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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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CHARLOTTE BRONTE (1816 - 1855) North East links with Charlotte have been pointed out in the entries for Thomas Bewick and John Martin (qq.v) but Professor John Sutherland in his intriguing book of literary puzzles Is Heathcliff a Murderer? suggests that the experiences of Harriet Martineau (q.v.) while resident in Tynemouth, may have had a direct influence on Jane Eyre. After Harriet had been cured by mesmerism on Tyneside in 1844, she wrote in praise of the method in letters to the Athenaeum. Among much else, she described the clairvoyant and 'mental travelling' feats of a young Tynemouth maidservant, Jane Arrowsmith, who apparently witnessed a shipwreck a dozen miles out at sea while in a mesmeric trance. Jane could also hear over long distances without the use of her ears. These reports aroused much public controversy and prompted a London doctor to travel to Tynemouth: he claimed that Jane's powers were faked. At this time, Charlotte knew Harriet through her father, Patrick Bronte, and would have sided with her in the debate. At all events, the strange (and most untypical) episode of astral communication between Jane and Rochester at the end of the novel, where the two are mesmerised by a candle and the moon respectively, may indeed be based on Harriet Martineau's account of Jane Arrowsmith of Tynemouth.
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