So19: Let’s start with the basics. Charlotte's letters is set in the 19th century, but it's a very modern play: intertwining several narratives and using minimal sets and props, for example.
JOG: Charlotte ’s Letters was inspired by the two years
Charlotte Brontë lived in Brussels
Though it uses historical figures and events, the play is a work of fiction. It isn’t intended to depict what might have occurred between the real people, nor is my character
So19: An
interesting and necessary distinction, but a tricky one as well.
JOG: Theatrical characters, even
those inspired by real persons, are only representations of people, used by the
playwright to serve the needs of the play. When we watch Shakespeare’s Richard
III, for example, we’re not
watching Shakespeare's attempt to faithfully reconstruct the actual king. He’s
not presenting his play as historical fact, but rather as a work of art.
I
tried to remain true to what I saw as essential characteristics of the real
Brontë—her intelligence, her sense of humor, her unflagging desire to be an
author, her great capacity for friendship and sense of responsibility. But I
also used my imagination.
In
fact, it’s quite possible that everything that occurs to Charlotte
So19: Before we get into the nitty-gritty of its 19th-century roots, let’s talk a bit about the themes of the play.
JOG: Charlotte
My
play imagines Charlotte Brontë at a time when she is trying desperately to
become a writer. Later, her friend Mrs. Gaskell feels forced to reinvent Charlotte
Another
area that the play (like my poetry) explores is love. What it is, and what we
do about it when circumstances don’t make it easy to express, are questions
than run throughout the piece.
So19: And speaking of love…at the heart of
JOG: Villette has long been one of my favorite novels. Its use of an
unreliable female narrator, its strong emotional content, its examination of
the life of a single woman—all of that was unusual for its time. I think it’s a
tremendous literary accomplishment. One wonders what Charlotte Brontë might
have written after Villette had she
lived long enough to finish another novel.
It
wasn’t until after a subsequent reading of my decades-old paperback edition of Villette that I decided to read the
front matter, and was very surprised to learn that Brontë had actually lived in
Brussels
Unlike
Paul Emanuel, Monsieur Heger was married, and to the directress of the school
at which Brontë studied and later worked. Brontë became increasingly estranged
from Madame Heger during her second year in Brussels Brussels
None
of this, by the way, would have been news to someone who had read the letters
of Charlotte Brontë or any modern biography of her. But for me it was a fascinating
discovery. Suddenly Brontë was transformed in my mind from a writer with an
amazing imagination, into one who used her own pain and life experiences to
make art. The desire to know more about her was the genesis of my play.
So19: Many scholars assume that the “real” Paul Emanuel,
Monsieur Heger, had no feelings for Charlotte Brontë.
JOG: I can’t quite see how that
could have been true. More than anyone outside of her own family, he encouraged
her writing. He also provided her with a way to earn her living, by inviting
her back to Brussels
So19: As you mentioned earlier, posited against its dramatization of the Brontës, the play depicts Elizabeth Gaskell as she plans her biography of her late friend. How did the idea for this storyline arise?
JOG: I struggled for a while
trying finding the right form for this play. I knew I wanted intertwining
plotlines that would comment on each other. I experimented with setting the
second plotline in the present, but it didn’t feel right. The moment I thought
of Gaskell, the entire play began to take shape, and different thematic
possibilities opened up. I enjoyed exploring Mrs. Gaskell, who was an author I
hadn’t known much about when I began writing the play. Also, when I began the
play, I was about the same age Mrs. Gaskell is when we see her. So I was able
to understand her concerns as a writer and a mother.
So19: Mrs. Gaskell’s biography was intended to depict Charlotte
Brontë in a way that would silence rumors of her scandalous character. Though
it’s a remarkable work built entirely on good intentions, her depiction also
helped distort Brontë’s character for history.
JOG: That’s true. I’m a good
example of the fallout from that. Before I began this work, I hadn’t realized
that Brontë had ever cared for anyone. Jane
Eyre is one of the most convincing love stories of all time, and the fact
that it never occurred to me that she must have loved somebody in order to
write it, or Villette, is proof of
the power of Elizabeth Gaskell’s depiction of her.
One
of the reasons I wrote this play was to help de-mythologize the Brontës, to
make them accessible to modern audiences. I wanted to disassociate them from
the idea we sometimes have, that they weren’t actually real women with the
ability to feel real love. I was interested in writing about a young woman who
wanted very badly to become a writer, and who had the concerns, insecurities,
and passions the rest of us have. I think Charlotte and Emily in my play are a
lot like young women writers I’ve known.
At
the same time, I wanted to depict Elizabeth Gaskell sympathetically. I think
her biography is a testament to the friendship between the two women as well as
how much she valued Brontë’s work.
