The wonderful novels of The Bronte Sisters. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights. Great classics of English literature.
79Contents.
The Bronte Sisters. Imagination can transcend The Mundane.
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte featuring young Elizabeth Taylor.
The Doomed Lovers. Wuthering Heights. The novel by Emily Bronte.
From ordinary comes Extraordinary
The Bronte Sisters. Imagination can transcend The Mundane.
The power of the imagination is a strange thing. People can live in the most straitened of circumstances, with hardly any access to the influences that bear on the lives of their better off contemporaries, but if they have minds that can soar beyond the mundanities that govern their lives, they can still conjure into being stories and characters that can give immortality to their names, and enthral the generations that come after them.
Such was the destiny of The Bronte sisters of Haworth in the English county of Yorkshire.
The Bronte sisters did not have very long lives. Indeed Charlotte, the longest lived amongst them only lived to the age of 39. Emily was 30, and Anne was 29.
They lived lives of respectable poverty with their eccentric father Patrick Bronte, and their alcoholic, drug addicted brother Branwell in the village parsonage at Haworth, a village set amidst the moors of Yorkshire in the north of England.
From an early age the children used to write long and involved adventure stories, which they bound in tiny little books, only a couple of inches square. These can still be seen at their home, which is now a museum.
The life they lived outside of the parsonage was limited because of the strictures that were put on the women of "the respectable poor" in nineteenth century England. They could marry, if they were lucky enough to find a husband, they could become governesses, and teach the spoiled offspring of their "betters"; or they could become teachers in a "respectable school.
Charlotte and Anne both pursued career paths in those fields, and the humiliations they suffered are reflected in their books, especially "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte, and "Agnes Grey" by Anne.
Emily, who was painfully shy, spent the greater part of her short life at home. She did accompany Charlotte to Brussels to teach in a school there, but it did not work out very well, and she returned to end her short life in the village where she grew up.
And yet, the great wonder of The Bronte sisters, and the reason why their names will live forever amongst lovers of great literature, is that out of these almost unimaginably constrained lives, the power of their illimitable minds has brought forth some of the most brilliant and stirring books in the English language.
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.
In this great novel by Charlotte, the eldest of The Bronte Sisters, the heroine Jane Eyre, has some really terrible childhood experiences at school.
When she grows up she goes to work as a governess for the darkly handsome Mr Rochester. They fall in love, and he asks her to marry him, but on the wedding day, some shocking news is disclosed, that totally ruins their plans.
To find out what that is, and whether they get past it, read the book. It is worth the effort.
This book was made into several films, and has been serialised in many notable television productions.
The most impressive version, I have seen, had Orson Welles playing Mr Rochester. It also featured the earliest screen appearance, which I know of, of Elizabeth Taylor. Well worth watching.
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte.
Wuthering Heights was the only novel produced by Emily Bronte, the most emotionally raw of The Bronte Sisters. So dark was it, and so graphically did it portray the passions, that the reading public didn’t believe it could be written by a woman.
It interweaves the stories of The Earnshaw Family, who lived at Wuthering Heights, and The Linton Family who lived at Thrushcross Grange. The central characters are Catherine Earnshaw, and the ravishingly saturnine anti-hero Heathcliff. Their obsessive love for each other is set against a background of windswept moorland, and bleak rock formations. So well is the book written, that you are literally swept along from chapter to chapter, unable to draw your eyes away from the unfolding stories of the riveting characters.
I hope you found that introduction to the brilliance of The Brontes interesting, and I further wish that acquaintance with some of the treasures, that stand as permanent memorials to their, too short lives, might leave you with an addiction to their fiction that is at least as strong as my own.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte featuring young Elizabeth Taylor.
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The Doomed Lovers. Wuthering Heights. The novel by Emily Bronte.
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sammyfiction.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you really enjoy the books if you get a chance to read them.
Wuthering Heights is so good that it is the only book that I have read entirely off a computer screen.
It really does draw you in.
"Extraordinary" was precisely the right word to apply to the Bronte sisters, christopher. Their novels were and are powerful and compelling.
They would be pleased with your review.
Thanks drjb.
I barely touched on their story. The accounts of their lives are really moving.
They were a wonderful family.
Christopher - this is such a fabulous article!!
I've been a "Jane Eyre" fan since my pre-teens, read the book over and over then, - still have it and read it occasionally.
