Bronte sisters

[chongjasmine]

Which of the Bronte sisters' work is your favourite?

 

[hitmouse]

.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

emily - I love the gothic tones and descriptions of the place

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Wuthering Heights is one of the strangest and most fascinating novels I have ever read. Much more to it than the "great romance" it seems to be in popular culture.

 

[Pyan]

Got to be Wuthering Heights - as @Victoria Silverwolf says, a most extraordinary novel. But I mst say I prefer the more mannered stories of Jane Austen, a generation earlier.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I find Wuthering Heights to be very creepy and atmospheric, but Heathcliff (especially) and Cathy are such vile human beings (yes, I know, they have some reason for that, but still), it is hard for me to sympathize with their romance at all, or care what happens to them at any point in their adult lives. The author takes a very dark view of humanity. Most of the characters are either brutally selfish, or weak and foolish. The younger generation turns out better, but we don't really see so much of them.

So I like Jane Eyre much better (although maybe that's because I read it at a very young age, and it sort of imprinted on my psyche). It has it's spooky moments, and weird psychological turns, Edward Rochester is certainly no prize as heroes go, but I have always found Jane to be admirable, a woman of strength and dignity, who insists on being respected. I know to modern readers she can come across as prim and preachy, but many contemporary critics found her to be a shocking character and the plot equally shocking (and that was so even before they found out the author was a woman). It was quite a daring work in its time. It is ironic that Jane's literary descendants tend toward damsels in distress,which I imagine would have disappointed Charlotte Brontë if she had lived long enough to know of it.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was enjoyable, but I've always felt that Anne was not on quite the same level as a writer as her sisters were. I read Agnes Grey a few years ago, and it was purely depressing. I understand that it was an accurate, if fictionalized, depiction of her own life as a governess, and so, perhaps, could not have been anything else.

The other books, I have tried, but could never get into them.

 

[beccabear67]

I haven't read absolutely everything (yet), but while I find Anne more interesting, it was Charlotte's Jane Eyre I encountered and read first, so I'd have to go with that. I just ordered the biography on The Brontes by Juliet Barker and looking forward to reading all 1184 pages.

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

Jane Eyre. Is my favourite.

 

[Extollager]

Charlotte's Villette really wins appreciation (and I've read it two times), while not being a gripping read like Jane Eyre. I have yet to read Charlotte's Shirley and The Professor, and Anne's Tenant though I have read a lot of it. Wuthering Heights is probably a greater novel than any of these, but it's Jane Eyre that I like the most. Agnes Grey I don't much remember -- over 40 years ago. I do remember thinking it was interesting that oneself is referred to as "number one," which I thought must be an early (earliest?) use of that expression.

 

[Lady of Winterfell]

I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't read any of their books. I do have Jane Eyre on my list to hopefully read this year.

 

[beccabear67]

There is a debate about if a photograph of the sisters may have been taken circa the fall of 1847 and fall of 1848, of which another photographer may have made a photograph of in the 1850s. The younger sister of the Brontes' housekeeper in an interview published in 1910 but one of the sisters' publishers in a magazine mentions he having a 'photograph'... there was a photographer who photographed a painting among other things at the Parsonage in Haworth in the 1850s. An 1850s copy of a photo surfaced with an attribution written on the back in French that these were the sisters Bronte. The one of a kind original Daguerreotype, if it existed, is either lost or possibly even was buried with someone such as their father or Charlotte's husband. We may yet live to see this authenticated.... there are unique features of nose and earlobe which correspond to known portrait drawings and the lone photo of their father who outlived them (there is a known later lone Charlotte photo as well), which lack of has pretty soundly debunked other vintage photos brought forward. The hat worn by Emily was most fashionable and available to be bought from circa May 1947.

Charlotte, Emily and Anne.

This is the best copy I could find online and unfortunately it has been coloured. In the earlier painting made by their brother Branwell, Anne's nose has more of a bridge than Emily's, and Anne was known to breathe through her mouth due to asthma type issues and some see her mouth (they had to hold a pose for minutes in those days to capture an image) as more open.

 

[BAYLOR]

I find Wuthering Heights to be very creepy and atmospheric, but Heathcliff (especially) and Cathy are such vile human beings (yes, I know, they have some reason for that, but still), it is hard for me to sympathize with their romance at all, or care what happens to them at any point in their adult lives. The author takes a very dark view of humanity. Most of the characters are either brutally selfish, or weak and foolish. The younger generation turns out better, but we don't really see so much of them.

So I like Jane Eyre much better (although maybe that's because I read it at a very young age, and it sort of imprinted on my psyche). It has it's spooky moments, and weird psychological turns, Edward Rochester is certainly no prize as heroes go, but I have always found Jane to be admirable, a woman of strength and dignity, who insists on being respected. I know to modern readers she can come across as prim and preachy, but many contemporary critics found her to be a shocking character and the plot equally shocking (and that was so even before they found out the author was a woman). It was quite a daring work in its time. It is ironic that Jane's literary descendants tend toward damsels in distress,which I imagine would have disappointed Charlotte Brontë if she had lived long enough to know of it.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was enjoyable, but I've always felt that Anne was not on quite the same level as a writer as her sisters were. I read Agnes Grey a few years ago, and it was purely depressing. I understand that it was an accurate, if fictionalized, depiction of her own life as a governess, and so, perhaps, could not have been anything else.

The other books, I have tried, but could never get into them.

Ive only read Wuthering Heights and that was in college. This book is in serious need of zombies or perhaps someone like Jason Voorhees.