The Brontë Sisterhood

According to a Literary Hub contributor, 'Emily Disregards the Most Compelling Part of the Brontë Sisterhood'.

More than merely siblings, the Brontës are a literary sisterhood. “We are three sisters,” Charlotte famously said when their anonymity could no longer be hidden from her publisher. [...]

But in the latest addition to the on-screen Brontë sisterhood, Emily (2022)—written and directed by Frances O’Connor—the three sisters are shown writing together only once. Emily (Emma Mackey) is placed center; Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling) and Anne (Amelia Gething) flank her, out of focus.

This is only a nod to the famous imagery, for the film is uninterested in the elements of collaboration that make the Brontë story so compelling. Lush and poetic, Emily interprets the formation of the middle sister’s imagination, adding an affair with curate William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Pre-empting criticism of historical inaccuracy, O’Connor rejects the label of “biopic.”

Nevertheless, Emily is marketed around the concept of “authenticity,” perfectly in keeping with the genre’s gestures towards emotional truth over fact. O’Connor may dislike the label, but the film’s weakness is the biopic’s perennial flaw: the oversimplification of events and characters to serve a central protagonist’s personal development. Other family members become satellites that revolve around Planet Emily. By doing so, the film reproduces tired conceptions of the nature of genius and defines women’s relationships as antagonism rather than kinship. [...]

The other Brontës’ works are erased. Emily publishes alone, without her pseudonym, toasted by family and friends. There is no mention of the poetry book, no Agnes Grey, no Jane Eyre yet. Anne is mostly ignored, and a false hierarchy of influence is established when Emily’s dying encouragement (and disclosure of her romantic experience) inspires Charlotte to write her own masterpiece. Emily is sealed in splendid artistic isolation.

These choices are disappointing because the Brontës were an intriguing creative community. Emily restructures their lives into a lazy template of familial “black sheep” and individualized triumph. [...]

Yet Anne’s outdated image as the dull, passive sister makes her an unsuitable protagonist for a glossy narrative like Emily, and to question the stereotyping would disrupt its infatuation with the genius misfit.

O’Connor’s pairing of Branwell and Emily, though, is not unique; in fact, it’s consistently repeated across Brontë adaptations. To Walk Invisible’s Emily (Chloe Pirrie) is the only sister who comforts Branwell (Adam Nagaitis) as he spirals into alcoholism. Despite Charlotte and Branwell’s documented early partnership, something about Emily’s persona aligns her more easily with Branwell in popular imagining. Emily goes so far as to imply an inability to separate the two siblings’ identities, with O’Connor rather bizarrely citing the impact of their mother’s early death in 1821. This transposes Heathcliff and Cathy’s intense early relationship in Wuthering Heights, and Cathy’s declaration of “I am Heathcliff” into Emily’s own experience, thus resurrecting reductive autobiographical readings of her novel.

By contrast, To Walk Invisible presents the three sisters as a team, demonstrating Emily’s reserve and Charlotte’s controlling tendencies without resorting to caricature. (Iona Glen)

Newsroom (New Zealand) features a collector of orange Penguin books.

They were pretty easy and common to score. Over the years, I’ve scored at least one from every op shop in central and North Dunedin. I frequently paid $2 for the likes of Thomas DeQuincey’s Confessions Of An English Opium Eater or Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. (Grant McDougall)

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