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The Brontë Sisters: The Brief Lives Of Charlotte, Emily, And Anne (2012)

by Catherine Reef(Favorite Author)

3.69 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0547579667 (ISBN13: 9780547579665)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Clarion Books

review 1: This is a biography following the lives of the Bronte sisters. They were three of the six Bronte children. Their mother died when they were young, and their Reverend father did not fully appreciate them even as company until they were much older. They each spend some significant time in different boarding schools, gaining the education that would allow them to provide for themselves in the case that they never got married (which was a high possibility because of how poor they were). They had older sisters who died while at these boarding schools because of the harsh conditions. The only children to reach young adulthood were Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and their brother, Branwell. All were creative as children, and the sisters confided their written work together. This book ex... moreplains their writing and publishing habits, criticism, and the circumstances that so strongly influenced their writings. I enjoyed this collective biography of these sisters. I didn't know much about them prior to reading this book. I never realized how few works they published, and how young they were when they wrote and published them. I also liked that this book explained some of the cultural and societal beliefs that inhibited them from publishing under their own names in the beginning, as well as the criticism that surrounded their literature immediately after they were published. It is written for young middle school students, and the content obviously speaks more to female readers than males. In terms of the book's quality as a collective biography, it is a fairly well told narrative surrounding these sisters, using some of their writings and poetry to support specific themes and ideas the girls were interested in. However, the text mostly follows a chronological timeline, rather than a thematic timeline. Not the end of the world, but does not make it my #1 favorite biography.
review 2: There were six Bronte children...five daughters and one son born to a Yorkshire minister and his wife. The mother died soon after the birth of her sixth child, Anne.....and the oldest two daughters followed her in death at ages ten and eleven from tuberculosis. That left Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne who grew up running about on the “wuthering” moor. They were united in their passion to become writers and made up stories from a very young age. When older, the girls served various stints as governesses and teachers but none of them ever found satisfaction in this line of work. In time they all ended up back in their beloved home on the moor where they worked on their writing. Eventually the three girls submitted manuscripts to publishers under male pseudonyms because writing was considered to be in the male domain. These novels have become classics that are still loved today. Charlotte wrote “Jane Eyre”, “Shirley”, and “Villette”, her most autobiographical novel. Emily wrote “Wuthering Heights” which outraged many critics; one said that it was “a perfect pandemonium of low and brutal creatures, who wrangle with each other in language too disgusting for the eye or the ear to tolerate.” Anne is the author of “”Agnes Grey” and “The Tenant of Windfell Hall”. However, tuberculosis claimed all of them before they reached the age of 40. Such a cruel fate for such imaginative young ladies. The only one of the children who married was Charlotte. She had several welcome proposals from the curate helping in her father’s parish but for quite a while her father would not allow the marriage. Evidently he did not think the younger fellow good enough for his talented daughter. Eventually the longtime household servant in the household convinced Charlotte’s father that he was seriously hurting his daughter by denying her this marriage so he reluctantly gave in. Sadly, Charlotte only enjoyed nine months of marital bliss before she, too, died from tuberculosis. Earlier, Charlotte had fallen in love with a married man who had served as her teacher and mentor. She also taught in his school in Brussels for a while but his wife put the kibosh on that relationship.Because of the criticism still being leveled at his daughters for writing such “coarse” and “repulsive” tales, after Charlotte’s death Reverend Bronte asked Elizabeth Gaskell, a respected female writer of the time, to pen a “brief account” of her life. This she did, although she did not mention anything of Charlotte’s love for her teacher/mentor in Brussels because this would have outraged the Victorians of this time. This book proved popular and caused the public to view the Bronte sisters in a more sympathetic light. The Reverend Bronte himself lived to the ripe old age of eighty-four. Go figure. less

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