Is this a photo of the Brontë sisters? From left to right (supposedly): Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Brontë. Photograph found by Seamus Molloy
Overview
Directions
Written Blog Response: When we completed our introductory study I would like you to compose a 500 word blog response covering what you learned about the Victorian era, the Bronte sisters, and which novel you intend to study and why. Please include direct evidence from this post. You may also include questions and insights you would like to discuss in class. I look forward to your responses.
The Victorian Age
The Victorian era was a period of dramatic change that brought England to its highest point of development as a world power. The rapid growth of London, from a population of 2 million when Victoria came to the throne to one of 6.5 million by the time of Victoria's death, indicates the dramatic transition from a way of life based on the ownership of land to a modern urban economy. England experienced an enormous increase in wealth, but rapid and unregulated industrialization brought a host of social and economic problems. Some writers such as Thomas Babbington Macauley applauded England’s progress, while others such as Mathew Arnold felt the abandonment of traditional rhythms of life exacted a terrible price in human happiness.
The early Victorian period (1830–48) saw the opening of Britain’s first railway and its first Reform Parliament, but it was also a time of economic distress. The Reform Bill of 1832 extended voting privileges to men of the lower middle classes and redistributing parliamentary representation more fairly. Yet the economic and social difficulties associated with industrialization made the 1830s and 1840s a “Time of Troubles,” characterized by unemployment, desperate poverty, and rioting. The Chartists, an organization of workers, helped create an atmosphere open to further reform. The “condition of England” became a central topic for novelists including Charles Kingsley, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Benjamin Disraeli in the 1840s and early 1850s.
Although the mid- Victorian period (1848–70) was not free of harassing problems, it was a time of prosperity, optimism, and stability. The achievements of modern industry and science were celebrated at the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park (1851). Enormous investments of people, money, and technology created the British Empire. Many English people saw the expansion of empire as a moral responsibility, and missionary societies flourished. At the same time, however, there was increasing debate about religious belief. The Church of England had evolved into three major divisions, with conflicting beliefs about religious practice. There were also rationalist challenges to religion from philosophy (especially Utilitarianism) and science (especially biology and geology). Both the infallibility of the Bible and the stature of the human species in the universe were increasingly called into question.
In the later period (1870–1901) the costs of Empire became increasingly apparent, and England was confronted with growing threats to its military and economic preeminence. A variety of socialist movements gained force, some influenced by the revolutionary theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The literature of the 1890s is characterized by self-conscious melancholy and aestheticism, but also saw the beginnings of the modernist movement.
The extreme inequities between men and women stimulated a debate about women’s roles known as “The Woman Question.” Women were denied the right to vote or hold political office throughout the period, but gradually won significant rights such as custody of minor children and the ownership of property in marriage. By the end of Victoria’s reign, women could take degrees at twelve universities. Hundreds of thousands of working-class women labored at factory jobs under appalling conditions, and many were driven into prostitution. While John Stuart Mill argued that the “nature of women” was an artificial thing, most male authors preferred to claim that women had a special nature fitting them for domestic duties.
Literacy increased significantly in the period, and publishers could bring out more material more cheaply than ever before. The most significant development in publishing was the growth of the periodical. Novels and long works of non-fiction were published in serial form, fostering a distinctive sense of a community of readers. Victorian novels seek to represent a large and comprehensive social world, constructing a tension between social conditions and the aspirations of the hero or heroine. Writing in the shadow of Romanticism, the Victorians developed a poetry of mood and character. Victorian poetry tends to be pictorial, and often uses sound to convey meaning. The theater, a flourishing and popular institution throughout the period, was transformed in the 1890s by the comic masterpieces of George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. Very different from each other, both took aim at Victorian pretense and hypocrisy.
from The Norton Anthology of English Literature
Bronte Family Biography
Six years after the loss of her sisters, Charlotte set off for Roe Head School. She returned a little after a year later and taught her sisters. In 1835, Charlotte became a teacher at Roe Head, and Emily became a student there, but she only lasted three months. She would speak to no one except Charlotte and became very thin and pale. She was soon back at Haworth. Anne took Emily's place at Roe Head.
