Category Archives: Bronte, Anne

The Full Brontë

In 2023, I decided to finish reading all of the novels by the Brontë sisters. My daughter and I sometimes read classics together, and we read Jane Eyre (a reread for me), Wuthering Heights (also a reread for me) and Tenant of Wildfell Hall (not a reread for me). Years ago, I read the other novel by Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey.

After finishing Tenant, I decided that it would be a good year to finish reading the remaining 3 books by the Charlotte Brontë: The Professor, Shirley and Villette. My goal was to finish them by the end of the year. I finished the last page of Villette on New Years Eve. I can now provide my definitive ranking of the Brontë canon:

Jane Eyre (will always be my favorite) by Charlotte
Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne
Villette by Charlotte
Wuthering Heights (I have a love/hate relationship with this book) by Emily
Shirley by Charlotte
Agnes Grey by Anne
The Professor by Charlotte

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
by Anne Bronte
Rating: ★★★★½
Publication Date: January 1, 1848
Genre: classic
Pages: 524
ReRead?: No
Project: classics club round 2

'She looked so like herself that I knew not how to bear it'

In this sensational, hard-hitting and passionate tale of marital cruelty, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall sees a mysterious tenant, Helen Graham, unmasked not as a 'wicked woman' as the local gossips would have it, but as the estranged wife of a brutal alcoholic bully, desperate to protect her son.

Using her own experiences with her brother Branwell to depict the cruelty and debauchery from which Helen flees, Anne Bronte wrote her masterpiece to reflect the fragile position of women in society and her belief in universal redemption, but scandalized readers of the time.

This is my second favorite Brontë novel. It starts with a letter from Gilbert Markham to a friend, about the mysterious Helen Graham, who has moved into Wildfell Hall after leaving her abusive husband. She, and her son, are living there in secret. The story develops with Gilbert falling in love with Mrs. Graham and generally being an irritating hanger-on.

Helen is an interesting character. She can be tiresome and preachy while also be representative of something very new and different – a woman with backbone enough to leave her abusive, alcoholic husband. The connection between Arthur, Helen’s husband, and Branwell Brontë, Anne’s ne’er do well, underachieving, self-indulgent alcoholic brother is very obvious. And, as art imitates life, Branwell died a rather terrible death as a result of his self-indulgence.

I’ve read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights many times. Tenant of Wildfell Hall will definitely become a book that I reread in similar fashion.

Villette
by Charlotte Bronte
Rating: ★★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1853
Genre: classic
Pages: 611
ReRead?: No

Villette is Charlotte Brontë's powerful autobiographical novel of one woman's search for true love, edited with an introduction by Helen M. Cooper in Penguin Classics.

With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette. There, she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, the hostility of headmistress Madame Beck, and her own complex feelings - first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor Paul Emanuel. Drawing on her own deeply unhappy experiences as a governess in Brussels, Charlotte Brontë'sautobiographical novel, the last published during her lifetime, is a powerfully moving study of loneliness and isolation, and the pain of unrequited love, narrated by a heroine determined to preserve an independent spirit in the face of adverse circumstances.

Villette was the last of the Brontë novels that I read, and is my third favorite. Until I read the book, I thought that Villette was a person, not a place, so I was surprised to figure out that Villette is a stand-in for Brussels, a city where Charlotte spent a year or two when she was young(er). Charlotte is the longest lived of the three sisters – she made it all the way to age 39. Anne died at 29, Emily at 30.

I really liked the main character of Villette, Lucy Snowe, maybe even best of all of the Brontë women. She’s occasionally overbearing in her martyrdom, but she is also fighting tooth and nail to establish her independence. She is a woman of no resources who ends up being extraordinarily resourceful. She can be difficult to like, but real women can also be difficult to like – especially the ones who are ahead of their time.

I have mixed feelings about the ambiguous ending of Villette – part of me would have preferred a more certain resolution. But, I don’t like the ending that Charlotte had intended for Lucy, so I’m happier with an ending where I can project my need for a positive conclusion onto the book. I will reread this book at some point.

Shirley
by Charlotte Bronte
Rating: ★★★½
Publication Date: January 1, 1849
Genre: classic
Pages: 624
ReRead?: No

Following the tremendous popular success of Jane Eyre, which earned her lifelong notoriety as a moral revolutionary, Charlotte Brontë vowed to write a sweeping social chronicle that focused on "something real and unromantic as Monday morning." Set in the industrializing England of the Napoleonic wars and Luddite revolts of 1811-12, Shirley (1849) is the story of two contrasting heroines. One is the shy Caroline Helstone, who is trapped in the oppressive atmosphere of a Yorkshire rectory and whose bare life symbolizes the plight of single women in the nineteenth century. The other is the vivacious Shirley Keeldar, who inherits a local estate and whose wealth liberates her from convention.

