GOTHIC BRONTES

Though they lived in the Victorian Age and published their novels in those years, the three Bronte sisters share a great deal with the Romantic Age in their works: themes, literary devices and features, wild nature and tormented souls. For example, Charlotte’s Mr Rochester or Emily’s Heathcliff embody the typical Byronic hero: moody, restless, wild in manners, tormented but so attractive. The heroes and the heroines in their novels tend to be atypical, anti-conformist, unable to simply accept their duties. They are often led by feelings and passions. And all of that is not typically Victorian. The reading audience was shocked by Emily’s Wuthering Heights (1847). (I still am sometimes re-reading it: she was so brave at writing and publishing such a novel at that time)

A literary taste the three writers share is that for Gothic elements. And this is what I want to point out in this post I prepared for The All About the Brontes Challenge.

Gothic novels were very popular at the end of the 18th century (the first one was published 1764 by Horace Walpole and was titled The Castle of Otranto) and their popularity went on through the Romantic Age. Lord Byron and his friends, among whom P.B. and Mary Shelley , spent their nights together reading and discussing gothic tales and they even proved themselves at writing one , but only Mary Shelley wrote something as worthy to be remembered as her Frankenstein (1818).

Gothic novels were based on frightening characters and events and had risen thanks to Edmund Burke ’s new conception of the sublime as “horrible beauty” whose main source was fear. What is Gothic then in our beloved novels by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte?

1. In Charlotte’s JANE EYRE (1847) we can recognize many  Gothic features

 Jane’s childhood terrors in Lowood school

 Thornfield mysterious nocturnal incidents

 A sense of supernatural

 The gloomy atmosphere

 Bertha’s madness

 Jane’s (apparently) unrequited love

2. The same can be said for Emily’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1847): Gothic features are prevailing respect to Victorian themes

 the atmosphere of the setting ( that is sinister and sublime because of the stormy, windy weather on the moors )

 Catherine’s ghost

 the dreams

 the superstitions

 the graves

 the macabre details

 the themes of death and revenge

 Heathcliff as the villain who persecutes the naive heroine (Isabella Linton, Cathy Jr)

3. To recognize Gothic features in Anne’s THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL (1848) is less immediate.

I read this novel quite recently, not yet a year ago. Last summer in fact. I was impressed by young Anne courage at dealing with the theme of women’s equality. Her Helen is not a silent victim, what the society of the time would have expected from her since conventions dictated submissiveness. This is why this novel is often considered the first feminist novel.

But we have to focus on Gothic details . In The Tenant there are not so many.

Certainly its wonderfully Gothic title owes a debt to the Gothic tradition. Wildfell Hall is a desolate residence in an isolated place. And this is already a typical Gothic setting. Then, Helen is surrounded by mystery in the first part. Nodoby knows much about her and her past and her being self-possessedrather secluded and surrounded by secrecy makes her the victim of local slander.

In the second part, while we read Helen’s diary with Gilbert Markham, the mystery of her past is revealed and we are plunged in a different atmosphere which is still Gothic: Helen and her son become the victims of dissolute Arthur Huntington, respectively her husband and his father. Their lives were spoilt and exposed to many risks: Arthur lost control and became a brute, especially when drunk.

This character is said to be inspired to Branwell Bronte, the Bronte family’s spoilt son, but can well recall – in some moments and only in the central part , not in his sad end - the villain in the Gothic novels who abducted, threatened, raped naive girls.

