Charlotte Bronte Brought out of the shadows.

books:

	• Charlotte Bronte, a Passionate Life Lyndall Gordon W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1996 - 456 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Charlotte Bronte Brought out of the shadows.

Lyndall Gordon does an excellent job of retelling the life of Charlotte Bronte. In this book we see a different side of a woman who since Gaskell's novel, has been pitied. In this biography we find a Charlotte that is full of life and even with the sadness and death that surrounds her is able to continue to follow her own path. She does not crumble into oblivion. Lyndall also opens up parts of Charlotte's life ignored by Gaskell to protect Charlotte's image. This novel reveals a Charlotte Bronte that knows passion and love not just pain and loss. This is an excellent book for any person interested in the life of a incredible author who was as strong-willed as the characters she wrote.

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Charlotte Bronte A Passionate Life

From the time I first read "Jane Eyre" in high school until now, some 30 years and many re-readings later, I have never come across anything that made me feel I really could comprehend the woman behind the work, until I read this book,which I finished early this morning. "Jane Eyre" has always been my favorite novel... I have seen every movie adaptation, I have trudged the rainy streets of Haworth and the surrounding moors, I have read several biographies, I have read other Bronte works. You see, I thought if I understood Charlotte Bronte better, I would understand myself better, at least the part of myself that is so incredibly moved by Jane Eyre at every re-reading. I was THRILLED to find a book that leaves the strict biographical details to any of the numerous Bronte biographers and explores the soul behind the facts. It is wonderfully written in its own right and demonstrates incredible insight and respect for the Bronte genius. Without feeling like I was being manipulated by a feminist with an agenda, I came to appreciate the incredible strength of mind and character in a woman like Ms. Bronte, whose unique identity and voice couldn't be suppressed by her social and personal circumstances. My already profound admiration for Charlotte Bronte was only deepened after reading this book by Lundall Gordon for the first time.

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A Passion for Language

At first I thought, "Oh, no, not ANOTHER life of Charlotte Bronte." But this one is worthwhile: convincing and upbeat. Rather than recording day-by-day events of Charlotte's life (usually viewed as pathetic), it emphasizes the miracle of her writing. I could not follow every step of Gordon's critical readings of the novels, but . . . Gordon offers so many other insights to feast upon regarding: the importance of Charlotte's letters, the Bronte family's place in society, the views of Mrs Gaskell, Charlotte's decision to marry Arthur, and the probable cause of her death. The comparison of Jane Eyre to Catherine Earnshaw and to Giselle of the ballet is only one example of Gordon's originality. The serious reader should also look up the reviews of the Times (London) and Independent (London).

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The Enigma of Charlotte Bronte

I have long considered "Jane Eyre" to be my favorite book, and I have read much of Charlotte Bronte and the writing of her sisters. These three women were enigmas in their time; they wrote with voice beyond their years and experience, and created central female characters who were strong and could hold their ground with any male character, something not deemed proper in a modest Victorian lady. Hidden behind pseudonymns, they could give voice to the shape of women to come long after they lived and since Charlotte lived the longest of the three, it is through her legacy that anything about the Brontes can be known.

Lyndall Gordon has done a remarkable job with this biography. It is not a straight-forward chronological biography in the typical sense; while it concerns itself with dates and events as they unfolded, Gordon is more concerned with the woman behind these happenings. She has been able to delve into Charlotte's life and expose a portrait much more vivid than other biographies have created. So much has been said and misrepresented about Charlotte Bronte (thanks in large part to the biased writing of Elizabeth Gaskell so soon after Charlotte's death) and Gordon examines that image while weaving the fire of Charlotte Bronte's soul and writing into a new image of an icon.

Gordon begins by tracing the roots of the Bronte family - the death of their mother at a young age, who left behind six children to a preoccupied father who only had time for his parsonage and his only son,(so preoccupied was Mr. Bronte that he did not know of the writing gifts his three daughters possessed until they presented him with published novels) - to the trials and tribulations of publishing, to the tragic deaths of all four of her sisters and her brother, to her unlikely marriage and success as an author. Gordon traces Charlotte's struggles at school and her exhaustion at being a governess, to her years in Brussels where her gift (and love) truly caught flame for the first time. She weaves back and forth between triumph and disillusion, success and heartache, happiness and depression, painting a picture of Charlotte Bronte as a passionate, fearless woman who defied the life laid out for her.

In an age when literary pursuits were not meant for females, Charlotte Bronte turned the tide. She endured criticisms of being coarse and immoral, of being plain and undignified, of being doomed to a life of spinsterhood and illness. She rose above all of these challenges and became a mix of the heroes she had created in her novels. "Jane Eyre" may stand as her best work, but it would be amazing to know what else she might have been able to offer the world if her life hadn't been cut short.

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reviews: page 1, 2

This critically acclaimed portrait of Charlotte Bronte looks beyond the insistent image of the modest Victorian lady, the slave to duty in the shadow of tombstones, to reveal a strong, fiery woman who shaped her own life and transformed it into art. Drawing on Bronte's unpublished letters, journals, early stories, and the manuscript of Villette, her last, unfinished novel, Gordon takes readers into the unseen space in which Bronte was able to live and create. of photos.

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