different expectations surrounding the Brontës and their brother, with their father’s reaction to Charlotte’s desire to be published, and with their eventual decision to use male pseudonyms with sensitivity and insight. And likewise with the accusations of “coarseness” that inevitably followed the revelation of their gender, or with their rejection of the notion that strong emotions of any kind in women should be surrounded by shame.

The Taste of Sorrow is also very much about the imagination, about why we tell and read stories, about the differences—or similarities—between our “real” experiences and our inner lives. Emily in particular is someone who doesn’t always distinguish between one and the other, but this is not presented as a form of madness – just as a way of being in the world. The Brontë sisters turned to writing to find the emotional and intellectual stimulus they did not find in the outside world. I don’t want to use the word “escapism” because I fear its connotations of cowardliness or evasion - and writing was probably the bravest thing they could have done.

The Taste of Sorrow made me not only want to read more about the Brontës, but it also read them again. I’ve yet to try Anne, but I already had plans to fill that gap in 2011. And I think I’m also ready to give Wuthering Heights a second try. Who’s your favourite Brontë sister? Why?

Favourite bits:

‘I don’t think we should invent horrors,’ Ellen said later, quivering, downright. The screams of one girl had brought Miss Wooler down on them in stately reproach. ‘It isn’t right. Lord knows, they are plentiful enough in real life.’
‘That’s why we invent them,’ Charlotte said. ‘To take the edge off the real ones.’

‘We are not supposed to say,’ Charlotte pronounces now. Her own voice crackles on her ear, harsh and sibylline in the midnight silence. ‘Anything we feel, we are not supposed to know we feel. If we do know, there is something morally wrong with us. If you like a man – not even love him, but like him enough to be drawn to him, to think you might possibly love him – you aren’t supposed to know that either. You are supposed to go drooling about like an emotional infant.’

‘I don’t presume to speak for all of womankind, Monsieur Heger. Indeed, I don’t think such a thing is possible. I would contend that there is not such a great difference between men and women as you suggest. The perilous truth is how alike we are.’
‘Perilous?’
‘Oh, yes. It would be a Jericho blast to acknowledge it. Walls would tumble. We would all have to alter our positions.’

They read it too: Lovely Treez Reads, Savidge Reads

(Have I missed yours?)