I am a contemporary of Elizabeth Taylor. She was born 15 days after my birth - she in England, I in Texas. Her role in "Jane Eyre" must have been about the time of her role in "National Velvet", when this country fell in love with her. The DVD I have of "Jane Eyre" was filmed by the BBC and stars Timothy Dalton as Rochester and Zelah Clarke as Jane.
I read "Wuthering Heights" and saw its movie early on. I recognized Lawrence Olivier and Merle Oberon in this 1939 except you've included. I vividly remember the moors and her clutching the bundle of heather. But I haven't followed that story over my lifetime as I have "Jane Eyre". I have some of my grandchildren hooked on JA too. lol
1939 was the same year I both read and saw "Gone With The Wind". It was a biggie. And "The Wizard of Oz" was that same year when I was 7.
We had only one small movie house in Del Rio. I had to make a quilt block to earn my fare to the Saturday morning shoot-em-ups. Sometimes my friend and I stayed for the afternoon matinees of the more sophisticated movies on the same dime. LOL But Mother often went with me to the really good ones. Her favorite was "Lost Horizon", which we saw when I was 5.
My current passion is Jane Austen - I just can't get enough of her works. I was exposed to them in school but didn't dive into them as I have now. I have DVDs of all 6 of her works, plus one based on her life ("Becoming Jane') and the books for 3 of the novels. I'm re-reading "Pride and Prejudice" now, in fact. Next will be "Sense and Sensibility" & Persuasion", though I must read all of them. "Mansfield Park" is among of my most favorites.
Now that you've created a thirst for it, I've looked for my copy of "Wuthering Heights" but can't seem to find it. Perhaps I'll just get another one. I may have to re-join the Folio Society, though Amazon.com is quite accommodating & usually I'm entitled to no-shipping fees. ;->
Hi Nellieanna.
Thanks for dropping in.
I have never read any Jane Austen, although I have seen Pride and Prejudice on TV several times. I really should read some of her books as well.
If you have the patience to sit in front of the computer, you can read Wuthering Heights on line on Project Guthenberg.
That is where I read it last.
But ,of course, the actual book is still most people's favourite
I've been hearing praises of Project Guthenberg. I am monocular, however and sometimes have to grab a magnifier to read short messages in small font, so I've not become a big e-reader. I even must have ample light for the printed page. It's one of the challenges I face while transcribing my own poetry. The combiation of reading handwritten stuff on one hand and putting it on the computer on the other is something of a challenge, though I think I type faster than I read - LOL. Good thing my stuff is all fairly brief. But there are so MANY!!
But I've been intending to read WH for quite awhile and will do so, one way or another!
The books I have of Austen's works happen to be pleasures to read and to HOLD. I love books so much - the very look and feel of books delights me.
But if I break down and get an iPad - I'll probably start reading e-books more.
As for Jane Austen, I hadn't been such a fan till the last year or so. Now I'm totally hooked. She had such a MIND! She saw subtlety in situations and anticipated her characters' responses so masterfully. They're not just chick-stories, either. The men are vivid, though she imposed on herself some rules about depicting them in situations of which she could have no first-hand knowledge, such as alone or in all-male company. The film-makers are more apt to show them in those situations, but in character.
Of course, the historical significance of the way it was in her era (late 18th-early 19th centuries), when young women and their mothers in British families without brothers & sons were doomed to be ousted when the fathers died because of inheritance regulations against females inheriting if the father & husband was a landowner without a title. His property would go to the nearest male relative, which often was a serious hardship for the females in the family.
Those prevailing conditions also limited their chances of marrying well, which was, nevertheless, their only alternative other than becoming charity cases. The class distinction was very prevalent and oppressive. Of course, women were not permitted to earn their own living, though Austen herself defied the rules to become a successful author and make her own way after the love of her life was forbidden to marry her due to her station as a pastor's daughter. The young man decided to marry her anyway, but when she learned that his destitute dependent mother would be deprived of the allowance and support he got from his uncle, his mother's cruel & snobbish brother, if he had defied the uncle to marry Austen, she decided she couldn't in good conscience allow that to happen so she chose to stay single and make her own living, to her mother's dismay. She wrote only 6 books, but they were successful even then.
This kind of thread weaves throughout the stories, though in various circumstances in which very bright but limited young women face challenges and the men they met and loved also did so.
The movies help in picturing the actual settings, but Austen is such a great dramatist that her stories are almost as vivid and I'm really enjoying the combination of reading and watching, along with watching the behind-the-scenes accounts sometimes included by the filmmakers.
Anyway - that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Hehe.
Nellieanna.
You are an absolute goldmine of information.