In the next few years, Emily became a teacher at Law Hill School. Failure was the result. Emily endured her position for six months; she disliked teaching very much, and longed for the moors that surrounded her home.
In February of 1842, Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels. They stayed at the Pensionnat Heger, where they became pupils. Madame Heger was the head of the school. The two sisters learned French, German, music, singing, writing, arithmetic, and drawing.
At home, Aunt Branwell had become very ill. Charlotte and Emily came home, only to find her dead and buried. Afterwards, Emily stayed at the Parsonage, but Charlotte went back to Brussels. She became a teacher at the Pensionnat, but she was very dissatisfied with her students. In a letter to Branwell, she said:
"I can discern only one or two [pupils] who deserve anything like regard...They have not intellect or politeness or good-nature or good-feeling..."
Madame Heger thought that Charlotte had fallen in love with her husband, and therefore became very cold and distant towards her. Monsieur Heger taught her German, but otherwise, had little to do with her. Early in 1844, Charlotte came home, but continued to write to Monsieur Heger, even though he allowed her to write to him only twice a year.
Branwell's talents seemed very promising. He was seen as the gifted one in the family. His father had hired a painting master to teach his only son, and it was also thought that Branwell could possibly turn out to be a poet or a journalist. Unfortunately, Fate dictated otherwise. Branwell was to go to London to attend the Royal Academy Schools, but he did not present himself as planned. Instead, he roamed the streets of London, wasting his money on alcohol. Later on, when he had failed at portrait painting and working on railroads, he tried his hand at tutoring (the Robinson family hired him). Branwell was dismissed because of "irregularities," as it was termed. He had been having an affair with Mrs. Robinson. Finally, at age 31, Charlotte's only brother died.
Meanwhile, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne had begun publishing their poetry and novels. Charlotte had written Jane Eyre (1846), Shirley (1849), and Villette (1853). It was not until after her death that The Professor was published in 1857. Charlotte had begun several novels, but she never finished them. Emily's novel Wuthering Heights was published in 1847. Anne's accomplishments included Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). All of the Bronte sisters had contributed poems to a collection of poetry, entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846). Currer, Ellis and Acton were the aliases assumed by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte. The sisters lived in such times that women were not always given a fair chance in the business world. Therefore, they assumed masculine names, so that their books would have a better chance of being published.
Disaster struck in October of 1848, when Emily fell sick with tuberculosis. In December of 1848, Emily's coffin was laid in the same vault as that of her mother and brother. Anne soon followed her sister to the grave, after she was consumed by the same relentless disease that had deprived her mother, brother, and three sisters of their lives.
The only remaining members of the Bronte family were Patrick and Charlotte. Charlotte was very deeply grieved at the loss of her companions. Writing restored her energy. In Shirley, she explained her feelings:
"...who cares for imagination? Who does not think it a rather dangerous, senseless attribute - akin to weakness - perhaps partaking of frenzy - a disease rather than a gift of the mind?
Probably all think it so, but those who possess - or fancy they possess - it. To hear them speak, you would believe that their hearts would be cold if that elixir did not flow about them; that their eyes would be dim if that flame did not refine their vision; that they would be lonely if this strange companion abandoned them. You would suppose that it imparted some glad hope to spring, some fine charm to summer, some tranquil joy to autumn, some consolation to winter, which you do not feel. An illusion, of course; but the fanatics cling to their dream, and would not give it for gold."
Charlotte also wrote to her publisher, when she was announcing the completion of Shirley:
"Whatever now becomes of the work, the occupation of writing it has been a boon to me. It took me out of dark and desolate reality into an unreal but happier region."
In a later letter to the same publisher, she wrote:
"The faculty of imagination lifted me when I was sinking, three months ago...I am thankful to God, who gave me this faculty; and it is for me a part of my religion to defend this gift and to profit by its possession."
