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Anne Brontë (17 January 1820 – 28 May 1849) was a British novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family. The daughter of a poor Irish clergyman in the Church of England, Anne Brontë lived most of her life with her family at the parish of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors.
For a couple of years she went to a boarding school. At the age of
nineteen, she left Haworth working as a governess between 1839 and
1845. After leaving her teaching position, she fulfilled her literary
ambitions. She wrote a volume of poetry with her sisters (Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, 1846) and in short succession she wrote two novels. Agnes Grey, based upon her experiences as a governess, was published in 1847. Her second and last novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall appeared in 1848. Anne's life was cut short with her death of pulmonary tuberculosis when she was 29 years old. Anne Brontë is somewhat overshadowed by her more famous sisters, Charlotte, author of four novels including Jane Eyre; and Emily, author of Wuthering Heights.
Anne's two novels, written in a sharp and ironic style, are completely
different from the romanticism followed by her sisters. She wrote in a
realistic, rather than a romantic style. Her novels, like those of her
sisters, have become classics of English literature. Anne's father, Patrick Brontë (1777 – 1861), was born in a meagre two room cottage in Emdale, Loughbrickland, County Down, Ireland. He was the first of ten children born to Hugh Brunty and Eleanor McCrory, a couple of poor Irish peasant farmers. The family surname mac Aedh Ó Proinntigh had been earlier Anglicised as Prunty or sometimes Brunty. Struggling
against poverty, Patrick learned how to read and write and from 1798 to
teach others. In 1802, at the age of twenty-six, he won a place at Cambridge to study theology at St. John's College.
There he gave up his original name, Brunty, and called himself by the
more distinguished Brontë. In 1807 he was ordained in the
priesthood in the Church of England. He served as an assistant priest or curate in various parishes and in 1810 he published his first poem Winter Evening Thoughts in a local newspaper, followed in 1811 by a collection of moral verse, Cottage Poems. In 1811, he was made vicar of St. Peter's church in Hartshead in Yorkshire. The following year he was appointed an examiner of Bible knowledge at a Wesleyan academy, Woodhouse Grove School. There, at age thirty-five, he met his future wife, Maria Branwell, the headmaster's niece. Anne's mother, Maria Branwell (1783 – 1821), was the daughter of a successful, property owning grocer and tea merchant of Penzance, Thomas Branwell and Anne Crane, the daughter of a silversmith in the town. The
eighth of eleven children, Maria had enjoyed all the benefits of
belonging to a prosperous family in a small town. After the death of
both parents within a year of each other, Maria went to help her aunt
with the teaching at the school. A tiny, neat woman, aged thirty, she
was well read and intelligent. Her strong Methodist faith immediately attracted Patrick Brontë. Though
from vastly different backgrounds, within three months Patrick
Brontë and Maria Branwell were married on 29 December 1812. Their first child, Maria (1814 – 1825), was born after their move to Hartshead. In 1815, Patrick was made curate of a chapel in the little village of Thornton, near Bradford; a second daughter, Elizabeth (1815 – 1825), was born shortly after. Four more children would follow: Charlotte (1816 – 1855), Patrick Branwell (1817 – 1848), Emily (1818 – 1848) and Anne (1820 – 1849). Anne, the youngest member of the Brontë family, was born on 17 January 1820, at number 74 Market Street in the village of Thornton, Bradford, Yorkshire, England. When
Anne was born, her father was the curate of Thornton and she was
baptised there on 25 March 1820. Shortly after, Anne's father took a
perpetual curacy, a secure but not enriching vocation, in Haworth, a
remote small town some seven miles (11 km) away. In April 1820,
The Brontë family moved into the Haworth Parsonage. This five room
building became the Brontës' family home for the rest of their
lives. Anne was barely a year old when her mother became ill of what is believed to have been uterine cancer. Maria Branwell died on 15 September 1821. In order to provide a mother for his children, Patrick tried to remarry, but he had no success. Maria's
sister, Elizabeth Branwell (1776 – 1842), had moved into the parsonage,
initially to nurse her dying sister, but she subsequently spent the
rest of her life there raising the Brontë children. She did it
from a sense of duty, but she was a stern woman who expected respect,
rather than love. There
was little affection between her and the eldest children, but to Anne,
her favorite according to tradition, she did relate. Anne shared a room
with her aunt, they were particularly close, and this may have strongly
influenced Anne's personality and religious beliefs. In Elizabeth Gaskell's
biography, Anne's father remembered her as precocious, reporting that
once, when she was four years old, in reply to his question about what
a child most wanted, she answered: "age and experience". In the summer of 1824, Patrick sent his eldest daughters Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily to Crofton Hall in Crofton, West Yorkshire, and later to the Clergy Daughter's School, Cowan Bridge, Lancashire. When
the two eldest siblings died of consumption in 1825, Maria on 6 May and
Elizabeth on 15 June, Charlotte and Emily were immediately brought home. The
unexpected deaths of Anne's two eldest sisters distressed the bereaved
family enough that Patrick could not face sending them away again. For
the next five years, all the Brontë children were educated at
home, largely by their father and aunt. The
young Brontës made little attempt to mix with others outside the
parsonage, but relied upon each other for friendship and companionship.
