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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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 🙂

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.

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.

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.

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 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...

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

I'm not sure of the point of that link to the Wikipedia page.

Minnie Gertrude Ellis Jeffreys (12 May 1868(?)[n 1] – 21 January 1943) was an English actress

They, as women, knew that they hadn’t a hope of being taken seriously.

In Charlotte's own words:

Adverse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women – without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called ‘feminine’ – we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice[.]”

I cant see any relevance in arguing whether 'Currer' or 'Ellis' were given names or not; if you looked hard enough you’d probably find one or two people with that name, but it’s beside the point as far as I can see.

Remember that all the children, Branwell included, had spent years inventing the vivid fantasy-worlds of Angria and Gondal in which they assumed the personas of dashing military men, dukes, duchesses, ladies, gentlemen….but that did NOT mean they had any confusion about their 'gender identity'. It’s called ‘imagination'.

Charlotte, Emily and Anne knew they were women - they'd had a lifetime of housekeeping, governessing and domestic drudgery from which Branwell was exempted by virtue of being a boy - and they damn well knew they'd be laughed out of any publisher’s office if they sent in a MS under their own names.

I'm a member of the Brontë Society, which used to be a reputable organisation, and bilge like this makes me furious.

The gender of the authors was hotly debated

The SEX of the authors was debated - but not by the authors themselves! Everyone involved knew that the authors were either male or female. The authors themselves knew they were female. Furthermore, it was because they were female that they used pseudonyms. Not because they thought they weren’t!

<thunk>

It is certainly meant to be masculine. As were they all. In Charlotte’s own words, in fact, as quoted by PP above.

I am usually the first to dislike all this.
But Shirley (by Charlotte B) was quite a shocking thing at the time because the heroine was called by what was then a man's name. I read it so long ago, that I can't remember much more than that, but didn't the heroine behave in a way outside of the gender stereotypes at the time?
I'm not banging the drum for one side or the other, but a stopped clock is right twice a day, and maybe it is worth exploring.

If they still have the visitor comments book at the Bronte museum, you could write what you think in it?

Can't go unfortunately, so I shall write what I think here: What a load of crap.

I wholeheartedly agree that the sexism of the time (only improved a minuscule amount since then) prevented the Brontë sisters from publishing under their real names.

Therefore talking about them during Pride month, which is about sexuality and gender identity (not biological sex) is completely irrelevant.

If it was an equality day or a women’s day or a feminist day - yes.

But yet again we have a situation where biological sex/sexism is getting confused with gender.

I think it is a rather dishonest representation to declare that every person who writes or does something that doesn’t follow sexist stereotypes has anything to do with ‘gender identity’ at all. To suggest gender identity exploration was the motivation of the Brontes is essentially ideologically biased and very weak. It is retrofitting a modern day perspective.

The Brontes and their characters behaved outside gender stereotypes. That is feminism, not queer theory. Neither they nor their characters were any less female for breaking stereotypes. Either in reality, or in the views of people at the time and the brontes themselves.

Queer theory promotes the idea that the stereotypes you cling to actually indicate your sex. That by breaking a stereotype imposed on women, you’re actually not a woman. In other words, that stereotypes should be upheld.

A PP asked for examples of Ellis as a given name for women.

I provided one.

If the Brontes were "examining their gender identity", it would only be in a very critical way, on how the sexist gender roles allocated to women held them back.

This is just more proof that the gender identity lens is anti-feminist. Instead of seeing gender stereotypes as the problem, you see the problem being that people are not allowed to easily break from the stereotypes ie the problem is personal, not structural.

If the Brontes were "examining their gender identity", it would only be in a very critical way, on how the sexist gender roles allocated to women held them back.

This is just more proof that the gender identity lens is anti-feminist. Instead of seeing gender stereotypes as the problem, you see the problem being that people are not allowed to easily break from the stereotypes ie the problem is personal, not structural.

I cant see any relevance in arguing whether 'Currer' or 'Ellis' were given names or not; if you looked hard enough you’d probably find one or two people with that name, but it’s beside the point as far as I can see

Theres a rather lovely theory (which you probably already know as a member of the society), that they may have been the surnames of two published female authors and the female owner of one of the most extensive libraries of the time, which, if indeed the case, would be a great FU to the patriarchy of the time.