Brontë

see also: Etymology of Brontë

The sisters Brontë Charlotte (born the April 21st 1816), Emily (born the July 30th 1818) and Anne (born the January 17th 1820), are British women of letters of the years 1840-50. Their novels made scandal when they appeared for the first time and were not allowed that later among the philosopher's stones of the British literature.

They are the girls of the reverend Patrick Brontë (also known under the name of Brunty or of Prunty), who was born in the Comté from Down, in Ireland. They settled in the presbytery of Haworth, in the Yorkshire in 1820. The death of their mother leaves Patrick Brontë alone with six infants. The sister of his late wife, Elizabeth Branwell, comes to support it in this task. Very early, the six children place the writing in the center of their interests, by first of all making some a play which gradually is moulted in true passion. If all show unquestionable gifts for the narration, they are the juniors who will have the leisure to develop them. The existence of this quartet of children as brilliant as “cursed” will thus be tied in the loneliness of a small presbytery of Yorkshire, around the omnipresent figure of the Father. In 1824, the four oldest daughters of Brontë enter like pupils to the school of the Sisters of Cowan Bridge. The following year, Maria and Elizabeth, the two elder ones of the phratry, fall sick and are withdrawn from the school, but they die some time later, at a few days of interval; Charlotte and Emily, withdrawn they also of this unhealthy place, turn over to Haworth. The loss of their two sisters will be for the four children a traumatism, traumatism which shows through notammant in the work of Charlotte.

During their childhood, they started to write compulsivement, and their poems are published for the first time in 1846 under the Pseudonyme of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. The book hardly draws the attention, two specimens only are sold, and they turn over to prose, writing each one a novel the following year. Jane Eyre , of Charlotte, Wuthering Heights , of Emily, and Agnes Grey , of Anne, appears in 1847 afterwards many difficulties to find an editor. The novels draw an great attention criticizes and become soon bestsellers, but the career of the sisters is curtailed by a fragile health. Emily dies the following year before to have been able to complete another novel. Anne publishes its second novel, the Lady of the manor of Wildfell Hall in 1848, one year before her death. As of its publication, Jane Eyre is the greatest critical and commercial success of all the novels of the Brontë sisters, which is confirmed today still. Shirley , of Charlotte, appears in 1849, and it is followed by the Villette in 1853. Its first novel, the Professor , which had been refused in 1847, is published in posthumous title in 1857; its incomplete fragment, Emma , are published in 1860 and the news The Green Dwarf appears only in 2003. Charlotte dies in 38 years in 1855, after a short disease. She had married with the vicar of her father, Arthur Bell Nicholls, less than one front year.

The first biography of Charlotte was written by her friend Elizabeth Gaskell and was published in 1857, helping to create the myth of a family likely to fail, alive in a romantic loneliness.

The family

Patrick Brontë

Pasteur Anglican of Irish origin, born the day of St Patrick, on March 17th, 1777, Patrick Brontë is the author of Cottage Poems (1811), of The Rural Minstrel (1814), as well as various pastoral poetries. Resulting from a family of extremely poor peasants, it is a gifted autodidact who enters to the St John' S College of Cambridge, before being ordered priest. In 1812, it meets Maria Branwell “the soft one” (immediate, reciprocal love at first sight and quasi-eternal). They have six children, between 1814 and 1820: Maria (1814), Elizabeth (1815), Charlotte (1816), Branwell (1817), Emily (1818) and Anne (1820).

Certain authors described it (according to the prototype of Pasteur Anglican) like terrible, rigid, hypochondriac and misanthropist. In fact, Patrick is all the opposite of this image: exceptionally gifted, generous like all Branwell-Brontë, loving his/her children deeply. He encourages them to write, read, run the moor or to dream. Having included/understood the extreme quickness of mind of his/her daughters, it sends them to Cowan Hall, a new school for girls of Pasteur, in order to perfect their education. But Maria and Elizabeth die there (respectively to 12 and 11 years) of exhaustion, malnutrition and of the Tuberculose, at the end of one year of ill treatments. Pasteur, who includes/understands then, too late, in which kind of establishment it sent his daughters, withdraws them institution and chooses to deal itself with their education, with the presbytery. Emily and Charlotte will always preserve in memory the horror of these allegedly charitable institutions victoriennes. Charlotte, especially, will remember it in her novel Jane Eyre , where it transcends her anger in the description of the disaster “Lowood School”.

The father runs by mounts and by be worth, lavishing masses, discharges and extreme oilings, leaving only with their aunt and an old maidservant the three sisters Brontë, Emily, Charlotte, Anne and their single Branwell brother. The four children invent imaginary worlds, from where the kingdoms of Angria and Gondal emerge, which they populate of a crowd of adventures, consigned in the “Small books”, little books decorated with the drawings of Branwell.

Maria and Elizabeth Branwell

Maria Brontë, is born Branwell in 1783 and dies in 1821. It Marie on December 29th, 1812, the same day as his/her younger sister, Charlotte Branwell, in Penzance, in Cornouailles. It is the mother of Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne. She dies of a cancer at 34 years.

