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INTRODUCTION

After the completion of Villette and before her marriage to Arthur Bell Nicholls, Charlotte Brontë began working on the first two chapters of what could have been her final novel. When the Brontë biographers Lyndall Gordon and Juliet Barker introduced Clare Boylan to this enticing fragment, Boylan knew she could not let Brontë's final work languish unnoticed in the Cornhill Magazine archives. So she set herself the Herculean task of creating a world for Brontë's last heroine to live out a full literary life.

Emma Brown is the dramatic tale of an enigmatic young girl who arrives in a handsome carriage with an elegant gentleman at Fuchsia Lodge, a ladies' boarding school run by the shallow Wilcox sisters. Plain-faced Matilda Fitzgibbon's elaborate finery and ceremonious arrival win her the unwarranted and unwanted position of teacher's pet, alienating the already reticent young girl even more from her resentful peers.

As Matilda's first term draws to a close, Miss Mabel Wilcox sends out letters to the families and guardians of each of her pupils asking whether the school should house the student for the holidays. A reply comes back for every student except the one addressed to Mr. Conway Fitzgibbons of May Park, Matilda's patron. Miss Wilcox summons William Ellin, a sober-faced local bachelor, to help unravel the mystery of Matilda's origin. Much to the Wilcox sisters' dismay, they discover that there is no such place as May Park and no such person as Conway Fitzgibbons.

Mr. Ellin takes it upon himself to figure out who Matilda really is and how she wound up at Fuchsia Lodge with several trunks full of fancy dresses but not a penny to her name. He turns to the narrator of the novel, the sympathetic Isabel Chalfont, for a female's perspective on the answer to his newly acquired riddle, and Isabel welcomes the mysterious young lady into her home and into her heart. Isabel attempts to draw the girl out by recounting tales of her own regret-filled youth, winning a small victory when the girl's memory is jogged and she reclaims her true name, Emma. But Isabel's prying goes too far, and early one morning while Isabel sleeps, Emma steals a small amount of money from her benefactress and runs away to the seedy world of the slums of Victorian London to search for the truth about her own past.

Nothing could have prepared Isabel and Mr. Ellin for the shocking truth about Emma's ignoble past and the extraordinary circumstances that brought her into their lives. The search for the young girl brings a sense of purpose to the childless Isabel and bored bachelor Ellin. Almost too late, they realize that the only way to save themselves is by finding Emma and giving her the safe haven she deserves.

In this thrilling story of love and self-discovery, the characters find redemption only by exploring their own intertwined pasts and exorcising the demons that haunt them. In this way, Emma Brown raises profound issues about identity: How much does our past reflect on our present selves? What circumstances enable a person to create a new life for herself or himself? Boylan seamlessly integrates these timeless themes and Brontë's fragments into her own lyrical prose, creating a colorful novel that, like Brontë's best work, is at once Victorian and completely modern.

ABOUT CHARLOTTE BRONTË

Charlotte Brontë lived from 1816 to 1855. In 1824 she was sent away to school with her four sisters and they were treated so badly that their father brought them home to Haworth in Yorkshire. The elder two sisters died within a few days and Charlotte and her sisters Emily and Anne were brought up in the isolated village. They were often lonely and loved to walk on the moors. They were all great readers and soon began to write small pieces of verse and stories.

Once Charlotte’s informal education was over she began to work as a governess and teacher in Yorkshire and Belgium so that she could add to the low family income and help to pay for her brother Branwell’s art education. Charlotte was a rather nervous young woman and didn’t like to be away from home for too long. The sisters began to write more seriously and published poetry in 1846 under male pen names – there was a lot of prejudice against women writers. The book was not a success and the sisters all moved on to write novels. Charlotte’s best-known book, Jane Eyre, appeared in 1847 and was soon seen as a work of genius. Charlotte really knew how to make characters and situations come alive.

Charlotte’s life was full of tragedy, never more so than when her brother Branwell and sisters Emily and Anne died within a few months in 1848/49. She married her father’s curate in 1854 but died in 1855, before her fortieth birthday.

ABOUT CLARE BOYLAN

Clare Boylan is the author of seven novels, which include Holy Pictures, Room for a Single Lady, Black Baby, and Beloved Stranger. She has also written several works of nonfiction.

