Brontë Scholars

Lifting the Veil on the Brontë Juvenilia: A Study of the Gondal Saga and Wuthering Heights
Tara, Emily
Advisor: Garcha, Amanpal; Hannibal, Hamlin
Issue Date: 2013-05
The Ohio State University. Department of English Undergraduate Research Theses; 2013

In 1848, before her death, Emily Brontë completed a novel that has transcended time and has become a staple of classic Victorian literature; that novel is Wuthering Heights. While many have read or have heard of this novel, the origination of the tale has been left to speculation and uncertainty. I hope to uncover some of the truth behind the novel's origination by comparing its plot, themes and characters to Emily's juvenilia poetry. The Gondal poetry, as it has come to be called, gives a greater insight into the framework for the novel, and through careful explication of specific passages, can be seen as a precursor to the popular gothic novel. While Wuthering Heights is a fictional story, I will give details that will explain that through studying the novel in relation to the juvenilia, it is more than possible that her writing contains elements of her personal life, environment and viewpoints.
Brontë Scholars (III)

Gondal poems

A page from Emily's notebook, showing her Gondal poems

the Gondal saga

 

In 1831, after Charlotte left for Roe Head School, Emily and Anne began to concentrate their energies exclusively on the Gondal saga, distinct from the Angrian fantasies of their brother and sister, a special form of imaginative play in which the two younger sisters alone engaged for the remainder of their lives. 

• Emily's first mention of Gondal occurs in her diary paper for 24 November 1834, a series of notes written by Emily and Anne about every four years and the earliest piece of Brontë's writing to have survived. The first paragraph of the entry reads, "Taby said just now Come Anne pilloputate (i.e. pill a potato) Aunt has come into the kitchen just now and said where are you feet Anne Anne answered On the floor Aunt papa opened the parlour door and gave Branwell a letter saying here Branwell read this and show it to your Aunt and Charlotte--The Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine Sally Mosley is washing in the back kitchen." In addition to noting the astonishing absence of punctuation conventions in the sixteen-year-old Emily's diary entry, critics uniformly point to her seamless fit of the imaginary Gondal into the fabric of everyday events in the Brontë kitchen. 

Scholars such as W. D. Paden in An Investigation of Gondal (1958) have deftly recovered much of the history of Gondal despite Charlotte's destruction of the plays and prose after her sisters' deaths, from the birthday notes, the undated lists of character names Anne wrote, the list of place names she wrote into a copy of J. Goldsmith's A Grammar of General Geography (1819), and Emily's and Anne's Gondal poems. Most recognize, however, their own creative responsibility in such a reconstruction, for while Brontë wrote almost seventy poems that are undoubtedly part of the Gondal story, the majority of her poems cannot always be attributed to Gondal, and many are clearly more personal lyrics. Scholars therefore find Fannie Ratchford's Gondal's Queen: A Novel in Verse (1955), an attempt to fit the whole of Brontë's poetic output into the Gondal fantasy, an interesting but far-fetched effort. 

• What can be determined is that Gondal, according to Anne, was "a large island in the North Pacific" and that Gaaldine was "a large island newly discovered in the South Pacific." The rigorous scenery of these islands derives much from Scott's fiction and is filled with mountains, heather, and snow. 
• The Gondal stories concern impetuous royalty, political intrigue, love thwarted and abandoned, wars, murders, and assassinations. 
• In a noteworthy article in 1939 Helen Brown was one of the first critics to point out the influence of George Gordon, Lord Byron, on Brontë's Gondal characters and their isolation, passions, dark crimes, and darker thoughts. 
• The main character in Brontë's Gondal poems, the speaker of at least fourteen and the subject of many others, is the passionate, dark-haired queen Augusta G. Almeda, or A.G.A., perhaps based on Mary, Queen of Scots and the young Queen Victoria, in whose accession to the throne Brontë took a good deal of interest. 
• A secondary character is Julius Brenzaida, king of Almedore in Gaaldine. 

Critical reception of the Gondal poems has been uneven. 

• Some critics reject them for their melodrama, formulaic qualities, and simplistic meters and rhymes. 
• Recently, however, feminist critics have taken special note of the prominent role played by the queen, A.G.A. Christine Gallant, for example, calls attention to the fact that Gondal is "a mythic world emphatically excluding the real world" known to Victorian women, controlled by a "dominating presence of female figures." 
• Teddi Lynn Chichester believes that Brontë was continually working through her own loss of significant female figures, that "through Augusta, Brontë could explore, in private, her need to create a powerful, even indestructible" woman, and that A.G.A. "ultimately reinforced the disturbing connection between mortality and the feminine" that is such a potent undercurrent in Western literature. 
• Richard Benvenuto points out that without the years Brontë spent "developing her Gondal imagination, the mature imagination she did attain would have been a considerably different mode of vision." 
• While a knowledge of the facts of Gondal can deepen the reader's understanding of Brontë's creative life, we can still appreciate the poems for their merits apart from their place in the Gondal saga. In writing the Gondal poems Brontë took on different voices and personae, and the themes of imprisonment and death that inform her better-known poetry were first explored therein. The dark and overpowering emotions first manifested in these poems certainly fed her invention of Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. poetryfoundation/bio/emily-jane-bronte