A work that combines social commentary with the more private preoccupations of Jane Eyre, Shirley demonstrates the full range of Brontë's literary talent. "Shirley is a revolutionary novel," wrote Brontë biographer Lyndall Gordon. "Shirley follows Jane Eyre as a new exemplar but so much a forerunner of the feminist of the later twentieth century that it is hard to believe in her actual existence in 1811-12. She is a theoretic possibility: what a woman might be if she combined independence and means of her own with intellect. Charlotte Brontë imagined a new form of power, equal to that of men, in a confident young woman [whose] extraordinary freedom has accustomed her to think for herself....Shirley [is] Brontë's most feminist novel."

For me, Shirley suffers from covering some of the same ground as Elizabeth Gaskell’s more “socially conscious” fiction, such as North and South and, especially, Mary Barton. Set during, and concerning, the Luddite Revolt in the industrialized north of England, the concerns of the working poor are not a natural fit for Charlotte, who seems to have pretty well internalized an acceptance of the hierarchy (which kills off all of her siblings) in which she lives, and who is better with melodrama and gothic stylings. She is no firebrand for the plight of the working man.

This book claims, early on, that it is not a romance, but it is a marriage plot in the way of Trollope. The two main female characters: Caroline and Shirley, are both unmarried and both are married by the end of the book. The two primary “romantic” leads, while not particularly heroic in the romance sense, are pretty obvious from the beginning.

Having said that, I enjoyed both Caroline and Shirley, even if I am entirely lukewarm on the men they married. I may reread this book at some point.

The Professor
by Charlotte Bronte
Rating: ★★½
Publication Date: January 1, 1857
Genre: classic
Pages: 316
ReRead?: No

"The middle and latter portion of The Professor is as good as I can write. It contains more pith, more substance, more reality, in my judgment, than much of Jane Eyre ." - Charlotte Brontë

The Professor was the first novel that Charlotte Brontë completed. Rejected by the publisher who took on the work of her sisters in 1846--Anne's Agnes Grey and Emily's Wuthering Heights--it remained unpublished until 1857, two years after Charlotte Brontë's death. Like Villette (1853), The Professor is based on her experiences as a language student in Brussels in 1842. Told from the point of view of William Crimsworth, the only male narrator that she used, the work formulated a new aesthetic that questioned many of the presuppositions of Victorian society. Brontë's hero escapes from a humiliating clerkship in a Yorkshire mill to find work as a teacher in Belgium, where he falls in love with an impoverished student-teacher, who is perhaps the author's most realistic feminist heroine. The Professor endures today as both a harbinger of Brontë's later novels and a compelling read in its own right.

The Professor was Charlotte’s first book, but was rejected a number of times and was not published until after her death. It’s sort of a first draft of Villette, but with a different narrator. It’s the only of Charlotte’s books that is told from the perspective a man, which is just not convincing. I’m glad that I read it, in order to be a Brontë completist, but I will never reread this book.

So, there you have it. A very longwinded (like Charlotte!) post about finishing up the novels of the Brontë sisters.

Lucky Number 3: Villette by Charlotte Bronte

The classic spin number has been spun, and it is number 3, so I will be reading Villette by Charlotte Bronte in the next two months.

This is a doubly lucky number for me because Villette was already in my reading plans. As I mentioned in the comments to my list, one of my goals for the end of the year was to finish out the novels of all three Bronte sisters. I have already read both Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte, and I’ve (of course) read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and have read Jane Eyre many times.

That left me Charlotte Bronte’s other 3 books: The Professor, Shirley and Villette. I read The Professor last month & I’m currently reading Shirley. Once I finish Shirley, I’ll probably take a week and then get going on Villette.

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

This is an old review from 2014. I am closing down a blog, and republishing book reviews prior to deleting the old one.

Agnes Grey
by Anne Bronte
Publication Date: December 1, 1847
Genre: classic
Pages: 251
Project: classics club round 1

Drawing heavily from personal experience, Anne Brontë wrote Agnes Grey in an effort to represent the many 19th Century women who worked as governesses and suffered daily abuse as a result of their position.

