Anne Brontë

Abstract

Until well into the 20th century, the reputation of Anne Brontë (b. 1820–d. 1849) as a writer rested largely on the fame of her elder sisters Charlotte and Emily. She was “the other one”: treated as a peripheral player in the Brontë story and mythologized as “dear, gentle Anne”—the words of the Brontës’ schoolfriend Ellen Nussey, in her reminiscences of 1871. We now know that, although shy, reserved, and delicate (she suffered from asthma), Anne was also pragmatic, keenly observant, quietly determined, and courageous. Only five of her letters survive, but we know from contemporary records, including her diary papers and family correspondence, of her Yorkshire childhood and schooling, her difficult experiences as a governess, and her strong Christian faith and talent for music. Like her sisters, she began writing in childhood, creating the imaginary world of Gondal with Emily, to whom she was particularly close. She wrote poetry and two novels. Her first novel, Agnes Grey (1847), published as part of a “three-decker” with Emily’s Wuthering Heights, was inevitably compared unfavorably with her sister’s novel because it was less sensational and “less powerful”; yet it is now increasingly celebrated as one of the first novels to educate readers in the economic and psychological hardship of the governess. Her longer second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), also attracted comparison with Wuthering Heights and the same accusations of coarseness (Sharps London Magazine was horrified by The Tenant’s “disgustingly truthful mimesis”). The unfavorable reception and subsequent lack of interest in the novel was fueled by Charlotte’s reluctance to allow republication: she thought the subject matter (designed to warn against misuse of talents and the abuse of male privilege in society) a “mistake.” She felt that Anne’s dedication to representing the truth of such appalling subject matter had harmed her sensitive sister personally and publicly. It took some eighty years before the effects of this opinion were reversed: biographers and critics—led by W. T. Hale, followed by A. Harrison and D. Stanford, A. Craig Bell, and E. Chitham—now acknowledge Anne as a serious novelist and poet. Increasing critical interest in female authors gave further impetus to critics like Elizabeth Langland to examine Anne as a literary figure in her own right, an artist whose aesthetics lie more in the realm of realism, especially in the relationships between professionalism, art, and morality, than in the familiar world of Brontë romance. Her Gondal and autobiographical poems, twenty-one of which were first published by the Brontë sisters under pseudonyms, in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, display a close observation of the world, an often-melancholy tone, and a disarming sincerity. Driven by a sense of Christian duty to teach, she believed that “the end of Religion is not to teach us how to die, but how to live.” Anne Brontë is now seen as a bravely original and resolutely moral writer, whose works increasingly yield fresh insights from new critical approaches.