The Brontës IV

I'm only up to 1840, when the Brontë children were in their twenties. There is too much information to sum everything up neatly. Charlotte didn't teach for long at the Roe Head school, but Emily and Anne attended briefly while she was there. In 1838, Emily became a teacher in Halifax. Charlotte became a governess in 1839. Anne attended Roe Head when Emily left, but herself left in 1837 following an illness and was briefly a governess. At one point, the three sisters all ended up back at Haworth, a situation that they did not object to. In Branwell's case, he wrote to Wordsworth but was ignored. He later wrote to Coleridge, who did respond and liked the samples of his writing that he had sent. They met. Charlotte also corresponded with Coleridge successfully. 

One of the most interesting aspects of the Brontë family was the way that the children collaborated on writing projects. Branwell and Charlotte wrote about the imaginary world of Angria and Emily and Anne wrote about the imaginary world of Gondal. Branwell, liked to think of himself as a heroic, Byronic figure, and Charlotte initially went along with him. Gondal was a less violent and more fantastical world, which Emily and Anne preferred. Eventually Charlotte distanced herself from Branwell's style. The four of them preferred being at home to teaching or working as governesses. The household was like an MFA program for teenagers, with courses in heroic fiction and Gothic fiction. I have noticed that children with a particular talent can become extremely proficient if they are able to pursue it in an unfettered manner.  Over time, it seems that Charlotte and Anne moved closer to realist fiction with elements of social criticism. I've only read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, so my perspective is somewhat limited. While there does not seem to be any clear evidence, it seems likely that Charlotte read A Vindication of the Rights of Women, by Mary Wollstonecraft, and though her novel contains some of the whimsical elements of Angria, it can also be read as the comeuppance of a male chauvinist pig, Edward Rochester. Of the four surviving Brontë children, Charlotte had the most exposure to the outside world and was probably more attuned to the inequities of society. Some of this had to do with wealth. She was acutely aware that her friend, Ellen Nussey, came from a wealthier family and didn't have to work: she was happily traveling about while Charlotte was toiling away in unpleasant jobs. Then it would have been impossible for Charlotte not to notice that Branwell received preferential treatment from their father: she had to work in order to pay for his training as a painter.

Branwell did become a portraitist in Bradford, but judging from the portraits I've seen, they weren't very good, and he soon gave up due to insufficient income. Anne became a governess, and soon after Charlotte became one. Charlotte did eventually have a vacation with Ellen Nussey, during which they traveled to Bridlington, and she saw the North Sea for the first time. Branwell got a job as a tutor in the Lake District, a suitable location for a Romantic poet. However, he was dismissed in a few months, and it is thought that he had impregnated a girl and caused a scandal.

As in most of the biographies that I read, Barker is maintaining a psychologically and sociologically neutral description of the Brontë family. That may be appropriate in this case, because she is consciously attempting to remove the misunderstandings attributed to Mrs. Gaskell. So far, Patrick Brontë does seem like a conscientious and respectable father and citizen, though, consistent with his generation, he had traditional patriarchal ideas. However, when I compare him to my British ancestors, it seems possible that his judgment may not have been optimal. At the beginning of the nineteenth century in Britain, people were streaming away from farming and rural areas and moving to cities. My ancestors from Scotland, Yorkshire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Hampshire all moved to London. They didn't go to college and learned trades instead. Some were tailors, some were furriers and one was a builder. To me, Patrick Brontë's decision to pursue a low-paying job in a rural area seems out of step with the time, though perhaps it can be justified by his lack of knowledge, having grown up in Ireland. There is also the possibility that Brontë's decision-making process was faith-based, but so far in this book Barker has not explored that angle, and she is being steadfastly neutral on the behavior of the Brontës.