Tags
Anne Brontë, Book Review, Feminism, Samantha Ellis, Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life
A sisterly fight for the youngest, overlooked Brontë
I confess, with some shame, that the youngest Brontë, Anne, is the one I have never explored. Clearly, I surrendered to the fake news floating around for nearly 200 years which dismissed Anne as being lesser than her more respected siblings, Emily and Charlotte.
Anne has been championed in more modern times for her more realistic, less romantic, heroines, as the sister who more clearly reflected the way society was weighted against women, and, moreover who explored a journey towards independence for her heroines, a self-actualisation free from the lures of ‘the Byronic romantic hero’ which renders Emily’s and Charlotte’s books so very alluring to impressionable minds.
Anne might just be the writer for the woman wanting to make a journey out of myth.
And Ellis is a perfectly placed writer to explore this territory.
Anne by Charlotte 1834
I adored Ellis’ first book, How to be a Heroine, which engagingly, intelligently, passionately, thoughtfully and entertainingly explored the various ‘heroines’ of literature whom female readers might internalise as aspirational role models. This was, and is, a book a strongly recommend to all of my literary minded sisters, as a feisty book which provokes much enjoyable debate. And THIS book will be another, and is certainly heading me over to explore Anne’s two novels.
Ellis writes exactly the kind of literary non-fiction which I most enjoy. Forget dry, cerebral, academic theory, which pins its subject matter like a chloroformed butterfly, so that it will never fly again. Without losing any ability to analyse, or being any less intelligent in analysis, what Samantha Ellis brings is dynamism, a whole-hearted, gut-felt, lively intellect engagement with her material. Literature MATTERS to her, it is a living thing, and she observes the flying butterfly of a book, a life, a society on the wing, and observes herself observing it, rather than pretending a book, a life, a society are something outside our observation. The observer is always also having subjective responses.
Anne by Branwell
Ellis takes (of course she does!) an interesting approach to her analysis of Anne, her life and her books. Rather than a linear approach, she looks at the seminal influences on Anne, with a chapter devoted to each influencing person. And also chapters devoted to the central characters of her two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – there must, surely, always be a kind of symbiotic relationship between a writer and their creations. The writer (well, the depth writer, anyway) will create characters from their own ‘stuff’, but what is also happening is that written character is also potential, offering an ability for writer (and reader) to have something fed back to them, by the imaginative invention.
And I was pleased to discover (so Ellis, so Anne!) that the positive influence of less obvious individuals were allowed to take their places in Anne’s formative sun – not only her missing mother, Maria, who died in Anne’s infancy, but Aunt Elizabeth Branwell, Maria’s older sister, who moved from her beloved Cornwall to be the motherly presence in the Haworth household. Tabby, who served the family all her life, also provided stability and love. The often harshly vilified father, Patrick, is also shown to be far more positively formative, with his commitment to education, and a strong sense of class inequality, and its unjustiice.
…when we have to do with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear. To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light is doubtless the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers? Anne Brontë, preface to Tenant of Wildfell Hall
It must be said that the person Ellis is most censorious of is the best known, most successful sister – Charlotte, and her proper champions, Mrs Gaskell and Ellen Nussey. It was Charlotte who prevented, initially, the re-publication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall after Anne’s death. In writing a realistic novel about alcoholism and about violence within marriage, Anne had written too modern, too truthful a book. And one, moreover, ‘unfeminine’ The book was considered by some, coarse, because it showed truth, and held a mirror up to society. Charlotte rather presented the sanitised image of the youngest sister, shy and sweet, and what the youngest actually wrote, conflicted with the docile image :
Wildfell Hall it hardly appears to me desirable to preserve. The choice of subject in that work is a mistake, it was too little consonant with the character, tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring inexperienced writer. Charlotte Brontë
At this time of course Charlotte is a literary sensation. There is no doubt she loved her sister, but it seems she may have found it easier to love the idea of a weak, ineffectual angel (possibly an unhealed loss of her eldest sister, Maria, who it seems WAS that child), but found a more tough-minded, truth, rather than romantic illusion, facing sister, too tough a prospect. A more modern, psychologically driven analysis also has to wonder about any role played by sibling rivalry. Despite being seen by some as ‘coarse’, BECAUSE it did not romanticise, Wildfell Hall did sell well, on first publication.
It seems even more poignant than getting her age wrong on the original inscription, that her status, in her own right, was omitted
Samantha Ellis, in offering us a wonderfully complex, interesting person, challenging-of-pre-conceptions writer, in her Anne Brontë biography, does the reader a service by clearly indicating where she is ‘imagining’ from her own perspective how Anne might have felt, or thought this and that, with also backing up some of her assumptions by textual evidence from the books, from social history documents of the times, as well as Bronte-and-friends letters and other documents
I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man Anne Brontë, preface to Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Woven into the book, in a way I find wonderful, is a kind of life-story, journey, of Ellis as 
artist and woman. This is a harking back to her first book ‘How to Be A Heroine’ as she uses Anne’s writing, Anne’s complex, struggling heroines, Agnes and Helen, to help her reflect on her own journey. Reminding me (who needs no such reminder) of the power of literature to shape lives. We learn and are inspired by a multiplicity of stories – our own, those of others we know personally, also figures in our own times on world stages, figures from other times – but, also, the inspiration of imagination itself, and that most ancient, and most potent of teachers – story.
