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).

Shakespeare was the greatest gender bender of all time. He doesn’t need “them” to do it to him.

They have NO art of their own so in a desperate attempt to stay 'relevant' they queer everything.

I reference this workshop session from a previously sensible foundation.

Seed Saving. In which male pollen pollenates female ovules and produces fruit and then seeds. There is no 'heteronormative ideals' in plants that use sexual reproduction to produce seeds that we save for growing food.

It is fucking deranged.

They have NO art of their own

Did you allow that to pass through your brain?

Seed Savers?

What, and I say this as a biologist, the Actual Fuck?!

The idea that any woman who fights or fails to conform to sexist stereotypes magically stops being a woman is infuriating.

I know, right!

What The Fuck Have I Just Read?

Signed,
A biologist

I still can't...

This was last year by the way.

That isn't the implication at all. Nobody is 'queering' anyone.

Also, they did have a choice. There were other novelists published under female names at the time, and earlier (including gothic novelists who wrote books a lot more shocking, at the time, than the Brontes did). They made a conscious decision to publish with male/unisex names - and that was before they published their novels. Their first published work was their poetry.

Yes, that choice was made within in the context of the time, and their own social status and upbringing as the daughters of a middle-class clergyman. But it was still a choice, and it was a choice that related to gender norms, which is interesting for its own sake. They could, for example, have published as anonymous women (Jane Austen published her books as 'By A Lady') or with obviously male names (as George Eliot did).

It isn't dishonest to discuss this in the context of gender and identity, and the posts don't imply anything about the Brontes' sexuality. It's a perfectly valid and relevant thing to discuss and it is simply not as black and white as 'they had no choice'. I remember lectures going into this when I was studying the Brontes as part of my degree, and that was 30 years ago, so it's not a new area of interest and not one that's fuelled by recent awareness of trans issues.

This discussion though, about the Brontës, is about feminism, sexism, breaking down gender stereotypes, expectations and rigid enforcement of them. It's got nothing to do with recent ideas about "gender identity" particularly because those ideas are illogical, lacking definitions and meaning. And queer theory is a load of bunk too.

It wasn't really because they thought they would have difficulty getting published, but because they were concerned about the preconceptions that would affect reactions to their work if people knew they were women - especially given the nature of their work. Being a woman wasn't necessarily a barrier in itself to being published, as Jane Austen demonstrated in the previous century; her name wasn't shown on her books during her lifetime, but the author was stated to be "A Lady".

The Bronté sisters were the daughters of a clergyman, living in the rural West riding of Yorkshire, at the beginning of the industrial revolution. The idea that they could write about passion, land ownership, the introduction of Mills and luddites, as women and be accepted, is quite bonkers!

Oh FFS we all know they used pseudonyms. There was no contemplating gender identity in it at all. God I'm sick to the back teeth of all this bollocks. Is nothing safe from trans bullshit anymore🤬

Of course it’s valid to have conversations about their motivations and the constraints in which they found themselves living. And of course that it is interesting. I don’t think anyone disagrees with that.

The issue is trying to paint that discussion as one associated with the modern pride movement, which is very far removed from the considerations of the Brontes’ time.

The topics are totally unrelated. That’s not to say either is wrong or invalid, they’re just separate. And it’s so frustrating for anything and everything to be shoehorned in to pride when actually, the issues around this discussion are quite clearly ones of sex, misogyny, societal expectations of women etc and not at all to do with the modern understanding of gender identity.

Of course they’re “queering” the idea of the Brontes using male pseudonyms, otherwise they would have posted this at any other time of the year. Instead they posted it surrounded by rainbows and trans flags. The usual contrary posters pretended otherwise I see🙄.

Wait until you hear about Marxist literacy criticism. It’ll blow your minds.

Re Kew, the Mammal Society is doing something similar.

https://x.com/Mammal_Society/status/1799411133712867596

Jane Austen’s work is much more polite. And I have wondered whether she would have felt less constrained if she had written under a male pseudonym.

I rarely agree with you @Blossomtoes but Shakespeare is definitely the king of gender fluidity.

Yes, I agree, and in the post you've quoted I said "and to avoid the scandal of a woman having written about the topics they covered".

This has absolutely nothing to do with Pride though. There's no evidence whatsoever that any of the Brontes were same sex attracted or identified as anything other than women. (Identifying as a different gender wasn't a concept that existed back then.)

🥂

Identifying as a different gender wasn't a concept that existed back then.

I refer you to Shakespeare who I believe preceded the Brontes by a couple of centuries.

Cross dressing, or playing a cross sex role is not the same as having a "gender identity", @BIossomtoes Shakespeare wasn't commenting on "gender identity" he was commenting on sex-based roles and expectations, and what can happen when someone presents as the opposite sex.