The bleak moors surrounding Haworth became their playground. Anne's
studies at home included music and drawing. Anne, Emily and Branwell
had piano lessons at the parsonage from the Keighley parish organist.
The Brontë children received art lessons from John Bradley of
Keighley and all of them drew with some skill. Their aunt tried to make sure the girls knew how to run a household, but their minds were more inclined to literature. Their father's well stocked library was a main source of knowledge. They read the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Scott, and many others, and examined articles from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Fraser's Magazine, and The Edinburgh Review. In addition, they read history, geography and biographies. Those
readings fed the Brontës' imaginations. The children's creativity
soared after their father presented Branwell with a set of toy soldiers
in June 1826. They named the soldiers and developed their characters,
which they called the "Twelves". This led to the creation of an imaginary world: the African kingdom of "Angria".
That was illustrated with maps and watercolour renderings. The children
kept themselves busy devising plots about the people of Angria, and its
capital city, "Glass Town", later called Verreopolis, and finally,
Verdopolis. These
fantasy worlds and kingdoms gradually acquired all the characteristics
of the real world — sovereigns, armies, heroes, outlaws, fugitives, inns,
schools and publishers. For these peoples and lands the children
created newspapers, magazines and chronicles, all of which were written
out in extremely tiny books, with writing that was so small it was
difficult to read without the aid of a magnifying glass. These juvenile
creations and writings served as the apprenticeship of their later,
literary talents.
Around 1831, when Anne was eleven, she and her sister Emily broke away from
Charlotte and Branwell in the creation and development of the fictional
sagas of Angria establishing their own fantasy world of Gondal. Anne
was at this time particularly close to Emily; the closeness of their
relationship was reinforced by Charlotte's departure for Roe Head
School, in January 1831.
When Charlotte's friend Ellen Nussey visited
Haworth in 1833, she reported that Emily and Anne were "like twins",
"inseparable companions". She described Anne at this time: "Anne, dear
gentle Anne was quite different in appearance from the others, and she
was her aunt's favourite. Her hair was a very pretty light brown, and
fell on her neck in graceful curls. She had lovely violet - blue eyes;
fine pencilled eyebrows and a clear almost transparent complexion. She
still pursued her studies and especially her sewing, under the
surveillance of her aunt." Anne
also took lessons from Charlotte, after she came back from the boarding
school, at Roe Head. Later, Anne began more formal studies at Miss
Wooler's school at Roe Head, Huddersfield.
