CHAPTER XXVI, “THE BURIAL”
“Solitude is the luminous silent space of freedom, of self and nature, of inflection and creative power. There we feel and see and contemplate with a freshness scarcely to be believed; there, in the Free and Easy Wandering of the spirit, in the startling exhilaration of a creative vision, we make hash of predestination. There is nothing better for a human person, though there are loving things as good.” (299)
- Philip Koch Solitude: A Philosophical Encounter (1994)
“[The Gothic] became a great liberator of feeling in the increasingly repressed 19th century! It acknowledged the non‑rational – in the world of things and events, occasionally in the realm of the Transcendental, ultimately and most persistently in the depths of the human being.” (458)
- Robert Heilman “Charlotte Bronte’s New Gothic.” (1958)[1]
Burials are meant to be permanent; though sometimes they are not – as our horror stories and other narratives sometimes tell us. In some tales, writs for exhumation cause a body to be dug up, while in others, the moving of burials to another site requires the digging up of multiple coffins. In this chapter Lucy buries something once – and apparently still – dear to her; John Graham Bretton’s letters – though she will question the wisdom of that interment at a later point in her narrative, as well as admitting to us that she dug them up and read them again at some future point. The burial occurs in the Garden, at the end of the Alley, under the Old Tree. There, she says decisively:
“The letters … must be put away, out of sight: people who have undergone bereavement always jealously gather together and lock away mementos: it is not supportable to be stabbed to the heart each moment by sharp revival of regret.” (¶ 18)
- “The Burial” (Chapter XXVI)
Here in this chapter we are at the beginning of this interment process; the burial of these once long-awaited and then treasured epistles—an act that signifies much of what is going on in Lucy’s Mind & Heart. By this point in her life-journey she had become all-too-aware that John Graham Bretton was not ‘for her,’ neither she ‘for him.’ She is grieving, as one would at any death; here, at the passing of an unacknowledged as well as unprofessed romantic love. As the unrequited lover who was never known to be beloved as lover, she ponders what to do with the letters; sitting in the “dormitory window-seat.” (¶ 23). Could this be the very “casement” in which she was sitting out upon, wilding in, enjoying the storm in Chapter XII (¶ 15)?
We find her in this scene gazing in her grief out upon the Garden. She sees the Methuselah Tree and the “allée défendue” [“Forbidden Alley”]. She is meditatively engaged with the Garden—Tree—Alley complex. And what happens? She experiences an inspiration as to what she can do with John’s letters. She tells us:
It was a fine frosty afternoon; the winter sun, already setting, gleamed pale on the tops of the garden-shrubs in the “allée défendue.” One great old pear-tree—the nun’s pear-tree—stood up a tall dryad skeleton, grey, gaunt, and stripped. A thought struck me—one of those queer fantastic thoughts that will sometimes strike solitary people. I put on my bonnet, cloak, and furs, and went out into the city. (¶ 23)
Lucy is once again entering into that liminal time between day and night in which so many things happen to her in this narrative. It is dusking, the winter sun is going down; both of these phenomena signifying an end—one of the day and the other of the year. Winter is a time of dormancy and waiting. As one day passes, it is natural to await the next; both the day and the year suggest a transverse from life into death, then intimating a rebirth.
Solitude can be a propitious and soul-deepening experience; if it is not a desolate emptiness in which one falls away from all positive connection with others. True solitude is not loneliness. It is an intentional Aloneness. For Lucy, solitude is almost never described or experienced in negative terms; the one major exception being in “The Long Vacation” (Chapter XV). And here, in solitude, gazing down into the Garden to the Alley and the Tree, Lucy experiences an inspiration; out of the depth of solitary reflection—she knows what she is going to do with John’s Letters.
