By Lechi Eke
The Victorian Era gave the world one of the most famous literary families, the Bronte Sisters. In fact, every member of their family was a writer, from their father, Patrick Bronte, to all his children who survived childhood.
But life was not easy for the Bronte family. They grappled with indigence, the girls being teachers and governesses at different times, although Charlotte and Emily travelled overseas and learned German. Their brother was hooked on drug and alcohol. The only respite came in 1842 when their mother’s sister, Elizabeth (their Aunt Branwell) died and left them 950 pounds which helped them clear their debts. We pray that we eat the fruits of our labour while we live!
Patrick Bronte (1777-1861) the father of the famous novelists and poets was born in Loughbrickland, County Down, Ireland by farm workers of Catholic (mother) and Anglican (father) parents, but he was raised an Anglican. He won a scholarship to St. John’s College, Cambridge where he studied Divinity and Ancient and Modern History, bagging a Bachelor’s degree in Art. It was around this time that he changed his name from Brunty or Prunty to Bronte.
In 1806, he was ordained and held curacies in different places, but ended up being rector at Haworth in 1820. Before he met and married Maria Branwell (1783-1821) from Cornwall in 1812, he had published a collection of poems titled Cottage Poems (1811). In 1814, he published another collection titled, The Rural Minstrel. His wife died in 1812 after giving him six children, and her sister, Elizabeth, relocated to Haworth to help raise them.
In 1824, after being home taught, Mr Patrick Bronte enrolled his four eldest girls into the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge Lancashire. This school as well as other low cost schools at the time educated the children of the less prosperous members of the clergy. The following year, 1825, the two eldest girls, Maria and Elizabeth fell gravelly ill and were withdrawn. They both died within a month of each other: May 6 and June 15 1825!
The young girls had contracted Tuberculosis from boarding school (Cowan Bridge School!). They were aged 10 and 11.
The other girls, Charlotte and Emily had to be withdrawn too. But the damage had been done because the Bronte family struggled with Tuberculosis afterwards, the illness killing Branwell, Emily and Anne later in life. Two in one year (Branwell, their only son in September, 1848 and the famous Emily Bronte in December 1848), and one (Anne) in the following year (1849)!
However, the death toll in the Bronte family was nothing peculiar or curious at that time as you would later read.
The famous Bronte Sisters (Charlotte, Emily and Anne) with their brother, Branwell, were born in Thornton. Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) wrote the highly popular novel, Jane Eyre (1847), which was an instant success. Earlier, she and her sisters: Emily and Anne had published a book of Poetry under male pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bells like other of their contemporaries. For their “passion” and “originality”, their stories attracted immediate fame.
Branwell (1817-1848) their only brother wrote: Real Rest, Juvenilia (co-written as a child with Charlotte), Glass Town, Angria, poems, pieces of poems and verse, including an unfinished novel. Branwell wrote under the pseudonym of Northangerland.
Emily Bronte (1818-1848), of course, wrote the best selling novel, Wuthering Heights (1847). When Wuthering Heights was published, it did not make much impact. It was later found to be a great literary piece.
Anne Bronte (1820-1849) wrote two novels: Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The latter became well-received.
Thorton where these great writers were born is now a place of pilgrimage because of them, and their family house, the parsonage at Haworth in Yorkshire is now a museum known as the Bronte Pasonage Museum which is a tourist attraction, especially for book lovers and the literati.
Writers of the Victorian Era (1837-1901) were writing realism. They rejected the embellishments and high emotionalism and anarchy of Romanticism (1798-1850).
Last week, we did mention that the Victorians were said to have “invented childhood.” This week we look at some of the challenges of the pre-Victorian era that spilled into this age which formed part of their literary narratives, as can be seen in the works of such notable writers as Charles Dickens and the Bronte sisters.
Charles Dickens lived in Victorian England between 1812 and 1870. Coming from an indigent background and being put through child labour, Charles Dickens’ wrote about that childhood. As an adult and famous author, Dickens used his influence to push for the rights and education of children, and other social reforms that would favour them.
Victorian era may not have produced overtly participating women in the society, but in line with the queen on the throne, at the time, who was small but mighty, this era produced quietly insurgent women. As shown by the work of the Bronte Sisters, George Eliot, etc., women of this era knew who they were and what they wanted.
