The Brontes have been 'queered'

[biddyboo]

For Pride month, the Bronte Parsonage museum has posted a number of Facebook posts exploring the Brontes and 'gender identity'

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/eGENRmGQPkz7omY5/

The posts talk about the Brontes using 'androgynous' pseudonyms, rather than the male pseudonyms they were necessitated to use due to the sexism of the times they lived in 😕

It hasn't gone down well. Comments were disabled, and the museum posted about commitment to equality and diversity and not tolerating bullying and hatred (I haven't seen evidence of this, just a lot of people outraged about history being rewritten to suit a narrative).

Thank you @fromorbit , I enjoyed reading that.

Agree! Fantastic novel and Helen is a strong, stoic heroine who pulls out all the stops to protect her child from the terrible effects of her husband's alcoholism. Women like this have existed through history and are just as worthy heroines - more so - than your Catherine Earnshaws and Lizzy Bennets.

It's an incredibly powerful novel and does make you wonder what Anne must have witnessed in her life.

I did Villette for O level. Would it be chosen as a GCSE text now? Probably not.
I remember finding it rather unsettling, unsurprisingly perhaps.

the problem with “living as a gender different from your birth sex”? It strongly implies these gender boxes are appropriate and good

... and real.

@MrsWhattery

but this such a narrow, gendered view

Historically the world was a narrow gendered place. You are confusing my comment on historical practices and conventions with my own personal views of contemporary gender - which you‘ve invented to continue this ramble.

It’s an interesting question. In the U.K. I agree it stems from the church, mystery plays etc, and the general status of women.

But it’s a very ancient practice - in Ancient Greece women did not appear on the stage. If Nietzsche is right - that tragedy developed from the mystery rituals of Dionysus - it’s interesting because originally women would have taken part in those rites - the Maenads. (In fact in the Bacchae the Maenads kill Pentheus after he banned the worship of Dionysus). I guess the practice of mask wearing may have made the characterisation feel more symbolic anyway.

Ancient Egypt too had its own performances with words spoken by actors representing different Gods. I highly doubt women were involved in that.

I agree the Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a brilliant novel, and wonder, has the fact the writer takes on the first person persona of a man writing the story been remarked on, and has she been transed accordingly? ( I have not read all the thread from today.)

It is so far before its time in its social realism, from small details of domestic life, to the portrayal of a woman in a dangerous marriage with a monster, and its portrayal of a woman earning a living from her own skill.

Heathcliff and Mr Rochester are both very suspect characters, were they to be real, yet their very cruelty is sublimated into love and passion in the novels.

Anne Brontë goes for the truth of what a relationship with a brute would be like. Must read again, tonight.

Anne is very underrated as both novelist and poet, I think. She was extremely observant of others - she saw her brother conduct an obsessive affair with her employer's wife, then watched him ruin himself with drink and drugs; and working as a governess, she was in a good position to see all the machinations and relationships of a well to do household. People talk, and Anne listened.

Yes, the convention is old. I am curious that in continental Europe women performing was allowed at various times e.g. sixteenth century Spain.

Thank you very much for that.

And also for kindly ignoring my misspelling of Woolf!!

😁

They adopted these names because they couldn’t have published their work under their own names. Establishment publishers of the time wouldn’t have touched them, and there would have been a huge scandal and serious consequences given their stories weren’t conventional and “appropriate” for women writers. They wrote passionate, often disturbing novels about strong-willed, intelligent, flawed, sometimes unlikeable female characters in utterly patriarchal worlds, and male-sounding pseudonyms were a way to get their work out and for it to be judged on its merits. Ascribing their motivations to “gender identity” is anachronistic and completely ahistorical.

Good point - Commedia Del’Arte in Italy used women from I think around the 1550s - they had to get permission from the Vatican.

It’s interesting Spain and Italy are both strongly Catholic countries - and yet the approach to women in the theatre was more enlightened.

But the CdelA was much tamer than Shakespeare and pantomimic - so I don’t know if that was an issue.