Brontë Studies. Volume 45 Issue 3

The new issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 45 Issue 3, July 2020) is already available online. We provide you with the table of contents and abstracts:

Editorial
pp. 209-213  Author:  Amber M. Adams & Josephine Smith

‘Unpleasant and undreamt of experiences of human nature’: a Refocus on Thorp Green
pp.  214-226  Author: Chitham, Edward
Abstract: 
In this article I re-examine the milieu at Thorp Green during, before and after Anne Brontë's stay there. Though Branwell is not the chief focus, slight doubt is cast on his account of events. There may be other explanations of some of what he reports. Use will be made of research by Bob Gamble, with many thanks.

Servants and Animals in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
pp. 227-239 Author: Newman, Hilary
Abstract: 
In Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Anne Brontë employs animals and servants to provoke moral responses from her readers. Unfailingly, those characters Anne Brontë — and her reader — approve of are humane in their treatment of animals and servants. Similarly, her most morally flawed characters largely expose themselves to criticism through their behaviour and treatment of their dependants. Animals and servants are briefly considered in Agnes Grey. This is followed by an extensive exploration of these features in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Anne Brontë creates her own individual manifestation of a moral code and this is an important factor in the success of the novels in engaging the reader.

An Appalling Wish to Emancipate: Work as a Common Thread Towards the Middle-Class Woman’s Emancipation
pp.  240-252   Author: Aires Lima, Sónia
Abstract: 
During the Victorian era, a time of pronounced economic growth but also of great instability, a large number of women found themselves facing unexpectedly precarious financial situations. Work, a vital element towards the survival of the individual, proved crucial for the empowerment of the Victorian middle-class woman. In a society where an independent woman was rather atypical, Anne Brontë’s female characters are noteworthy examples of women who used work as a path towards emancipation. The governess and the abused wife both appear to embody a universe of women who experienced ill-treatment, something everyone knew about, but not everyone chose to discuss.

Character Depiction in Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey
pp. 253-257  Author: Gharib, Susie
Abstract: 
This paper attempts to draw the reader’s attention to the physiognomic skills of Anne Brontë as manifested in her neglected novel Agnes Grey. This is an aspect of character depiction that has merited critical attention in the works of her sister Charlotte.

‘A distinct family likeness’: A Reappraisal of the Creative Partnership between Anne and Emily Brontë
pp. 258-271 Author: Quinnell, James
Abstract:
Since the publication of Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell’ as an appendage to the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, scholarship on Anne Brontë has been shackled to biography in ways perhaps not realized. Ideas of Anne as the quiet one, less able to cope with exposure to the harshness of the world as her sisters, have diluted the impact of her writing.
This is particularly the case in her relationship with Emily, where Anne has lost out to the supposed wilder Romanticism of her elder sibling. Moreover, the commonplace idea that Anne became Emily’s critic in the publication of their novels has further served to sunder them.
I argue for the continued affinity of thought between Emily and Anne in the period their novels were written and published. Charlotte’s ‘Biographical Notice’ has profoundly affected the way that Anne is seen in relation to Emily and vice versa. I use Emily’s Belgian devoirs to help tease out, via Agnes Grey, how the two were still as much twins in the way they saw the world in adulthood as they were in adolescence. I then critique the idea, now almost de rigueur, that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was written as a parody of Wuthering Heights.
My conclusion is that by removing Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Biographical Notice’ as a filter to our appreciation of Anne and Emily’s literary partnership, it opens up new ways of engaging with their writing.

The Presentation of Two Housekeepers in Wuthering Heights
pp.  272-281 Author: Tytler, Graeme
Abstract:
Best remembered as it commonly is for its famous love story, Wuthering Heights is hardly less memorable for the presentation of its various minor characters, prominent among them being two of Heathcliff’s housekeepers: Zillah and the unnamed woman from Gimmerton. Although these two figures play useful roles in the structure of the novel, whether for purposes of plot or as narrators, they are of interest chiefly for what they reveal of themselves in their elaborate utterances. Thus we note that, while not without their moments of kindness or good humour, both housekeepers tend to be quite hard-hearted or contemptuous towards the second Catherine, Linton Heathcliff and Hareton Earnshaw. That all this may be due partly to their abject fear of Heathcliff and partly to their mercenary attitude to their work is not difficult to surmise. It is, moreover, through their essentially unsympathetic presentation that Emily Brontë succeeds in indirectly pointing up the virtues of the second Catherine and Hareton.

Recent Acquisitions at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, 2010–2019
pp. 282-296 Author: The Curatorial Team
Abstract:
The collection held at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth is a great scholarly resource, providing insights into the Brontës’ lives and works. Today the Brontë Society continues to add to, and care for, its unrivalled collection of Brontëana.

 REVIEWS

Anne Brontё and the Trials of Life
pp. 297-298  Author: Watson, Graham

Without the Veil Between: Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit: A Novel
pp. 298-299 Author:  Stoneman, Patsy

The Girl at the Window
pp. 300-301 Author:  Powell, Sarah

Emily’s Papers
pp. 301-302 Author:  Van Der Meer, Carolyn

The Brontës and the Idea of the Human: Science, Ethics, and the Victorian Imagination
pp. 302-303 Author:  Shastri, Aparna

The Remarkable Story of Nancy de Garrs, Charlotte Brontë’s Nurse
pp. 303-304 Author:  Duckett, Bob

The Mother of The Brontës: When Maria met Patrick
pp. 304-306 Author:  Duckett, Bob