Miss Miles: or, A Tale of Yorkshire Life 60 Years AgoThe close friendship between Charlotte Brontë and Mary Taylor began in boarding school and lasted for the rest of their lives. It was Mary Taylor, in fact, who inspired Brontë to leave her oppressive parsonage home and go to Brussels, the eventual setting for her novel, Villette. Mary herself led a much less restricted life, especially in her later years as a feminist essayist who strongly urged women to consider their "first duty" to be working to support themselves. In Miss Miles, her only novel, Taylor breaks with tradition by creating a profoundly feminist and morally intense work which depicts women's friendships as sustaining life and sanity through all of the vicissitudes of Victorian womanhood. She also introduces an innovative narrative form which Janet Murray (who has written an introduction for this edition) calls a "feminist bildungsroman": the story of the education of several heroines which emphasizes their friendship and economic and mental well-being rather than their love lives. Set in the small Yorkshire village of Repton against the backdrop of starvation in the wool districts and the rise of Chartism in the 1830s, this recovered feminist classic chronicles the lives of four disparate and individually ambitious women as they learn to find their own voices and support one another. The novel's emphasis on the healing power of women's friendships echoes the relationship between Brontë and Taylor herself. Originally published in 1890, Miss Miles has been unavailable for decades. Its reappearance will delight all lovers of fine literature. |
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agate allus Amelia Turner answer Aunt Baumforth began better Branksome chapel Charlotte Brontë coming daughter dear Dodds door Dora Dora's dress Eldon Eliza Everard took exclaimed eyes face father fire girl give gone Gracehurst Greaves hand Harriet head heard hope Jane Jane Eyre John Miles keep knew lady lass laughed live mamma Maria Mary mind Miss Amelia Miss Bell Miss Everard Miss Forbes Miss Miles Miss Raines Miss Turner mother mysen never nought old Sykes once Overton papa perhaps Repton round Sammy Sarah Miles silence sing smile soon Sophy stood summat sure Sydney talk tell Thelwal there's thing thought told Tommy Walsh took turned Victoria Magazine voice walked wish woman women wonder Woodman word ye'll ye're young
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Page viii - Then a time came that both Charlotte and Mary were so proficient in schoolroom attainments there was no more for them to learn, and Miss Wooler set them Blair's Belles Lettres to commit to memory. We all laughed at their studies. Charlotte persevered, but Mary took her own line, flatly refused, and accepted the penalty of disobedience, going supperless to bed for about a month before she left school. When it was moonlight, we always found her engaged in drawing on the chest of drawers, which stood...
Page xvi - You talk wonderful nonsense about Charlotte Bronte in your letter. What do you mean about ' bearing her position so long, and enduring to the end ' ? and still better, ' bearing our lot, whatever it is.
Page x - She said she should like any change at first, as she had liked Brussels at first, and she thought that there must be some possibility for some people of having a life of more variety and more communion with human kind, but she saw none for her. I told her very warmly, that she ought not to stay at home ; that to spend the next five years at home, in solitude and weak health, would ruin her ; that she would never recover it. Such a dark shadow came over her face when I said, ' Think of what' you '11...
Page x - Charlotte," says one of the two most intimate friends she had, " she told me she had quite decided to stay at home. She owned she did not like it. Her health was weak. She said she should like any change at first, as she had liked Brussels at first; and she thought that there must be some possibility for some people of having a life of more variety and more communion with humankind, but she saw none for her.
Page xvi - If it's Charlotte's lot to be married, shouldn't she bear that too? or does your strange morality mean that she should refuse to ameliorate her lot when it is in her power. How would she be inconsistent with herself in marrying ? Because she considers her own pleasure? If this is so new for her to do, it is high time she began to make it more common. It is an outrageous exaction to expect her to give up her choice in a matter so important, and I think her to blame in having been hitherto so yielding...
Page viii - Rose is a still, and sometimes a stubborn girl now : her mother wants to make of her such a woman as she is herself — a woman of dark and dreary duties —and Rose has a mind full-set, thicksown with the germs of ideas her mother never knew. It is agony to her often to have these ideas trampled on and repressed.
Page xii - DEAR CHARLOTTE, — I have set up shop ! I am delighted with it as a whole — that is, it is as pleasant or as little disagreeable as you can expect an employment to be that you earn your living by. The best of it is that your labour has some return, and you are not forced to work on hopelessly without result. Du resle, it is very odd.
Page viii - Rose is a still, sometimes a stubborn, girl now. Her mother wants to make of her such a woman as she is herself - a woman of dark and dreary duties; and Rose has a mind full-set, thick-sown with the germs of ideas her mother never knew. It is agony to her often to have these ideas trampled on and repressed. She has never rebelled yet, but if hard driven she will rebel one day, and then it will...
Page xiii - You are very different from me in having no doctrine to preach. It is impossible to squeeze a moral out of your production. Has the world gone so well with you that you have no protest to make against its absurdities?
Page xiv - Joe have lent me £100 and given me £300. Ellen's means are rather less. Besides nonsense we talk over other things that I never could talk about before she came. Some of them had got to look so strange I used to think sometimes I had dreamt them. Charlotte's books were of this kind. Politics were another thing where I had all the interest to myself, and a number of opinions of my own I had got so used to keep to myself that at last I thought one side of my head filled with crazy stuff. Is it that...