Charlotte returned there on 29 July 1835 as a teacher. Emily
accompanied her as a pupil; her tuition largely financed by Charlotte's
teaching. Within a few months, Emily was unable to adapt to life at
school, and by October, was physically ill from homesickness. She was
withdrawn from the school and replaced by Anne. At
fifteen, it was Anne's first time away from home, and she made few
friends at Roe Head. She was quiet and hard working, and determined to
stay and get the education that would allow her to support herself. Anne
stayed for two years, winning a good conduct medal in December 1836,
and returning home only during Christmas and the summer holidays. Anne
and Charlotte do not appear to have been close during their time at Roe
Head (Charlotte's letters almost never mention Anne) but Charlotte was
concerned about the health of her sister. At some point before December
1837, Anne became seriously ill with gastritis and underwent a religious crisis. A Moravian minister
was called to see Anne several times during her illness, suggesting
that her distress was caused, at least in part, by conflict with the
local Anglican clergy. Charlotte was sufficiently concerned about
Anne's illness to notify Patrick Brontë, and to take Anne home
where she remained to recover. Little
is known about Anne's life during 1838, but in 1839, a year after
leaving the school and at the age of nineteen, she was actively looking
for a teaching position. As the daughter of a poor clergyman, she
needed to earn a living. Her father had no private income and the
parsonage would revert to the church on his death. Teaching or being a
governess in a private family were among the few options available to
poor but educated women. In April, 1839, Anne began to work as a
governess with the Ingham family at Blake Hall, near Mirfield. The children in Anne's charge were spoilt and wild, and persistently disobeyed and tormented her. She
experienced great difficulty controlling them, and had almost no
success in instilling any education. She was not empowered to inflict
any punishment, and when she complained of their behaviour to their
parents, she received no support, but was merely criticized for not
being capable of her job. The Inghams, unsatisfied with their
children's progress, dismissed Anne at the end of the year. She
returned home at Christmas, 1839, joining Charlotte and Emily, who had
left their positions, and Branwell. The whole episode at Blake Hall was
so traumatic for Anne, that she reproduced it in almost perfect detail
in her later novel, Agnes Grey. At
Anne's return to Haworth, she met William Weightman (1814 – 1842),
Patrick's new curate, who began work in the parish in August 1839. Twenty-five years old, he had obtained a two year licentiate in theology from the University of Durham.
He quickly became welcome at the parsonage. Anne's acquaintance with
William Weightman parallels the writing of a number of poems, which may suggest that she fell in love with him. There is considerable disagreement over this point. Not much outside evidence exists beyond a teasing anecdote of Charlotte's to Ellen Nussey in January 1842. It may or may not be relevant that the source of Agnes Grey 's
renewed interest in poetry is the curate to whom she is attracted. As
the person to whom Anne Brontë may have been attracted, William
Weightman has aroused much curiosity. It seems clear that he was a
good looking, engaging young man, whose easy humour and kindness
towards the Brontë sisters made a considerable impression. It is
such a character that she portrays in Edward Weston, and that her
heroine Agnes Grey finds deeply appealing. If
Anne did form an attachment to Weightman, that does not imply that he,
in turn, was attracted to her. Indeed, it is entirely possible that
Weightman was no more aware of her than of her sisters or their friend
Ellen Nussey. Nor does it follow that Anne believed him to be
interested in her. If anything, her poems suggest just the
opposite – they speak of quietly experienced but intensely felt
emotions, intentionally hidden from others, without any indication of
their being
requited. It is also possible that an initially mild attraction to
Weightman assumed increasing importance to Anne over time, in the
absence of other opportunities for love, marriage, and children. Anne
would have seen William Weightman on her holidays at home, particularly
during the summer of 1842, when her sisters were away. He died of
cholera in the same year. Anne expressed her grief for his death in her poem "I will not mourn thee, lovely one", in which she called him "our darling".
