Continuing the Bronte Discussion

I apologize for not contributing soon after our "All Things Bronte" discussion night, but computer problems hindered. And then, I wanted to finish Agnes Grey. That done this afternoon, and the computer refitted with a monster-hard drive, I can post.

We only had three at our April meeting, which was disappointing because we knew others have read and enjoyed the Brontes. We wanted to hear what all had to say, and the blog is your opportunity. Please, post, whether you attended or not. Especially if you did not.

I've just read Page Turner's review of Agnes Grey, and won't add much to it. I found it much more enjoyable than The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (also by Anne Bronte), which I read in time for the book club but felt to be too much like a tract on behavior.

It's surprising to me that Tenant was Anne's second novel (with Agnes the first). Agnes Grey handles narrative more maturely, while Tenant clumsily contrives to be a series of letters and a journal. I say 'clumsily,' because I don't believe anyone would write either at such length, especially characters such as a farmer and a young mother. Furthermore, the journal portion doesn't ring true because it reads as though the writer knows the end from the beginning. No diarist knows what's going to be important until after she has reread her pages and reflected on the themes that keep reappearing. It's written as though she knows she'll need an excuse for leaving her husband. The reader is being set up. Why not use the first-person narrative, as in Agnes Grey? In it, Anne succeeds at having her heroine look back on a hard life in antipation of a more fulfilling future.

Agnes Grey is also a 'tract on behavior,' but less preachy. Tenant is full of tiresome speeches, while Agnes is reflective and interspersed with snippets of action that bear out a point the main character is making. We get her take on the many types that populate her world, as Page Turner describes. I kept having the impression, reading both, that here was the book of Proverbs fleshed out. There's the fool, the slothful person, the mocker, the drunkard, the adulterer, the prudent, the excellent wife, the poor, the humble, the simple.

The main characters of both books desire to be good and faithful. They believe they'll answer to God for their actions, and that being abused is no excuse for letting down standards. They also find hope in the reality of a future where all is made right and where heavenly joys more than compensate for whatever they might have missed on earth.

Anne Bronte seems to have been the most open of the sisters about her faith, although Charlotte certainly used her art to advance morality. (Having read Wuthering Heights long ago, I can't say whether Emily intended Heathcliff and Cathy's doomed love as a warning against unbridled passion, although it has that effect. Someone else want to chime in?) All the sisters seem to have high ideals for marriage and use their novels to spell out what they (and we) should like in a man.

We spent a little time discussing the Victorian ideals for womanhood and manhood. I found an interesting web site call The Victorian Web, on which you can find writings about the Brontes, and on various related subjects (such as The Gentleman; I can't locate what I'd read earlier on ideal womanhood). Tenant, especially, deals with these themes and, while many men in the story put their heroines on a pedestal, I'm not sure Anne sees that as a problem. The virtuous women in her stories seem to not mind being put up there, or being called "angels." It being their duty to supress their own desires in order to serve the whims of their husbands, they see themselves as extensions of their husbands. Nevertheless, the Bronte heroines maintain an understanding of their own personal worth and do not fear independence.