"The Professor" by Charlotte Bronte

Yesterday I read the chapter on "The Professor" in Janet Gezari's book on Charlotte Bronte's, and it was very helpful. Professor Gezari, who is an old friend and a parent of a former student of mine, discusses the motif of "hands" that threads its way through the entire story, something I certainly had not noticed. She points out that Bronte repeatedly describes characters shaking hands, touching hands, waving with their hands (or not), clenching their hands in anger or tension,  holding another's hands in friendship or love, and even just looking at another's hands in admiration. This is the type of motif that I often -- or usually -- miss in a first reading, and I'm always grateful to get the views of a devoted literary scholar like Janet. (She also points out the similarity between characters in this novel and those in Bronte's other novels, and discusses at length Bronte's strong anti-Catholic feelings -- very helpful information for me.)

"The Professor" by Charlotte Bronte

Yesterday I finished “The Professor” by Charlotte Bronte. There were times, early in the reading, when I was dismayed by the empty-headedness of some of the characters, and by the seeming tediousness of the story line. However, fortunately for me, I made a small commitment to stay with the book, and slowly the story started to blossom, chapter by chapter. Bronte’s writing – her graceful sentence structure, especially – was elegant almost from start to finish, and soon the characters starting seeming like people I could study and come to admire. The descriptions, both of the natural world and of the characters, grew better, it seemed, as I turned the pages. And her sentence structure, as I said, was so stylish. I made numerous highlights of sentences containing very pleasing examples of parallelism. Obviously, I am glad I didn’t give up on this somewhat forgotten but nonetheless impressive novel.