Gondal and Poems

Poems by Currer, Ellis and Action Bell, published in 1846 and paid for by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, contained twenty-one poems by Emily and by Anne and nineteen by Charlotte. Despite the fact that it received two encouraging reviews, only two copies were sold. Charlotte edited Emily's poems and rewrote some for the 1850 edition of her sisters' poems and novels. She included seventeen previously unpublished poems from Emily's manuscripts and one poem not found in Emily's manuscript ("Often rebuked, yet always back returning"). Nothing of the Gondal history remains except Emily's poems, the references in the journal fragments by Anne and Emily, the birthday papers of 1841 and 1845, and Anne's list of the names of characters and locations.

• Emily Brontë has been called one of the great English lyric poets and has found admirers among other poets. Emily Dickinson thought so highly of Emily Brontë's poetry that she chose "No coward soul" to be read at her funeral.
• To Imagination (September 3, 1844). Emily personifies Imagination as a physical presence separate from the individual in several poems, including this one.
• The Two Children (May 28, 1845). Emily's name for these two poems in the Gondal saga was "A. E. and R. C"; it was Charlotte who gave them this title. The image of two children appears a number of times in Emily Brontë's poetry as well as in her novel. In this poem, the "melancholy boy" resembles Heathcliff and Hareton, while the "Child of Delight! with sunbright hair" resembles Catherine Earnshaw and Cathy Linton; the poem hints that they are to redeem the "melancholy boy." The dark-light, male-female pair appears in the novel and in the Gondal saga as well.
• How beautiful the Earth is still ( June 2, 1845). Charlotte Brontë wrote "Never was better stuff penned." in the manuscript of this poem.
• The Prisoner. A Fragment (October 9, 1845) This poem is part of a larger Gondal poem which Emily revised for publication in 1846. She cut lines 1-12, 45-64, and 93-152. She added the concluding stanza, which starts with "She ceased to speak..." The original title of the poem is "Julian M. and A.G. Rochelle," the names of two lovers in the Gondal saga.
• The Visionary (October 9, 1845). This poem is part of the same Gondal poem from which Emily carved "The Prisoner. A Fragment." Charlotte Brontë took lines 1-12 of Emily's original poem, "Julian M. and A.G Rochelle," and added 8 lines of her own. Thus, the positive ending in which the watcher has a spiritual experience is Charlotte's and the watcher may be seen as Emily rather than a Gondal character. In Charlotte's version, it is hard to explain the guiding light in the window of stanze 2.
• Often rebuked, yet always back returning. Harold Bloom calls this Emily Brontë's finest poem; however, C.W. Hatfield, who edited her poems, speculates that Charlotte wrote or revised this poem. It first appeared in the 1850 edition of Emily's novel and poems; no manuscript version of this poem is known. academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/
• Anne's poems are generally divided into two categories: the 'Gondal', and the 'non-Gondal'. The former are the ones that she wrote as part of the fantasy world - Gondal - which she created and developed throughout her childhood and youth with Emily: most of these where written while Anne was in close proximity with her sister. When the two sisters were parted, Anne rarely ever wrote Gondal verses. mick-armitage.staff.shef.ac.uk/anne/poems
• Most of the poems quoted come from the manuscript note-book in the British Museum.  The manuscript of the “Alcona” poem is in the Bonnell Collection at the Parsonage Museum. ingentaconnect
• wiki/Poems_by_Currer,_Ellis,_and_Acton_Bell

Gondal

It was during December 1827 that the world really took shape, when Charlotte suggested that everyone own and manage their own island, which they named after heroic leaders: Charlotte had Wellington, Branwell had Sneaky, Emily had Parry, and Anne had Ross. Each island's capital was called Glasstown, hence the name of the Glasstown Confederacy.^[4]

Emily and Anne, as the youngest siblings, were often relegated to inferior positions within the game. Therefore, they staged a rebellion and established the imaginary world of Gondal for themselves. "The Gondal Chronicles," which would have given us the full story of Gondal, has unfortunately been lost, but the poems and the diary entries they wrote to each other provide something of an outline.^[5]The earliest documented reference to Gondal is one of Emily's diary entries in 1834, 9 years after the Glasstown Confederacy, when the two younger sisters were aged 16 and 14 respectively; it read: "The Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine."^[4][5]