Elizabeth Branwell, born in 1776 in Penzance, Cornouailles, dead on October 29th, 1842 with Haworth, in the Yorkshire, is the older sister of Maria, and thus aunt of the children, whom it raises, in Haworth, after the death of their mother, Maria, in 1824.

Maria and Elizabeth Brontë

Maria Brontë (1814-1825), the elder one of Brontë, is placed at Logan Hall, qualified institution victorienne the charitable one for: “there to receive a good education and to learn the good mannerss there”, after the death of his/her mother. Alas, she knows there only the cold, the hunger, the deprivations and only the Tuberculose brings back from there (disease which was to carry all its family).

Elizabeth Brontë (1815-1825), the junior, joined her Maria sister in Logan Hall, where she knows the same tragic fate.

Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë, born in 1816, in Thornton (Yorkshire), died in 1855, in Haworth, is certainly most famous of the three sisters.

In 1831, Charlotte is sent to the school of Wooler Miss, in Roe Head, where it becomes itself professor in 1835, before turning over to Haworth in 1838. There, it finds its family in a poor financial position. To increase their incomes, Charlotte and her sisters imagine adventurous plans to establish a school. In order to learn from the foreign languages, Emily and Charlotte go in 1842 to Brussels, where they attend the boarding school of Mr. and Mrs. Héger. But the death of their aunt Elizabeth, who helped them thanks to her small fortune, the constrained one to return in Haworth. One then offers to each one a station with the boarding school, but only Charlotte turns over in Belgium in 1843. In 1844, in love with Mr. Héger, she is requested to leave; she turns over to Haworth the following year. Mow, the life is even sadder there, Mr. Brontë losing the sight and Branwell falling into a rapid forfeiture; besides its bad reputation makes fall through the project of school.

1848 and publication of Jane Eyre: an Autobiography establish its reputation. Between September 1848 and May 1849, his/her Branwell brother and his two last sisters Emily and Anne, die of tuberculosis. The majority of people who occupied his life up to that point having disappeared, Charlotte start to go on journeys to London, where she is celebrated. It publishes then Shirley (1849) and the Villette (1853). In 1854, she marries the reverend Arthur Bell Nichols (1818-1906), the vicar of her father, after having declined three proposals. She dies the following year of a Fièvre puerpérale, undoubtedly worsened by tuberculosis.

Charlotte wrote four novels:

Jane Eyre : year autobiography (1848). One falls there under the charm from a hot and picturesque, doubled of a major and empathic knowledge of the life, a painting real and moved by the characters and passions, supported interest and increasingly poignant style. These qualities will distinguish, to differing degree, its other works:
Shirley (1849). Emily would have been used as model with this novel victorien. It is a table of manners, where the Protestant pastors are painted with a subtle irony.
the Villette (1853). This novel finds its origin in the experiment of Brussels of Charlotte (1842).
The Professor (1857), appeared on a purely posthumous basis, although it is the first novel of Charlotte, because in 1847, no editor had agreed to publish it.

Branwell Brontë

Branwell Patrick Brontë (1817-1848) is considered by his/her father and his sisters, in her youth, like a genius; besides it has realities and brilliant talents as well literary as pictorial. It leaves to London, with an aim of studying art, with the desire to become painter. But it sinks in alcohol and laudanum. Playing the large ones discharged, it however succeeds in testing a sincere love for a married woman, Mrs Robinson, whose husband swears himself “to break” the young man. Famous characters posed for Branwell, but it did not finish any portrait, however ordered, except some. He dies of a tuberculosis diagnosed too late. Branwell is the author of the Juvenilia which he wrote, child, with his Charlotte sister, as well as various tables representing his/her sisters, of which the portrait “happy Phratry”, where they are all the three joined together.

Emily Brontë

Emily Jane Brontë (1818-1848), fifth girl of Pasteur, passed the essence of its short life in the Yorkshire. Accomplished genius of the family, equipped with a personality as inflexible as enigmatic, it reaches, with only one novel and some poems, the tops of the Literature. Ignored of alive sound, the posterity the class in the forefront of the English literature. Its single novel, the Tops of Hurlevent ( Wuthering Heights ), published under the pseudonym of Beautiful Eliss, is not recognized at its exit, in 1848, contrary to Jane Eyre , is published in 1847 by his/her Charlotte older sister. It is a work with the black romanticism, whereas works of his/her two sisters are more realistic. Having taken cold with the burial of his/her brother, Emily dies of tuberculosis in December 1848, the year which follows the publication of its book.

Anne Brontë

Of the three sisters who shouted, in the loneliness of Haworth, the absolute power of individual passions, Anne Brontë (1820-1849) could be regarded as the least gifted, but its novels were appreciated for their realism, their integrity and their moral fiber. It is the author of two remarkable novels: Agnes Grey (1847), which describes the very simple life of one controlling, and the Lady of the manor of Wildfell Hall (1848), where an young girl Marie with one discharged.

External bonds

Brontë Parsonage Museum
Bronte Sisters Links

* Brontës: Reading

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