ALMOST immediately after Charlotte Brontë’s death in 1855, her friend and fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell set about writing her biography.

It was a labour she felt driven to perform, but one that caused her much anxiety. The recently married Charlotte had died in the early months of pregnancy, and Gaskell felt almost guilty that she had not been there to try to save her life. Instead, she determined to save her friend’s reputation, and to produce a hagiography that would win maximum public sympathy.

Though it may be hard to grasp from today’s standpoint, Charlotte Brontë’s novels — and those of her sisters — had inspired accusations of immorality from some critics. The Brontës had always been aware of the “prejudice” that existed against women authors, which is why they had decided to publish under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Though Jane Eyre had been a bestseller, once it was suspected that its author was a woman, it was labelled “unfeminine” and even anti-Christian. Emily’s Wuthering Heights was called “coarse and loathsome” and Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall “revolting”.

Perhaps surprisingly, Gaskell had her own doubts about the morality of the Brontë novels. Though she winningly told Charlotte to her face that she would keep her works as a treasure for her daughters, she actually forbade her eldest girl to read Jane Eyre until she was 20. She repeated what had become the standard critical buzzword, “coarse”, in her assessment of Charlotte’s fiction. The word was used to refer to those aspects of the novels that were considered unladylike: the deployment of slang and swear words, their treatment of violence and sexuality, their excessive passion and even, in Jane Eyre’s case, the assertive ego of the heroine.

During the course of her researches for The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Gaskell was alarmed by what she might find, and hypersensitive about making any of Charlotte’s unpublished writings public. Even after Charlotte’s widower had toned down some of the language, she was worried about the prospect of bringing out The Professor. This first full-length novel of Charlotte’s was a downbeat tale that had been rejected by the publisher George Smith partly on the ground that it was not exciting enough. But Gaskell still feared the worst. “I would not, if I could help it,” she wrote, “have another syllable that could be called coarse to be associated with her name.”

If Gaskell was able to find anything coarse in the unexceptionable Professor, it is hard to imagine the panic that would have gripped her had she read the manuscript of Stancliffe’s Hotel. Written when Charlotte was only 22, influenced by the decadent silver fork novels of Bulwer-Lytton and shot through with Byronism, it couldn’t be farther from the high-Victorian moral seriousness that Gaskell strove to achieve in her own novels.

If critics had found “masculine hardness, coarseness and freedom of expression” in the published Brontë novels, what would they have made of this novelette, in which the young female author takes delight in aping the voice of a cynical male narrator, peppering his language with racy slang, mocking religious observance, and presenting a world of loose sexual mores with no sense of shock or shame? There is no reason to suppose that Gaskell saw this manuscript, but we can assume that she would have done her utmost to suppress it had she done so. There were other private writings that she saw but held back from public view, such as the passionate letters Charlotte had written to Constantin Heger, the married man who had taught her in Brussels.

Gaskell quoted some innocuous passages from the offending correspondence, but remained terrified that the rest might somehow get into the public eye. She was right to be concerned. When the letters were finally published in The Times in 1913, they exploded the sanctified image of Charlotte that Gaskell had created.

Despite all the anxiety attending its creation, Gaskell’s Life turned out to be a brilliant work of literature, which transformed its subject into a tragic heroine and an enduring cultural icon. Nevertheless, it was so concerned to play down the fiery imagination that had produced Jane Eyre, and so keen to exaggerate the domestic sufferings of its subject, that it had an ambivalent effect on Charlotte Brontë’s literary reputation.

In the years after its publication, this version of Charlotte was picked up by lesser Victorian writers, who transformed her into a model of dutiful feminine piety. The present publication of Stancliffe’s Hotel should be seen as part of a continuing process made necessary by Gaskell’s early spin-doctoring: the rediscovery of the real Charlotte Brontë.

LUCASTA MILLER

The author wrote The Brontë Myth, Jonathan Cape, £18.99.

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