The
real Gaskell, it seems to me, was a creative, empathetic, open-minded woman who
was smart enough to deduce, from Villette,
that Charlotte Brontë had had strong feelings for someone. Later, when she met
Monsieur Heger and saw the letters Brontë had written him, she must have
understood Brontë’s feelings for him. But that wasn’t something she could put
in her biography. The Hegers were still alive and had a school to maintain, and
there was a very real possibility that Brontë’s novels would fade into
oblivion, or at least be left for later generations to discover. Instead, they
remained in print. That’s really due in large part to Gaskell.
So19: As its title suggests, the play works with the idea of
letters: letters between Charlotte Brontë and Heger, a letter from Gaskell to
Heger requesting information, a letter back. Are Heger’s actual letters to
Charlotte Brontë, or vice versa, extant?
JOG: None of Heger’s letters to
her survive. We don’t know what became of them. We do have a letter he wrote to
Gaskell when she was seeking extracts from Brontë’s letters to him, and those
extracts, with very little variation, are used in my play.
Three of the surviving letters were at one point torn into pieces, presumably by Heger, and subsequently repaired, supposedly by Madame Heger. She kept them, we are told, in secret, and passed them on to her daughter Louise, a professional artist. It’s commonly assumed that Heger destroyed the letters after he read them. That is often used as evidence that he didn’t care about Brontë or her feelings. But we know that Elizabeth Gaskell saw Brontë’s letters to him when she visited him in
So19: You
mentioned above that Gaskell’s young daughter, Margaret Emily, known as Meta,
appears in the play. What can you tell us about her?
JOG: The real Meta Gaskell was
the second of Elizabeth Gaskell’s four daughters. She was intelligent, and a
good artist. In fact, she once considered a professional career in the field.
Interestingly, as I noted above, Louise Heger became a professional artist.
Nineteenth-century women weren’t commonly encouraged to pursue creative
careers, so that tells us something important about Heger, Gaskell, and their
outlooks on life.
Meta Gaskell never married. She was engaged briefly but broke the engagement off. I’ve never been able to discover why. There are suggestions that she learned something negative about her fiancé. That intrigued me and worked well with the themes of my play. Most importantly, there was enough space in the record of
So19: I loved the rather mordant humor in the play. Sometimes the Brontës and anything to do with them are seen as being very somber subjects, as though they were the stuff of tragic fiction and lived every day entirely in some kind of dark consciousness.
JOG: If one reads Brontë’s
letters, nearly a thousand of which still exist, it becomes clear that she had
a sharp sense of humor. I saw that as essential. Humorous people are often
attracted to other humorous people, so it made sense to me that the major
characters in my play would share Charlotte
So19: Even when
one isn’t attempting any kind of documentary realism, plays dealing with 19th-century
events require research. How did you explore the Belgian aspects of, and
characters in, the play?
JOG: I discovered a chapter of
the Brontë Society based in Brussels
So19: How did you keep the language of the play at once accurate enough to the period to be believable, yet fresh enough for contemporary playgoers?
JOG: To begin with, I immersed
myself in Charlotte Brontë’s letters. That gave me a good feel for how she
sounded—which was actually surprisingly modern, at least to my ear. I read
other letters from the time period, including those of other Brontë family
members and those of Elizabeth Gaskell.
And I re-read Charlotte Brontë’s novels. Because they were written in
first person, they sound a lot like someone speaking, and helped give me ideas
for how my characters might sound.
So19: Speaking of language,
the play begins with Emily and Charlotte speaking in counterpoint. I believe
their words there are quotations from their actual writings?
JOG: The Stage Directions
indicate that they’re speaking from Jane
Eyre and Wuthering Heights
So 19: You’ve also
written plays about W.C. Fields, as well as about several different
contemporary situations. What links this play about the 19th century
to your other dramatic work?
JOG: I’m
fascinated by characters who can’t or won’t reveal themselves for some reason,
whether they’re hiding an emotional truth within themselves or something more
concrete. That creates internal conflicts that I find very interesting and
dramatically rich. How such people use or don’t use language also interests me.
And I’m intrigued by art and the creation of art, what it is and why we do it,
how it reflects other parts of our lives. Those concerns belong to people of
our time, of course, as well as those who lived earlier.
Most
importantly though, I’m fascinated by love—what it is, how we live with or
without it. I think, ultimately, that everything I write is an exploration of
love. Of course, it can take different forms. There’s romantic love but there’s
also love between friends or siblings, between parent and child, love for one’s
work, etc. We all know how love feels, yet it’s elusive—we can’t easily pin it
down or define it. That fascinates me, and is one of the things that keeps me
writing.
 |
| Elizabeth Gaskell by Emery Walker |