Anne
soon obtained a second post: this time as a governess to the children
of the Reverend Edmund Robinson and his wife Lydia, at Thorp Green, a
wealthy country house near
York. Thorp Green appeared later as Horton Lodge in her novel Agnes Grey. Anne was to have four pupils: Lydia, age 15, Elizabeth, age 13, Mary, age 12, and Edmund, age 8. Initially,
she encountered the same problems with the unruly children that she had
experienced at Blake Hall. Anne missed her home and family, commenting
in a diary paper in 1841 that she did not like her situation and wished
to leave it. Her own quiet, gentle disposition did not help matters. However,
despite her outwardly placid appearance, Anne was determined and with
the experience she gradually gained, she eventually made a success of
her position, becoming well liked by her new employers. Her charges,
the Robinson girls, ultimately became her lifelong friends. For
the next five years, Anne spent no more than five or six weeks a year
with her family, during holidays at Christmas and in June. The rest of
her time she was with the Robinsons at their home Thorp Green. She was
also obliged to accompany the family on their annual holidays to Scarborough. Between 1840 and 1844, Anne spent around five weeks each summer at the resort, and loved the place. A number of locations in Scarborough formed the setting for Agnes Grey 's final scenes. During
the time working for the Robinsons, Anne and her sisters considered the
possibility of setting-up their own school. Various locations,
including their own home, the parsonage, were considered as places to
establish it. The project never materialized and Anne chose repeatedly
to return to Thorp Green. She came home at the death of her aunt in
early November 1842, while her sisters were away in Brussels. Elizabeth Branwell left a £350 legacy for each of her nieces. Anne
returned to Thorp Green in January 1843. She secured a position for
Branwell with her employers: he was to take over from her as tutor to
the Robinsons' son, Edmund, the only boy in the family, who was growing
too old to be under Anne's care. However Branwell did not live in the
house with the Robinson family, as Anne did. Anne's vaunted calm
appears to have been the result of hard fought battles, balancing
deeply felt emotions with careful thought, a sense of responsibility,
and resolute determination. All
three Brontë sisters had spent time working as governesses or
teachers, and all had experienced problems controlling their charges,
gaining support from their employers, and coping with homesickness — but
Anne was the only one who persevered and made a success of her work.
Anne
and Branwell continued to teach at Thorp Green for the next two years.
However, Branwell was enticed into a secret relationship with his
employer's wife, Lydia Robinson. When Anne and her brother returned
home for the holidays in June 1845, she resigned her position. While
Anne gave no reason for leaving Thorp Green, it is generally believed
that she chose to leave upon becoming aware of the relationship between
her brother and Mrs. Robinson. Branwell was sternly dismissed when his
employer found out about his relationship with his wife. In spite of
her brother's behaviour, Anne retained close ties to Elizabeth and Mary
Robinson, exchanging frequent letters with them even after Branwell's
disgrace. The Robinson sisters came to visit Anne in December 1848. Once
free of her position as a governess, Anne took Emily to visit some of
the places she had come to know and love in the past five years. An
initial plan of going to the sea at Scarborough fell through, and the sisters went instead to York, where Anne showed her sister the York Minster.
In
the summer of 1845, all four of the Brontës were at home with
their father Patrick. None of the four had any immediate prospect of
employment. It was at this point that Charlotte came across Emily's
poems. They had been shared only with Anne, her partner in the world of
Gondal. Charlotte proposed that they be published. Anne also revealed
her own poems. Charlotte's reaction was characteristically patronizing:
"I thought that these verses too had a sweet sincere pathos of their
own". Eventually,
though not easily, the sisters reached an agreement. They told neither
Branwell, nor their father, nor their friends about what they were
doing. Anne and Emily each contributed 21 poems and Charlotte with
nineteen. With Aunt Branwell's money, the Brontë sisters paid to
have the collection published. Afraid
that their work would be judged differently if they revealed their
identity as women, the book appeared under their three chosen
pseudonyms — or pen-names, the initials of which were the same as their
own. Charlotte became Currer Bell, Emily became Ellis Bell and Anne became Acton Bell. Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell was
available for sale in May 1846. The cost of publication was about
¾ of Anne's annual salary at Thorp Green. On 7 May 1846, the
first three copies of the book were delivered to Haworth Parsonage. The
volume achieved three somewhat favourable reviews, but was a dismal
failure, with only two copies being sold during the first year. Anne,
however, began to find a market for her more recent poetry. Both the
Leeds Intelligencer and Fraser's Magazine published her poem "The
Narrow Way" under her pseudonym, Acton Bell. Four months earlier, in
August, Fraser's Magazine had also published her poem "The Three
Guides". Even
before the fate of the book of poems became apparent, the three sisters
were working on a new project. They began to work on their first
novels. Charlotte wrote The Professor, Emily Wuthering Heights, and Anne Agnes Grey. By July 1846, a package with the three manuscripts was making the rounds of London publishers. After a number of rejections, Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey were accepted by a publisher in London, but Charlotte's novel was rejected by every other publisher to whom it was sent. However, Charlotte was not long in completing her second novel, the now famous Jane Eyre, and this was immediately accepted by Smith, Elder & Co., a different publisher from Anne's and Emily's though also located in London. However, Jane Eyre was
the first to appear in print. While Anne and Emily's novels 'lingered
in the press', Charlotte's second novel became an immediate and
resounding success. Meanwhile, Anne and Emily were obliged to pay fifty
pounds to help meet the publishing costs. Their publisher, urged on by
the success of Jane Eyre, finally published Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey in December 1847. These two sold exceptionally well, but Agnes Grey was distinctly outshone by Emily's much more dramatic Wuthering Heights.