Having lost the family savings on risky investments, Richard Grey removes himself from family life and suffers a bout of depression. Feeling helpless and frustrated, his youngest daughter, Agnes, applies for a job as a governess to the children of a wealthy, upper-class, English family.

Ecstatic at the thought that she has finally gained control and freedom over her own life, Agnes arrives at the Bloomfield mansion armed with confidence and purpose. The cruelty with which the family treat her however, slowly but surely strips the heroine of all dignity and belief in humanity.

A tale of female bravery in the face of isolation and subjugation, Agnes Grey is a masterpiece claimed by Irish writer, George Moore, to be possessed of all the qualities and style of a Jane Austen title. Its simple prosaic style propels the narrative forward in a gentle yet rhythmic manner which continuously leaves the listener wanting to know more.

Anne Brontë, the somewhat lesser known sister, was in fact the first to finish and publish Agnes Grey under the pseudonym of Acton Bell. Charlotte and Emily followed shortly after with Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

As Anne passed away from what is now known to be pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of just 29, she only published one further title; The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. As feminist in nature as Agnes Grey, Anne's brave voice resonates and permeates during one of the most prejudiced and patriarchal times of English history.

Agnes Grey was published in 1847. This was an exceptionally good year for the Bronte sisters – 1847 saw the publication of Agnes Grey, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, which combined to form a trifecta of Bronte awesomeness, and includes the two most well-known books by the Brontes.

Anne Bronte was the youngest Bronte, and remains the least well-known of the three sisters. She died very young, at 29 years of age. Her only other published work is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which was out of publication for many years at the behest (as I understand it) of the eldest and most prolific sister, Charlotte. Agnes Grey was published under the pseudonym Acton Bell.

Agnes Grey is a bildungsroman, or a coming of age story, in this case, of the titular character, Agnes. The book begins with Agnes and her sister living at home with her parson father and their mother. Father unwisely invests money with a merchant who ends up dying, and the family loses all their savings. Agnes, in a bid for independence, decides to go to work as a governess. She ultimately obtains a position as a governess for a wealthy family, and leaves the family homes and goes out in the world.

I really liked this book. I was not a fan of Wuthering Heights when I read it many years ago, although I did love Jane Eyre. Agnes Grey is, in my mind, less sophisticated than Jane Eyre, but has many of the same themes. Anne Bronte used the book as a vehicle to explore oppression of women, animal cruelty, love, marriage and religion.

I have been listening to one of the Great Courses on the Victorian era as well as reading books that were written in and during the Victorian era. There are two lectures, so far, that dealt directly with women – one about upper class women and one about working class women. The circumstances for working class girls/women were fairly dire, actually, and Agnes Grey does a good job of illustrating that direness. Agnes finds herself working for a family that is clearly inferior to her in most domains – she has more common sense, more integrity, she is better educated, she has a greater work ethic, she is more useful. The only area that they exceed her is in that of wealth. They are rich, she is poor.

Each of the families, nonetheless, considers themselves and is considered by society, to be her superior. The Bloomfield family – the first family where she is a governess – has raised their eldest son to be an overtly cruel human being. He is abusive – both verbally and at times physically – to Agnes, and he casually tortures small animals. His education is a total loss because no one exerts even the slightest degree of control over him to force him to learn, and being the eldest son of a wealthy family, there is no incentive for him to be anything other than what he desires to be. Agnes is dismissed when she fails to educate him.

The second family, the Murray family, is less casually abusive but concomitantly more frivolous. Agnes is governess to their two youngest daughters. The eldest, Rosalie, is a pretty ornament who thinks only of flirtations and marriage. Matilda, the youngest, is a foul-mouthed tomboy who is also a liar (I confess a bit of partiality to poor Matilda. She’s so screwed in that era). The appearance is the reality for this family, and nothing matters but what is on the surface.

Agnes Grey is based on Anne Bronte’s experience as a governess. One of the things that I found interesting was how little actual learning was going on in the schoolroom. I am sure that not every Victorian wealthy family was the same, but Agnes was given no authority at all, and was therefore ignored at best and abused at worst. I cannot think of few worse jobs than being charged with the education of spoiled, entitled, in some cases quite possibly sociopathic, children who have total power over your life. It’s a nightmarish prospect.

It is easy to wax nostalgic for the past, and for eras like the Victorian era. Reading a book like Agnes Grey is a useful exercise to remind us that we should not idealize the past.