The inspiration here comes via her meditative gazing down into the Garden to its Tree and the Alley. Her meditation gives way to a revelation! Here, instead of recalling her to memory’s touchstones as in Chapter XII,[2] Lucy is inspired to action; to go into the city and there, finding a broker’s shop – probably something like an antiques or pawn shop – to search around for some container that might be sealed hermetically. She searches the shop and soon finds and purchases just such a container. Being assured by the broker that it can be made hermetically secure, she puts John’s letters in it, and has the broker seal it. She shares with us the procedure she used to ‘secure’ her treasured objects, saying:
I then made a little roll of my letters, wrapped them in oiled silk, bound them with twine, and, having put them in the bottle, got the old Jew broker to stopper, seal, and make it air-tight. While obeying my directions, he glanced at me now and then suspiciously from under his frost-white eyelashes. I believe he thought there was some evil deed on hand. (¶ 35)
At the very least this is a pragmatic procedure. Lucy wants to secure and thus preserve her friend’s letters. This process, however, carries resonance with a magical practice I was once familiar with; its details speaking so clearly to me of making a jar of confinement. This magical container was intended to either make safe something that needed protection, or to preserve something from decay. It was not used to ‘imprison entities;’ though pop culture and religious superstition have often misconstrued it as such. It may be this kind of misunderstanding of Lucy’s process with the jar and the letters, however, that the broker has in mind when he looks at her “suspiciously!”
The wrapping of John’s letters in “oiled silk” and bound with “twine” suggests the concern with which she is sealing-up these epistles. The “oiled silk” would be for keeping the letters from drying out; not too moist, though, or they would rot—which was the problem with hiding them in the dank attic or in some other less-than-used place in the school. The twine is used to tie the bundle of letters together in the jar. The way in which the twine is being used here reminds me the way a magical cord; a fith-fath of one sort or another– would be used. Magic rituals often have a very practical basis! Tied about the letters; the cord ‘binds’ the letters; symbolically – for anyone familiar with such a ritual – making them inert in the sense of having no longer any control over the binder. It may also be interpreted as keeping them safe from prying eyes or anyone who might want to destroy them. Indeed, Lucy tells us that the final impetus prompting her to hide the letters away was that Madame Beck was ‘procuring’ them without Lucy’s permission, and that she and M Paul Emmanuel were probably reading them together. Keeping them safe from such scrutiny was certainly a primary factor in this process of ‘burial.’ However, her motive was more complicated than that!
There is a potent ambiguity in the ritual, pointing to Lucy’s state of mind. It could suggest, whether given a magical interpretation of the ritual or not, that Lucy is trying to secure the emotions connected with John’s letters in a way that, while they are being preserved, they would no longer actively bear upon her emotional life.[3] Seen from a naturalistic psychological and emotional standpoint, Lucy is clearly intent here on preserving the letters from her beloved friend, even as she distances herself from them—and him! It is a complicated state that she finds herself in, and after paying for the jar and probably the materials she used (we are not told whether she brought the oiled paper and twine with her; though she might have done) she returns to the pensionnat, where she enters the Garden and goes to the Tree[4] along the Alley.
Many people, having broken off a romantic relationship, might well destroy letters and other artifacts received from the beloved, for wont of heartbreak, while others might keep them and mourn over or even still cherish them. As any of these responses might be healthy or not, for any particular person, Lucy goes a different path. She wants them ‘gone’ but cannot destroy them. She stands at an in-between – that is, ambiguous – position in her relationship with them; perhaps – as she still does, with John.
By the time she got back to the pensionnat (7 PM; ¶ 26) it was dark; so, as with many of the most significant experiences in her life, Lucy is enacting this ritual at night. We are told that the Moon had risen. All the best, most powerful ‘magic’ happens at night; under particular phases of the Moon. She waits until the school was quiet – all of the students and teachers, et cetera, having retired or left the school for the night, and then, she says, “I shawled myself, and, taking the sealed jar, stole out through the first-classe door, into the berceau [“Arbor”][5] and thence into the allée défendue.” (¶26).
If one keeps in mind that this Alley was earlier described as “strait and narrow,” this walk to the Tree takes on an aura of ‘doing the right thing;’ not turning aside or straying, but arriving at one’s destination with a positive intent—walking in the paths leading to ‘life!’ She goes straight to her bench, near which stands Old Methuselah. Lucy refers to the Tree as “he,” describing it, saying, “he rose up, dim and gray, above the lower shrubs round him.” This description is resonant with that of sacred Trees in various old traditions; the Yggdrasil of the Norse and the Celtic World Tree both come to mind—such mythic trees representing the cosmos; the smaller trees or bushes around them symbolizing the two worlds in which we live; both the actual everyday world and the spiritual world. This Tree, in this Garden, however, has a much more mixed and diminished symbolic heft, as it is to some degree decrepit; in a very aged state. She describes it as “a tall dryad skeleton, grey, gaunt, and stripped,” (¶23), yet still being a place of inspiration for her and, later, of revelation. A bivalence here is in the Tree being described as the skeletal remains of a Dryad; which is a tree-spirit. Could we then think of this Tree as ‘ghostly’ or as having a more ‘spiritual’ being-in-existence than the simply natural tree?