So, we can conclude saying that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is Gothic particularly in its sense of mystery and in its portrayals of an aristocratic life of decadence and emotional brutality

Related posts on FLY HIGH & LEARN ON LINE

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The Professor by Charlotte Bronte

Shirley: Charlotte Bronte's historical novel

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall  by Anne Bronte

Gothic Austen

My students' lessons on

Jane Eyre 1

Jane Eyre 2

Wuthering Heights 1
Wuthering Heitghts 2

THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL by ANNE BRONTE

This summer holidays 2009 have been the occasion to read some Victorian novels I had only read about but never actually read through. I’m very happy of my decision . I’ve recently read SHIRLEY by Charlotte Bronte, RUTH by Elizabeth Gaskell, AGNES GREY and THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL by Anne Bronte. Even though I’ve read and studied plenty about and from the Victorian Era, my to–be- read list is still very long. Unfortunately, I’m going back to school next week and , from then on, I will have to read a lot of students’ papers and texts for the preparation of my classes and will be left very little time to read for pleasure.
I’ve just finished THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL and I can honestly say it is the one I loved most among the four novels mentioned above. Anne Brontë, the youngest of the three Bronte sisters, tragically fated to die early in life before her writing talents could be as widely appreciated as her older sisters', was in many ways the most daring of the three, exploring themes and characters that shocked readers in her day, but which seem presciently current to our present-day sensibilities. Anne is not and was not as popular as her sisters – their JANE EYRE and WUTHERING HEIGHTS have become evergreen classics - but she was a great talent too. In AGNES GREY and , especially, in THE TENANT she creates unconventional heroines, conveys strong anticonformist ideas, draws involving plots, entertains and makes the reader aware of unpleasant realities, too often hidden because uncomfortable to the Victorian “perbenist” middle class.

Helen Huntingdon, the Tenant of Wildfell Hall, is a very determined, warm, passionate, brave young woman –far from the prude she is often characterized as - who refuses to be a silent victim and decides to leave her brutish, drunkard husband - thought to be based on Anne's brother, Branwell; she is not only flouting convention but even going against the laws of the land. Fleeing with her small son, she decides to lead an independent existence in a desolate, isolated countryside mansion in Yorkshire earning a living with her paintings. She pretends to be a young widow – do you remember Gaskell’s RUTH? – and surrounds herself with secrecy. But she soon finds herself the victim of local slander.

This novel written in the 1840s is of a startling modernity in its bold treatment of the issue of women’s equality and dignity and is unforgettable in its intensity, sincerity and psychological depth. I’m not exaggerating. Helen, her decadent husband and their complicated relationship are dealt with an extraordinary psychological insight. Helen can be considered a forerunner of Ibsen's Nora in the Doll's House and Anne is very like Jane Austen in her sensitive and acute characterization.

The narrative structure of the novel is also quite interesting. It is as if you have two novels in one. At the beginning the story opens in an epistolary form and is narrated from Gilbert Markham’s point of view. The young generous Yorkshire yeoman is almost immediately fascinated by the mysterious strong-willed young widow Helen Graham and writes letters to his dear friend and brother-in-law, Halford. He tells him about how, little by little, he and Helen became attached and discovered their affinity and affection. But everybody seems sure of Helen’s scandalous past and present secret, so he starts doubting her being a widow too. Now there’s a complete change in the setting and form. Gilbert starts reading Helen’s personal journal, which she had given him as a sign of utter trust, in order to reveal him everything in detail about her mysterious past. Now the narrator is Helen and we know - from her point of view – about the disappointing unfortunate experience of her wrecked marriage. She is not a widow, then, but Mrs Hundington, this is why she is not free to return Gilbert’s love! And little Arthur, her son, is not an illeggitimate child as rumours suppose.
My review of the book stops here in order to avoid spoilers, if you haven’t already read THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL.

1996 BBC THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL

After finishing the book I decided to watch the 1996 two-part adaptation I have in my DVD collection. I hadn’t wanted to see it before reading the novel. It has been waiting only for a few months though, not so long. There are ,of course, many cuts in the film version and several differences from the book . It is anyway an honest TV movie with impressive settings and very good actors. Tara Fitzgerald as Helen, Toby Stephens (Mr Rochester in BBC 2006 Jane Eyre) as Gilbert Markham and Rupert Graves as Arthur Hundington give very convincing performances. This miniseries has a beautiful and sylvan visual flair that highlights the rugged beauty of the Yorkshire countryside, helping to paint a picture of these people made physicaly sturdy and perhaps emotionally hard by their surroundings.
For those of you who never have enough of period drama and go on with repeated viewings of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights or Sense and Sensibility, THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL will provide good entertainment with a distinctly different flavour that might make “little sister Anne” a new favourite.

