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4.07 AVERAGE
4.07 AVERAGE
Banger of a classic!!! Plus makes me inspired to paint again.
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I loved this book. I did skip the sermon-like paragraphs, which might make me a bad Victorianist, but it was at times George Eliot-like didacticism. Anne wrote a better heroine than Emily or Charlotte, though my heart will always belong to Jane and Mr. Rochester.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Why did I not know about Branwell Bronte until now?
A quick primer: Branwell is the fourth child and only son in the Brontë family. He (sort of) held a series of what would now be considered day jobs and sold portraits as he pursued his artistic career. Eventually he falls in with a bad crowd, picks up a laudanum habit, and at some point begins an affair with a married woman. When the (eventually widowed) woman refuses to marry him, he buries himself in his addictions and dies a year or so after the major Brontë triad is published.
I've probably had to read Jane Eyre three times over the course of my education, Wuthering Heights twice. I like them both well enough (I do love a good gothic melodrama) but Jesus god, way the bury the lede, educational standards board! I have spent at least two solid hours of my life decoding the purported symbolism of whatever spooky ghost shows up in the other two stories, only to miss a better and more interesting lesson because they aren't treated like the triad they should be.
Alright, I'll calm down. Anne is by far the most realistic and pragmatic writer of the Bronte sisters. Wildfell Hall is as good if not better than Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, even if Helen, the heroine, is somewhat too pious and forgiving to be relatable. (There were points where I wondered if she was even a reliable narrator.) The book is couched in epistolary, which works well in the beginning and works less in the end, and the conclusion has that rushed feeling that reeks of Victorian publishers demanding happy, matrimonial endings for any and all virtuous women. Gilbert the narrator serves more as a plot device than as a love interest, and while the rapid conclusion of his own part in the plot feels strained, I think the exposition of Helen's character would be weaker without him.
Helen's husband's bad behavior is regularly painful to read about. Not only in the empathetic sense, but in the historical one - that there were men like him, and there still are, and there are faithful, good people being hurt by them. Helen's trials confirm her fears that there is very little support for her, and the small successes she does have are down to her extraordinary fortitude of character, and the limited ability of her meager stock of friends. I wish I could say more had changed. I know, I know, we're working on it.
But so returns the question of Branwell. Read in triad, all three novels are so clearly about him. Each sister takes her own view, and in so doing, you learn as much about the author as you do about him. Charlotte's measured anger, Emily's dramatic despair, and Anne's duty-bound, moralistic disgust for their dissipate brother create a sort of layered portrait of lost potential and familial bond pushed to breaking. Instead of whatever high symbolic concerns of the English state, you see three sisters trying to come to terms with their own lives' cruelties. Instead of the eternal faceless feminine struggling to assert itself on some vast notion of time and place, you see the wreckage of a life spent in selfishness and machismo, as three real, complex, and flawed women struggle to survive it in a world with few, if any resources. High schoolers can and should understand this. It's a better lesson, a more human one, and one that shouldn't be left to your thirties to uncover on accident.
A quick primer: Branwell is the fourth child and only son in the Brontë family. He (sort of) held a series of what would now be considered day jobs and sold portraits as he pursued his artistic career. Eventually he falls in with a bad crowd, picks up a laudanum habit, and at some point begins an affair with a married woman. When the (eventually widowed) woman refuses to marry him, he buries himself in his addictions and dies a year or so after the major Brontë triad is published.
I've probably had to read Jane Eyre three times over the course of my education, Wuthering Heights twice. I like them both well enough (I do love a good gothic melodrama) but Jesus god, way the bury the lede, educational standards board! I have spent at least two solid hours of my life decoding the purported symbolism of whatever spooky ghost shows up in the other two stories, only to miss a better and more interesting lesson because they aren't treated like the triad they should be.
Alright, I'll calm down. Anne is by far the most realistic and pragmatic writer of the Bronte sisters. Wildfell Hall is as good if not better than Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, even if Helen, the heroine, is somewhat too pious and forgiving to be relatable. (There were points where I wondered if she was even a reliable narrator.) The book is couched in epistolary, which works well in the beginning and works less in the end, and the conclusion has that rushed feeling that reeks of Victorian publishers demanding happy, matrimonial endings for any and all virtuous women. Gilbert the narrator serves more as a plot device than as a love interest, and while the rapid conclusion of his own part in the plot feels strained, I think the exposition of Helen's character would be weaker without him.
Helen's husband's bad behavior is regularly painful to read about. Not only in the empathetic sense, but in the historical one - that there were men like him, and there still are, and there are faithful, good people being hurt by them. Helen's trials confirm her fears that there is very little support for her, and the small successes she does have are down to her extraordinary fortitude of character, and the limited ability of her meager stock of friends. I wish I could say more had changed. I know, I know, we're working on it.
But so returns the question of Branwell. Read in triad, all three novels are so clearly about him. Each sister takes her own view, and in so doing, you learn as much about the author as you do about him. Charlotte's measured anger, Emily's dramatic despair, and Anne's duty-bound, moralistic disgust for their dissipate brother create a sort of layered portrait of lost potential and familial bond pushed to breaking. Instead of whatever high symbolic concerns of the English state, you see three sisters trying to come to terms with their own lives' cruelties. Instead of the eternal faceless feminine struggling to assert itself on some vast notion of time and place, you see the wreckage of a life spent in selfishness and machismo, as three real, complex, and flawed women struggle to survive it in a world with few, if any resources. High schoolers can and should understand this. It's a better lesson, a more human one, and one that shouldn't be left to your thirties to uncover on accident.
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Loveable characters:
No