The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of a Literary Family

by Juliet Barker

The Brontës’ lives and works have been taken apart and reassembled according to theories of varying degrees of sanity by literally hundreds of other biographers and literary critics. What is surprising is that, despite so much activity, the basic ideas about the Brontës’ lives have remained unchanged. Charlotte is portrayed as the long-suffering victim of duty, subordinating her career as a writer to the demands of her selfish and autocratic father; Emily is the wild child of genius, deeply misanthropic yet full of compassion for her errant brother; Anne is the quiet, conventional one who, lacking her sisters’ rebellious spirit, conforms to the demands of society and religion. The men in their lives have suffered an even worse fate, blamed first of all by Mrs Gaskell, and since then by feminists, for holding the Brontë sisters back from achieving literary success and even, at times, for simply existing. Patrick is universally depicted as cold, austere and remote, yet given to uncontrollable rages, alternately neglecting and tyrannizing his children. Branwell is a selfish braggart, subordinating his sisters’ lives to his own by right of his masculinity, and negating the value of this sacrifice by squandering his talent and the family’s money on drink and drugs. Arthur Bell Nicholls, who cannot be portrayed as either mad or bad, is simply dull. These stereotypes have been reinforced by the practice of writing separate biographies for each member of the family. Yet the most r...