Charlotte Bronte had as rough a time as any Victorian girl could expect and yet there was, in all the coldness, a way of thinking, a way of writing, which frowned on frivolity and promoted serious feelings and commitments, something increasingly unknown today:

During the summer, in fact, an old friend of the family came to pay a visit at the rectory, and with him he brought a young clergyman, fresh from Dublin University, a lively, clever, witty young Irishman.

The man amused Charlotte; she talked to him gaily, laughing at his jests without restraint until, as the day wore on, “he began to season his conversation with something of Hibernian flattery.” Then she cooled towards him. This was not at all to her liking.

But presently the man departed. And after he had gone Charlotte thought no more about him until, a few days later, she received a letter in a strange handwriting. Who could the writer be? Consumed with curiosity, she tore the letter open, and read – surely as ardent a declaration of love as has been ever penned. The writer was her young Irish friend!

“I have heard of love at first sight,” she wrote afterwards; “but this beats all. I leave you to guess . . . my answer.”

And the nature of that answer, reader, perhaps you, too, can guess. Charlotte Bronte was not a hare-brained girl. For love, for a true, deep love, she longed; and to it she would have yielded herself utterly and gladly. But to that tawdry substitute, an emotional attachment – never.

But that love which she required is a rare and priceless jewel indeed. Many people seek for it; few ever find it. In the end, the great majority clutch feverishly at the sham. And so, as the years rolled on, romance became almost a stranger to her; work absorbed all her energies.

Yet still she thought a great deal about love – about love and marriage. This, of course, her art demanded of her; it demanded that she should understand the emotions of her sex. But her own she failed utterly to understand. And many a great writer and many a great thinker has suffered similarly.

And then, again, although in her inmost heart Charlotte remained faithful to the man of her dreams, Time – Time, the great changer of all things – completely revolutionised her views on life.

The girl’s longing for a man for whose sake she could wish to die; a man whose smallest wish would outweigh in the balance the whole world, yielded to the woman’s wish for love, for somebody to care for her and cherish her.

You could be forgiven, having read the above, that Charlotte could never find the love she wanted but in fact she did:

Before accepting him, however, she consulted her father. Mr. Bronte objected, and Charlotte quietly put aside the happiness within her reach, and gave an unfavorable answer.

But Mr. Bront gradually changed his mind, and in a year’s time gave his consent to the marriage; although, with characteristic perversity, he refused at the last minute to go to the church and give his daughter away.

Charlotte Bronte was married on the twenty-ninth of June, 1854. The wedding was of the quietest, but the pale, delicate little bride was very happy as she left the old church on her husband’s arm, followed by the good wishes of the villagers who had gathered to see her pass.

She was dressed in soft white, with no color about her save green leaves, looking, as one who was there told Mrs. Gaskell, like a snow-drop.

Her happily married life lasted but eight months. She died in March, 1855. Waking after a long delirium, she saw her husband bending above her with a face of anguish, murmuring some broken prayer that God would spare her.

“Oh!” she whispered, looking up at him, “I am not going to die, am I ? He will not separate us; we have been so happy.”

Though she could not love a man, she was prepared to marry one who loved her.  And thus it is with all of us – is it better to marry the one we love or marry the one who loves us?

To the modern reader, such is a trick question.

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