Friday, January 15, 2016

Interesting Facts About the Brontë Sisters

Bronte sisters
Patrick Bramwell
painting of his sisters
Emily, Anne and Charlotte Brontë were three sisters from England who are now famous for their literary works. Charlotte is perhaps the most famous, but this may only be because she lived the longest. Each of the Brontë sisters was very talented in her own right. It is perhaps not very surprising that each of them grew up to be very creative, given the life that they lived both in their childhoods and in their brief adulthood. Theirs were interesting lives indeed. The following are descriptions of some of the more important events in these women’s lives, as well as some random interesting facts regarding them.

Charlotte, Emily and Anne were only three of Reverend Patrick Brontë and Mrs. Maria Brontë’s six children. There were two other Brontë sisters, Maria and Elizabeth. There was also a brother named Patrick Branwell. He was known as Branwell.

Patrick was also very creative, but did find himself in a bit of trouble in his life. However, he did draw a self-portrait that is now relatively well known. He also painted a picture of his three authoress sisters, which is a well-known work of art.

Mrs. Brontë died in 1820 of tuberculosis. Charlotte was four at the time, Emily was two and Anne was one. They stayed with their father, who was a very strict, frugal and somewhat odd man. After a year of raising his six children by himself, he enlisted the aid of a Miss Branwell. She played an integral part in the childrens’ education.

In 1824 Mr. Brontë sent Maria and Elizabeth to a girl’s school named Cowan’s Bridge. They were followed shortly after by Charlotte and Emily. Maria Brontë died at home that year, after suffering from tuberculosis in the school. Maria’s death was almost identical to that of Charlotte’s character Helen Burns in Jane Eyre. The ill treatment Helen received at Lowood School and the treatment Maria received at Cowan’s Bridge was sadly identical as well. Not long after, Elizabeth was sent home and died of tuberculosis too. Their ages when they passed away were ten and nine, respectively.

Both Emily and Anne were plagued with homesickness when they were sent to join Charlotte with her teacher Ms. Wooler (Charlotte and Emily had since left Cowan’s Bridge). Their homesickness was so bad that it produced physical symptoms and the girls had to be sent home. Whatever the cause of this melancholy, it subsided in time and both girls were eventually able to hold jobs outside of their home without becoming ill.

Patrick Branwell Brontë served as a tutor at a home in which Anne was a governess. He conducted a love affair with the lady of the house and was eventually found out. The name of the woman he loved? Mrs. Robinson. Following his dismissal, he became a drunken, belligerent, opium addict, who mistreated his sisters. Anne and Emily did what they could for him, but Charlotte disliked her destitute, shameful brother for the rest of her life.

The Brontë sisters were first published with their own funds. They published a collection of poetry that included work from all three of them. The book was something of a failure. Nonetheless, the names that they used on it would come to be some of the most famous pseudonyms of all time. Ellis Bell was Emily Brontë. Currer Bell was Charlotte Brontë and Acton Bell was Anne Brontë.
Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “Agnes Grey” were the first of the Brontë novels to be accepted for publication. Charlotte’s first novel “The Professor” was rejected. However, “Jane Eyre” was accepted soon after. “Jane Eyre” was a popular novel as soon as it was published, whereas, Emily and Anne’s novels saw most of their success after their authors’ deaths.

Emily is often thought to have been as talented, if not more talented than her more famous sister, Charlotte. However, the only novel she ever wrote was “Wuthering Heights.” With a single novel as good as that, it is hard not to try to imagine what this woman would have produced, had she been given the chance. She died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty. Patrick had died of the disease shortly before her and Anne died of it soon after. Patrick was 31, at the time of his death and Anne was 29.

Charlotte Brontë did not disclose the fact that Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell were, in fact, women, until after all of her siblings had passed away. She wrote several more novels under her pseudonym during her lifetime, but was at least recognized as the author before her death.

Charlotte Brontë was the only one of the Brontë sisters to marry. She did so in 1854. Just eight months later she died of tuberculosis and complications from her first pregnancy. Her husband was by her side.

These snippets of the sad lives of the Brontë sisters give us the idea that their novels were something more than fiction. They were reflections of the sad and sometimes lonely lives that they led. They were poor working girls. They were well-educated girls, in both academic subjects and in the difficulties of life. They were motherless and without any real expectation in life. Nonetheless, they wrote novels that are now considered classics, the modern sales of which would have made them wealthier than they could possibly imagine in their lifetimes. It is doubtful that any of them would have expected that.

Sources

The Brontë Sisters, retrieved 1/27/10, female-ancestors.com/daughters/Brontë.htm


The Brontë Family Chronology, retrieved 1/27/10, Brontëfamily.org/chron.html

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