A pre-requisite to reading this novel – the reader must love words, love to wander the topography of sentences, the geometry of their architecture, and accept as curator their unveiling of past lives. This is a wonderful book but you must love words or you will be lost in the depth of their use, and the breadth of the coverage.
The novel deals with the life of the Brontë family with a special focus on the three sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne. The tone is set for the rest of the novel with the illness of their mother Maria Branwell Bronte, her downward spiral. As she becomes increasingly delusional her maternal fear sets in “Oh my children. Oh God, my poor children” This is the first sentence that opens the novel. It also sets firmly in place the dark undercurrents that seep through the novel. Death is a constant but even so it is presented as a poignant state of play that pays forward into the future, however stark either might be. There is no side-stepping it, or sugar-coating it is an afterthought, it is as in life a very much ominous presence that lurks through the pages of the novel. A stain that cannot be wiped away, blood on Lady Macbeth’s hands, here the stain of death is real and cannot be washed away.
Her passing, leaves the six Siblings in a motherless existence, six Brontë Siblings- Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell.
Branwell is the only male heir in the Brontë brood and a beacon of hope for father and Pastor Patrick Brontë.
The novel takes us through the confusion that is their growing up, between the story telling and religious citations of ‘Aunt Branwell” and a present but steadfastly unaware father, who cannot contain the workings of the Parson and the needs of a home under one roof.
Patrick enrolls them in the Cowan Bridge School, first Maria and then Elizabeth, a residential school for the poorer children of the clergy. It is almost Dickensian in it’s presentation to us and the children are mistreated and ignored largely. Maria and Elizabeth are losing their vitality and growing weaker, yet they are joined by Charlotte first and later Emily. Maria is awarded mother status. She is poised and collected in her thoughts, cares for her father, is worried that telling him about the issues faced at the school will only cause him more concern.
This is constant through the book, the children are constantly imposing upon their father the actual events that occur in their life, they continue to shroud them at many times with fatal outcomes to themselves.
Maria weakened by the draconian conditions at the school succumbs to a bout of Tuberculosis. Her death is followed by a spate of deaths as listed by Jude Morgan in the novel, they are listed as occurrences, stated as a fact. They are a pre-fix to the harsh reality that conditions in these schools were abysmal, that the girls were nothing more than a poor statistic. You are angered, by what happened but distanced from it at the same time as you come to realize that this was rampant, I searched online for some idea on the extent of which these issues were prevalent and found the below from this website http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/diseases_industrial_revolution.htm
“it is believed that TB killed one-third of all those who died in Britain between 1800 and 1850.”
Elizabeth succumbs to the same disease, and it is when Charlotte starts falling ill that her father takes them away back to the Parsonage at Haworth .
You realize how strongly the death of the two older siblings affect the remaining four children as they congeal around each other, fantasize a world separate from their own, a fantasy world called Glass Town and later Gondal ruled by a woman. Their closeness helped them spur their collective and individual creative worlds forward.
This is an excerpt from Wikipedia on the Brontë cultivation.
“However, it was not until December 1827 that their ideas took written form and the imaginary African kingdom of Glass Town came into existence, followed by Gondal, ruled by a woman, created by Emily and Anne, after the departure of Charlotte in 1831, and Angria In the beginning, these stories were written in little books, the size of a matchbox, (about 1.5 x 2.5 inches (3.8 x 6.4 cm)),and cursorily bound with thread. The pages were filled with close, minute writing, often in capital letters without punctuation and embellished with illustrations, detailed maps, schemes, landscapes, and plans of buildings, created by the children according to their specializations. The complexity of the stories matured as the children's imaginations developed, fed by reading the three weekly or monthly magazines to which their father had subscribed or the newspapers that were bought daily from John Greenwood's local news and stationery store.”
The novel progresses as the sisters in order of chronological age attend Miss Wooler's school in preparation for governesses, their experiences once they commence their roles individually as governesses are not pleasant, yet they continue to do so out of a strong moral compass that directs them to help their father, and support Branwell who spoilt with the attention and with the possibility of having to support his family, falls prey to alcoholism and laudanum. Charlotte continues her efforts to become a famous writer, tired of being a governess and finding a reciprocal dislike in her sisters they decide to have a school of their own like Miss Wooler’s, but in the Haworth Parson. Motivated Charlotte and Emily move to Brussels , encouraged by their Aunt Branwells financial support where they join Monsieur and Madame Heger's boarding school in the Rue d'Isabelle. They remain there till they hear of their Aunt’s ill health, Emily who is extremely close to her aunt returns. Unfortunately her Aunt succumbs to her illness.
Charlotte returns to Brussels and is enamored by Constantin Heger yet is disappointed when she finds he lacks a similar feeling towards her.
The character of the Bronte Sisters reveals Charlotte as the attention seeker, craving recognition, love, fame and all the pleasantries that go with it, writing for her is a means to an end, Emily as the sister who loves Haworth, the sense of home, writing is a very internal for her, and her form of writing is embodied with her own sense of life. She shuns attention, to her detriment. Anne is the baby of the three, yet is the most steady and pragmatic in her role and duties, she takes on a position as governess because she must, she writes almost to be able to whet her want for a world away from the real one. The sisters goaded on by Charlotte decide that they need to publish their work a book of poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (aliases as writing by women was still looked down upon) They still maintained the initials of their names and the address of the Parsonage.
The Book of Poems titled ‘Poems’ sold two copies.
Undeterred Emily and Anne, pushed by Charlotte worked to publish Charlotte 's Jane Eyre, Emily's Wuthering Heights, and Anne's Agnes Grey,
The first Jane Eyre was finally published by Smith, Elder & Co in London, and was a best-seller while the books of Emily and Anne were published by ‘Thomas Cautley Newby who intended to compile a three-decker, more economical for sale and for loan in the circulating libraries the two first volumes to include Wuthering Heights and the third one Agnes Grey. Both the novels attracted critical acclaim, occasionally harsh about Wuthering Heights, praised for the originality of the subject and its narrative style, but viewed with suspect because of its outrageous violence and immorality – surely, the critics wrote, a work of a man with a depraved mind – fairly neutral about Agnes Grey, more flattering in spite of certain commentators denouncing it as an affront to morals and good mores, for Jane Eyre which soon became what would be called today a best-seller.’ from wikipedia.
As of Branwell, having been introduced Robinsons by Anne when she was a governess, falls hard for Mrs. Robinson but when Mrs Robinson does not confirm his position that they are in love he loses hope goes into a downward spiral and dies, sad, lost of life and love.
The book flounders through two more deaths, Emily and shortly thereafter of Anne's. Charlotte is the only one able to leave the Haworth Parsonage, the only one able to adopt the semblance of a simple and normal family life. She marries Arthur Bell Nicholls, a curator at her Father’s Parson, she marries him against Patrick’s wishes. She is the only one who shows a slight glimmer having migrated out of the tunnel that is the Brontë life. But in keeping with the spate of bad luck Charlotte succumbs to an illness a year into the marriage.
There is so much in this book that is wonderful, in-spite of their many personal losses, the Bronte Sisters shoulder on, and write books that have become a mainstay in English literature.
Jude Morgan has lovingly remembered the sisters who have lived on forever through their words, even when they were marked so strongly by death.
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