The Brontes have been 'queered'

And Ellis Jeffreys' actual name (Ellis Jeffreys was her stage name) was the clearly androgynous Minnie Gertrude Ellis Jeffreys.

The gender of the authors was hotly debated

Interesting that they are using gender here as a synonym for sex, because contemporary critics were absolutely not debating gender in the way it is sometimes meant now...

Yes I know Currer is a surname, that’s why I asked about parallel names rather than other examples of that actual name. It reads as masculine to me because from what I have seen it was pretty common to give surnames to boys as first names and much less so for girls.

The other thing that pisses me off about this is that it’s backwards in terms of how understanding the past - or any subject - works. (Compare the stupid “queering” of botany that Kew Gardens attempted )

if you start out with queer theory as your toolkit you can impose it on any topic in a meaningless, distorted way by picking up on any aspect of your topic that you can twist into a queer-theory-looking shape. Some plants and animals are hermaphroditic or asexual, some women from the past used male names or disguises to get ahead. That has nothing to do with queer theory but you force-team them for some sad, uninformative, politicised exhibition or publication instead of focusing on actual real information and insight that helps to make subjects like these actually come alive and helps people really understand and relate to them. It’s the reverse of good scholarship and good interpretive work.

Women have had to hide their true identities throughout history but we don't see anything wrong with the false identity now overtaking the true identity?
We are now saying they must have embraced this false identity so much they were always it? The claimed identity was the actual identity trying to 'come out? Really?

They would really not have preferred not to hide who they were? Not to be proud of who they were without masking? All this during pride month?

Really?

I thought we'd lost our way but fuck me we've really lost our way.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Jeffreys

Again, Currer is a surname. It's not a given name. You'd struggle to find anyone with it as a first name.

I would be interested to know of Victorian women given first names parallel to those. Perhaps you have some examples? I have never come across nineteenth century women with names like those and to me they read as clearly masculine, but I am always ready to learn more 🙂

Oh FFS. I agree it’s dishonest. It’s retrospectively imposing a 21st century concept on women who didn’t think that way. I am pretty certain from their extensive writings that none of the Brontes considered their “gender identity” or what they ‘identified as”. They clearly knew they were women and had a lot of understanding about the unfairness of how they were treated because of their sex.

Don’t forget they had a very difficult, unproductive (to put it kindly) brother who wasn’t placed under the societal restrictions they were and they were very aware of that.

if they’d chosen unambiguously male names to publish under, what would the “queer” lobby have to say about that - that they were actually men probably. Load of bollocks.

and why does everything have to be (ugh) “queered” - why aren’t we going back and imposing incorrect disabilities, ethnicities or religions on people from the past. Because it would be bloody offensive is why. And so is imposing this shite on women who had nothing to do with it.

I know this may be cynical, but... does the museum receive grants from somewhere? Is that 'somewhere' a body that requires lots of paperwork (they usually do) and are there boxes to be ticked?

Because that's what this smacks of. The one thing it doesn't resemble in any way is: good scholarship.

Lots of Victorian given names were rather strange, and not easily identifiable as either male or female. Sometimes, surnames were used as Christian names. So the names chosen by the Brontë women sound unusual, but not weird - and quite masculine.

Oh that’s a shame, was going to visit again next week, shan’t bother now - the eye roll will be so huge I might fall over.
And for whoever mentioned George Eliot, pretty sure Mary Ann Evans has already been transed by some fool or other.

It's not merely dishonest, it's opportunistic historical revisionism.

The implication of the posts is that they chose androgynous names as they were playing around with their 'gender identity'. Not that they had no choice but to do this to stand a chance of being published (and to avoid the scandal of a woman having written about the topics they covered). It's a dishonest representation of what they were doing.”

How do you know that they weren’t?

It's a stones throw from Hebden Bridge after all....

Sigh… did this type not learn when they tried to “queer” Anne Lister? Morons.

Personally I think applying gender identity theories to 19th C literature is like applying Freudian theory to the bible. The Bronte’s would have had no concept of gender identity, just the knowledge that if they obscured the fact they were female their books might stand a chance of being published. It’s a complete misreading of the Bronte experience.

The patriarchy was what was wrong with it. The fact that women couldn't publish under their actual names and still be taken seriously (cf. also Mary Ann Evans). Androgyny in this context does not equal 'queer'.

The patriarchy was to blame then, and it's to blame now. The TRA lobby hates women, but not enough so that they will ever be willing to leave them, their spaces, or their achievements well alone.

The title slide is "Pride at the Parsonage: The Brontës and Gender Identity".

A lot of excellent comments on the post, I’m encouraged to see that.

I understand a little where @Flickersy is coming from but the fact they’ve chosen to do this during pride, with all the pride banners, and describing it as an exploration of gender identity does make it clear they’re taking a gender ID angle. It could and should more properly be described as an exploration of sexism and the barriers women faced at that time, and I don’t see how it has any connection to pride.

You didn't say anything about their legacy being queered. You said the Brontës had been queered (it's literally the title of your thread), which is patently untrue.

Look, I agree this shoehorning is ridiculous and they're going to dislocate something from reaching like that about Lucy. But the bulk of what the museum has posted is not a lie, it's historically accurate.

I think people have seen the rainbow flags and assumed, without reading what has been written.

I like the comments!