Posted on 04/22/2016 9:27:09 AM PDT by Borges
Happy Birthday, Charlotte! I’ve visited your home several times.
Did you destroy Emily’s last book?
My uncle gave me Jane Eyre to read when I was 8. I was already a somewhat avid reader. After Jane Eyre, I always had a book with me throughout my childhood and teen years. I still read it every so often.
In 1848, Elizabeth Rigby reviewing Jane Eyre in The Quarterly Review, found it “pre-eminently an anti-Christian composition,” declaring: “We do not hesitate to say that the tone of mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated every code human and divine abroad, and fostered Chartism and rebellion at home, is the same which has also written Jane Eyre.”
Oh, yes. All the Brontes were bashed for their novels. Jane Eyre sent clerics into hysterics as did Wuthering Heights. It disturbed the more worldly and sensitive Charlotte; Emily blew it off and went back to peeling potatoes and walking her dogs.
My husband and I will be in York for a week this June. he has a friend who is planning on taking us there during our visit.
The Young Brontes was the first "real" biography I ever read and on which I had to do a book report. I remember reading about the miniature books they wrote, the poverty in which they lived, and that the chimney of their house collapsed! Important stuff!
Bronte ping
I think York is a distance from Haworth. We went to Leeds and took a small choo-choo to Keighley and then a cab into town. Gorgeous little place with very friendly people, excellent hotel restaurants and you get to hang out at Branwell’s favorite pub, The Black Bull, I think it’s called.
Keighley has recently been the subject of a grooming scandal. When we visited in the late 90s, it was fine.
I don’t think, btw, that the Brontes lived in poverty. It’s true that the town was quite poor but Patrick Bronte made a decent salary, had a nice house which opened up onto the moors. They had servants. But the girls and Branwell had to go out and earn a living. And that’s when all the bad troubles began. When they were home writing, they were a happy family.
Julius Caesar by aldis lamp.
Eight?! Advanced reader. The subject matter is a bit old for eight, no? My daughters were considerably older than that before they knew what being a “mistress” would imply.
Maybe, as a child, I figured if your chimney fell down, you were in trouble financially.;-) I read the book a LONG time ago (45+ years???)
When we go to England we always travel by train: Britrail Pass. My husband knows several people there now and one has suggested this trip to us and offered to take us there, by car! He drove us to Whitby a couple of years ago.
You’re in for a treat! We were there about 3 weeks prior to Christmas and got to see a Christmas pageant with little girls dressed as angels and a slightly effeminate choir master who chided them on occasion. I still have wonderful pictures of the kids - they were thrilled to have a Yank photograph them. Haworth is on a steep incline and you’ll see miniature horse-drawn carts still in use by the farmers.
I had no idea Patrick lent his hand to poetry! Generally, he sat in his room reading a book on diseases. I think he gets a bad rap from historians. He was a laid-back father for the most part who let his daughters do what they wished.
I think I probably did not understand the actual definition of mistress. But, I understood the book. I was an advanced reader. By the time I was 10, my teacher was searching for books that I could read for class. Yes, I did read all of the usual, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Trixie Belden, Little House etc. However, I enjoyed the classics early. Particularly, Poe.
That’s the nice thing about those books. Good authors can communicate their ideas without getting terribly clinical. The story works on both levels. My daughter was able to read Pride and Prejudice after 8 but before she was versed on what houses of ill repute were. So she could read it without real problems. Bleak House can’t quite pull it off because of the central theme of the whole thing, though Dickens is certainly in the same class, and was a bit of a social revolutionary in some ways himself (”Hard Times”). I get the feeling that Dickens was a bit apolitical regarding parties, though, and had a genuine love for England with her warts, and all.
I preferred Poe and Hawthorne and others when I was young, but did love Austen, as well. I read everything from Poe to Heinlein to Austen to Greek & Roman mythology. I would go to the library and get 6 or 7 books and take them back the following week and get more.
I am sad that I do not seem to read as much or get the joy out of it. I do read some, but nowhere near the amount I once did.
You like your literature on the dark side. At your age then I was all up for the Greek and Roman Mythology, but was still in Action Comics, consistent, but low brow by comparison. At that age I wasn’t going to pick up the depth of The House of Atreus but was all for the surface level feats of might and power. At least you didn’t mention Melville. I just reread Bartleby, and I still don’t see it as anything “great”; I found Moby Dick unreadable.
I was a strange one when it came to what I read as a teen! I loved Heinlein and Asimov, Clarke, King, you name it, I would try! I read Shakespeare and so on. Anything involving ancient history, mythology, European history, the Middle Ages.
I never made it though Moby Dick or Wuthering Heights. Did not care for Dickens. Go figure. lol Some authors grabbed me and others left me meh. My teacher said I read too fast. So, that I possibly missed nuances. I don’t think so, but whatever! lol
Took me two times to read The Stand and, since then, I have read it a dozen times. I do not mind re-reading books and getting more from them.
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