Brontë Studies. Volume 48. Issue 4

The new (double) issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 48  Issue 4,  October 2023) has been available online for a while. We (belatedly) provide you with the table of contents and abstracts:

Editorial Introductioo
pp. 277-281 Author: Sarah E. Fanning & Claire O’Callaghan

Literary Art and Moral Instruction in the Novels of Anne Brontë
pp. 282-295  Author: Marianne Thormählen
Abstract:
In her own time, Anne Brontë the writer was regarded as inferior to the two older “Bells”, largely because of the perceived slightness of her first novel and the alleged coarseness and brutality of her second. For the next hundred years, it was accepted that she was a pale second-rater in relation to her sisters. That image has now been discarded; but the notion that Anne Brontë was not quite her sisters’ equal as a literary artist lingers, influenced by the resistance of recent generations of critics to what they perceive as moral messages in literature. This keynote address argues that Anne Brontë the novelist was in no way inferior to Charlotte and Emily as a writer of fiction. It draws attention to the skills displayed by Anne Brontë in respect of characterisation, realistic observation, psychological acumen, style and idiom, nuance in the analysis of human behaviour and even – somewhat unexpectedly, given the frequently expressed criticisms of the construction of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) – narrative structure. The discussion ends with a tribute to Anne Brontë’s success in making readers keep turning the pages.

Singing from the Margins: Anne Brontë’s Surprising Poetic Afterlife
pp 296-308 Author: Sara L. Pearson

Abstract
Anne Brontë was the only hymn-writer in her family, and her hymns have had a successful afterlife in multiple hymnals from 1858 to 1997. Her hymns have been used by a variety of religious denominations and sects, in numerous countries, among various groups of people, from children to university students to the sick and suffering. Although Charlotte Brontë’s selection of poems for the 1850 reissue of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was responsible for the publication of five of Anne’s seven published hymns, it was Anne’s own sensitivity to hymnody as a means of exploring religious faith that ensured her successful afterlife as a hymn writer.Footnote1 Various digital and Internet resources such as Google Books, www.hymnary.org, and YouTube have made it possible to discover more about Anne as a hymn-writer, including the fact that her hymn ‘Believe not those who say’ has appeared in over sixty hymnals. This article provides an overview of the afterlife of Anne Brontë’s hymns with the hope of prompting further investigation into this topic.Footnote

‘Is Childhood Then so All-Divine?’: Representations of Childhood in the Poetry of Anne Brontë
pp. 309-323 Author: Ciara Glasscott
Abstract:
Despite the increasing criticism of her traditional critical and cultural reputation as the “third Brontë” in recent years, the underestimation of Anne Brontë’s philosophical and political engagement remains tenacious. This is especially relevant when it comes to scholarly work on her poetry, where biographical and/or religious critical frameworks dominate. By contrast, this article is interested in Brontë’s poetic intervention in Victorian debates surrounding political and aesthetic conceptions of the child and childhood. Brontë simultaneously deploys and subverts traditionally Romantic imagery, interrogating this mode most explicitly in later poems such as ‘Memory’, ‘Dreams’ and ‘Z-’s Dream’. In these mature pieces, Brontë undercuts the more conventional presentation of such topics in her earlier poems with a self-reflexive meditation on the authenticity of nostalgic visions. Therefore, Brontë’s engagement with childhood becomes more vexed over time, mirroring the more realist representation of childhood in her novels. However, Brontë’s poetic work also reveals a deeper and more conflicted identification with the Romantic aesthetic of childhood than one might imagine the writer of Agnes Grey (1847) could possess, providing access to a more complete picture of Brontë’s position on these essential questions of innocence, nostalgia and childhood.