As there was a ritualistic procedure in the confining of John’s letters to the sealed jar, so there is a ‘ritual’ by which she inters her ‘jar of confinement.’ She says:
Now Methusaleh, though so very old, was of sound timber still; only there was a hole, or rather a deep hollow, near his root. I knew there was such a hollow, hidden partly by ivy and creepers growing thick round; and there I meditated hiding my treasure. But I was not only going to hide a treasure—I meant also to bury a grief. That grief over which I had lately been weeping, as I wrapped it in its winding-sheet, must be interred. (¶ 27)
First, how did she ‘know’ that there was a hidden hollow beneath the bole of the Old Tree? If it was partly hidden by Ivy and Creepers, I suppose, she may have simply noticed it at some point, while sitting on her bench, yet there might be another possibility—that she has examined ‘him’ and found this hollow space, which would imply a curiosity about Old Methuselah? Given the mystique surrounding this Tree, I think this latter suggestion at least plausible. The Tree is right down at the end of the Forbidden Alley, and Lucy would have had plenty of opportunity to observe its physical character even from her bench, I would assume, which is nearby, though we are not told the exact orientation of the bench in relation to the Tree.
Second, notice how Lucy spells out her dilemma in the next two sentences. Not only was she hiding a “treasure” – i.e., something she still values – but is also intent on burying a “grief.” Here is her emotional and psychological conundrum concisely poised. She has been weeping over it. She is grieving a relationship, of which the letters are a symbolic touchstone. This intensifies the meaning of the “winding-sheet.” It is, of course, a term referring to a sheet wrapped around a corpse before interment. It was part of the common burial accouterments in England at the time of this story. Since the 17th century English law had required corpses to be wrapped in a sheet before being put in the ground.[6] It is possible that she is indeed wrapping the jar in some kind of cloth as a “winding sheet,” though it might also be a metaphor; an emotional and psychological ‘shroud’ for her grief that she is attempting to lay to rest.
Thus there are two burials going on here; first, that of the letters, and second, that of her grief. To accomplish these she cleared away the Ivy, revealing the hole. Ivy is a tenacious herb, clinging to whatever its roots can grab hold of for sustenance and stability, though it is not a parasite. It is thus a symbol of fidelity and, in being an evergreen, is associated with eternal life. For this reason it has traditionally been planted and found growing in cemeteries. Here, it is growing around the Tree that stands over the supposed buried remains of a nun! The Ivy no doubt sinks its roots into the bark of Old Methuselah, thus shoring the Tree up, perhaps protecting it to some degree from rot and decay. Being associated with eternal life, the Ivy symbols the long and yet-to-be-extended – for some indeterminate number of years – life of this aging Old Tree. Being a symbol of fidelity, the Ivy might also be understood as a true protector of the Tree as well as of the burden buried below it. Once Lucy adds her jar to that burden, the Ivy can be seen as protector and preserver of John’s letters as well.
She “thrust” the jar “deep” into the hole beneath the Tree and, having gone to a toolshed somewhere else in the Garden, returned with a slate and some mortar, with which tools she sealed the jar into the hole, re-covering it with “black mould” and replacing the Ivy. In so doing she is closing a grave over her buried treasures. She then tells us that, “This done, I rested, leaning against the tree; lingering, like any other mourner, beside a newly-sodded grave.” (¶ 28). Like many of the grief-stricken after a funeral, she tarries near the place of interment. She has made sure that it is ‘secure’ – such that ‘nothing’ can get out of it! A slab has been mortared into place over the receiving hole under the Tree’s roots. The word “slab” here resonates with the practice of placing a heavy, often adorned ‘tombstone’ – in an older use of that word – flat on top of the grave once it is filled-in. The ‘tombstone’ was put in place not only to mark the place of interment, but to keep the dead from rising! The ‘dead’ that she fears rising here, being John’s letters_ as the touchstone of her feelings for him.
