Book Review: The Professor was Charlotte Bronte's first written but last published (posthumously) novel. The book gets a lot of grief today and she was unable to get it published during her lifetime, but I found it as intriguing as any of her other books (haven't read Shirley yet). Does it have some problems? You bet. A long list. But is it engrossing, interesting, and a quick read? You bet. It's straightforward, simple, direct. If you're interested in the author herself, much can be divined, and seeing Charlotte Bronte in the guise and mind of her male narrator (William Crimsworth) was almost trippy at times. I felt as if I was reading over Bronte's shoulder as she wrote it. The Professor presents a picture of a man set to make his fortune, and so is at war with the world. Life is as an essentially negative place where one must keep a wary surveillance of everyone. The world is oppositional, one must defy and deny, everyone is an adversary. William's relationship with his brother, his friends, even his first love are closer to conflicts than comforts. There is much hostility and little warmth. Success for one is only achieved as a loss for another. This makes for a story which feels off, odd, disturbing and disquieting. Where our male protagonist is erratic, resentful, abrupt, angry. He admits he would have no love for his future wife if she had any defects of "eyes, teeth, complexion, shape." Bronte herself said (perhaps facetiously) that her feelings toward the novel were "those of a doting parent towards an idiot child" It's been suggested that Bronte was too close to this novel to make the changes required to get it published. I agree, because I believe that it too closely reflects her own (understandably) troubled view of life and people. "Human affections do not bloom, nor do human passions glow for me." Between her bitter excoriation of the Catholics (although our narrator claims "I am not a bigot in matters of theology" -- but he is!) and her utter contempt for and derision of the Flemish, this is not a book for the politically correct. Her description of the students and faculty was more score-settling with those Bronte had encountered in Brussels than any sort of literary exposition. When everyone you meet is terrible, what's the common denominator? I'm as misanthropic as anyone, but even I was taken aback a bit by her vehemence. Even the "happy" ending consists of struggle and tragedy; the sweet family unit is somewhat scary. Some may appreciate the congruences with Bronte's later and distinguished Villette, or William's fiancee's assertion about women's roles: "Think of my marrying you to be kept by you ... I could not do it!" The Professor is an early effort, not Charlotte Bronte's masterpiece. The romance is predictable and perfunctory, the characters are vague or approach caricature, it seems incomplete, there is plot that functions at times more as wish-fulfillment than verisimilitude. It may have been a book she needed to write to continue to write. But this odd, unsettling book made me feel closer to Charlotte Bronte and kept me reading page after page. [3★]
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