Brontes - any fans who can explain…

[Peverellshire]

1. Which was the most talented? Best book in your opinion?
2. Could most clergymen’s daughters write well? Did their isolation set them apart & focus imagination.
3. Was Branwell an alcoholic? And or mentally unwell? What was up? Did he have an affair with that woman of house or exaggerated? What was root of downfall?
4. Was Patrick Bronte, unusual, aspirational even? Thinking about emphasis on education & changing surname from more ordinary, Brunty. Why?
5. If the sisters had moved & lived away from home would they have ultimately led happier lives, been more content? I know one did but the lure of home too strong.
6. If their mother had lived would that have dramatically altered the course of their life?

Thanks!

Do you have an essay to write?

Definitely sounds like an essay with a set of very woolly and unanswerable questions to me. The answer to Patrick changing his name was because Brunty was Irish and Britain had a lot of anti Irish and anti Catholic feeling at the time - the Irish being seen by some people as less than human.

The rest of it is far too much intellectual effort for a Sunday morning.

Could most clergymen’s daughters write well? Did their isolation set them apart & focus imagination

The only ones I can think of are the Brontes and Jane Austen; and the latter was far from isolated, socially or geographically. But mostly, these questions are nonsense.

Heard of Google?

No, although have an educational/studying itch to scratch. Read a bio, more than one in past, & found absolutely fascinating. Lowood, horrific. Imagine losing your wife & two eldest in quick succession.

Patrick seems very interesting in particular. Really passionate about his daughters receiving an education. I need to visit their home.

I imagine the girls & young women were highly unusual, hence their enduring fame. Maybe others in a similar position would also have been as educated & written well (?)

Are you studying them? The best book IMO is Jane Eyre but that’s just because I enjoy it, it’s not necessarily the best written. Emily’s talents definitely lay more in poetry for me, I’ve never been able to get on with Wuthering Heights for a few reasons - but I love her poetry.

Re Branwell Bronte, BBC showed a fantastic film a few years ago at Christmas called To Walk Invisible. Very much worth a watch and gives a good perspective of the family as a whole.

I just listened to Agnes Gray this morning before getting up. Those books are scary, what women put up with.

Haworth is well worth a visit and you might find out the answers to some of these questions! Beautiful wee place and very interesting.

@dontknowwhattothinkordo thanks so much. Branwell, so much wasted potential. Tragic. Interesting he scrubbed himself from the portrait, I wonder if Patrick’s expectations very hard to live up to.

I came to say, visit Haworth.

I think Patrick was unusual- he seemed to value education, and for women! The sisters were isolated which may have had an impact.

My favourite is The tenant of Wildfell Hall

There is some thought that Emily at least may have had some autistic traits - which definitely comes across in To Walk Invisible in terms of her characterisation, but that could also be explained by her life circumstances.

It is interesting re lack of a mother. That’s a theme that comes up a lot in Jane Eyre - you’ve now got me wondering if Jane was so fiercely independent because she didn’t have a mother as such and if that’s a reflection of Charlotte herself …

I studied Jane Eyre to university level - did my final dissertation on Jane Eyre, Rebecca, The Bell Jar and The Yellow Wallpaper (mental illness and it’s depiction in so called feminist lit, especially the ‘madwoman in the attic’ trope.

On my list.

Believe it or not, my interest was sparked by an early Blue Peter Doc! If anyone remembers :) very ropey recording if still about. He certainly got them thinking, a vignette in his study with a mask & asking each what they thought best virtues were. Or something like that. From memory, he outlived them all, how sad.

Sounds very interesting. The limited external stimulation, esp when young, must have meant mainly about CB’s internal world. Imagine losing two sisters to school too, traumatising. How close were they to the Aunt, she feels like a cook/housekeeper more than a motherly soul, but not sure.

The opportunities Branwell was given, what he was able to 'get away with', compared to his sisters, says a lot about sex and class for that era.

Wuthering Heights is not a love story. Jane Eyre is interesting to read alongside Wide Sargasso Sea.

Emily liked doing domestic chores. Charlotte controlled the 'image' of her sisters and family to some extent.

They lost their sisters as well as their mother.

Mine was my mum - she wasn’t a big reader but for some reason she had read the first chapter or so of Jane Eyre and was very taken with the ‘I am not deceitful, for if I were, I should tell you that I loved you’ bit - I remember when I went into fifth/sixth year at school not having a clue what to study and mum urging me to read Jane Eyre. She had been to Haworth back in the 80s and loved the film with Anna Paquin/Elle Macpherson. (I think it was made in the early 90s). Happy memories of Sunday afternoons watching it together whilst my mum did the ironing.

Never did manage to go to Haworth with mum - she’s since been diagnosed with dementia so it would be impossible now, but it’s on my list of places to go to - a v close friend is a huge fan of Wuthering Heights and I’m hoping one day the two of us can go for a weekend.

He did, he outlived the entire family. I can’t remember if any of them had any children that would still have descendants alive today but I don’t think so.

The Brontes by Juliet Barker is extremely well-researched and very readable.

https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/juliet-barker/brontes/9781857990690?cq_src=google_ads&cq_cmp=18244219672&cq_con=&cq_med=pla&cq_plac=&cq_net=x&gclid=Cj0KCQjwx5qoBhDyARIsAPbMagC6q-hxXJAzsSzK3SvWsoQv0L945CjNGH-157cA9EPwW2JjGopUKsAaAiVkEALw_wcB#GOR001642390

Took the words out of my mouth 😂

Do you want me to resurrect my 40 year old Jane Eyre essay @Peverellshire? I think I got a first equivalent for it.

Patrick Brontë was remarkable in that he was from a family of ten, headed up by his farm labourer father.
He would have been born into real poverty but self educated to the extent that he attended Cambridge. Going from being apprentices to a blacksmith in County Down to Cambridge must have been the most amazing journey.

So did Patrick change religion (denomination) as well, @Winterscomingagain?

@dontknowwhattothinkordo Your Mum sounds lovely. I don’t think direct descendants. CB died from hyperemesis I think, sad, if so, as so treatable today. We should both def go to Haworth when we can.

On Haworth I read the position of house near graveyard & ground/drainage made it an unhealthy place to live? Not sure if case.

As their mother from Cornwall I imagine a move to Yorkshire with all those children & young toddler, stressful & I think she was ill by then.

I used to write essays for money in the pre internet days......

Visit the Bronte Museum in Haworth.. been often.Very interesting and informative.
The village too.

He sounds fiercely bright & fascinating. John Clare vibes. No doubt his children were too. Branwell had such early promise, the soldiers, Angria. The bond with sisters. Did Patrick push him too hard I wonder? Too ambitious for him?

I wonder what became of Patrick’s siblings, will have to look up. Why didn’t Patrick move on from Haworth, seems ambitious? Or write himself.

No , his father was a member of the Church of Ireland and his mother was Catholic.
The children would have been brought up as Protestants.It would have been a remarkably poor upbringing.

I think Emily was extremely unusual, Jane to some extent, in that they presumably were quite sheltered and yet wrote books containing necrophilia, female lust (for pleasure not romance), extreme jealousy and possessiveness and mental illness. I wonder how they ever conceived of these ideas. I'm a writer and I feel I can only really write about things I know about with any authenticity.
Haven't read any of Anne so can't comment.
I think Branwell was probably a sub-par writer compared to his sisters. They liked to make out that it was his illness/ addiction that stopped him from making his name as a writer but maybe he just wasn't that good.