I was struck by the contrast offered in her manner of treating the topic to that of Miss Rigby in the Quarterly. Good and intelligent women write well on such subjects. I have read with pleasure a little book on English Social Life by the wife of Archbishop Whately. Hare’s Guesses At Truth, a book containing things that in depth and far-sought wisdom sometimes recall the Thoughts of Pascal, only it is as the light of the sun recalls that of the moon. Reading has, of late, been my great solace and recreation. With the heavy suspicion on my mind that all may not be right, I yet feel forced to put up with the inevitable wrong.
I can work indefatigably at the correction of a work before it leaves my hands, but when once I have looked on it as completed and submitted to the inspection of others, it becomes next to impossible to alter or amend. I ask this though I well know it cannot now be altered. Taylor censured it he considers as defective all that portion which relates to Shirley’s nervousness-the bite of the dog, etc. My Dear Sir,-I want to know your opinion of the subject of this proof-sheet. Yet Caroline Helstone’s ethereal femininity and infantilization mirrors Anne Brontë’s reputation as the ‘obedient’ sibling, as well as the views expressed in her semi-autobiographical novels Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848).Ĭreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public LicenseCharlotte Brontë to William Smith Williams, SeptemDumbarton Oaks Skip to Content Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Menu This juvenilia piece explores themes of waning sibling connections, death and heartbreak – issues which tormented Branwell and Charlotte throughout his prolonged final illness. Mere weeks before Charlotte began volume 1 of Shirley, Branwell was determined to return to a heroine created in his childhood, also named “Caroline (1836)”. In despair, as a form of catharsis, she turned to her writing and this essay will focus on how protagonist Caroline Helstone became an elegy for both Branwell and Anne Brontë. Charlotte was the last sibling standing, having lost all her co-authors in the space of nine months.
However, by the summer of 1849, their familial collaboration was at an end. Throughout adulthood, each Brontë continuously returned to these stories, oftentimes due to nostalgia and occasionally for creative reinvention. In their adolescent years, the Brontës famously forged fictional kingdoms together, known collectively as “The Glass Town Saga”. This essay explores Charlotte Brontë’s 1849 novel Shirley as a literary endeavour to recreate the sibling dynamic of the Brontës’ childhoods, and the psychological effect of being the ‘surviving’ sibling of a formally collaborative unit.
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