Thank you for that sparkling evocation of the problems that faced "young ladies" in the "good old days". It was a different world, and yet the charm of history is that it was not so very different from our own.
True, and yet so different. While the young ladies had a bleak future if they failed to "snare" a husband or lacked a calculating mother who set it up (as the Bennet sisters did in P&P) - they were given such elegant courtesy in every way and when they did win the love of a good man, they were quite well treated. But what a dilemma!
And it hasn't been all that long ago. My own eldest sister who was born in 1918, had learned the value of keeping her intelligence under wraps and playing the part of the beautiful but helpless young maiden, so that her dance card would be full and wit wouldn't scare off her suitors. I wonder sometimes if that is still a turn-off. LOL. Glad it's not my problem any more.
Sheesh!
I fell in love with the works of the Bronte sisters and also re-read their works many times. I have watched the movies Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights many times. Their work is truly timeless and I am deeply moved by the stories each time I read or watch.
I also love Jane Austen. I wonder perhaps if the attraction is their understanding and ability to express so clearly the deeply hidden emotions that create the bond of humanity.
Nellieanna.
I think it is still a problem under the surface. There is the idea of the "dumb blonde" still around, and girls dont always help themselves, when it comes to asserting their equality.
I remember girls, that I used to know, saying quite unashamedly that they would never pay for anything if they were on a date; even when they had quite good jobs.
FloBe.
I think you hit the nail right on the head there. You are so right in what you say in your second paragraph, and it is our ability to sense a fellow feeling in the dilemmas of these characters, that makes the books of Jane Austen, and the Brontes such timeless classics.
Thanks very much for dropping in.
I would guess that people-watching was a major form of entertainment, before radio and TV and internet to distract and absorb so much of an observer's time. Seeing and sensing the underlying motives, emotions, ideas and relationships in progress among real people was surely a more common pursuit and permeated writers' works. While external factors almost totally dominated what people were allowed to DO, their thoughts were more free to roam and explore with less interference from hype & PR extolling products and imposing views on them at every moment.
And - yes - that is so about female ability and perceived inability. However it is not my contention that "equality" is necessarily the ideal. In many ways, that is absurd. Fairness is a better objective for both genders. There are essential gender differences which just ARE, although the evaluation of the differences may merit examination. There are definitely different kinds of strengths and powers.
But certainly many girls and women cultivate an unrealistic helplessness and dependency position for themselves. But quite factually, there are normal times in her life when a woman IS semi-dependent, such as the conditions before, during and following childbirth, which is not some malady, but a vital part of human survival.
Granted, some women regard it as a rather incidental inconvenience to their "real" life, but I wonder whether that attitude may not be part of the problem with the world today. Call me old-fashioned, but I think mothers should either joyfully embrace motherhood as a high calling or just avoid it in favor of whatever they do prefer. Having considerable abilities. I truly chose to invest them in a family. And some people surely regarded it as an inferior choice indicating a lack of abilities.. But I WAS asserting myself in spite of peer pressure. It was not "fashionable" so in a way the pressure pendulum swings both directions. I was even discouraged by the doctors when I announced I intended to breast-feed my babies. That was REALLY out of style and I was regarded as an anomaly. I actually had to insist IN SPITE OF their opposition. It was like the tip of the iceberg which now grips the population with a stye of "health care" which substitutes all kinds of medicines and "procedures" for what is natural, but which therefore involves no charges. OOPS - another discussion. LOL.
Perhaps the standard needs to be freedom to choose & freedom from oppression. There were slaveowners who actually claimed that their slaves were better off as slaves. That's food for thought.
Nellieanna.
I,m glad that you choose to do it your way.
An over emphasis on equality, might make people forget that there are essential differences between men and women.
I feel that you have managed to get the balance just about right.
Thanks, Christopher. Balance is an important value to me.
i have yet to travel down the Bronte road, yet I am very curious.
Hi trusouldj.
Thanks for reading. I definitely encourage you to read some of their books.
I would start with "Wuthering Heights"
It is a bit shorter than the others, and the characters and the plot will certainly "drag you in".
Hi, Christopher!
I have immensely enjoyed all their novels, but my favorite is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, written by Anne Bronte.
Thank you for giving the Bronte sisters such a wonderful tribute.
Hi nemanjaboskov.
I havent read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but I have seen the serialisation on television, and I agree. It is a brilliant story.
Thanks for reading.
sammyfiction 16 months ago
Very interesting hub! I am a huge fan of periodic novels and Jane Austin obviously is in my top favorites. I will definitely put these two on my reading list! Thanks, :) SF