AN INTERVIEW WITH CLARE BOYLAN

In the opening of your novel, Isabel says, "A pleasant fancy began to visit me in a certain year, that perhaps the number of human beings is few who do not find their quest at some era of life for some space more or less brief." When did you find your "quest"?

In one way, I've found different quests at different stages of my life—love, success in my literary career, places of the heart. In another way, I have not yet found it. At this stage in my life I'm on a quest for self. All the other elements in my life have helped to shape and evolve the external self. I'm now, I suppose, on a more spiritual quest, to find the interior me.

Why did you choose to write in the first person from Isabel Chalfont's point of view instead of William Ellin's or Emma's? Why not in the third person point of view?

I didn't exactly choose to write in the first person. It was Charlotte who established Mrs. Chalfont as the teller of the tale, and I had made up my mind not to alter anything she had written. When I first heard about the fragment I assumed it to be a first-person narrative and looked forward to being Emma, in the way that Charlotte was Jane Eyre. However, right from the start I felt a delightful rapport with Mrs. Chalfont. She was gossipy, honest and ironic and I felt her like a good friend who kept me company throughout the work. I think the reason Charlotte gave the novel this narrator is that she wanted to explore the Jane Eyre idea again but with an adult overview (i.e., her own). She wanted to express her more mature views on love and life through Isa. So as not to stray too far from her intention, I delved into her wonderful letters and would recommend these as separate reading for anyone.

Finishing a novel started by one of literature's most gifted storytellers must have been a daunting task. Why did you choose to finish her fragment? How did you choose the direction the story would take?

Who could resist? Every novelist is influenced by one great work of fiction, and wishes he or she had written it. For me it was Jane Eyre. As the conditions and the character of Charlotte's last fragment sounded so similar to Jane Eyre, it really seemed like an unmissable opportunity. On another level, I really wanted to find out what happened to Emma next and the only way was to write the book. I chose the direction of the plot from a marker Charlotte herself had left. In 1853, Charlotte was in London, as a guest of her publisher, George Smith, whose mother had arranged a schedule of suitable cultural attractions. Charlotte, wearying of the tourist sites, gave her hostess the slip and went alone to visit Bethlehem Hospital (the lunatic asylum, known as Bedlam), The Foundling Hospital, and Pentonville and Newgate prisons. At Newgate she was drawn to a young woman with a profoundly miserable expression who had killed her illegitimate child. The novelist held her hand and talked to her. What can Charlotte have been thinking of? For a shy countrywoman in the nineteenth century it was an astonishing feat of daring. Rebecca Fraser, in her biography, suggested that this episode signaled a change in Charlotte, a new toughness which would have altered the course of her career. A little earlier, she had written to George Smith: "I cannot write books handling the topics of the day; there is no use trying." As he had never requested her to do such a thing, her protest almost certainly confirms her ambition to do so.

What were the greatest challenges you faced writing this novel? How did it differ from writing your own novels?

The biggest challenge was the geography—making the streets of Victorian London come alive. I think this would have been difficult for Charlotte, too, as we are both what one critic defined as "indoor" writers, whereas Emily was an "outdoor" writer. For this I enlisted the aid of a wonderful Yorkshire librarian, Ian Stringer, and a sprightly septuagenarian historian called Jean Haynes, who is a guide on the London Walks and a Freeman of the city of London. Jean took me on a ten-mile walk of London, tracing all of Emma's steps and describing the surroundings exactly as they would have been at the time. Keeping close to Charlotte's superbly individual style was, of course, another challenge. She is absolutely the only writer I know who can combine irony and melodrama and there is a very distinct rhythm to her sentences. The Brontë girls are supposed to have been influenced by Byron, but I have always felt there is a Shakespearean rhythm to Charlotte's prose and use of language. The other distinctive feature of her writing is a sort of maternal storytelling, "gather-in-reader" sort of feel, which is very attractive and which comes, I suspect, from being the eldest surviving sibling in a motherless family. At first the novel seemed very different from my usual style of dark domestic comedy, but I soon realized that it covered two of my favorite themes—that of young girls on the verge of womanhood who are beginning to get a clear picture of their identity when it becomes confused by social expectations of the female and that of powerful women powerless to command their own destinies. Fortunately, Charlotte had a very strong and individual sense of wit and irony. I couldn't have followed the style of any writer without a sense of humor.

