myth and reality the enduring myth of the brontës living a life of isolation and unrelieved tragedy was, to some extent, unintentionally created by themselves. Choosing to write under pseudonyms, the sisters immediately drew a veil of mystery around them, as people wondered who Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell really were. Charlotte added to the myth, when, in her 1850 ‘biographical notice’ of her sisters, she attempted to shield them from her critics’ accusations of ‘brutality’ by portraying them as uneducated, worldless young women who wrote by instinct rather than by design.
Novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte’s first biographer, was also responsible for perpetuating some of the myths. When she published The Life of Charlotte Brontë in 1857, two years after Charlotte’s death, she wrote from a novelist’s perspective, perceiving Charlotte’s life as a tragedy as she nobly sacrificed herself for her duty. the brontës acquired a heroic status that is often applied to those who die young.
You are reading: Brontë sisters’ books
See Also: Karen Marie Moning – Book Series In Order
The Brontë Parsonage Museum seeks to separate myth from reality and present the known facts about the family.
the influence of their home environment charlotte, branwell, emily and anne were born in thornton, near bradford, but moved to the nearby township of haworth when charlotte, the greatest of the famous novelists, it was just five years. The boys’ formative years and their mature writing careers took place in Haworth, amidst the spectacular scenery of the surrounding moors. Early biographers and critics sometimes assumed that the Brontës based their fiction exclusively on real-life places, people, and events, perhaps reluctant to accept that a clergyman’s daughters could produce what were often perceived as shocking and amoral books. . however, this would be to deny the brontës the power of imagination.
the parish house was the home in which the creativity of the young brontës was nurtured, where they created their children’s lands of angria and gondal, and in which they served a collaborative literary apprenticeship of more than twenty years before the publication of his novels. Like most authors, the Brontës were inspired by their imaginations, their personal experiences, and the landscape and characters around them, but their mature poems and novels are also rooted in the themes of their early childhood writings. and adolescence.
See Also: 30 Best Zen Books Of All Time To Find Your Inner Peace 2022
Brontës and Victorian society Brontës occupied an unusual position in society, which would influence the themes of their novels. The Parsonage was among the largest houses in Haworth, although compared to clergymen’s houses in more prosperous areas of Britain it would have been considered small. Similarly, Patrick’s annual income of about £200 was twenty times that of an average domestic servant, but the Brontës were poor compared to landlords or wealthy aristocrats whose incomes could exceed £10,000 or even more. the £20,000.
In the early 19th century, the class system was much more rigid than it is today. The education of the Brontës in the era before the Primary Education Act of 1870, when a large proportion of the population could not read, placed them socially above the majority of people in Haworth. However, they could not afford to maintain a carriage, travel extensively, or dress and furnish their home as the upper classes and wealthy Yorkshire manufacturers did. it was essential that brontë girls earn a living, and their experiences as governesses, in a social interior where they were neither family nor servants, informed much of her writing. visiting the house in which these three remarkable women spent most of their lives provides a fascinating insight into the freedoms and restrictions of the times in which they lived, and a deeper understanding of their novels.
a new website detailing everything the brontës are known to have read (or might have read) and its possible influences on their work, is located here: http://www.thebrontes.net/ reading // strong>.
See Also: How to Decorate a Bookshelf: Simple Formulas That Work! – Driven by Decor