Abstract
There is a paradoxical contrast between the quiet life of Emily Brontë and her passionate fiction offers no complete picture of the young woman in spite of the myriad biographies, legends, and myths about her life or the crushing number of critical responses to her fictions. Into this gap, neo-Victorian (re)visionings of and a (re)voicing of personal history allow for a reconsideration of Emily Brontë’s interests. To that end, Chap. 5, “The Odd(est) Brontë: Portrait(s) of Emily as a Young Author,” considers Always Emily (2014) by Michaela MacColl and The World Within: A Novel of Emily Brontë (2015) by Jane Eagland. Both biofictional narratives reconstruct an image of Brontë despite the scant archival evidence because, like adult readers, adolescents are interested in the who and why of writers’ lives; in addition, readers seek a greater insight into the famous characters that such an author may have invented in their texts.
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Notes
- 1.
Kohlke calls this celebrity biofiction which “infills” often “insufficiently documented lives” especially the “individual’s pre-history (and sometimes post-history) to the events that brought her/him to public attention” to “provide a supplementary or compensatory effect, substituting fictional life for a lacunae in knowledge rather than reworking and adding a wealth of known detail” (2013, 8).
- 2.
For a full discussion of these problematic constructions, see Maier (2016).
- 3.
Michael Lackey raises the question of ethics with regard to biofiction for children and young adults since they are, as yet, possibly without the knowledge to distinguish between historical fact and historical narrative (see 2018a).
- 4.
During the illness, Maria’s sister, Elizabeth Branwell (1776–1842), joins the family to care for her, then stays for the rest of her life to provide a stable, instructive female influence for the children, later to be joined in 1824 by Tabitha “Tabby” Aykroyd (?1771–January 6, 1859), the servant to whom the children often turn for comfort, rather than instruction.
- 5.
Along with Sarah, her sister Nancy (1803–86) acted as nursemaid to the children.
- 6.
The school was to be run by the well-known Reverend William Carus Wilson for students in need; they were placed under the tutelage of the headmistress, Miss Margaret Wooler (1792–1855) who became a lifelong friend of Charlotte, even giving her away at her wedding to her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls (January 6, 1819–December 3, 1906), on June 29, 1854.
- 7.
There are biographies aplenty of the individual Brontës and of their collective family from creating part of what has been called the Brontë industry. See Terry Eagleton ([1975] 2005).
- 8.
This is not to say that important work has not been done on the known material lives of the Brontës; for further discussion, see Deborah Lutz’s exceptional The Brontë Cabinet (2015) where she makes connections between physical artefacts in possession of and/or created by the siblings—such as Keeper’s collar, or a painting of Nero by Emily—as a means to understand the family members in relation to their surroundings; in particular, these two objects demonstrate Emily’s deep love of animals.
- 9.
- 10.
For a full discussion, see Chap. 3.
- 11.
An earlier biographer, Robinson, warned her reader that “Emily’s genius was set down as a lunatic’s hobgoblin of nightmare potency” (MacColl 109).
- 12.
A gytrash is defined as “An apparition, spectre, ghost, generally taking the form of an animal” (OED); further definition is found in this passage from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: “I remembered certain of Bessie’s tales wherein figured a North-of-England spirit, called a ‘Gytrash;’ which, in the form of horse, mule, or large dog, haunted solitary ways, and sometimes came upon belated travellers” (1847, I xii).
- 13.
John Ruskin tells us in his lecture “Of Queen’s Gardens,” in Sesame and Lilies (1865), that “man’s power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war” whereas “women’s power is for rule, not for battle—and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision” while “she is protected from all danger and temptation” (164–5). For a strong discussion of proper and “improper” womanhood, see Lyn Pykett (1992).
- 14.
Charlotte and Emily go to Brussels in search of language skills to market for a potential school at the Parsonage since neither of them relishes becoming a governess.
- 15.
Notably, there are two very recent adult books concerning the brother, Branwell ([2005] 2020) by Douglas Martin, and Brontë’s Mistress (2020) by Finola Austin. The initially named Taste of Sorrow (2009) by Jude Morgan was changed to Charlotte and Emily: A Novel of the Brontës (2010), completely eliding Anne and Branwell from the titular discussion of sorrow and, by implication, the creative genius that arises from it; however, they are included in the novel itself. I have not yet found either an adult or young adult novel about Anne Brontë.
- 16.
One such comparison of fear and emotional turmoil in a child or young adult facing the potential death of a parent is found in the Young Adult novel, A Monster Calls (2011) inspired by Siobhan Dowd and written by Patrick Ness.
- 17.
In an excellent example of Brontë mythmaking, Juliet Barker argues that this story was instigated by Mrs. Ellis Chadwick but that this “supposedly disastrous trip to London” is unfounded (1036, footnotes 3 and 4). Chadwick’s account is, at best, a series of assumptions: “Mrs. Gaskell had the impression that Branwell never visited London, and Ellen Nussey evidently had the same impression.… Branwell was the first member of the family to see the ‘Great Babylon,’ but it proved too much for him; he frequented the public-houses, amongst them the Castle Tavern in Holborn, then kept by Tom Spring, a well-known prize fighter. He was not twenty years of age, and before he really reached the City he had fallen a prey to ‘sharpers,’ and very soon the money which his father had so generously given him was either squandered or obtained from him by fraud” ([1914] 2011, 192).
- 18.
Mary Taylor (February 26, 1817–March 1, 1893) was a remarkable woman and a lifelong friend of the Brontë sisters. Precocious from a young age, she left for New Zealand in 1845 where she became a businesswoman of note, a writer, a New Woman suffragette and, after she finally returned to Gomersal in 1859, she travelled and wrote about her travels as well as journalism on feminist issues of the day. Although radically different in temperament, Charlotte and Taylor wrote regularly to each other even after Taylor emigrated.
- 19.
For interest in a possible connection, that the Brontës lived within distance of Anne Lister and Shibden Hall, see Banerjee (n.d.).
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Maier, S.E. (2024). The Odd(est) Brontë: Portrait(s) of Emily as a Young Author. In: Neo-Victorian Young Adult Narratives . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47295-4_5
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