HAPPY 200TH BIRTHDAY, EMILY BRONTË!

Emily Brontë was born on 30th July 1818, the 5th child of the Reverend Patrick Brontë, a stern Evangelical curate, and his wife Maria. 
When Emily was three years old, her mother died of cancer, and her Aunt Branwell, a strict Calvinist, moved in to help raise the six children (another daughter, Anne, was born soon after Emily). They lived in a parsonage in Haworth with the bleak moors of Yorkshire on one side and the parish graveyard on the other. 

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EMILY BRONTË!

Emily Brontë was born on 30th July 1818, the 5th child of the Reverend Patrick Brontë, a stern Evangelical curate, and his wife Maria. When Emily was three years old, her mother died of cancer, and her Aunt Branwell, a strict Calvinist, moved in to help raise the six children (another daughter, Anne, was born soon after Emily). They lived in a parsonage in Haworth with the bleak moors of Yorkshire on one side and the parish graveyard on the other. 
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“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Healthcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.” 
Emily Brontë, "Wuthering Heights"

REVISING JANE EYRE

Jane Eyre was Charlotte Brontë’s second novel, but the first to be published. The first, The Professor, was rejected several times  by the publishers and was published posthumously. Jane Eyre, on the other hand, was accepted at once, favourably reviewed and recognised as something new in English fiction  -  it used traditional conventions in a very personal way. The strong autobiographical element is what typifies all her work and this novel in particular. In fact, Charlotte Brontë’s  fiction is best understood in the light of her personal background, as it is essentially  the expression of her passionate  temper and the imaginary world  in which  she lived.  The first-person  narrator, who in 18^th-century fiction was used to add the realism of narration, is used by Charlotte Brontë  to convey  personal feelings  in order that the narrator becomes directly identified with the author. This accounts  for the emotional use of language and reveals the strength of Charlotte Brontë’s feelings and her interest in the nature  of human relationships. She also employed Gothic conventions in a personal way, not just for the sake of arousing  a sense  of horror, but as a means of evoking feelings. The handling of nature  serves the same purpose.  The emotional use of  language, the symbolic handling of nature and the projection of personal feelings are features typical of Romantic poetry, but they appear  for the first time in serious  fiction  in the novels of  Charlotte Brontë. The Romantic aspect is also evident in the male protagonist of Jane Eyre  -  Rochester is a typical Byronic hero. Despite his stern manner and not particularly handsome appearance, he is very attractive to women, but restless and moody and with something mysterious about his past. 

You can read The Guardian review here.
Here you can read the novel.

https://webtv.loescher.it/home/zoomPublic?contentId=1682921

"Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags."

Charlotte Brontë

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ANNE BRONTË!

Born on January 17, 1820, in Thornton, Yorkshire, England, Anne Brontë wrote a book of poetry with her sisters Charlotte and Emily. She worked as a governess too. Her 1847 novel, Agnes Grey, was inspired by her experiences. Her subsequent novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the story of a woman leaving her abusive husband, was published the following year. Anne died of tuberculosis on May 28, 1849, in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England.  

Continue reading  here.

Here you can read an interesting article about her books.

“I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.” 
Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

COMMEMORATING CHARLOTTE BRONTË

Charlotte Brontë, the last surviving child of her family, died aged 38 and pregnant on 31 March 1855 (Easter Saturday) in Haworth.

Click here to read her most famous novel, Jane Eyre, online. 

I am neither a man nor a woman but an author.

Charlotte Brontë

11 Lessons That 'Jane Eyre' Can Teach Every 21st Century Woman About How To Live Well

10 Things Writers Can Learn From Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre at a Glance

https://www.bl.uk/people/charlotte-bronte

CHARLOTTE BRONTË

Charlotte Brontë was born on 21 April 1816, the third daughter of Reverend Patrick Brontë. At the age of four she moved with her family to Haworth in Yorkshire where her father had been appointed curate and where she lived for the rest of her life. Her mother died in 1821. She lived with her brother and sisters in wild and beautiful surroundings but with little contact with other people. They had to rely on each other for company  and as a result became a very close-knit group. They were taught partly by their father and partly at school, but they were mainly self-educated. They were deeply influenced by Romantic writers, especially Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley. Charlotte also read French novelists.