ADSactly Literature - Runs in the Family - The Story of the Bronte Sisters (Part 1)
Hello, dear @adsactly readers. Today, I thought we’d talk about a trio that’s always fascinated me to a certain extent and that is, the Bronte sisters.
To me, it’s incredible to think they are all well-established literary figures in our world today, that they all had the talent to rise there, particularly difficult in the 19th century, when women were treated very differently than they are today.
Of course, it can be argued that one was more talented than the others, but that depends on personal preference, really and they are all widely-respected authors (status they enjoyed during their own lifetimes, also).
Especially since, despite the title of this article, the Brontes’ ancestry was one of illiterates, which I believe makes the Bronte sisters all the more fascinating. Interestingly enough, the Bronte sisters were always prolific writers, often letting their imaginations run wild, when they were children and making up stories and entirely fictional worlds.
In childhood, the sisters along with their brother Branwell, would spend hours chronicling the lives of the inhabitants in their imagined worlds, either through prose or with articles and poems, many of which still exist today.
The children lived in relative isolation from the rest of the world, which only encouraged them to get lost inside their fantasies, becoming almost obsessive about these invented worlds, an obsession they would carry well into adolescence. In a way, their isolation also explained their proclivity to fantasy and making up adventures.
Emily, Anne and Charlotte Image
Surely, this image of children playing together on the English moors and telling stories and making up adventures in nature sounds all very bohemian, but the Brontes’ childhoods were deeply blighted by deaths and sadness. First, came the death of their mother, Maria, when the children were very young. She died at the relatively young (at least, by our judgment) age of thirty-eight, from uterine cancer, leaving behind a husband, Patrick and no less than six children. However, not all would reach maturity.
Four years after Maria’s untimely death, the family was shaken by tragedy again, when the oldest daughters of the family, Elizabeth and Maria, succumbed to tuberculosis and died within weeks of each other, Maria at age 11 and Elizabeth at only 10 years old.
And while the young Bronte girls, Emily and Anne, admittedly had been too young to remember their mother well, or indeed, her death, they definitely remembered the deaths of their two sisters.
It seems a tragedy to think that all the surviving Bronte children would eventually die of tuberculosis, as well. Certainly, a disease that haunted the Bronte family.
After the two girls died in 1825, it was believed that they had contracted the disease due to the poor living conditions at the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, where all the girls (except for Anne, who was too young) had been enrolled the year before. Fearing for Charlotte and Emily’s lives, Patrick Bronte pulled the girls out of school and from then on, he was the one who oversaw their education.
This school would later be immortalized in Charlotte Bronte’s ‘Jane Eyre’, as Lowood Institution. A school for poor, orphaned girls, Lowood reflects the harsh treatment the Brontes endured at Cowan Bridge and the tyrannical characters of Mr. Brocklehurst (the headmaster) and Miss Scatcherd was actually based on the people in charge of the school.
Interesting to note, the death of Jane Eyre’s only friend, an older girl called Helen Burns, closely resembles the death of Charlotte’s oldest sister, Maria.
Later, at age 14, Charlotte would be sent as a pupil to the school of Miss Wooler, where she would later become a teacher. Emily and Anne also followed their older sister there.
And from here on, I find it only appropriate to look at the three sisters individually, but before we do, I would like to add a word about Branwell Bronte, who, even though greatly outdone by his sisters, was a writer and painter also.
Self-portrait of Branwell Bronte Image
However, Branwell found it hard to decide on one specific job and drifted from one thing to another, during his lifetime. He faced rejection from the artistic world, which prompted his drinking (worsened, it’s believed, by an affair with a married woman). Branwell fell into serious alcohol problems and died of tuberculosis (probably worsened by his substance abuse) at the age of 31.
Branwell painted the most well-known picture of the Bronte sisters, which, in the beginning featured his image also. However, Branwell grew displeased with the image and painted himself out, leaving only the three Bronte sisters.
1. Charlotte Bronte
The oldest of the three surviving Bronte girls and also, the first one to enjoy literary success, Charlotte Bronte’s youth was largely unhappy. First, working as a teacher at Miss Wooler left her feeling alone and alienated. She didn’t enjoy her work and didn’t really like the children she was teaching to. She also saw little literary success at first, even receiving the following discouraging advice from Poet Laurate Robert Southey:
Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it even as an accomplishment and a recreation.
Charlotte didn’t listen to the advice (and thank goodness she didn’t), but it was still rather dispiriting. Later, she worked as a governess, which she disliked even more.
However, all these experiences would prove to be worthwhile, since they inspired the events of her most acclaimed novel, Jane Eyre, about an honest and rather plain young governess who falls into various misfortunes.
With the publication of Jane Eyre in 1847, Charlotte’s life changed by quite a bit. The novel was an immediate success (a grim parallel to the fate of her first novel, The Professor, which was sadly rejected and only saw the light posthumously). The sisters were soon accepted and revered in literary circles.
Jane Eyre was regarded as highly controversial at the time, both because of the events of the book itself, and also because of the first-person female perspective of the writing (which she would later use in Villette).
Charlotte’s personal life was also a great source of inspiration. As a young woman, she attended the Belgian boarding school headed by Constantin Heger, a married man Charlotte is believed to have been in love with and who, very likely, inspired Mr Rochester and the character of Paul Emanuel in Villette).
Charlotte Bronte eventually married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father’s curate. It’s interesting to note that the Bronte sisters used the male pen-names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell and they took the surname from Arthur Bell Nicholls himself.
Charlotte seemed to have a happy, though short, married life. However, she became pregnant soon after the wedding and even though the official cause of her death was tuberculosis, there are many who believe she was suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum (excessive morning sickness) and that may have led to her untimely demise.
