When Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë’s novels were first published in the 1840s, they caused quite a stir. Amidst the more positive reviews, critics singled out the apparent violence of the Brontës’ literary productions as coarse and unfeminine. Violence has since become a provocative, as well as an alluring, influence on perceptions of the Brontë sisters and their major works, one that continues to shape our view of them as writers today.
In this talk, we’ll explore the depiction of violence in a selection of Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë’s fiction, alongside its ongoing impact on their cultural afterlives through recent adaptations and biopics such as Sally Wainwright’s To Walk Invisible, to reveal its shifting role in their legacies.
Dr Sophie Franklin is a researcher based in the School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin. Her work specialises in representations of violence in nineteenth-century literature and culture, with particular focus on the Brontë family. She has written widely on the Brontës, and is the author of Charlotte Brontë Revisited: A View from the Twenty-First Century (Saraband, 2016) and the recent Violence and the Brontës: Language, Reception, Afterlives (Edinburgh University Press, 2025). Sophie is also an Associate Editor of Brontë Studies.
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