Book Magic: Aesthetic Conflicts in Charlotte Brontë's Juvenilia

Abstract

f',I K E most forms of youthful play, the Bronte juvenilia served an important heuristic function for its players. The vast imaginary world which the Bronte children created out of the cramped reality of Haworth Parsonage was at once a playground and a workshop, a land where the aspiring young artists could begin to work through problems, at once psychological and vocational, which would concern them for the rest of their lives. In writings which focussed so often on chaos-from war and political rebellion to the disintegration of families-we can trace a constant preoccupation with the idea of literary form, with the structural conflicts involved in the process of writing itself.' Melodie Monahan, in her edition of Charlotte The Poetaster, points out that in this miniature Jonsonian play, Bront6's emphasis is ... on esthetics, on defining great lit-