ANNE BRONTE The Other One Women Writers General Editors: Eva Figes and AdeleKing Published titles: Sylvia Plath: Susan Bassnett FannyBurney: Judy Simons Christina Stead: Diana Brydon Charlotte Bronte: Pauline Nestor Margaret Atuiood: Barbara Hill Rigney Eudora Welty: Louise Westling Anne Bronte: Elizabeth Langland Forthcoming: Jane Austen: Meenakshi Mukherjee ElizabethBarrett Browning: Majorie Stone ElizabethBowen: Phyllis Lassner Emily Bronte: Lyn Pykett Ivy Compton Burnett: Kathy Gentile WillaCather: Susie Thomas Colette: Diana Holmes Emily Dickinson: Joan Kirkby George Eliot: Kristin Brady Mrs Gaskell: Jane Spencer Doris Lessing: Barbara Hill Rigney Katherine Mansfield: Diane DeBell Christina Rossetti: Linda Marshall Jean Rhys: Carol Rumens Stevie Smith: Catherine Civello MurielSpark: Judith Sproxton Edith Wharton: Katherine Joslin-Jeske Women in Romanticism: Meena Alexander Virginia Woolf: Clare Hanson Further titles are in preparation Women Writers Anne Bronte The Other One Elizabeth Langland M MACMILLAN © Elizabeth Langland 1989 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WCIE 7DP . Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages . First published 1989 Published by MACMILLAN EDUCATION LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke , Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world British Library Cataloguing in Publicauon Data Langland, Elizabeth Anne Bronte: the other one . - (Women writers). I. Fiction in English . Bronte , Anne , 182(}1849.CriticaJ studies I. T ide II. Series 823' .8 ISBN 978-0-333-42301-1 ISBN 978-1-349-20058-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20058-0 Contents vii Acknowledgements Editors' Preface Vl11 1 Anne Bronte's Life: 'age and experience' 2 Influences: 'Acton Bell is neither Currer nor Ellis Bell' 3 The Poems: 'pillars of witness' 4 Agnes Grey: 'all true histories contain instruction' 5 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: 'wholesome truths' versus 'soft nonsense' 6 Critics on Anne Bronte: a 'literary Cinderella' 119 149 Note on Texts Notes Bibliography Index 160 161 166 169 v 1 29 61 97 To Deirdre and Edith Crossland whofirst introduced me to Yorkshire and Brontecountry. VI Acknowledgements I am grateful to my friends of long-standing in Yorkshire who have shared and fostered my love of the Brontes for many years. I am particularly grateful to Edith Crossland for taking the time to drive me to Bronte houses, schools, and locales and to Deirdre Crossland for hosting me and organising a trip to Scarborough to visit the sea and Anne's grave. I thank the University of Florida for grants enabling me to pursue research in England and Juliet R. V. Barker, Librarian/Curator of the Bronte Parsonage Museum, for facilitating that research. I appreciate my students in Victorian literature for sharing my enthusiasm for Anne Bronte; my parents, Joseph and Judith Langland, for encouraging this project; and my children, Erika and Peter, for listening with interest to countless Bronte anecdotes. To my colleague, Alistair Duckworth, lowe a debt of gratitude for his careful reading of the final manuscript. And for cheerfully reading draft upon draft, I thank my husband, Jerald Iahn, whose constant support made my task even pleasant. Vll Editors' Preface The study of women's writing has been long neglected by a male critical establishment both in academic circles and beyond. As a result, many women writers have either been unfairly neglected or have been marginalised in some way, so that their true influence and importance has been ignored. Other women writers have been accepted by male critics and academics, but on terms which seem, to many women readers of this generation, to be false or simplistic. In the past the internal conflicts involved in being a woman in a male-dominated society have been largely ignored by readers of both sexes, and this has affected our reading of women's work. The time has come for a serious reassessment of women's writing in the light of what we understand today. This series is designed to help in that reassessment. All the books are written by women because we believe that men's understanding of feminist critique is only, at best, partial. And besides, men have held the floor quite long enough. EVAFIGES ADELE KING Vlll