All of the prose chronicles are now lost. The only surviving remnants of the Gondal works are made up of poems, diary entries and some occasional memory aids such as lists of names and characteristics.^[6]

The Gondal saga is set on two islands in the South Pacific. The northern island, Gondal, is a realm of moorlands and snow (based onYorkshire). The southern island, Gaaldine, features a more tropical climate. Gaaldine is subject to Gondal, which may be related to the time period of the early nineteenth-century in which Britain was expanding its Empire.^[6]

The character stories created by the Bronte children are filled with melodrama and intrigue. The early part of Gondal's history follows the life of the warlike Julius Brenzaida, a figure reminiscent of the Duke of Zamorna from the siblings' earlier Tales of Angria and Prince of Gondal's primary kingdom of Angora. The two loves of his life are Rosina, who becomes his wife and queen, and Geraldine Sidonia, who gives birth to his daughter, Augusta Geraldin Almeda (A.G.A). Julius is evidently a two-faced king. After sharing a coronation with Gerald, King of Exina, he imprisons and executes him. Julius is eventually assassinated during a civil war and is succeeded by his daughter, A.G.A., who is similar to her father in temperament. She has several lovers, including Alexander of Elbë, Fernando De Samara, and Alfred Sidonia of Aspin Castle, all of whom die. She also is eventually murdered during a civil war.^{[6]  wiki/Gondal}

(1) A notable exception is the pioneer work of  TJ Wise & JA Symington (eds), The Miscellaneous and Unpublished Writings of Charlotte and Patrick Branwell Brontë (Shakespeare Head Brontë), 2 vols: 1 (1936) and 2 (1938) 
(2) Alexander, Christine (ed), An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 1. The Glass Town Saga 1826-1832 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987);  vol 2. The Rise of Angria 1833-1835: part 1, 1833-1834, part 2, 1834-1835 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), vol 3 (forthcoming).
Neufeldt, Victor (ed), The Works of Patrick Branwell Brontë: An Edition, vol 1 (New York: Garland, 1997), vols. 2 and 3 (1999). 
Paperback editions: Barker, Juliet (ed), Charlotte Brontë: Juvenilia 1829-1835 (Penguin, 1996)
Glen, Heather (ed), Charlotte Brontë: Tales of Angria (Penguin, 2006) 
It should be mentioned also Christine Alexander's coordination of the Brontë juvenilia volumes of Juvenilia Press, a pedagogic press which publishes juvenilia edited by graduate students.
(3) In the Editor's Preface to the New Edition of 'Wuthering Heights', 1850:

Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know: the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master - something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself.

(4) Emily made fair copies of her poems and divided them into two notebooks. One famously inscribed Gondal poems (which is at the British Library in London) and another one inscribed E.J.B. and known as the Honresfeld manuscript, which is usually understood to contain poems of a more personal nature, but that is not exactly known. The Honresfeld manuscript is unfortunately lost, although a facsimile of it was made prior to that. Bronte Blog/tales-of-glass-town-angria-and-gondal

Brontës: Gondal

Brontës

The British Library’s major new exhibition Out of this World: Science Fiction but not as you know it reveals the imaginary worlds of the Brontë children. http://www.bl.uk/

At some point Emily and Anne stopped contributing to the Glass Town and Angria stories in order to create their own imaginary world of Gondal, probably as a rebellion against their older siblings who usually gave them inferior roles to play in the games. Unfortunately, the chronicles of this imaginary place written in prose were lost and only poems are now known. As with the Glass Town writings, these poems are concerned with love and war and explore various modes of identity. Emily Brontë’s Gondal poems relate to characters in the stories, who came from either side of two warring factions. Early biographers of Emily assumed that the events described in the poems related to her own life, but instead they were figments of her extremely active imagination, and, like Wuthering Heights, not directly written from personal experience.

From the notebook of Gondal Poems by Emily Brontë

Scholars such as W. D. Paden in An Investigation of Gondal (1958) have deftly recovered much of the history of Gondal despite Charlotte's destruction of the plays and prose after her sisters' deaths, from the birthday notes, the undated lists of character names Anne wrote, the list of place names she wrote into a copy of J. Goldsmith's A Grammar of General Geography (1819), and Emily's and Anne's Gondal poems.

Most recognize, however, their own creative responsibility in such a reconstruction, for while Brontë wrote almost seventy poems that are undoubtedly part of the Gondal story, the majority of her poems cannot always be attributed to Gondal, and many are clearly more personal lyrics. Scholars therefore find Fannie Ratchford's Gondal's Queen: A Novel in Verse (1955), an attempt to fit the whole of Brontë's poetic output into the Gondal fantasy, an interesting but far-fetched effort.

