This scene in the book is my idea of a
nightmare scenario.
Stella Benson put something of her own
experience into the New York episode. She travelled by ship to America in July
1917. She had more in the way of resources than Sarah Brown did, but it was
still an ordeal. Approaching New York Harbour, she was:
“...sick
with excitement and fright at such an unknown day before me.”
She wrote in her diary on the evening of her
first day in New York:
“I never wish for a more wretched thirty
hours than this last.”
She was so overcome by loneliness, confusion
and the great heat that she started to cry. She awoke the next morning from
dreams of death and despair.
The Living Alone scenario and others from
Stella Benson’s life sound familiar; they remind me of other writers’ accounts
of permutations of isolation, desperation, dangerous situations, going into the
unknown, lack of resources and dreadful inner states.
The many common elements make me wonder
whether these scenarios are engineered, perhaps subconsciously or perhaps by
sinister unseen influences.
Some of Charlotte Brontë’s writings are of
particular interest here; they say to me that she knew the terrible feelings
well and had experienced a few nightmare scenarios of her own.
Here are two examples from Charlotte Brontë’s
novels:
Lucy Snowe and the nightmare scenario
Just as Sarah Brown’s arrival in New York was
a fictionalised, exaggerated version of Stella Benson’s own experience, the
journey to Belgium made by Lucy Snow in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette was taken
by the author herself.
The authors’ situations were better than
their creations’, but their inner states may have been much the same.
Being sick with both excitement and fear as
Stella Benson was is a common experience. People are torn between fear of the
unknown, fear of being found wanting, fear of even more of the suffering that
they are trying to escape, fear of not getting whatever it is that they want on
the one hand, and excitement brought on by new sights, experiences and opportunities
on the other.
Lucy Snowe travels by herself on a night sea
journey to the continent.
She has no firm plans, but she feels that she
has nothing to lose and may even gain a better life. She is completely alone in
the world:
“…a new, resolute, and daring—perhaps
desperate—line of action. I had nothing to lose. Unutterable loathing of a
desolate existence past, forbade return. If I failed in what I now designed to
undertake, who, save myself, would suffer? If I died far away from—home, I was
going to say, but I had no home—from England, then, who would weep?“
After landing on the other side of the
channel, Lucy Snowe sees a crumb of hope for a position in a casual remark by a
shipboard acquaintance. She decides to travel to the town of Villette (a
fictionalised version of Brussels):
“I knew I was catching at straws; but in the
wide and weltering deep where I found myself, I would have caught at cobwebs.”
While she enjoys some aspects of the journey
towards the town of Villette, Lucy Snowe is always conscious of impending
Damoclean disaster. Above all things, she wants to avoid arriving in a strange
town after dark. This is both for practical reasons and because she knows that
terrible sensations are waiting to overwhelm her.
Charlotte Brontë writes a good description of
how people who are out on a limb, close to the edge and a few steps from
disaster can feel even when things appear to be going well. The predator is not
far away and is biding its time:
“These feelings, however, were well kept in
check by the secret but ceaseless consciousness of anxiety lying in wait on
enjoyment, like a tiger crouched in a jungle. The breathing of that beast of
prey was in my ear always; his fierce heart panted close against mine; he never
stirred in his lair but I felt him: I knew he waited only for sun-down to bound
ravenous from his ambush.”
Needless to say, that which Lucy Snowe fears
most comes upon her. Slow progress and many delays mean that she arrives in Villette
much later than was originally scheduled. She then finds that her luggage,
which contains most of her money, has been left behind, although she is assured
that it will be sent on later.
Distress signals attract predators.
She sets off to find an inn that has been
recommended to her. Two unpleasant men follow her and make insolent and
offensive remarks, unsettling her even further and causing her to lose her way.
Lucy Snowe’s ordeal soon comes to an end but for
me it is a case of once read, never forgotten.
Another of Charlotte Brontë’s heroines endures
something much worse and more melodramatic: Jane Eyre becomes completely
destitute.
Jane Eyre and the nightmare scenario
Jane Eyre says this about her isolated state:
“The
more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will
respect myself.”
After learning that Mr. Rochester is already
married, Jane Eyre decides to leave Thornfield even though she is tired, ill
and devastated by a mortal wound to her heart. She ends up penniless in a
remote, unknown place called Whitcross, completely destitute as, just like
Sarah Brown, she has spent all her money on the fare. She had unwisely asked to
be carried as far as her small stock of cash would take her; it would have been
better to select a more suitable place to be set down, one less remote and that
would leave her with some money.
Worse yet, Jane has accidentally left her
small package of belongings behind in the coach. Unlike Lucy Snowe’s luggage,
it has gone forever.
She has no idea where to go or what to do. She
sleeps out in the open in the heather with moss for her pillow. She soon has to
beg for a crust of bread.
Jane Eyre made a bad decision and a careless
mistake. This is understandable considering her exhaustion and disturbed inner
state, but is that all there is to it?
There are more examples of nightmare
scenarios to come, including some from the life of Stella Benson. There are
more connections to be made and questions to be raised.
Jane Eyre at Whitcross:
