THIS NEEDS TO BE AN AUDIOBOOK.
IT'S 2022 ALREADY, SHOULD BE AN AUDIOBOOK
lost interest
THIS NEEDS TO BE AN AUDIOBOOK.
THIS NEEDS TO BE AN AUDIOBOOK.
THIS NEEDS TO BE AN AUDIOBOOK.

Lo único que no me gusta es que le caiga mal Charlotte sin fundamento.

This is a pretty mammoth book, but you could expect little less from what is effectively a biography of five people, albeit a family - Patrick, Branwell, Charlotte, Anne and Emily Brontë. That it never once flags is a true testament to the skill of the author; this biography is eminently worthy of such a family of literary genius.

So much of what posterity has known of the Brontës has come down via Mrs Gaskell's biography of Charlotte, a laudable but inaccurate work that set in stone a great number of the myths and legends that have come to surround the family. Barker sets out to chisel through these myths and bring the real but flawed characters of the family to light, in particular the men of the family, Patrick, Branwell and Charlotte's husband Arthur Bell Nicholls, all of whom suffered particularly at the hands of Mrs Gaskell. That biography, whilst succeeding in its aim at establishing Charlotte and her sisters as geniuses, did so at the expense of the men in their lives, setting their achievements against a life of hardship and suffering.

This book spends more time on Charlotte than any of the other family members, but such a focus is understandable, given that Charlotte was the more lionized in her time, lived longer, had more of a desire for public and literary esteem, and bequeathed to history more of her letters, manuscripts and childhood writings. She doesn't come across as an entirely sympathetic figure, but Barker truly succeeds in capturing a vivid, vital and real personality. Anne and Emily are necessarily more shadowy, Branwell even more so.

One cannot help but finish this biography feeling that the Brontë family were cursed by their genius, cursed by possessing such vivid imaginations and passionate feelings in a place and time that did not value them and had little real outlet for them. One can only wonder how the sisters in particular would have fared in a later era.

This is a difficult book to rate; on the one hand, it’s an engaging and lively read, surprisingly easy and consistently interesting despite its length. It’s also clearly incredibly well researched, with sources frequently quoted in the text, which I appreciated.

However, the bias against Charlotte and basically every other woman mentioned is immensely frustrating. It almost feels like the book’s goal is to convince the reader that Patrick and Branwell were flawless; anyone who said a negative word about either of them was dismissed as a liar, and Branwell is credited (with no evidence) as being the cause of his sisters’ success. Anything Charlotte says or does is interpreted in the worst possible light (her unrecorded thoughts and motivations are often invented and criticized alongside the uncharitable misinterpretations of her written words) and her friends are belittled as well (“hysterical” is a common descriptor). Branwell’s objectively worse behavior is never once criticized, an impartiality that would make sense if it was extended to his sister as well, but it is not.

I found it possible to overlook this issue, because the author draws her conclusions after presenting the original sources, allowing the reader to interpret the text differently. I actually would recommend this book to anyone who’s interested in the Brontës, but it’s just a bit galling to read a biography of three women who changed the face of English literature and be presented with constant claims that the men in their lives (who did not produce any work of comparable quality) were superior.

Outstanding

What must it have been like in the Bronte household? The lives of Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell - the masculine pen names of Charlotte, Anne and Emily Bronte, were darker and filled with more secret intrigue and morose romance than any books published in this era, including their own. For such seemingly prim and sheltered women, they had wildly brutal imaginations that led them to pen books as or more scandalous than their male contemporaries. This is a huge tome, and well worth diving into. A gothic tale if ever there was.

Whew!

Juliet Barker's The Brontes is exhaustive and, as such, could be exhausting for those not thoroughly interested in the history of the Bronte family. I mean, she starts out when patriarch Patrick is a child for cripessakes - clearly this will not be a short-winded affair.

I picked this book up due to my interest in the youngest Bronte, Anne. I find her to be so damn intriguing with her feminism and critical eye on religion and marriage - what sort of woman would stand up in the face of society and spit on it so resolutely??

According to Barker, an exceedingly lonely one.

Barker is not romanticizing the Brontes in her book. She berates Elizabeth Gaskell for her slanted "biography" of Charlotte, and provides the most honest, no matter how brutal, account of each Bronte. Charlotte is angry and bull-headed and selfish and arguably a bully to her younger siblings. Branwell is a love-sick puppy who destroys himself. Emily is the day dreaming, isolating genius. Anne is the tight-lipped loner with a critical eye.

They're not sounding too great, are they?

The Brontes lived a rural life, with each other as their only company. Charlotte and Branwell made friends outside the family; Emily and Anne depended on one another. It's a tragic tale of four incredibly intelligent people dying before their time and fighting the peril of low-middle-class in the 1800s. Barker does an expert job of allowing the Brontes to speak in their own words, using hundreds of pages of their letters and diary entries. She finishes by fleshing out the world around them, allowing for fully-immersive story telling. If you're interested in mid-nineteenth century England and/or the Brontes, you really shouldn't go anywhere else but to Barker.

Though this book made me think Charlotte was kind of a terrible person, I found myself thoroughly engrossed in her story, even after her other siblings had all died. It wasn't until Charlotte's own death that I began to skim the book a little (the last 100 pages or so).

The Brontes isn't for everyone, or really for most people. It is a hefty book, and the attention to detail is so obsessive, you have to wonder if Barker has a spot of OCD. That being said, for someone like me, who got her Masters in English, and has always found the Brontes fascinating? I wouldn't have minded if it had been even longer.