Anne's second novel,
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was published in the last week of June 1848. It was an instant phenomenal success; within six weeks it was sold out. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is
perhaps the most shocking of the Brontës' novels. In seeking to
present the truth in literature, Anne's depiction of alcoholism and
debauchery were profoundly disturbing to nineteenth century readers.
Helen Graham, the tenant of the title, intrigues Gilbert Markham and
gradually she reveals her mysterious past as an artist and wife of the
dissipated Arthur Huntingdon. The book's brilliance lies in its
revelation of the position of women at the time, and its multi - layered
plot. It is easy today to underestimate the extent to which the novel challenged existing social and legal structures. May Sinclair,
in 1913, said that the slamming of Helen Huntingdon's bedroom door
against her husband reverberated throughout Victorian England. Anne's
heroine eventually leaves her husband to protect their young son from
his influence. She supports herself and her son by painting, while
living in hiding, fearful of discovery. In doing so, she violates not
only social conventions, but also English law. At the time, a married
woman had no independent legal existence, apart from her husband; could
not own her own property, sue for divorce, or control custody of her
children. If she attempted to live apart from him, her husband had the
right to reclaim her. If she took their child with her, she was liable
for kidnapping. In living off her own earnings, she was held to be
stealing her husband's property, since any income she made was legally
his.
In
July 1848, in order to dispel the rumour that the three "Bell brothers"
were all the same person, Charlotte and Anne went to London to reveal
their identities to the publisher George Smith. The women spent several
days in his company. Many years after Anne's death, he wrote in the
Cornhill Magazine his
impressions of her, describing her as: "...a gentle, quiet, rather
subdued person, by no means pretty, yet of a pleasing appearance. Her
manner was curiously expressive of a wish for protection and
encouragement, a kind of constant appeal which invited sympathy." In the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,
which appeared in August 1848, Anne clearly stated her intentions in
writing it. She presented a forceful rebuttal to critics who considered
her portrayal of Huntingdon overly graphic and disturbing. (Charlotte
was among them.) Anne
also sharply castigated reviewers who speculated on the sex of the
authors, and the appropriateness of their writing to their sex, in
words that do little to reinforce the stereotype of Anne as meek and
gentle. The increasing popularity of the Bells' work led to renewed interest in the Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell,
originally published by Aylott and Jones. The remaining print run was
purchased by Smith and Elder, and reissued under new covers in November
1848. It still sold poorly. Only
in their late twenties, a highly successful literary career appeared a
certainty for Anne and her sisters. However, an impending tragedy was
to engulf the family. Within the next ten months, three of the siblings, including Anne, would be dead. Branwell's
health had gradually deteriorated over the previous two years, but its
seriousness was half disguised by his persistent drunkenness. He died
on the morning of 24 September 1848. His sudden death came as a shock to the family. He was aged just thirty-one. The cause was recorded as chronic bronchitis - marasmus; though, through his recorded symptoms, it is now believed that he was also suffering from tuberculosis. The
whole family had suffered from coughs and colds during the winter of
1848 and it was Emily who next became severely ill. She deteriorated
rapidly over a two month period, persistently refusing all medical aid
until the morning of 19 December, when, being so weak, she declared:
"if you will send for a doctor, I will see him now". It
was far too late. At about two o'clock that afternoon, after a hard,
short conflict in which she struggled desperately to hang on to life,
she died, aged just thirty. Emily's death deeply affected Anne and her grief further undermined her physical health. Over Christmas, Anne caught influenza. Her symptoms intensified, and in early January, her father sent for a Leeds physician,
who diagnosed her condition as consumption, and intimated that it was
quite advanced leaving little hope of a recovery. Anne met the news
with characteristic determination and self control. Unlike Emily, Anne took all the recommended medicines, and responded to all the advice she was given. That
same month Anne wrote her last poem, " A dreadful darkness closes in",
in which she deals with the realization of being terminally ill. Her health fluctuated as the months passed, but she progressively grew thinner and weaker. In February 1849, Anne seemed somewhat better. By this time, she had decided to make a return visit to Scarborough in the hope that the change of location and fresh sea air might initiate a recovery, and give her a chance to live. On
24 May 1849, Anne said her good-byes to her father and the servants at
Haworth, and set off for Scarborough with Charlotte and their friend Ellen Nussey.