Society might have perhaps required of them to be soft, tender and gracious, but they had an identity and demanded for esteem as shown by their work.
From the mouth of one of Patrick Bronte’s characters in his book, The Maid of Kilarney, readers of our days begin to deduce the prejudiced stand of the Victorian males towards their female counterparts. This character says, “The education of female ought, most assuredly, to be competent, in order that she might enjoy herself, and be a fit companion for man. But, believe me, lovely, delicate and sprightly woman, is not formed by nature, to pore over the musty pages of Grecian and Roman Literature, or to plod through the windings of Mathematical problems, nor has Providence assigned for her sphere of action, either the cabinet or the field. Her forte is softness, tenderness and grace.”
Robert Southey (1774-1843) Romantic Poet Laureate for 30 years (1813-1843) who wrote in response to Charlotte Bronte at a certain time said, “Ladies from a good background should be content with an education and a marriage embellished with some decorative talents.”
The above definitely revealed the inner thoughts and stance of pre-Victorian and Victorian era men.
Nonetheless, the inner quality of the Victorian females seemed to be revealed in Charlotte Bronte’s letters to her friend, Ellen Nussey, before and after she married her husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls (1818-1906). Charlotte wrote that she was “impressed by his (Nicholls’) deep voice, his dignity and near complete emotional collapse of him” when she, Charlotte, turned him down at first. Nevertheless, she found him “rigid, conventional and rather narrow-minded like all the curates (her father, Patrick, was one!).
After her honeymoon, Charlotte confided in her friend, Ellen, that she felt “a kind of holy terror at her new situation.” She wrote, “Indeed-indeed-Nell- it is a solemn and strange and perilous thing for a woman to become a wife.”
This shows that the educated Victorian woman did not hold the institution of marriage on the same pedestal which their men did. For these men, marriage for a woman, was an end; it was what they thought completed the woman. But for an educated woman who was cerebrally engaged with life, the trappings of marriage might present a “perilous thing”.
Of the three famous Bronte sisters, only Charlotte got married and that not with overt excitement! She got married in 1854 and died the following year in 1855. George Eliot also married for a very brief period.
The above formed part of the Challenges of the Victorian Era which informed their Literature, plus the following:
- children’s education
- social, sanitary and economic conditions,
- Brevity of life – in fact life expectancy at the time was less than 25 years, and infant mortality was 41% for children 0-6 months old. So this made the death toll in the Bronte household neither peculiar nor curious.
- On sanitary/health issues, it is recorded that in Haworth before the Brontes arrived and while they lived there, the village did not have a sewage system (they used a strip of plank over a hole and a lower plank for children). Water was contaminated by faecal matter and the decomposition of bodies in the large cemetery on the hilltop.
The Preoccupation of Victorian Literature
Looking at the preoccupation of Victorian literature, the reader sees hidden in plain sight, such issues as the unfair treatment of young children (especially boys as depicted by Charles Dickens (already explained above), the terrible condition of the places of education as exposed in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, etc.).
The background to what is depicted in Jane Eyre’s Lowood School is found in the real life of the Bronte family. They started losing family members very early in life. Rector Patrick Bronte was the only one who lived long (died at 84). He outlived all his children.
The trauma of the loss of her sisters in 1825 showed in Charlotte’s writing. She blamed the Clergy Daughters’ School Cowan Bridge Lancashire. It was one of the affordable schools the Brontes could attend. Charlotte wrote about the school’s “poor medical care, chiefly, repeated emetics, and blood letting and negligence of the school doctor.”
In Jane Eyre, Charlotte using Lowood School, bashed and blamed educational institutions of her days, exposing the prevalent “scanty and sometimes spoiled food (served in schools), the lack of heating, and inadequate clothing, and the periodic epidemics of illness such as typhoid fevers; the severity and arbitrariness of punishments and even the harshness of the teachers…”
The Victorian Era was a literate age, and people were reading. Through Literature, great ills are exposed and thank God for conscientious rulers and leaders who would be touched by the plight of the people and put their hands to nation-building and development.
More to come on the Victorians…
