The Brontë Myth

Rating:
Summary: Not a book, a New Yorker article maybe
Review: I couldn't decide whether to buy this book and so ordered through my local library. Wise choice. This is not really a full-length study but rather an expanded article/essay that falls apart after the first third. Repetitive, reductive and sounds like an extended PhD dissertation. A real disappointment. Needed a good editor (like get rid of some of the unnecessary 'sics' and the repetition that borders on perseveration).

Rating:
Summary: First rate debunking of the mythmakers
Review: I got this book expecting it to be a biography of the family, and it turned out to be more a review of how and why biographers have distorted who Charlotte and Emily Bronte were and what they achieved as writers. Lucasta Miller's main point in the book is that the Brontes have really been short-changed as authors. I suppose she doesn't really discuss Anne Bronte because she doesn't put her work on the same level as the others and Anne hasn't become a cult figure in the same way CB and EB have.

I've always counted JE and WH as among my favorite books, and it was so gratifying to have them vindicated as the great books they truly are instead of being castigated for not fitting into someone else's expectations of what they should be.



Rating:
Summary: Myth Buster
Review: Lucasta Miller sums up her addition to the mountains of Bronte materials as a "metabiography." What she does here, actually, is deconstruct the layers of myth and mystery surrounding the three Bronte sisters, starting with Elizabeth Gaskell's 1857 "Life of Charlotte Bronte." Miller's stated intent to to refocus readers' attention on the social, political and literary influences on the three authors (actually only two, as Anne -- undeservingly -- receives little attention here). Miller also makes a convincing case as to how Charlotte and Emily contributed knowingly to the enduring myths about their lonely, provincial childhood, famously full of suffering, illness and death. That the sisters were complicit in creating their own mythos is entirely convincing and makes for a fascinating read. Miller focuses in on portraits of the sisters in biography, fiction, film and television, analyzing an amazing array of sources' skews on the Bronte legacy. Familiarity with the Bronte oevre is helpful to fully enjoying this iconoclastic look at the three weird sisters and the creative output they have inspired.

Rating:
Summary: Myth Buster
Review: Lucasta Miller sums up her addition to the mountains of Bronte materials as a "metabiography." What she does here, actually, is deconstruct the layers of myth and mystery surrounding the three Bronte sisters, starting with Elizabeth Gaskell's 1857 "Life of Charlotte Bronte." Miller's stated intent to to refocus readers' attention on the social, political and literary influences on the three authors (actually only two, as Anne -- undeservingly -- receives little attention here). Miller also makes a convincing case as to how Charlotte and Emily contributed knowingly to the enduring myths about their lonely, provincial childhood, famously full of suffering, illness and death. That the sisters were complicit in creating their own mythos is entirely convincing and makes for a fascinating read. Miller focuses in on portraits of the sisters in biography, fiction, film and television, analyzing an amazing array of sources' skews on the Bronte legacy. Familiarity with the Bronte oevre is helpful to fully enjoying this iconoclastic look at the three weird sisters and the creative output they have inspired.

Rating:
Summary: Recommended for any college-level literary collection
Review: Lucasta Miller's THE BRONTE MYTH appeared earlier this year but deserves ongoing mention as an excellent addition to the literature on the Brontes. There've already been numerous books on the topic of each Bronte family member: so why the need for yet another? Lucasta Miller goes a step further in her coverage, showing how the Brontes became cultural symbols as their novels were published, and providing insights into how this happened. Recommended for any college-level literary collection.



Rating:
Summary: The real Brontes.
Review: The Brontes defied Victorian conventions, which is what makes them such fascinating biographical subject matter. For every reader of JANE EYRE or WUTHERING HEIGHTS, it seems as though there are a hundred other readers more absorbed in the biographical details of the Brontes' lives. Virginia Woolf said that "a biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many as a thousand" (p. 121). In her "metabiography" (p. xii) of Charlotte, Emily, and to a lesser extent, Anne Bronte--collectively known as "the Bronte sisters," literary critic, Lucasta Miller, cuts through the many layers of myth that add up to a thousand different Brontes, to reveal the real artistic fire central to these three unconventional women. From Elizabeth Gaskell's 1857 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE, portraying her subject as a "quiet and trembling creature, reared in total seclusion, a martyr to duty, and a model of Victorian femininity" (p. 4), to novelists, Freudian psychobiographers, filmmakers, poets (like Ted Hughes, who called them "three weird sisters"), and feminists, all of whom have portrayed the Brontes as "three lonely sisters playing out their tragic destiny on top of a windswept moor with a mad misanthrope father and doomed brother" (p. 62), Miller sifts through more than a hundred years of fascinating Bronte mania, to examine the real literary value of reading the Brontes.