En route, the three spent a day and a night in York, where, escorting
Anne around in a wheelchair, they did some shopping, and at Anne's request, visited the colossal York Minster. However, it was clear that Anne had little strength left. On
Sunday, 27 May, Anne asked Charlotte whether it would be easier for her
if she return home to die instead of remaining at Scarborough. A
doctor, consulted the next day, indicated that death was already close.
Anne received the news quietly. She expressed her love and concern for
Ellen and Charlotte, and seeing Charlotte's distress, whispered to her
to "take courage". Conscious and calm, Anne died at about two o'clock in the afternoon, Monday, 28 May 1849. Over the following few days, Charlotte made the decision to "lay the flower where it had fallen". Anne
was buried not in Haworth with the rest of her family, but in
Scarborough. The funeral was held on Wednesday, 30 May, which did not
allow time for Patrick Brontë to make the 70-mile (110 km)
trip to Scarborough, had he wished to do so. The former schoolmistress
at Roe Head, Miss Wooler, was also in Scarborough at this time, and she
was the only other mourner at Anne's funeral. She
was buried in St. Mary's churchyard; beneath the castle walls, and
overlooking the bay. Charlotte commissioned a stone to be placed over
her grave, with the simple inscription "Here lie the remains of Anne
Brontë, daughter of the Revd. P. Brontë, Incumbent of
Haworth, Yorkshire. She died, Aged 28, May 28th, 1849". Anne was
actually twenty-nine at her death. A
year after Anne's death, further editions of her novels were required;
however, Charlotte prevented re-publication of Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. In 1850, Charlotte wrote damningly "Wildfell Hall it
hardly appears to me desirable to preserve. The choice of subject in
that work is a mistake, it was too little consonant with the character,
tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring inexperienced writer." This
act was the predominant cause of Anne's relegation to the back seat of
the Brontë bandwagon. Anne's novel was daring for the Victorian
era with its depiction of scenes of mental and physical cruelty and
approach to divorce. The consequence was that Charlotte's novels, along
with Emily's Wuthering Heights,
continued to be published, firmly launching these two sisters into
literary stardom, while Anne's work was consigned to oblivion. Further,
Anne was only twenty-eight when she wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; at a comparable age, Charlotte had produced only The Professor. The
general view has been that Anne is a mere shadow compared with
Charlotte, the family's most prolific writer, and Emily, the genius.
This has occurred to a large extent because Anne was very different, as
a person and as a writer, from Charlotte and Emily. The controlled,
reflective camera eye of Agnes Grey is closer to Jane Austen's Persuasion than to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. The painstaking realism and social criticism of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall directly counters the romanticized violence of Wuthering Heights. Anne's religious concerns, reflected in her books and expressed
directly in her poems, were not concerns shared by her sisters. Anne's
subtle prose has a fine ironic edge; her novels also reveal Anne to be
the most socially radical of the three. Now, with increasing critical
interest in female authors, her life is being reexamined, and her work
reevaluated. A re-appraisal of Anne's work has begun, gradually leading
to her acceptance, not as a minor Brontë, but as a major literary
figure in her own right. |