During this time, her father's curate, the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls, had been spending a great deal of time with Patrick and Charlotte. It was not long before he proposed, and Charlotte accepted. They were married on the morning of Thursday, June 29, 1854. One year after the marriage, Charlotte died. The cause of her death was tuberculosis, and it is thought that complications in early pregnancy hastened the process.
Patrick Bronte ended up outliving his wife and six children. His only companion was Charlotte's husband, who looked after Charlotte's father, in compliance with Charlotte's last wishes. Patrick, at age 84, was the last of his family to die.
Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1846)
Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847)
And I pray one prayer - I repeat it till my tongue stiffens - Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you - haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!
Summary: When Heathcliff, a poor Gypsy boy, is adopted into wealthy Catherine Earnshaw's family, he and Catherine form a bond that progresses from childhood friendship to teenage passion. Because of Heathcliff's lowly social status, however, Catherine decides she cannot marry him, and instead marries the gentleman Edgar Linton. This sets in motion a chain of events that ravages both the Linton and Earnshaw families with jealousy, revenge, and bitterness, leaving only the ghosts of Catherine and Heathcliff to haunt the moors. Emily Bronte is also known for her amazing poetry, including, "No Coward Soul is Mine."
Well, then, it must be that you think they are both weak and prone to err, and the slightest error, the merest shadow of pollution, will ruin the one, while the character of the other will be strengthened and embellished - his education properly finished by a little practical acquaintance with forbidden things. Such experience, to him (to use a trite simile), will be like the storm to the oak, which, though it may scatter the leaves, and snap the smaller branches, serves but to rivet the roots, and to harden and condense the fibres of the tree. You would have us encourage our sons to prove all things by their own experience, while our daughters must not even profit by the experience of others. Now I would have both so to benefit by the experience of others, and the precepts of a higher authority, that they should know beforehand to refuse the evil and choose the good, and require no experimental proofs to teach them the evil of transgression. I would not send a poor girl into the world, unarmed against her foes, and ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself; - and as for my son - if I thought he would grow up to be what you call a man of the world - one that has "seen life," and glories in his experience, even though he should so far profit by it as to sober down, at length, into a useful and respected member of society - I would rather that he died to-morrow! - rather a thousand times!
Summary: This is the story of a woman's struggle for independence. Helen "Graham" has returned to Wildfell Hall in flight from a disastrous marriage. Exiled to the desolate moorland mansion, she adopts an assumed name and earns her living as a painter. Anne Bronte also wrote the semi-autobiographical, Agnes Grey (1847).
Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
Summary: This is the story of a woman's struggle for independence. Helen "Graham" has returned to Wildfell Hall in flight from a disastrous marriage. Exiled to the desolate moorland mansion, she adopts an assumed name and earns her living as a painter. Anne Bronte also wrote the semi-autobiographical, Agnes Grey (1847).
The Pillar Portrait (from left to right: Anne, Emily, Charlotte)
Background: Only one group portrait painting survives of all three Bronte Sisters, painted in the 1830s by their teenage brother Branwell. It is known as the Pillar Portrait because, before completion, Branwell painted his own figure out of the picture. His outline is just visible behind the pillar. The painting was seen by people visiting Rev. Patrick Bronte at Haworth Parsonage in the 1850s. It is obviously not a masterpiece but, as with the destroyed group portrait, visitors were told that the resemblances were good. There is a description of the painting in Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte (1857).
The painting was at Haworth Parsonage until the death of Rev. Patrick Bronte in 1861 when Charlotte's widower, Arthur Bell Nicholls, took it with him to Ireland. The portrait was hidden away in a wardrobe in his house. A photo of it was sent to him in the 1890s but he was rather vague and neglected to point out that it depicted his first wife Charlotte. Arthur Bell Nicholls died in 1906 but the painting wasn't discovered until 1914.