You rewrote the first draft after finding the manuscript of yet another unfinished story by Brontë about William Ellin. How was that version different?

In my original version Mr. Ellin had had a fairly privileged background. I had no notion of him as an abused child. This meant that I had to change not only his background but his social view. It meant a lot of rewriting, but I felt it broadened the base of the whole novel and that Charlotte would have liked the social contrasts in each of the main characters. In my original version he had defended a lady he loved on a murder charge and later came to believe her guilty. I kept that element, but I had not originally envisaged her as Emma's mother.

What kind of research or preparation went into writing the novel? How closely did you try to emulate Brontë's style? How important was historical accuracy? Which Victorian novels inspired you?

I think Emma has quite a resemblance to Jane Eyre. Both to me are very appealing heroines because in spite of the terrible circumstances of their lives, they refuse to compromise their principles or, in Jane's case, passions. Jane Eyre must have struck a chord in the hearts of thousands of stranded Victorian women because she stood for the right of plain and poor women to a life of passion. I think Emma has a great deal to say to contemporary girls and women because, in spite of having no identity, she has a very strong sense of her self. The need for self-acceptance is stronger than that for any consumer comforts or even affection. One can tell that Emma is going to be a force in society because she pursues the truth at any cost and always stands up for real values. This kind of inner strength seems missing in a lot of tough modern women. I think that with both Jane and Emma there is the triumphal feeling that no life can be limited except by dullness of aspiration and that no prescription of fate can prevent a true spirit from carrying off the glittering prizes.

Jane Eyre was one of the most beloved heroines in all of literature. Today, she seems much more a model of the uncompromising modern woman. Whom did you take as the model for Emma Brown? What makes the reader love and root for her?

This novel required a vast amount of research. I trawled the archives of the Guildhall Library in London, the Museum of London, the London Library. Victorian social archivists like Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew and Gustave Dore became my bedside reading. One of my favorite characters, the little urchin Jenny Drew, was inspired by Henry Mayhew's study of an eight-year-old watercress seller. He was particularly struck by the fact that this little girl seemed to have no idea what childhood was. She had never heard of play or toys and showed no interest in them. But her face lit up when he told her about the beautiful public parks and she said: "Would such as me be allowed in there just to look?" Peter Ackroyd's London, the Biography and The London Encyclopaedia, edited by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbbert, were also invaluable. For the first hundred pages or so I was constantly conscious of Charlotte's style and frequently sensed her at my elbow. Although she might not have hand-picked me as a collaborator (she had a middle-class Protestant's mistrust of Irish "papists") I never doubted that she wanted this story completed. I was heavily influenced by all of Charlotte's novels. I took to George Eliot for her superb period detail and to the novels of Wilkie Collins for the pleasures of Victorian twists of plot.

The heroines of Emma Brown are all nurturers—Teresa nurtures young Willie Ellin, Isabel nurtures Emma, Emma nurtures Jenny Drew. The female antagonists are those who have abandoned someone—the cold, self-serving Eliza Brown, the Wilcox sisters, the responsibility shirking Mrs. Cornhill. Do you think nurturing is an essentially feminine trait? Do you think the inclination to nurture is a strength or a weakness in a woman?

I believe that female nature gains strength and beauty and wisdom by reaching out to others. The problem is that most of us fail along the way to nurture ourselves and end up being depended upon by the weak and exploited by the needy. There is a Buddhist saying that you can light a thousand candles from a single candle and still not dim the light of that candle and I think that is so true for women. On the other hand, if you put a candle in a space without air, it will go out and I feel that modern women get all their space and air used up by the need to prove themselves, by work, dependents and their own innate guilt. Women have to learn that division between giving of themselves for their own pleasure and that of others and being squeezed dry and shredded. For this reason I have made both my heroines—Isa and Emma—very self-determined women who do their best for others but refuse to sell themselves short.

