The Brontë Sisters

English novelists

• Anne Brontë
• Born: January 17, 1820
• Died: May 28, 1849

• Charlotte Brontë
• Born: April 21, 1816
• Birthplace: Thornton, Yorkshire, England
• Died: March 31, 1855
• Place of death: Haworth, Yorkshire, England

• Emily Brontë
• Born: July 30, 1818
• Birthplace: Thornton, Yorkshire, England
• Died: December 19, 1848
• Place of death: Haworth, Yorkshire, England

The three Brontë sisters rank among the major English novelists of the Victorian era. Charlotte Brontë wrote four novels, the first of which, Jane Eyre, made her instantly famous. Emily was both a poet and a novelist; her novel Wuthering Heights remains a modern favorite of both readers and filmmakers. Anne Brontë published two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, during her short life and died before she reached her full potential as a writer.

Early Lives

The father of the Brontë sisters, Patrick Brontë (BRAHN-tee) was a powerful force in his family’s personal and creative life. He was born in Ireland in 1777 and overcame poverty to attend Cambridge University in England. The self-disciplined, hard-working young man became a minister in the Church of England and married Maria Branwell in 1812. In seven years, they had six children: Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Patrick Branwell, Emily Jane, and Anne. In 1820 Patrick moved his family to Haworth, England, where he was appointed minister for life. Maria died of cancer in 1821 at the age of thirty-eight, leaving Patrick with six small children.

Even after they became adults, the Brontë sisters seldom ventured far from Haworth, the center of their creative lives. The Brontë home was cold and damp, and the town suffered from the effects of open sewers and industrial pollution. Cholera and tuberculosis were common, and the average life expectancy in Haworth was only twenty-six years. It was a rough provincial town, and the family, while respected and well liked, had little social contact with townsfolk. The Brontë children turned to each other for companionship and entertainment. Although early Brontë scholarship portrayed Patrick as a tyrannical father, later research presented him more favorably. Defying the patriarchal values of his day, he educated his daughters and encouraged them in their creative efforts.

After Maria died, Patrick sent his four oldest daughters to the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge, probably the model for Charlotte’s vivid portrayal of the harsh conditions in the fictional Jane Eyre’s boarding school. After the two oldest girls became ill, Patrick brought his daughters home. Within a five-week period in 1825, Maria and Elizabeth died from tuberculosis. During the next six years Patrick educated the children himself.

The children found the outside world intimidating. In 1831 Charlotte went to Roe Head, a private school that she first attended as a student and then later returned to briefly as a teacher. Emily and Anne attended Roe Head for a short time but were unhappy away from home. In 1842 Charlotte and Emily attended a private school in Belgium, where Charlotte remained until 1844. The three sisters sometimes worked as governesses, which enriched their writing by exposing them to diverse social situations and giving them insights into aspects of human nature from which they were sheltered in Haworth.

Lives’ Work

While the young Brontë women found their ventures out into the world emotionally trying, their intellectual and creative lives blossomed in Haworth. In 1826 Patrick gave Branwell twelve toy soldiers. Each child chose a soldier and named it after a personal hero and then wrote and performed plays about the character. They set their stories in an imaginary African kingdom called Angria; later Emily and Anne created their own realm, which they named Gondal, and located it on an island in the Pacific Ocean.

The sisters’ fantasy worlds satisfied their emotional needs more than their bleak surroundings did. Charlotte did not free herself from her obsession with Angria until 1839, and Anne and Emily were still writing about Gondal in 1845. Angria and Gondal served as a deep well for the Brontës’ creative lives. They populated their kingdoms with people from history and from contemporary society pages. They laid out cities, devised geographies and drew maps, wrote their kingdoms’ histories, and incorporated the social and political controversies of their own day into Angria and Gondal. They painted and wrote poetry, drama, prose, and historical narrative.

Charlotte had a wider audience in mind. In 1845, she persuaded Emily and Anne to join her in publishing a collection of their poetry, entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846). Because the patriarchal Victorian society seldom took female writers seriously, they published their book under male-sounding pseudonyms: Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily), and Acton (Anne) Bell. Even before the poems appeared, the three sisters decided that each, using their pseudonyms, would publish a novel, to be published jointly in a three-volume work. Anne wrote Agnes Grey (1847), which drew on her experiences as a governess. Emily contributed Wuthering Heights (1847), whose dramatic characters and emotionally charged plot derived from her Gondal writings. Charlotte’s The Professor (1857) was enriched by her work as a teacher, especially from her years in Belgium.

Publisher Thomas Cautley Newby refused The Professor but published Anne’s and Emily’s novels. Anne’s book was warmly accepted by the public. She was concerned with incorporating morality and religion into daily life. Agnes Grey provided trenchant criticism of a society that allowed mediocrity to triumph over excellence and that tolerated an ignorant and insensitive upper class that had little understanding of the hard-working, decent people that surrounded and served them.

The first reaction to Wuthering Heights was that it was powerful but coarse and disturbing. In the novel, Heathcliff, a wild, abandoned child, is brought into the home—Wuthering Heights—of Mr. Earnshaw, a member of the local gentry, who has two children, Hindley and Cathy. Heathcliff and Cathy form a deep bond, but Hindley and other members of the local gentry scorn and abuse Heathcliff. Through a misunderstanding he thinks Cathy has turned against him as well; he flees, promising to avenge himself on his tormenters. He returns as a rich man and carries out his vow of revenge, destroying his own happiness and the lives of the people around him. In images that disturbed many conventional Christians, Heathcliff and Cathy find peace after their deaths, reunited as spirits wandering the moors they had loved.

