The Brontë Myth

Description

To be for ever known -- Poor Miss Brontë -- Life into literature -- The angel in the house -- Secrets and psychobiography -- Fiction and feminism -- Interpreting Emily -- A woman worthy of being avoided -- The mystic of the Moors.;In a brilliant combination of biography, literary criticism, and history, The BrontE Myth shows how Charlotte, Emily, and Anne BrontE became cultural icons whose ever-changing reputations reflected the obsessions of various eras. When literary London learned that Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights had been written by young rural spinsters, the BrontEs instantly became as famous as their shockingly passionate books. Soon after their deaths, their first biographer spun the sisters into a picturesque myth of family tragedies and Yorkshire moors. Ever since, these enigmatic figures have tempted generations of readers'Victorian, Freudian, feminist'to reinterpret them, casting them as everything from domestic saints to sex-starved hysterics. In her bewitching "metabiography," Lucasta Miller follows the twists and turns of the phenomenon of Bront-mania and rescues these three fiercely original geniuses from the distortions of legend. From the Trade Paperback edition. To be for ever known -- Poor Miss Brontë -- Life into literature -- The angel in the house -- Secrets and psychobiography -- Fiction and feminism -- Interpreting Emily -- A woman worthy of being avoided -- The mystic of the Moors.