zaterdag 14 november 2015

Both Charlotte and Emily returned to school after the midsummer holidays in this fatal year. Is this true?


 
I can tell you I am the proud owner of a copy of Claire Harman's ""Charlotte Bronte"".  Thanks to Anne, who sent it to me. I really am happy with it. And off course I am reading in it since I received it.
 
 
I own the Bronte biographies of Juliet Barker, Rebecca Fraser and Elizabeth Gaskell. I love the biography of Elizabeth Gaskell because I find it interesting that a lady, a woman of the world like Elizabeth Gaskell became so close to Charlotte Bronte. Charlotte who was so shy and insecure, but the same time so brave, so trusted her. I think Elizabeth Gaskell did the best she could with the knowledge she had at that time. And she showed courage to mention all the difficulties like Cowan Bridge and the love affair between Branwell and Mrs. Robinson. Afterwards she came in trouble because of her writing. She called it ""a hornet's nest"".

Later Juliet Barker wrote a fabulous biography in wich she proved when and why Elizabeth was wrong, for instance about Patrick Bronte. There is so much information in her book and she is giving so many details, so many notes to back it up.

In the biography of Rebecca Fraser I like the part she, like a detective, is searching for the truth behind the poststamps on the loveletters Charlotte Bronte sent to Mr. Heger.

The new biography
 
I started to be surprised from the beginning when I was reading the new biography of Claire Harman.  I get the feeling the days of Elisabeth Gaskell returned. Patrick Bronte as a selfish, excentrike man, only focused on himselve. And Haworth, a remote village, far away of civilisation. As if Juliet Barker never proved the opposite.

But I started to be shocked reading Patrick Bronte sent Charlotte and Emily back to Cowan Bridge, after their sisters Maria and Elizabeth died. Reason,  as Claire Harman is writing, because he had paid for it already. Did Patrick Bronte really did such a thing????? I didn't remember reading this before. So I started to search. I could not find this story in Juliet Barker, nor in Rebecca Fraser but then, yes, I found it in  Elizabeth Gaskell's book. So it is true. I am shocked. Elizabeth wrote: Both Charlotte and Emily returned to school after the midsummer holidays in this fatal year. But why didn't the other biographers mention it, I ask myself? Some hours later I thought, maybe there are notes in the book of Elizabeth Gaskell? And yes, I found it. The note: As Miss Gérin has shown (op.cit.p.16) this statement is inaccurate: the surviving Bronte sisters left the school for good on 1 June 1825.

I was trying to find out what Winifred Gérin was writing
Read here:

 
So, really I am confused. How is it possible that in the newest biography something is told
what is refuted in other biographies?
 
And.... Patrick Bronte got his money refunded? This really is a different story.
op

1 opmerking:

  1. Anne14 november 2015 om 23:13

    As it says in the middle of the page posted, page 16 of Gerin's 1967, Charlotte Bronte , that in order to learn when the girls left the school and that Rev. Bronte even got a refund because they left early , Gerin read the school's records.

    Has Harman has read only Gaskell ? The later Bronte bios do not mention this imo because Gerin disproved it by reading source materiel in the 1960's . It's expected a Bronte author should know this. It's more than a mistake...it's serious error

    BeantwoordenVerwijderen