Emma Brown is more of a mystery adventure than a love story; in fact, two adult relationships go unrequited and the book ends with only the promise of love between Mr. Ellin and Emma. It reads more as a story of self-discovery—not just for Emma, but also for Mr. Ellin, Isabel, and Mr. Cornhill. Why did you choose to draw the focus away from the love stories and more toward unraveling the mysteries of each character's past?

To me, this is very much a love story. Isa finds passionate love and then love as response to kindness. Emma, who has been made too wary to open her heart, finds love with a very trusting little child. Mr. Ellin, who believed only in the idealized, worshipful kind of love, eventually matures to the point where he wants the love of a challenging, uncompromising female. Finch Cornhill came from my own heart for he was exactly the sort of man I would have fallen for as a young girl, and if I met him today I wouldn't run a mile. However, as a mature woman I have learned that the delicious, wistful hero is actually built around a solid core of melancholy and I was far too fond of Isa to anchor her to him for life. For me, love has never been about requital. The mere experience of love is the highest form of human experience and the one that evolves and changes us most. Ultimate loss or possession doesn't seem that relevant.

What do you think Charlotte Brontë would think of your expansion of her novel? Do you think this is the road she would have taken with Emma? If you could ask her one question, what would it be?

Now, there's a question! I certainly think she would have read this book from cover to cover and found much to cheer and I think she would have laughed from time to time, and even cried. Undoubtedly, she would have felt she could have done better. As she had begun to explore social conditions in London, she could not have avoided coming across the wicked exploitation of children and would have felt the need to write about it. I don't suppose she could have been as explicit as I was, although she would have undoubtedly found some ingenious way of saying what needed to be said.

Of course I absolutely long to ask Charlotte did she mean to finish this novel. I want to ask where the character of Emma came from—and Mrs. Chalfont. And I have always been curious to know exactly what was in her mind when she wrote of Isa that "something was hovering around my hearth that pleased me wonderfully." If she was still smiling, I might work up the courage to ask how she felt about Emma Brown.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What do Isabel and Emma share in common that prompts Isabel to take Emma in as her own? What does Mr. Ellin see in Emma that appeals to him?
    
2. Mr. Ellin says, "We have most of us mislaid our past, although some of us have done so on purpose." What does this mean? Which characters have mislaid their pasts on purpose and why?
    
3. Isabel is mysteriously ambiguous about the name of "the man for whom destiny shaped" her. Who do you think that person is? Why do you think Isabel is so ambiguous about the name? What roles do destiny and coincidence play in this novel?
    
4. Boylan paints a portrait of a seedy London underworld for Emma to navigate through. Why does Emma return to the scene of her demise? Why does she leave the warmth of a home with a loving guardian? What does she hope to find in London?
    
5. How responsible is Mr. Ellin for Teresa's downfall and consequently Emma's demise? How responsible is Finch Cornhill for Emma's disappearance? Should he have come clean about her to Isabel and Mr. Ellin in the first place? What did he hope to accomplish by dropping her off at the Wilcox sisters' school to fend for herself?
    
6. Brontë's stories have long been heralded for their powerful heroines and commentary on women's socioeconomic immobility. What suffering must Emma endure as a result of her sex? What about Mrs. Chalfont? What privileges do Mr. Ellin and Mr. Cornhill enjoy because they are men?
    
7. A recurring theme in the novel is the importance of appearances—Mrs. Chalfont's husband insists on appearing rich though they can't afford it; Emma comes to school dressed in finery though she's basically a pauper. What is the significance of appearances in this story? How do appearances help or hinder each character?
    
8. Emma steals from Isabel in order to embark on her search for her past; Arthur Curran steals from the rich; Finch Cornhill lies when he leaves Emma under the Wilcoxes' auspices. What other circumstances can you find in which the characters compromise their values in order to accomplish their goals? Do the ends justify the means?
    
9. Emma is relieved and moved to tears when she discovers that her maidenhood is intact, but she had to give up the innocence and trust of childhood in her quest to find that information. Was her quest worthwhile? What lengths would you go to in order to uncover your personal history?
    
10. What is each character's personal quest? How much do the characters' pasts reflect on their present selves? What actions define each character? Does each character have a defining moment?