genre: classic fiction
Our Professor, William, does not start off in his profession. In fact, in a Dickensonian way, he has to pull himself up by his bootstraps with hardly a friend in the world to care for him. His loveless youth, however, does spur him to invest in himself and with determination he finds his way to Brussels. In this fashionable city he chooses his path and tries to create a life for himself with good work and, hopefully, with someone by his side to join him.
The Professsor is Charlotte's first book, published after her death. I am a devotee of Jane Eyre but this came no where near to that work of art. There are so many caricatured and rather horrible people and the last half an hour of the book could literally just not exist and the story wouldn't have changed. There is a LOT of French here, which I can handle, but there is no translation, which I can imagine would be irritating. And YET. You can still see her genius in there. The romance, although dripping with Patriarchal drivel sometimes, also was also sometimes exactly what you'd want. A few quotes that I had to listen to twice, they felt that lovely:
"I supposed the sensations, stirred by those first sounds, first sights, are felt but once. Treasure them, memory. Seal them in urns and keep them in safe niches."
When I looked at her, it was with the glance fitting to be bestowed on one who I knew had consulted jealousy as an advisor and employed treachery as an instrument.
I loved her as she stood there, penniless and parentless. For a sensualist charmless, for me a treasure -- my best object of sympathy on earth.
That is my little wild strawberry, Hunsden, whose sweetness made me careless of your hot-house grapes.
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