The whole mood of this scene has for me a gothic vibe; a nocturnal burial in moonlight at a strange, mysterious tree_ with the awareness that right below the hole in which the ‘jar of confinement’ is being buried there may be an older, mysterious burial with the auspicious horror of a person ‘buried alive’ associated with it. Even the night air as she describes it – “very still, but with a peculiar mist,” with the moonlight shining through what seemed a “luminous haze” (¶ 29) – sounds an enigmatic gothic note to what has been done. There is a sense of something extra-ordinary in the air, she says, “some quality—electrical, perhaps—which acted in strange sort upon me.” And then it happens; she has an epiphany fecund of self-revelation:
I felt then as I had felt a year ago in England—on a night when the aurora borealis was streaming and sweeping round heaven, when, belated in lonely fields, I had paused to watch that mustering of an army with banners—that quivering of serried lances—that swift ascent of messengers from below the north star to the dark, high keystone of heaven’s arch.” (¶ 29)
That event is narrated in Chapter V, “A New Leaf” (¶ 2) and consummates in the Aurora Borealis – personified as a ‘heavenly guide’ inspiring her – instructing her to “Leave this wilderness … and go out hence.” (¶ 3). When she asked “whereto?” she saw London on the horizon in her mind. (¶ 5)_ though it was far beyond the reach of her physical eyes. This was the inspiration that led her to take up a new direction in life; leading to her leaving England and adventuring to Villette by way of a series of providential coincidences. Aurora being a goddess of the dawn, her epiphanic experience intimated a new beginning for Lucy; leading to a “new day” in Lucy’s life. Boreas, being a god of the north and hence of cold and snow and ice—seems very appropriate as a guide to Lucy Snowe. As a result of this epiphanic moment of remembrance, she says, “I felt, not happy, far otherwise, but strong with reinforced strength.” (¶ 29). She felt, like at that moment a year before, strengthened and sustained in will to go forward with her life. To continue the journey.
Just as in “A New Leaf” Lucy was poised at a cross†roads, ready for a change of direction and open to the leadings of the Aurora Borealis, Lucy is here once again at a cross†roads. She is attempting to let-go of a relationship in which she has been involved since before those events of her late adolescence that undermined her life. She is standing, leaning back against the Methuselah Tree, and begins reflecting on her station in life, pondering how to go forward, once more, from this point. In response to the recollection of this earlier inspiration, Lucy resolves:
If life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct it single-handed. I pondered now how to break up my winter-quarters—to leave an encampment where food and forage failed. Perhaps, to effect this change, another pitched battle must be fought with fortune; if so, I had a mind to the encounter: too poor to lose, God might destine me to gain. (¶ 30)
Her aloneness is signified by her realization that, having lost John – as if she’d ever ‘had’ him – she was going to have to grapple with the vicissitudes of life alone; “single-handed” in the battle going forward. “Winter quarters” suggests an army camp. Breaking camp – her life at the pensionnat – she intends to be going on to another battlefield. “Food and forage” is an interesting pairing. She had literal “bread and board” at the Pensionnat, of course – material provision – but this dyad indicates more.
The “food” she refers to here is for existential sustenance; soul-provisioning—not just simply physical food for the body. To forage is to search about for sustenance; but could also refer to that which sustains one’s existence; seeking provisions for the soul. So it is more than “bread and board” that are failing her, guiding her imaginings toward having to engage in another “battle” with “fortune;” to try and establish herself in some new situation. She considers herself “too poor” to lose, because things could only go better for her than they had. She trusts in God to “destine” her again.
Her grief is clearly speaking, as it often does for those standing at a newly closed grave. She has just enacted a double-burial and is still ‘haunted’ by the dead; i.e., what is now interred and what those epistles symbolize for her. And while the ‘jar of confinement’ is sufficient to the physical burial of the letters, the “winding-sheet” may not be enough, yet, to deliver her from her grief over the separation she is experiencing from John Graham Bretton. It may rise again. She has expressed a dissatisfaction with her life before, and in her attempt to come to terms with the burials she has just enacted, she asks a question: “But what road was open?—what plan available? (¶ 30).
