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Lecture Eleven
Novelists of the 1840s—The Brontes
Scope: Appearing in 1847, the same year as Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights take the English novel in new directions. The Brontes’ works are often passionate and angry, echoing the revolutionary sentiments of the 1840s. The Brontes also challenge the limitations of earlier love stories, endowing their fiction with the intensity of Romantic poetry and modeling their male characters on the heroes of Lord Byron. Yet if the Brontes have much in common, they are also sharply distinct. Where Charlotte is fundamentally conservative, creating secure social positions for such characters as Jane Eyre, Emily is truly daring. In Wuthering Heights, she confounds the usual novelistic distinctions between love and hate, birth and death, creation and destruction, creating one of the few 19th-century English novels with the scope and shape of a tragedy.
Outline
I. Appearing in 1847, the same year as Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights take the English novel in new directions.
A. The Brontes’ works are often passionate and angry, echoing the revolutionary sentiments of the 1840s.
B. Their writing also borrows heavily from the works of the Romantic poets, and their male characters strongly resemble the heroes of Lord Byron.
C. Though the sisters were devoted to each other, their works are ultimately quite distinct. In this lecture, we will focus on their differences as well as their similarities.
II. The Brontes grew up in Haworth, a small town in Yorkshire.
A. There were six children in the family, two of whom died in childhood after contracting tuberculosis at school.
B. Four children survived to adulthood: Charlotte, the eldest (1816–1855); Branwell, the only brother (1817–1848); Emily (1818–1848); and Anne (1820–1849).
C. The children lost their mother at an early age, and they became exceptionally close, reading and writing stories for one another and exploring the moors together.
III. From childhood, the Brontes dreamed of literary fame but also feared the consequences of public exposure.
A. Their first publication was a collection of poems. They chose to publish under ambiguous pseudonyms—Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell—hoping to divert attention from themselves.
B. In 1847, when Charlotte’s Jane Eyre became a literary sensation, readers and reviewers were eager to know the author’s true identity.
C. The Brontes soon revealed their identities to their publisher, though Charlotte insisted that she be “forever known” to the public as “Currer Bell.”
D. Even more reclusive than Charlotte, Emily had few friends outside her immediate family. Of the sisters, she was the one most attached to the pseudonyms.
1. Emily died a year or so after publishing Wuthering Heights. Branwell had preceded her in death, and Anne would follow her soon—all dying within a span of just nine months.
2. Charlotte continued to write, publishing two more novels before her own death in 1855.
IV. As one might expect, Charlotte and Emily share many concerns.
A. Their novels respond to the social upheavals of the day, echoing the revolutionary sentiments of the late 1840s.
1. Jane Eyre not only protests against the class system but also insists on the equality of men and women.
2. Heathcliff, the central figure of Wuthering Heights, rejects all social values. What matters to him is not wealth or status but his intense attachment to Catherine Earnshaw.
B. Both Charlotte and Emily challenge the limitations of earlier love stories, endowing their fiction with the intensity of Romantic poetry.
1. Their male characters are descendents of the Byronic hero, difficult and dangerous yet powerfully attractive.
2. Jane’s master and future husband, Mr. Rochester, can be violent and domineering. Because he has married for money rather than for love, he feels himself undeserving of happiness.
3. Heathcliff is even more complex. He can be cruel as well as loving, and the other characters often describe him as a monster or a ghoul.
V. Despite their many similarities, the sisters are fundamentally different from each other.
A. Although Charlotte is capable of expressing anger, she is cautious and conservative by nature.
1. At the beginning of the story, Jane Eyre is an orphan. She has no money and no home of her own—and she is keenly aware of her dependence on others.
2. As governess to the children of Mr. Rochester, Jane is in a complicated position—neither a member of the family nor really one of the servants.
3. After falling in love with Rochester, Jane discovers that he is married to another woman. Although he offers to live with her in a kind of marriage, she rejects this offer.
4. By the end of the novel, Jane and Rochester have been reunited. What’s more, Jane has gained a fortune of her own—inheriting a large sum of money from her uncle.
5. Thus, Charlotte upholds the comedic conventions of the English novel: By the end of the story, her angry, outcast heroine has been promoted into the ruling class.
B. By contrast, Emily Bronte is much more daring.
1. Her vision is broader, taking in two families and two generations. The action of the novel spans a period of decades, starting in the early 1770s and ending around 1802.
2. The central action of Wuthering Heights is Catherine Earnshaw’s decision to marry Edgar Linton instead of Heathcliff.
3. Unable to accept this decision, Heathcliff runs away. When he returns after three years, having gained a fortune of his own, he devotes his life to revenge.
4. Later, after most of his own contemporaries are gone, he continues to seek power over their children, eventually tricking Catherine’s daughter into marrying his own son.
5. At the end of the novel, however, Heathcliff and Catherine seem to be reunited in death. Significantly, there is no suggestion of poetic justice in Heathcliff’s death.
VI. Though both works are impressive, Wuthering Heights is ultimately the more distinctive of the two.
A. Wuthering Heights confounds the usual novelistic distinctions between love and hate, birth and death, creation and destruction.
B. Emily Bronte’s major characters transcend conventional notions of good and evil, and the death of those characters is a precondition for the survival of the rest.
C. A century earlier, Richardson had produced a great tragic novel in Clarissa, and about a half century later, Hardy would produce tragic novels, including Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Between Richardson and Hardy, Wuthering Heights stands as one of the few Victorian novels with the shape and scope of a tragedy.
Essential Reading:
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre.
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights.
Supplementary Reading:
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic.
Lucasta Miller, The Bronte Myth.
Questions to Consider:
1. Why might an author decide to use a pseudonym? Does the sex of the author still factor into our judgment of a
book? Are male writers still given a latitude or freedom denied to female writers?
2. Does the figure of the Byronic hero continue to attract our attention? How often, in contemporary movies or
books, do we encounter dangerous yet attractive men?