Charlotte put The Professor aside (it was not published until after her death) and began work on Jane Eyre (1847). Jane Eyre, intelligent and self-reliant but poor, becomes the governess at Thornfield, the home of Edward Rochester. Her courage and intelligence attracts the aggressive, restless Rochester, who defies class distinctions by asking Eyre to marry him. At the altar Jane learns the secret of Thornfield’s mysterious locked tower. As a young man Rochester had been tricked into marrying a hopelessly insane woman, now locked in the tower and cared for by a companion. Eyre, despite her love for Rochester, refuses to compromise her morality and flees. She later returns, summoned mysteriously by Rochester’s voice. She finds him blinded after trying in vain to save his wife when she set fire to Thornfield. Eyre marries Rochester and both find peace and love.

Jane Eyre went into its third printing within months of its publication, and Charlotte’s remarkable success as Currer Bell fueled interest in Acton and Ellis Bell. When critics began to speculate that all three books were written by one person, Charlotte and Anne went to London to prove to their publisher that they had separate identities. Emily’s name became known to the outside world after her death.

People wanted more books from the young writers, but tragedy struck, leaving readers to wonder what the Brontës could have accomplished if they had lived into maturity. Branwell, a dissipated youth weakened from drinking and drugs, died in September, 1848. At his funeral, Emily, probably suffering from tuberculosis, caught a cold and died suddenly on December 19, 1848. In January, 1849, Anne, after finishing The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), was diagnosed with tuberculosis and died on May 28, 1849.

Charlotte was devastated by these deaths, but she found relief in writing. Some critics believed that Charlotte intended Shirley (1849) as a tribute to Emily as she might have been had she lived. The novel deals with industrial conflict and advocates giving women the opportunity to develop their potential and exercise some control over their lives. Charlotte also wrote Villette (1853), which explored some of the themes she dealt with in The Professor.

On June 29, 1854, Charlotte married her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. She became pregnant, and, already physically frail, her health quickly deteriorated. She died on March 31, 1855. Arthur stayed on to care for Patrick until Patrick’s death in 1861 and then returned to his native Ireland and remarried in 1864.

Significance

The Brontës achieved their place in literary history by overcoming the obstacles of genteel poverty, a rough provincial community, and the bleak landscape of the Yorkshire moors. The artistic and intelligent children lost themselves in fantasy realms that seemed richer and more vivid than the reality of their surroundings. Although the sisters found the outside world intimidating, they were bold and challenging in their creative lives. They believed in moral courage and, like Jane Eyre, in confronting and surmounting all obstacles, including patriarchal restraints on women. Their novels provided exemplary models of strong women confronting emotionally charged situations and dealing successfully with the pains and pleasures of everyday life.

A twentieth century critic called Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey English literature’s most perfect prose narrative and believed that Anne would have ranked with Jane Austen had she lived another ten years. She died at the age of thirty, however, and has continued to be overshadowed by her famous sisters.

For many years Charlotte Brontë’s critical and popular success outshone Emily, whose Wuthering Heights troubled many readers. Emily’s book challenged conventional morality and religious beliefs. Its twisted hero, Heathcliff, a moral monster, has disturbing appeal and turns a story of cruelty and revenge into a passionate love story. Its gothic overtones provided lasting images of ghostly lovers wandering the moors, images with great appeal to twentieth century readers and filmmakers.

Since its publication, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has retained its important place in the British literary canon and has stood as an inspiring story of a plain woman’s moral courage, as one of the great tragic love stories of literary history, and as an early and powerful plea for women’s liberation. It was a major source for the literary realism that became dominant later in the nineteenth century.

The Brontë Sisters’ Major Works

Anne Brontë

1847

• Agnes Grey

1848

• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Charlotte Brontë

1847

• Jane Eyre

1849

• Shirley

1853

• Villette

1857

• The Professor

Emily Brontë

1847

• Wuthering Heights

Bibliography

Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. This well-researched and clearly written book covers the entire Brontë family and carefully dispels the many myths and misunderstandings that have grown up around them.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. The Brontës: A Life in Letters. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1998. This collection of newly discovered letters and manuscripts written by the Brontë sisters re-creates a sense of their life and personalities.

Benvenuto, Richard. Emily Brontë. Boston: Twayne, 1982. A brief biography of the Brontë sister whose life remains most obscure. Only three of her letters survive, but Benvenuto stayed within the documentary record to provide a convincing portrait of her life and personality.

Bloom, Harold, ed. The Brontë Sisters. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2000. One of a series of “Biocritiques” by Bloom, professor of humanities at Yale University and professor of English at New York University. This volume includes biographies of the three sisters and critical analysis of their work by nineteenth- and twentieth century critics.

Chitham, Edward. A Life of Anne Brontë. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1991. This book covers Anne’s short life and shows that although she continues to be overshadowed by her famous sisters, she was developing her own voice when she died.

Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. London: Smith, Elder, 1857. An invaluable source because Gaskell, a friend of Charlotte Brontë, interviewed the author’s father, husband, and friends and had access to Charlotte’s correspondence. Despite its importance, it has also been the source of some of the misconceptions of Patrick’s role in the family.

Hopkins, Annette B. The Father of the Brontës. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968. A good description of Patrick Brontë’s life and personality as he changed from an outgoing young man to a reclusive elder. He strikes people today as a stern, authoritarian figure, but he gave his daughters remarkable freedom to develop as artists.

Miller, Lucasta. The Brontë Myth. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Miller traces the careers of the Brontës to show how they became cultural icons, with each generation creating a new mythology about them to reflect changing social values. She aims to strip away the myths and replace them with the facts of the three sisters’ lives.