Sometimes it’s best not to ask such questions in such circumstances; when you are close on to a sacred shrine or tree—though at other times – as back in England on the night the Aurora Borealis spoke to her – it can be fortunate and propitious. Here, the question is ‘answered’ by an apparition: she sees the Nun for a second time! And this time, close-up in the Moonlight! Lucy describes the experience, saying:
On this question I was still pausing, when the moon, so dim hitherto, seemed to shine out somewhat brighter: a ray gleamed even white before me, and a shadow became distinct and marked. I looked more narrowly, to make out the cause of this well-defined contrast appearing a little suddenly in the obscure alley: whiter and blacker it grew on my eye: it took shape with instantaneous transformation. I stood about three yards from a tall, sable-robed, snowy-veiled woman. (¶ 31)
The Moon’s light, earlier being dim and gauzy shining through the haze – had to that point characterized the night; but here a beam breaks through and falls into the Garden, breaking up the en-shadowed scene and causing a presence – nine short feet away! – to become visible to her! This apparition carries many ghostly characteristics, though here the apparition is described as somewhat more substantial. It appears in the Alley with Lucy, taking shape as the Moonlight allows it to be discerned. I wonder how long the Nun had been there?
A ray of moonlight “gleamed” into the Alley, rendering what was just a dark silhouette in the darkness more distinguishable from the darkness broken-into by the Moonbeam. Lucy is slowly able to distinguish in the moonlight a “woman,” she calls it, robed in sable (black) capped in a snowy (white) veil. She realizes this as the décor of a nun.
By her report, Lucy and the Nun stood there, facing one another, for five minutes (¶ 32). Is this a telescoping of time, as often happens in paranormal, extremely surprising or traumatic experiences; in memory thinking the time was longer than it was—or an accurate estimate? If the latter, what an experience it must have been! Standing alone, by herself, confronted with what she assumes must be a ghost? If I have the layout correctly envisioned, the Alley lies along the side of the Garden fronted by the boy’s school and the Tree stands at the end of the Alley where her bench is situated. The apparition of the Nun, therefore, would be standing in the way of Lucy retreating from the Alley back into the school! Lucy cannot get past her.
An apparition, even in Moonlight, is not necessarily well-defined; the what-it-is not quite clearly identifiable! _As I know from many moonlit walks! I imagine Lucy standing there in the darkness, seeing this ‘figure’ of a black and white clad “woman” in the Moonbeams revealing to her a presence. It is identifiable, as a “nun,” but would certainly seem – given the effect of Moonlight upon a natural scene – somewhat intangible; even somewhat insubstantial. Was she squinting at the apparition, fearful as much as fascinated, perhaps? _Trying to get it into focus and wondering what it was going to do!
To her credit, she did not flee this time – as she had done when confronted with the apparition in the attic – nor did she cry out. At the end of these few minutes, realizing that the nun was still there, she got up the courage to actually speak to it, asking, “Who are you? and why do you come to me?” (¶ 33). This is, of course, a classic question in ghost-lore. In confronting a ghost, you would want to know why this ‘person’ has come back across the thin places between ‘Here’ and ‘There’ to visit a mortal_ namely you, perhaps. To this question, the Nun “stood mute.” Furthermore, Lucy could see—
She had no face—no features: all below her brow was masked with a white cloth; but she had eyes, and they viewed me. (¶ 34)
All that is not costumed are the eyes of the apparition. They are fixed upon Lucy. A faceless ghost is ominous. The one seeing the apparition cannot identify who it was in life_ and so does not know how to relate to it! So the question might surely become, why is this faceless apparition appearing? I can only imagine the stillness of the night, the mystic beacon of Moonlight shining down into the Alley, and the two beings looking at one another_ unmoving; Lucy probably with her heart pounding! It took what seemed like or was five minutes, locked in stasis with the apparition in the Alley – for Lucy to call up the courage emanant from out of her “desperation,” to manage taking a step toward the Nun:
I advanced one step. I stretched out my hand, for I meant to touch her. She seemed to recede. I drew nearer: her recession, still silent, became swift. A mass of shrubs, full-leaved evergreens, laurel and dense yew, intervened between me and what I followed. Having passed that obstacle, I looked and saw nothing. I waited.
