A New Look at William Carus Wilson

Abstract

Despite the fact that Elizabeth Gaskell reached a different conclusion in the third edition of her Life of Charlotte Brontë, several of Charlotte Brontës recent biographers assert that Jane Eyre paints a fairly accurate portrait of the Rev. William Carus Wilson's activities at the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan Bridge. Most of the arguments by which these biographers support their position are either logically flawed or historically oversimplified. A series of letters concerning poor relief, which Carus Wilson wrote in 1822, and an 1838 pamphlet controversy on the same subject, in which he participated, cast new light on his attitudes towards charity. Recent biographers have not consulted these documents, in which Wilson expresses an indignation on behalf of the oppressed that is more reminiscent of the angry Jane Eyre than of the hypocritical and complacent Brocklehurst.