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The dark moors around Haworth feature in much of the Brontë's work
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Sex, Drugs, Poetry and Prose |
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Biographer’s galore
Branwell has had a large amount of literature written about him, mostly because of society’s interest in his sisters, more often than not he is portrayed as a demon-character . From Mary Robinson’s biography of Emily, where he is described as a “poor, half-demented lonely creature”, with a “vulgar weakness”, presumably referring to his drink and drug habits; to Elizabeth Gaskell’s description of him as “utterly selfish” and “self-indulgent” in Charlotte’s biography. Even those writers, such as Daphne du Maurier, in her second biography of him, who wish to paint a more complementary picture, can do no more than hope that, “Branwell Brontë will be remembered in the future for his early brilliance, not for his later failings.”
All biographies are written with a purpose in mind, not least the author’s desire to sell copies of their book and to make money, but also to paint a picture of their chosen subject in whatever light they wished them to be viewed in. Therefore in trusting biographies as a source of fact we have to take extreme care.
As Tom Winnifrith, writer of the article ‘The Life of Patrick Branwell Brontë’ says of Branwell’s two main biographers,
“Neither Winifred Gerin nor Daphne du Maurier are to be trusted. The former falls into the trap of confusing fact with fiction and writes events into Branwell’s dull life from the exciting poems and stories he created. The latter has the novelist’s eye for a good story, but little respect for the evidence.”
And on the subject of Mrs Gaskell he claims,
“Mrs Gaskell too was a novelist, but she did on the whole try to tell the truth from the evidence at her disposal, and got into trouble as a result. She was writing Charlotte’s story, Charlotte’s view of Branwell was a jaundiced one, and Mrs Gaskell probably exaggerated…Charlotte’s disappointment…”
Added to this the fact that Mrs Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte was written in 1857, two years after Charlotte’s death, and we must be sure to take her words with a pinch of salt.
As a starting point, when looking at Branwell’s life Tom Winnifrith states that,
“One of the sad little scraps of certain knowledge we have about Branwell Brontë is a note from his father in 1839 to the effect that he and Branwell were going to read Homer together.”
The one thing all the Brontë biographies have in common is espousing, in one version or another, some of the more interesting and salacious stories about his life. The two stories which incite the most fetid interest are the tales about Mrs Robinson, who was his alleged older lover, and his drink and drug habits.
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