She died aged thirty-eight, in 1855, the last of the original Bronte clan (both her sisters and her brother had died within a year of each other in 1848-9).
Given that the subject is an extremely rich one, I thought it best to split this story in two. The next installment will try to shed a bit of light on the lives of Anne and Emily Bronte.
So, who's your favorite Bronte? Do tell us about her in the comments!
Authored by: @honeydue
References: Wikipedia
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Thank you!
Hello, @honeydue.
I really liked this post.
I like biographies but I avoid, in general, by a kind of mania to keep the world of fiction separate from the real world, read biographies of writers. However, somehow, the treatment you give to these characters has aroused much curiosity and I will look for how to expand the information.
The misfortune of tuberculosis in this family is really hard. I didn't know the data on deaths due to illness and at such an early age. That moved me. Also the sad luck of the male brother... a unknown despite having sought to develop his talent. Very sad.
A hug and thank you for sharing it, and @adsactly for publishing it.
Oh I know what you mean, I usually don't like hearing about my favorite writers/actors/musicians precisely because I know that the real life story would somehow ruin it.
But when you do get to reading about some of them, you find they had such compelling stories that you like them even more, you know?
Thanks for reading! :)
It happens, it's true. Horacio Quiroga's life is impressive and more tragic than his stories, for example.
Thanks to you for bringing new interests to this shore.
I very much enjoyed Jayne Eyre, it's interesting to see how autobiographical it was. Great write up. I'm looking forward to Emily Bronte's write up, Wuthering Heights is one of my favourites and I studied it at uni. I'm not sure if I put my essay about it on steemit yet.
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I hope you enjoyed the part about Emily Bronte as well (it's not been up for a few days). :) It's one of my favorites as well! If you do decide to post that essay on Steemit, do be sure to tag me in it as I would love to read it! :)
Thanks for reading and commenting!
@honeydue, I will. I haven't got to read the Emily one yet but will look at it today.
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You give us a fairly complete overview of the lives of the Brontë sisters. As I said in a commentary on a past post of yours, they are writers who, although they were not milestones in the renewal of modern English literature, as will be the case, for example, Virginia Woolf, provided in their works a revealing vision of English society in the second half of the 19th century. Their combination of romanticism and realism gives access to the subjectivity (sensibility, ideas, customs) of the time, already marked by that great conservatism that was called "Victorianism". In the interesting film versions of her novels, in this case Jane Eyre, she has been able to represent these social and moral conditions. It would be interesting to have some commentary on her works, although your interest is in biography. I congratulate you on the excellent illustrations that accompany your text. Thank you, @honeydue.
Honestly, I think Charlotte was indeed a great insight into life in the 19th century and into what society was like then. But Emily is so much more than that. Her Wuthering Heights is a great story about the human mind and heart, it's about psychology and feeling and about what makes us human. in a way transcends the simple 'view into the past' idea that is true for other writers.
Thanks for reading! :)
I can imagine how hard these women's lives could have been not only because of illness, but also because of the conservatism of the time. It is said that Branwell and his sister Emily felt a forbidden love, and that's why it was their hobby for drugs and alcohol. My favourite is the dark, shy and introverted Emily Brontë and her only novel Wuthering Heights, the great classic of English literature. She is said to be the writer who transferred to paper the passions she could not live and even suffered from Asperger's Syndrome. I will wait for your next delivery, @honeydue. Thank you for always sharing fun materials.
I'm a bit skeptic of that story, to be honest, given that there is absolutely no proof that Emily and Branwell had an incestuous relationship. Many writers and biographers of the Brontes have insisted on that idea (making various claims from the one where they were lovers to the one where Branwell raped his own sisters) , but I think they did so to enhance their own popularity (because everyone loves a good scandal). There was no actual evidence that such a relationship existed, though.
As for her suffering from any sort of mental disease, I think that's just another example of our modern day society trying to impose ideas on the past and to explain it. Given that there is precious little information available about Emily's life, I find it a bit hard to believe that it was enough for doctors to actually find she suffered from any sort of mental issue.
Thanks for reading and commenting :)
This quite fascinating and informative
I would love to read about their brother Branwell in one of your subsequent posts
Thank you :) Glad you enjoyed. It's an interesting suggestion. I'm not sure yet if we'll have a full article just on Branwell (especially since this series was focused on the girls) :)But I will definitely keep it in mind!
I love the bronte's and their lives are so interesting and in some ways just very Victorian, they seem to be very much of 'their time' in the sense of their living and writing and experiencing life 'at home'.
Yes, they certainly were women of their time and in the case of Charlotte's writing, I think reading her offers great insight into Victorian society :) I love them, too. They were fascinating, both IRL and on the page.
I can imagine how hard these women's lives could have been not only because of illness, but also because of the conservatism of the time. It is said that Branwell and his sister Emily felt a forbidden love, and that's why it was their hobby for drugs and alcohol. My favourite is the dark, shy and introverted Emily Brontë and her only novel Wuthering Heights, the great classic of English literature. She is said to be the writer who transferred to paper the passions she could not live and even suffered from Asperger's Syndrome. I will wait for your next delivery, @honeydue. Thank you for always sharing fun materials.
Inspiring posts
The choice of the life of the writer who is full of struggle. Deep impressions in life that are full of twists and turns of the three Bronte likes and sorrows will certainly inspire us all. In his life both Charlotte, Emily and Anne had to live their own fate. The struggle for women who lived at that time would certainly be a heavy terrace, so they would have to go through day after day to support themselves.
what we should emulate is Charlotte's success in writing. He still recorded the events which later became an inspiration in writing his book. This is a positive value about how life's journey becomes the source of writing. Of course birth and inner experience are the key when writing as a work.
Thank you @honeydue
Thank you @adasctly
thank you Steemit
Warm regard from Indonesia