The Neo-Victorian Feminist Afterlife of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) in Sam Baker’s The Woman Who Ran (2016)
pp. 324-335 Author: Julia Snyckers & Jeanne Ellis
Abstract:
Anne Brontë’s deliberate exposition in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall of gendered violence as the consequence of the structurally embedded sexism in the Victorian patriarchal socio-legal system is a daring example of feminist critique that was ahead of its time. This article examines the afterlife of Brontë’s feminism in Sam Baker’s The Woman Who Ran (2016), a neo-Victorian domestic noir thriller which re(dis)covers and repurposes Brontë’s novel for contemporary women readers. Baker uncovers the ongoing crisis of domestic violence and sexism in professional spheres that persist despite the progress achieved by Western feminist movements to secure women’s rights in the last century. We argue that The Woman Who Ran demonstrates just how generative Anne Brontë’s writing remains for conceptualising feminist issues in the twenty-first century.

 
Plotting the Governess: The Lessons of Agnes Grey
pp. 336-346 Author: Phillippa Janu
Abstract:
The journey undertaken by the Victorian governess in the nineteenth-century novel is frequently aligned with the developmental narrative of the Bildungsroman. However, this article explores how the demands of instruction and surveillance, and the expectation that the governess is simultaneously authoritative and submissive, limit her growth and that of her pupils. An examination of Anne Brontë’s depiction of the repetitive and prosaic work of teaching in her 1847 novel Agnes Grey reveals that in demanding the critical engagement of the reader, the novel resists any expectation that either text or teacher are inherent repositories of knowledge. Finally, I argue that the rich development of the governess that is characteristic to the Bildungsroman can also be located in the marriage plot.

‘Free from Soil’: The Curation of Anne Brontë
pp. 347-358 Author: Jessica Lewis
Abstract:
Famously described by her sister Charlotte as ‘long-suffering, self-denying, reflective, and intelligent, a constitutional reserve and taciturnity placed and kept her in the shade’, Anne Brontë has been consistently filtered through her eldest sister. This article suggests the notion of Brontë as a figure of curation, in acknowledging Charlotte Brontë’s personal agenda in the writing of the 1850 ‘Biographical notice of Ellis and Acton Bell’. With the intention of softening and feminising her sisters’ reputations, Charlotte’s (re)writing of Anne has been long accepted into Brontë lore. This article explores the consequences of the ‘Notice’ and its significance in the posthumous reception of Anne’s work as mainly autobiographical. It suggests that Anne Brontë’s enduring image as the meek, mild, moralist is a result of Charlotte’s careful and conscious curation, and explores the influence of this image on her literary legacy.

News

The Anne Brontë Society: Changing the Narrative

pp  359-361 Author: Lauren Bruce

Editorial - Reviews Section

Editorial. Reviews Section

p 362 Author: Carolyne Van Der Meer

Book Reviews

Brontë Events at the Bradford Literature Festival, June 2023

pp 363-364 Author: Bob Duckett

A Gift of Poison

pp. 364-365 Author: Sarah Powell

Chiltern. Publishing Ltd-Jane Eyre

pp. 366-367 Author: Rose Dawn Gant

Poems from the Moor, by Emily Brontë, Alma Books, 2023. Alma Classics series and The Night is Darkening Round Me, by Emily Brontë, Penguin Books (Little Black Classics series, no.63), 2015

pp. 367-368 Author: Bob Ducket

A Brontë Reading List: 2021 

pp 369-384 Author:  Sara L. Pearson, Peter Cook & James Ogden

Abstract:

This reading list is an annotated bibliography of scholarly and critical work on the Brontës published in 2021. We have attempted to compile a comprehensive list of resources by consulting the MLA International Bibliography, Academic Search Complete, and the Brontë Blog (http://bronteblog.blogspot.com). Book chapters and scholarly articles on the Brontës are included except those articles published in Brontë Studies. Entire books on the Brontës are in the reviews section of this journal. The author’s initials in brackets are provided after each annotation.

Call for Articles: Brontë Studies Special Issue: The Brontës and the Wild
pp 385-386 Guest Editor: Dr Amber Pouliot