She calls the apparition a “what.” Neither a ‘she’ or ‘he,’ this time. It is faceless. How could she determine if it were the ghost of a man or woman except by its seemingly monastic garb? Yet she called it a “woman” earlier, perhaps because she believed it to be the legendary Nun? Would she be versed enough in monastic habits to be able to discern what order the apparition had been a member of in her life? Black and White were characteristic of Benedictines and others.
But then_ How to prove that something is a ghost and not something more physical? Touch it. Is there a sense, here, that Lucy may suspect that this apparition is not as spectral as a ghost should be? Why try to touch it, otherwise? In Moonlight, things are not always as they seem; they take on a luminous ‘gray-ish’ aspect, and their boundaries and spatiality may seem softened, even ambiguous. Things which appear solid and clearly defined to our physical eyesight in daylight, take on a less distinct definition in Moonlight, as anyone knows who has sat in a Moonlit place or space – in- or out-of-doors – and gazed about at ordinary objects.
At her first step, the Nun “seems to” recede. Why “seems?” Perhaps another effect of Moonlight upon the apparition, in which distances can seem fuzzy or blurred to our perception? But then, when Lucy “drew nearer,” the apparition “receded,” “silent” and “swift.” There is certainly a ghostly feel to this description. What urged Lucy to draw nearer the apparition? Was it the sense of it “seeming” to move away? If it was a ghost, you could suspect she was perhaps drawn into its aura; attracted into its Otherworldy presence and compelled to follow it, as some mortals have been said to do—disappearing into the Aether? Or was she given some sentient hint in the way that the Nun moved, of her possibly less-than-ghostly spectral ambiance? The ambiguity is poignant, and is left stand!
The Nun disappears from view, swiftly having passed betwixt some Laurel shrubs, evergreens and Yew; and then is gone, altogether—as once Lucy follows her, she sees her no more. Did the Nun actually vanish into thin, Moonlit air, or did she have some path of egress—allowing another ambiguity to be left stand, emergent in the text. It is perhaps significant that both the Laurel and Yew are mentioned here. While the Laurel Tree is so often associated with victory and triumph in war, it has also been associated with wisdom and immortality in old folk and Pagan traditions. Medieval Christians associated Laurel with Christ’s resurrection and thus with eternal life, the tree also symbolizing faith and perseverance in some traditions. Here, the presence of Laurels would seem to be appropriate to this area of the Garden as a place of burial; both of the nun and now Lucy’s letters. The themes of resurrection (rebirth) and perseverance are also significant.
Yew is an evergreen tree also associated with death and rebirth; and for that reason is widely found growing in cemeteries. Symbolically, the Nun – supposedly a dead woman – in passing through the hedge of Yew and Laurel could be mystically imagined to have vanished back into eternity? The Yew might also remind us of Lucy’s own earlier ‘death’ (on the steps of the Beguine Church in Chapter XV) and ‘rebirth’ (in chapter XVI), wherein she found herself in a virtual ‘replica’ of her godmother’s house in Bretton. In this Garden, Lucy is often surrounded by symbolic intimations of both death and resurrection, life-beyond-the-grave and eternal life.
After the apparition vanished, Lucy waited, perhaps wondering if it was still ‘present’ in some strange state. She then spoke, addressing the seemingly absent apparition: “If you have any errand to men, come back and deliver it.” But there was no response. “Nothing spoke or re-appeared.” (¶ 35). She was alone again, and, she tells us, “This time there was no Dr. John to whom to have recourse: there was no one to whom I dared whisper the words, “I have again seen the nun.” (¶ 36).
Themes of the Garden—Tree—Alley Complex:
This chapter shows the Garden—Tree—Alley complex functioning in a number of ways. Once again, as earlier in Chapter XV—as an impetus to inspiration. Lucy is gazing into the Garden, seeing the Tree and the Alley leading to it when she experiences a sudden insight: she knows what she is going to do with John’s letters. Later, it functions as the scene of another revelation. This time, not a revelation out of past memory, but of her own present condition. She is attempting to inter her grief at the Tree, distancing herself from – though not destroying – it, in doing so seeking release from her emotional connection to John Graham Bretton; the letters being the talisman and a clear touchstone of that grief.
