Презентація "Bronte Sisters"

Brontë Sisters

Charlotte Brontë(1816 – 1855)

Life and Works English novelist noted for Jane Eyre(1847), a strong narrative of a woman in conflict with her natural desires and social condition. The novel gave new truthfulness to Victorian fiction. Born in the family of a priest, Charlotte had two elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth( died of tuberculosis), two younger sisters, Emily and Anne and a brother, Branwell. When she was four the family moved to Haworth, a small village in Yorkshire. In 1821 their mother died and an aunt, Elizabeth Branwell, came to look after the children. In 1824 Charlotte and her elder sisters went to Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge, near Kirkby Lonsdale, Lancashire. The fees were low, the food unattractive, and the discipline harsh. Charlotte condemned the school long years afterward in Jane Eyre, describing Lowood Institution, and its principal, the Reverend William Carus Wilson, has been accepted as the counterpart of Mister Brocklehurst in the novel.

In 1831 Charlotte was sent to Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, near Huddersfield, where she stayed a year and made some lasting friendships; her correspondence with one of her friends, Ellen Nussey, continued until her death and has provided much of the current knowledge of her life. In 1832 she went home to teach her sisters but in 1835 returned to Roe Head as a teacher. She wished to improve her family’s position. In 1839 Charlotte declined a proposal from the Reverend Henry Nussey, her friend’s brother, and some months later one from another young clergyman.  In 1842 Charlotte went to Brussels to study languages. After a brief trip home upon the death of her aunt, Charlotte returned to Brussels as a pupil-teacher. She stayed there during 1843 but was lonely and depressed. Her friends had left Brussels, and Madame Héger, the misterss of the school, appears to have become jealous of her. Charlotta fell in love with Constantin Héger, one of the teachers and Mrs. Héger’s husband.

In 1847 Jane Eyre was accepted by Smith, Elder and Company and published. In 1848 Branwell died, later died Emily and Anne in 1849. In 1853 Villette published. In 1854 Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father’s curate. In 1855 Charlotte died. Main Literary Works. The Professor(1857)Jane Eyre (1847)Shirley (1849)Villette (1853)

Emily Brontë(1818-1848)

Life and Works English novelist and poet who produced but one novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), a highly imaginative work of passion and hate set on the Yorkshire moors.  In 1824, together with her sister Charlotte, went to Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire.  In 1835, when Charlotte secured a teaching position at Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, Emily accompanied her as a pupil but suffered from homesickness and remained only three months. In 1838 Emily spent six exhausting months as a teacher in Miss Patchett’s school at Law Hill, near Halifax, and then resigned. In February 1834 Emily accompanied her sister Charlotte to Brussels to learn foreign languages and school management at the Pension Héger. Although she missed home, she was highly appreciated there, her passionate nature was understood.

In October, when her aunt died, Emily returned permanently to Haworth. In 1845 Charlotte came across some poems by Emily, and this led to the discovery that all three sisters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—had written verse. A year later they published jointly a volume of verse, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell the initials of these pseudonyms being those of the sisters; it contained 21 of Emily’s poems, and a consensus of later criticism has accepted the fact that Emily’s verse alone reveals true poetic genius.  In December 1847 the novel Wuthering Heights was published. It wasn’t as successful as Jane Eyre. Only later it came to be considered one of the finest novels in the English language. Soon after the publication of her novel, Emily’s health began to fail rapidly. She had been ill for some time, but now her breathing became difficult, and she suffered great pain. She died of tuberculosis in December 1848.

Anne Brontë(1820 – 1849)

Life and Works The youngest of six children of Patrick and Marie Brontë, Anne was taught in the family’s Haworth home and at Roe Head School. With her sister Emily, she invented the imaginary kingdom of Gondal, about which they wrote verse and prose (the latter now lost) from the early 1830s until 1845. She worked as a governess briefly in 1839 and then again for four years, 1841–45, with the Robinsons, the family of a clergyman, at Thorpe Green, near York. There her brother, Branwell, joined her in 1843, intending to serve as a tutor. Anne returned home in 1845 and was followed shortly by her brother, who had been dismissed, charged with making love to his employer’s wife.

In 1846 Anne contributed 21 poems to Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, a joint work with her sisters Charlotte and Emily. Her first novel, Agnes Grey, was published together with Emily’s Wuthering Heights in three volumes (of which Agnes Grey was the third) in December 1847. In 1848 her second novel,  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was published. She fell ill with tuberculosis toward the end of the year and died the following May. Her novel Agnes Grey, probably begun at Thorpe Green, records with limpidity and some humour the life of a governess.  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall presents an unsoftened picture of the degradation of the heroine’s first husband and sets against it the Arminian belief, opposed to Calvinist predestination, that no soul shall be ultimately lost.