Kay's Bookshelf

In my opinion, the very idea of publishing the two parts together was a great one. I know that it might have been born out of necessity, as neither of them alone could have made an actual book, being so very short, but I find it very lucky that these two were brought together and nothing more, because I think they fit very well. The first part starts with narrating the first steps of the sisters on their road to becoming published authors, including the bad reception their first books met with, moving on to the thing that seemed to sadden Charlotte the most: the fact that almost everyone (critics and readers alike) was certain that the author of Wuthering Heights was the same as Jane Eyre, namely Charlotte herself (despite Wuthering Heights being more criticized than praised, Charlotte felt this misattribution to be detracting from her sister’s own merits). Which is why I think she gladly welcome the chance to write the preface to her sister’s book, taking advantage of the situation to make things right once and for all.

I think it’s a great thing that, by reading this book, we get to find out more about the Bronte sisters. While all their works are classical pieces now, unanimously acclaimed by critics worldwide, not much is known by the average reader (such as I) about the sisters themselves. Which makes this book a little gem, as not give us a few details about the three sisters, how their lives were, how they thought, but it also has the enormous quality (in my eyes at least) of having been written back then, by one of them even (back then when they had yet to become the quaint authors we consider them today).

It is interesting to notice that none of the three sisters was learned, they never studied the art of writing. They had only their imaginations and their observations of the (limited, as they lived quite isolated) human nature around them. Speaking of which, I think it’s worth noting Charlotte’s opinion of how Wuthering Heights and its characters came to be:

Though her feeling for the people round was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced. And yet she know them: knew their ways, their language, their family histories; she could hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but WITH them, she rarely exchanged a word. Hence it ensued that what her mind had gathered of the real concerning them, was too exclusively confined to those tragic and terrible traits of which, in listening to the secret annals of every rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receive the impress. Her imagination, which was a spirit more sombre than sunny, more powerful than sportive, found in such traits material whence it wrought creations like Heathcliff, like Earnshaw, like Catherine.

What I liked most:
The way Charlotte talked about her sisters, making the reader feel the warmth of her sisterly love for them even though she’s not only pointing out their qualities but their faults as well.
She said about Emily:

In Emily’s nature the extremes of vigour and simplicity seemed to meet. Under an unsophisticated culture, inartificial tastes, and an unpretending outside, lay a secret power and fire that might have informed the brain and kindled the veins of a hero; but she had no worldly wisdom; her powers were unadapted to the practical business of life; she would fail to defend her most manifest rights, to consult her most legitimate advantage. An interpreter ought always to have stood between her and the world. Her will was not very flexible, and it generally opposed her interest. Her temper was magnanimous, but warm and sudden; her spirit altogether unbending.

and of Anne:

Anne’s character was milder and more subdued; she wanted the power, the fire, the originality of her sister, but was well endowed with quiet virtues of her own. Long-suffering, self-denying, reflective, and intelligent, a constitutional reserve and taciturnity placed and kept her in the shade, and covered her mind, and especially her feelings, with a sort of nun-like veil, which was rarely lifted.

And the best quote about them both:

I may sum up all by saying, that for strangers they were nothing, for superficial observers less than nothing; but for those who had known them all their lives in the intimacy of close relationship, they were genuinely good and truly great.

What I liked least:
This is not an actual fault of the book, but I was sorry to see that it was more about Emily and Anne, Charlotte ignoring to write much about herself. A natural thing given the fact that she was the author and her natural modesty, but she is my favorite of the three (quite to be expected given that she has written more books by far than her sisters combined) and I would have liked to find out more about her too.

Recommend it? According to Amazon this is “widely considered to be one of the top 100 greatest books of all time”, so I’d say it’s quite a must read for any Bronte fan. Not counting the fact that it’s one of the shortest books I’ve ever read too :)

Written by the same author:
Jane Eyre

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