I received this as a digital copy for review purposes from the publisher via NetGalley
Lady Fancifull 
Wonderful review Lady F! This is the book for me – Anne is my favourite Bronte. This type of attention towards her is long overdue 🙂
Then you should LOVE this. Ellis is a brilliant narrator herself. She writes this biography, and her journey with Anne, like a friend captivating you with the tale she has to tell. She is a playwright, and I think that skill is within this book – even facts can be recounted in a way which draws the reader in.
A little like you, I have been guilty of overlooking Anne in the past – although I have to admit that the recent BBC drama about the Brontes, To Walk Invisible, really piqued my interest in her work. This sounds like a wonderful biography – interesting, intelligent and highly readable. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
You are welcome, Jacqui, Ellis is a most skillful biographer, and I was fascinated both by Anne herself, and by how Ellis presents her to the reader. It felt like some kind of conversation around a dinner table, not like being lectured or given great indigestible lumps of facts, yet, after finishing the book, and thinking about the source material she had read, I was aware she had done a vast amount of research and read, read, read, Anne’s books, and was immersed in them
“Fake news”!! Haha
I like to keep it topical!
I recently read a review which put me off reading this – but now you’ve made me want to read it after all. I loved The Tennant of Wildfell Hall which I re-read two years ago, Agnes Grey I remember less well – definitely time to re-read that too. Great review.
Thanks Ali. All I can say is I will eagerly read anything by Ellis. She is brilliant! A writer you, as reader can enjoyably argue with, rather than uncomfortably and snarlingly disagree. There is a kind of lively dynamic, warmth, in her writing, which is engaging and refreshing.
I loved How to be a Heroine so this is certainly back on my wishlist.
What a wonderful review. I loved Samanta Ellis’s last book and that may she relates to books and authors. I loved Anne’s books and, and never really understood why she wasn’t as talked about as her sister’s.So of course I really want to read this; though I am a little worried that Charlotte is too harshly treated.
Ellis is not trashing anyone. This isn’t a hatchet job, though it does bring the neglected sister forward. In some ways it is a continuation of her earlier book. Cathy was her internalised heroine, and influenced her view of romance. She grew into taking what Jane Eyre could bring. Now she has seen that Anne, in her writing, went much further in aspiration for what women might be, and what a relationship might be, and what it might be to find work which has meaning and value. I think she (Ellis) is too thoughtful a person to good and bad them but she does say ‘this was WRONG’ She had also had to work with her own illusions around the 100% sisterly support and love, of the Brontes for each other, and see something of greater nuance. Just like How to be a Heroine, this book leaves the reader with much to think on, because, I think, Ellis shares her own response to her research. I honestly believe you will adore this book.
It isn’t that I doubt the author at all after her last book, more that I was a little fearful that with a narrower focus it might be trickier to empathise if we had different views. My feelings at the moment may be coloured by a certain other series of books I’ve been reading with three sisters where the eldest is not understood as she might be by her siblings, her mother or her author, so I shall wait until I have moved though a few more different stories before I look at this one.
Lovely review. I too enjoyed How to be a Heroine immensely, and it has helped shape my reading journey since. This sounds like an excellent read, full of warmth and admiration for the ‘lesser’ known Bronte.
Oh, it is, exactly. I’m so pleased that this came through in my review, that warmth Ellis brings. Thank you bookbii
This is making me think its time to find my copy of Agnes Grey which is the one I am least familiar with. Do you think it was jealousy on Charlotte’s part or just a case of wanting to preserve the myth of Anne?
I rarely think things are either or. Reason and emotion are complex tangles of conflict. So, my answer would be both, and still more!
I do also believe that often it is hard to accept the whole of a person. Anne is the sweet, shy, vulnerable young sister. Anne is the one most exposed to a received idea of sinfulness – in the Robinson household, with Bramwell. His behaviour and that of Mrs Robinson. And, what of Charlotte and her feelings for Monsieur Heger How does that play out for her. Anne has been witness to adulterous behaviour. How soiled might Charlotte have felt by her own (perhaps unacknowledged) desires ?
Was she also ‘protecting’ herself from her own ‘coarse’ feelings?
I rather go with Wilde. In one of his witty. But deep, epigrams ‘the truth is rarely pure and never simple’, from The Importance of Being Earnest’
A really insightful and interesting review! Also loved this book and realised I knew nothing of this sister which has now changed. The TV drama was also remarkable and I’m so pleased Anne’s story has been told like this
Thank you book trailer. What a treasure Ellis’ book is!
Great review. I am adding the book to my TBR. I have read Agnes Grey as a child. And I would love to re read it now since I do not remember much. I need to read Tenant of WH as well. Interesting to note the take on sibling rivalry between Charlotte and Agnes.
Thank you Resh. I think sibling rivalry AND sibling support are likely to have existed side by side
I read the The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and found it more interesting than the Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. it was written from the viewpoint of a man, and is actually more optimistic that her sister’s major works.