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: Very good about Charlotte and Emily - needs more about Anne
Review: This book is not so much a biography of the lives of the Bronte's, but is really more about their afterlife. Miller focuses on the characters that were built up by biographers, especially Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte and Charlotte's own biographical note of Emily. I found this to be a very interesting read that helped to push aside some of the eroneous images I have of the Brontes. My only complaint is that Miller does not really say anything about Anne, whom I would like to hear more about.

This book reminded me of Janet Malcomb's The Silent Woman, about the afterlife of Sylvia Plath (which I also greatly enjoyed reading). This turned out to be quite a fitting connection as Miller does talk about Plath in connection to Emily in the very last chapter of the book.

Rating:
Summary: The Brontes deconstructed
Review: When I was 12 years old I discovered the Bronte sisters through "Jane Eyre" (falling hopelessly in love with Mr. Rochester in the process). Even in their own lifetime, the Brontes were a source of fascination and speculation. Lucasta Miller does a very good job of portraying the myths that grew up around the three sisters, and showing us the reality behind the legends.

To an extent, the myths were perpetrated by the Brontes themselves, as a defense against the public reaction to their extraordinary books. Already in 1857, Elizabeth Gaskell's "Life of Charlotte Bronte" told the public about the sisters' lives, much as Charlotte herself wanted it presented. "Jane Eyre" was a shocking book for its time; women weren't supposed to have such strong sexual feelings, let alone write about them. Charlotte developed, and helped perpetrate the myth of the sisters as quiet, mousy types, martyrs to duty and family, beset by tragedy at every turn. Charlotte was not only a great writer; she was a master at presenting herself the way she wanted others to see her.

I have a real problem with this books lack of proportionate attention given to the two younger sisters. Miller's assessment of Emily is much briefer than the space she gives to Charlotte, and about Anne she says almost nothing at all. Anne has always been the "forgotten Bronte"; most people who have grown up with "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" have never read anything Anne wrote. But "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" is every bit as compelling as the books of her better known sisters, and gives evidence that behind the quiet face she showed to the world, Anne may have been every bit as much a strong personality as Jane and Emily.

Generally, Miller is a strong biographer and shows us the Bronte sisters as they probably really were: vibrant individuals living full, all-too-short lives. The sisters she presents here are women who were really capable of writing the turbulently emotional, romantic novels that have endured as classics of English literature.

Rating:
Summary: The Brontes deconstructed
Review: When I was 12 years old I discovered the Bronte sisters through "Jane Eyre" (falling hopelessly in love with Mr. Rochester in the process). Even in their own lifetime, the Brontes were a source of fascination and speculation. Lucasta Miller does a very good job of portraying the myths that grew up around the three sisters, and showing us the reality behind the legends.

To an extent, the myths were perpetrated by the Brontes themselves, as a defense against the public reaction to their extraordinary books. Already in 1857, Elizabeth Gaskell's "Life of Charlotte Bronte" told the public about the sisters' lives, much as Charlotte herself wanted it presented. "Jane Eyre" was a shocking book for its time; women weren't supposed to have such strong sexual feelings, let alone write about them. Charlotte developed, and helped perpetrate the myth of the sisters as quiet, mousy types, martyrs to duty and family, beset by tragedy at every turn. Charlotte was not only a great writer; she was a master at presenting herself the way she wanted others to see her.

I have a real problem with this books lack of proportionate attention given to the two younger sisters. Miller's assessment of Emily is much briefer than the space she gives to Charlotte, and about Anne she says almost nothing at all. Anne has always been the "forgotten Bronte"; most people who have grown up with "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" have never read anything Anne wrote. But "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" is every bit as compelling as the books of her better known sisters, and gives evidence that behind the quiet face she showed to the world, Anne may have been every bit as much a strong personality as Jane and Emily.

Generally, Miller is a strong biographer and shows us the Bronte sisters as they probably really were: vibrant individuals living full, all-too-short lives. The sisters she presents here are women who were really capable of writing the turbulently emotional, romantic novels that have endured as classics of English literature.