The themes of Life and Death are both prominent here. The long dead nun. The buried letters signifying a death. The apparition of the Nun out of the darkness participating in the themes of resurrection and visitation from the Otherworld. Lucy’s life and where she will go from this point.
The theme of Mystery is here, too. The Nun is a manifestation of the mysterious dimension of our existence; always present if not perceived or recognized—it is “a something;” if a ghost –it may be trapped in the place near which she was buried. Her remnant remains are beneath the roots of the Tree, under the jar of confinement in which John’s letters have just been interred. One might reasonably ask, if a ghost, did the Nun appear because of the burial of the jar of confinement just above her own grave? Or did the Nun appear in response to Lucy’s question of where she was to go next? If so, what was Lucy going to do now?
The theme of revelation here has at least a two-fold aspect. The first ‘fold’ speaks to Lucy herself being considered to be like a nun and the school like a convent; her being thus “buried alive” – like the apparition of the Nun. Is Lucy in danger of being ‘buried alive’ in a ‘convent-like’ place – the school? This would be consistent with Charlotte Brontë’s opinion about monastic life for women. On the second ‘fold,’ could this apparition allude to Lucy’s own life in more general terms? Has she gone through her life since that unnarrated eight-year period, essentially ‘buried alive?’ Either of these ‘folds’ leads in fecund directions for reflection, thoughtful consideration and sensitive interpretation of the text.
These are revelations implicit in the narrative, whether or not Lucy would become cognizant of them. Lucy’s questioning of the apparition as to its reason to be visiting her is moving her toward a conscious grasp of the nature of this apparition. It is an engagement with Mystery; not simply ‘a’ mystery—though it is that as well. What message was Lucy perhaps anticipating when she asked of the Nun her “errand” into the mortal world? I would suggest that while it was a common enough trope to ask of a ghost why they were visiting in our world, either of the two ‘folds’ of revelation suggested by the apparition of the Nun might have been resonant in Lucy’s consciousness; trying to ‘get out’ and be expressed consciously. To be released from being “buried alive!”
And on that thought, I bid you farewell until next time_
Finis
[1] In Robert C. Rathburn & Martin Steinman Jr.'s classic study: From Jane Austin to Joseph Conrad, pp. 118 – 132 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958)
[2] See the first blog on this series for a discussion of this theme.
[3] This is sometimes what a jar of confinement is used for; though I am not suggesting that Charlotte Brontë had any such ‘magical’ technique in mind in writing this passage. For me, however, there is this occult resonance in the ritual as described, lending a certain symbolic heft to the intentions, rendering them more explicit if not actually implicit in the narrative to be read-out. However, I’m clearly reading-in from my own experience.
[4] This is sometimes what a jar of confinement is used for; though I am not suggesting that Charlotte Brontë had any such ‘magical’ technique in mind in writing this passage. For me, however, there is this occult resonance in the ritual as described, lending a certain symbolic heft to the intentions, rendering them more explicit if not actually implicit in the narrative to be read-out. However, I’m clearly reading-in from my own experience.
[4] It is interesting that in ¶ 23 Lucy refers to the Methuselah Tree as a “dryad” – a “tree spirit” – whereas in Chapter XXXI ¶ 86 she refers to the Nun as a “dryad,” perhaps because she and M Paul first see ‘her’ up in a tree next to the school. I believe they would infer, in that moment, that the Nun as she rushes past them is what was causing the disturbance in the tree by the First Classe.
[5] I have translated “berceau” as “arbor” as the best possible meaning. I do not know French, so all translations in these blogs come from Google Translate and other online sources. I am thinking of it as a “grape arbor” with vines covering it, under which people could sit. Other translations I found of the word do not seem to fit. If you know of a better one, let me know! - MW
[6] This may be why, in fact, we still often think of ghosts as shrouded in what look like sheets? They are visible aspects manifesting the “winding sheet” wrapped around corpse before interment.
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