英美文学选读学习笔记 The Bronte Sisters

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855), Emily Bronte (1818-1848) and their gifted sister Anne Bronte (1820-1849) came from a large family of Irish origin. Their father was a clergyman at Haworth, Yorkshire. When they were young, the Bronte sisters were sent to a school for clergymen's daughters. The eldest two died there due to the poor and unhealthy conditions. This experience inspired the later portrayal of Lowood School in the novel Jane Eyre (1847). As they grew up, the sisters worked either as teacher or governess in some private families. In 1842, in order to open up a school of their own, Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels to improve their foreign languages. The two years there left hardly any trace on Emily but for Charlotte the change was most fundamental. There she fell in love with her German professor, a married man. This passionate yet one-sided love was later recounted in her works, especially in Villette (1853).

Social life at Haworth was very limited for the Bronte children. They had to design their own device for solace and comfort. They found great pleasure playing outside in the vast, rough, untouched moorland wilderness. This was especially so with Emily, who, a rather reserved and simple girl, was very much a child of nature. She was never tired of staying outside in the open moorland in all weathers and never at ease when she was away from it. Once, she was teaching at a girl's school. She stayed there just for a few months because she was unwell all the time. Since then, she went out no more.

When winter came, the Bronte children usually stayed at home. They read omnivorously and were particularly fond of the Romanticist writings. They even started creating works of their own minds- recordings of brilliantly contrived adventures in Angrian (joint work of Charlotte and their brother Branwell) and Gondal (by Emily and Anne). In 1845, at Charlotte's initiative, a volume of poetry end Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (the pseudonyms of Charlotte, Emily and Anne) was published at their own expense. It received little attention. Then the three sisters turned to novel writing. Charlotte's first novel The Professor was rejected by the publisher. But her second one, Jane Eyre, won immediate success when it appeared in 1847. In the same year, Emily's single and unique work Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey were also published. Soon they were followed by Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848).

But at this happy moment, misfortune struck the Brontes. Branwell, the only boy in the family, the beloved of the sisters, died in the Sep. of 1848. Emily died of consumption that same year, and Anne the following summer, of the same disease. Left lonely in the world, Charlotte continued writing. Her  important novel Shirley, a work about the industrial troubles between the mill-owners and machine-breakers in Yorkshire in 1811-1812 came out in 1849. Another novel Villette appeared in 1853. This is her most autobiographical work, largely based on her experience in Brussels. In 1854, Charlotte married her father's curate. She died a few months later in gnancy. The Professor, her first written work, was published posthumously in 1857.

Charlotte's works are all about the struggle of an inspanidual consciousness towards self-realization, about some lonely and neglected young women with a fierce longing for love, understanding and a full, happy life. But brought up with strict orthodoxy, Charlotte would usually stick to the Puritanical code. She loves the beauty of nature but despises worldly ambition and success. In her mind, man's tire is composed of perpetual battle between sin and virtue, good and evil. All her heroines' highest joy arises from some sacrifice of self or some human weakness overcome. Besides, she is a writer of realism combined with romanticism. On one hand, she sents a vivid realistic picture of the English society by exposing the cruelty, hypocrisy and other evils of the upper classes, and by showing the misery and suffering of the poor. Her works are famous for the depiction of the life of the middle-class working women, Particularly governesses. On the other hand, her writings are marked throughout by an intensity of vision and of passion. By writing from an inspanidual point of view, by creating characters who are possessed of strong feelings, fiery passions and some extraordinary personalities, by resorting to some elements of horror, mystery and prophesy, she is able to recreate life in a wondrously romantic way. So, whatever weakness her work may have, the vividness of her subjective narration, the intensely achieved characterization, especially those heroines who are totally contrary to the public expectations, and the most truthful sentation of the economical, moral, social life of the time -- all this renders her works a never dying popularity.