She often also seems to be correcting various inaccurate details about major people in the Brontes’ lives.īut alas, not always. Lucasta Miller’s book is valuable because she really treats so many biographies (novelizing and non-fiction) of Charlotte and Emily, and offers a detailed picture of what scholarly and primary documents there are to study. Rather the obstacle for understanding the books partly by understanding the lives and other writing or art of the writers was a matter of prejudiced and unexamined interpretation and emphases, some of which simply is that the popular audience prefers to learn not so much all they can about writers’ lives rather than study their books, but what will reinforce their own belief system. It turns out to be highly debatable whether the Bronte stories are filled with inaccuraries. So I was even eager to know what I had been mistakenly believing. It did not sound as if it was the latter. The question was, what was so inaccurate or were the people advocating the book referring rather to skewed presentations. Now I know that the Brontes are yet another literary group of women around which a fan cult of sentimental emotionalisms and present day (not just Victorian) identity politics swirl.

I’ve been away for about 5 days during which time I read a couple of books I’d long wanted to read - mostly because of the way I heard academic colleagues talk about them: one was Lucasta Miller’s The Bronte Myth, which seemed ever to be accompanied by phrases meaning Miller had at long last (relieved tones here) freed the Bronte sisters from a context just filled with falsehoods. Only those who have felt the like can imagine my feelings, as I sat with an assumption of smiling indifference - Anne Bronte, Agnes Grey Poeple little know the injury they do to children by laughing at their faults, and making a pleasant jest of what their true friends have endeavoured to teach them to hold in abhorrence … a surprising effect in repressing all familiar, open-hearted kindness, and extinguishing every gleam of cordiality that might arise between us … I was used now to wearing a placid smiling countenance when my heart was bitter within me. I am Heathcliffe - Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights I have an inward treasure, born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to pay -Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre I can live alone, if self-respect and circumstances require me so to do.

The Brontë Myth by Lucasta Miller