Dreaming exiles in Charlotte Brontë’s ‘The Midnight Song’

Charlotte Brontë’s poem, ‘The Midnight Song’, appears in the second issue of the second series of the ‘Young Men’s Magazine’. This ‘little book’, created in miniature to be a fitting object for the toy soldiers that inspired the siblings’ collaborative storytelling, was acquired by the Brontë Parsonage Museum in 2019. This article enjoys the privilege of being the first to offer a critical account of ‘The Midnight Song’ to celebrate its first publication. It considers Charlotte’s delineation of the exile, expatriate and dreamer, figures who represent different but related ways of knowing and perceiving the world. As the poem unfolds, Charlotte inhabits these subject positions simultaneously, identifying their privileges and testing their limits. In so doing, she hones her understanding of the writer’s craft and creative power, revealing at just fourteen years of age a remarkable self-assurance when wielding her pen. In turn, the poem proves prophetic, for here Charlotte plays with the tropes of un/belonging, dis/connection and mis/communication that recur throughout her oeuvre.