Aristotle thought that literature was superior to history. While history dwelt on what had happened, literature threw light on what might happen, he said. Perhaps he ought to have added that literature could also open up the past again, and let you see it all as if it were happening for the first time. The Taste of Sorrow is a historical novel. Read it not to know the biography of the Bronte sisters, but to glean a whole mine of psychological insights.
The early scene of domestic discord between the dying mother of the Brontes and their Pastor-father, for instance, is the playing out of pent-up frustration after a life lived quite ‘right', a scene that would ring true to anyone familiar with the symptoms of schizophrenia. The Bronte mother struggles not only against death, but against religious belief and tradition too. And from her mouth come words that shock the devout father. He urges his wife, dying of cancer, to pray, to fight that ‘old adversary', the devil. But the woman is commonsensical: ‘What if it is me speaking? What then?' she asks, spitting in his face, telling him with all the intensity she can muster: ‘I don't care about my soul.'
There is domesticity here, even love. Only, it struggles against containment in set moulds, appearing almost perverse. It's a dying woman's struggle against death, against meaninglessness, her soul not quite ready to let go of a failing body. Underlying the struggle is a sexual energy contained within social norms, yet destructive: “He is a man of strong desires, he cannot deny it. And so the children came swiftly.” The doctor makes his diagnosis, quietly thinking to himself, “Too many children, too quickly. Cancer is the last inhabitant of that overworked womb.”
Crude realism
The children are all quite little as they witness this death. Two of the oldest Bronte siblings, Elizabeth and Maria, sent off to boarding school, stoically put up with harshness and illness, unwilling to complain. In quick succession, the two die of consumption. It's an illness that takes a huge toll on the family, gradually consuming all but one of the daughters, and sparing only the father, who survives the children and lives to a ripe old age.
The insular lives of the Brontes, the elaborate stories they wove as children — including also Branwell, the only and much-loved son — is perhaps familiar. After all, the Bronte novels are often recommended reading in English literature courses in India. Morgan uses familiar material, so reading this novel is a little like gossiping about common acquaintances — there are some things you know already, and you're surprised by some stuff that's news.
Unanswered
There are matters the novel touches on, leaving you to explore more fully in your own imagination. The father's great pride in his son, for instance, and his relative neglect of his daughters; the bitter disappointment that Branwell brings to the family as he squanders his talents and falls prey to addiction. Much to the dismay of the Pastor-father, Branwell oversteps the bounds of Victorian sexual morality, something his sisters would dare in their novels, never in real life.
There are interesting insights on freedom and love here. With a houseful of sisters who have never been in love with a flesh-and-blood man, Branwell feels cocksure that none of them will understand him. What he does not realise is that Charlotte, with whom he had been strongly bonded as a child, had continued to mirror his life into adulthood. Only, with greater reverence for the married bond, she had felt compelled to restrain herself, hold back, and put her emotions on a leash.
The Taste of Sorrow is a novel about novelists. Even William Thackeray and Elizabeth Gaskell feature briefly in it. But it's a saga of love, domesticity and struggle, one that will appeal even to that rare reader of English literature who has never before heard the name Bronte.
The Taste of Sorrow; Jude Morgan, Headline Publishing Group, Hachette UK, Pages: 454; Rs. 350