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1996 BBC MINISERIES

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AGNES GREY by ANNE BRONTE

For someone like me, whose job is teaching and educating teenagers and young people, it’s easy to sympathizze with the protagonist of this novel. Let’s see what she will get from you.
After reading much about Victorian stiff, inflexible education to young innocent children - often treated like little pets to be tamed if not worse - in Charles Dickens’s novels , i.e. David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, Hard Times , AGNES GREY has made me have a completely different vision of the issue.
Anne Bronte, like her most famous elder sister Charlotte, worked as a governess and used her personal experience to draw Agnes’s touching story. Charlotte Bronte had done the same in her works: her most famous heroine, JANE EYRE, is a governess (but a very lucky one!) and in SHIRLEY, one of her characters, Mrs Pryor, a former governess, complains about the difficult tasks and unfair treatment these unfortunate ladies often had to face.
AGNES GREY is a deeply moving account which seriously discusses the contempt and inhumanity shown towards the poor though educated women of the Victorian Age, whose only resource was to become a governess.

Would you ever bear to have to cope with such terrible pupils?

1. First experience – At the Bloomfields’
Master Tom Bloomfield , 7 years old
(…)
“Traps for birds”
“Why do you catch them?”
“Papa says they do harm”.
“And what do you do with them when you catch them?”
“Different things. Sometimes I give them to the cat; sometimes I cut them in pieces with my penknife; but the next I mean to roast alive.”
“And why do you mean to do such a horrible thing?”
“For two reasons: first, to see how long it will live – and then, to see what it will taste like.”
“But don’t you know it is extremely wicked to do such a thing? Remember, the birds can feel as well as you; and think how would you like it yourself?
“Oh, that’s nothing! I’m not a bird , and I can’t feel what I do to them”.

Mary Ann Bloomfield, 6 years old

(…) “preferred rolling on the floor to any other amusement. Down she would drop like a leaden weight; and when I, with great difficulty, had succeeded in rooting her thence, I had still to hold her up with one arm, while with the other I held the book from which she was to read or spell her lesson.”

Do you think older pupils might be better?

2. Second position – At the Murrays’ household

“Miss Murray,otherwise Rosalie, was about sixteen when I came, and decidedly a very pretty girl; and in two years longer, as time more completely her form and added grace to her carriage and deportment, she was positively beautiful; and that in no common degree. (…) I wish I could say as much for her mind and disposition as I can for her form and face.”

“Miss Matilda Murray… She was about two years and a half younger than her sister: her features were larger , her complexion much darker. (…) As an animal, Matilda was all right, full of life, vigour, and activity; as an intelligent being, she was barbarously ignorant, indocile, careless, and irrational; and consequently, very distressing to one who had the task of cultivating her understanding, reforming her manners, and aiding her to acquire those ornamental attainments which, unlike her sister, she despised as much as the rest.”

Can you imagine how terrible it could be to teach such tyrannical pupils , especially if they had over-indulgent parents? Nightmarish. And it was not all: “The servants, seeing in what little estimation the governess was held by both parents and children, regulated their behaviour by the same standard.”
I found this novel by Anne Bronte extremely brave in denouncing the unjust treatment governesses had to undergo in order to get a living. Her social satire reminds Jane Austen’s ironic portrait of the country gentry and of their habits but Anne’s work is far more bitter. Impossible to smile at the deceitful ends of the two disdainful young misses Murrays whose selfishness will spoil any chance of happiness for poor, good – hearted, naive Agnes Grey.

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