What can be determined is that Gondal, according to Anne, was "a large island in the North Pacific" and that Gaaldine was "a large island newly discovered in the South Pacific." The rigorous scenery of these islands derives much from Scott's fiction and is filled with mountains, heather, and snow. The Gondal stories concern impetuous royalty, political intrigue, love thwarted and abandoned, wars, murders, and assassinations.

In a noteworthy article in 1939 Helen Brown was one of the first critics to point out the influence of George Gordon, Lord Byron, on Brontë's Gondal characters and their isolation, passions, dark crimes, and darker thoughts. The main character in Brontë's Gondal poems, the speaker of at least fourteen and the subject of many others, is the passionate, dark-haired queen Augusta G. Almeda, or A.G.A., perhaps based on Mary, Queen of Scots and the young Queen Victoria, in whose accession to the throne Brontë took a good deal of interest. A secondary character is Julius Brenzaida, king of Almedore in Gaaldine.

Critical reception of the Gondal poems has been uneven. Some critics reject them for their melodrama, formulaic qualities, and simplistic meters and rhymes.

Recently, however, feminist critics have taken special note of the prominent role played by the queen, A.G.A. Christine Gallant, for example, calls attention to the fact that Gondal is "a mythic world emphatically excluding the real world" known to Victorian women, controlled by a "dominating presence of female figures." Teddi Lynn Chichester believes that Brontë was continually working through her own loss of significant female figures, that "through Augusta, Brontë could explore, in private, her need to create a powerful, even indestructible" woman, and that A.G.A. "ultimately reinforced the disturbing connection between mortality and the feminine" that is such a potent undercurrent in Western literature.

Richard Benvenuto points out that without the years Brontë spent "developing her Gondal imagination, the mature imagination she did attain would have been a considerably different mode of vision." While a knowledge of the facts of Gondal can deepen the reader's understanding of Brontë's creative life, we can still appreciate the poems for their merits apart from their place in the Gondal saga. In writing the Gondal poems Brontë took on different voices and personae, and the themes of imprisonment and death that inform her better-known poetry were first explored therein. The dark and overpowering emotions first manifested in these poems certainly fed her invention of Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.

The luxury Brontë enjoyed of freely flowing from domestic responsibilities at the parsonage to the world of Gondal and the mental and emotional sustenance she found therein was cut short in July 1835, when she accompanied Charlotte, now a teacher, to Roe Head. For Brontë--removed from her routine for the first time since she was six years old, extremely reticent and impatient with the other pupils in the school--the experiment was unhappy and unsuccessful. Moreover, because her daily schedule was now rigidly proscribed, she had no time to engage in the intellectually sustaining creation of the Gondal stories, and she was no longer living with Anne, her partner in the fantasy.

Charlotte later recalled her firm belief that Brontë "would die if she did not go home, and with this conviction obtained her recall." Charlotte understood only too well the void caused by the absence of "sources purely imaginary": she too grieved for her inability to interact with her visions of Angria. The combination of homesickness and creative deprivation forced Brontë home in October 1835, but her dependence on Yorkshire to free her poetic originality should not be overstated. She forced herself to leave home again two more times, to teach at Law Hill and to study in Brussels, and these journeys broadened rather than stultified her inventive abilities.

READ MORE: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/emily-jane-bronte

Did-the-Brontes-write-the-first-sci-fi

Bronte Juvenilia

Childhood fantasy is often stifled by the imposition of adult demands. The Brontë children escaped such censure, however. Writing without the requirement to put neat handwriting before creative expression, they developed storytelling skills that are reflected in their adult writings. Michael J. A. Howe describes the imaginary world chronicled by the Brontë children, revealing their sources of inspiration in the experiences of real people and the places they read about.

The imaginary worlds had their beginnings around 1826, when Charlotte and Emily, who shared a bed, invented simple unwritten plays, not unlike those created in many children's imaginary play. The very first of the Brontks' plays took most of the characters from toys, especially their brother Branwell's toy soldiers. The earliest surviving play that was written down, by Branwell, is set in Lorraine and concerns the imaginary intrigues and battles between would-be rulers, in the course of which the imagined events include a rebellion and a siege. As the Brontës' biographer Juliet Barker notes, most of the essential elements of their juvenile writings were already in place at that time, including political rivalries, battles, and rebellions that are played out within fantasy kingdoms (Juliet Barker, The Brontës, 1994, p. 152). Numerous sources were drawn upon. A particularly important inspiration was Blackwood's Magazine, a monthly journal containing a wide mixture of articles ranging from fiction to political satire and humour. Branwell's toy soldiers were given names and pressed into service as fictional characters.

Read more:  http://www.fathom.com/feature/122071/index.html

Our plays were established; Young Men, June, 1826; Our Fellows, July, 1827; Islanders, December, 1827. These are our three great plays, that are not kept secret. …The Young Men's play took its rise from some wooden soldiers Branwell had; Our Fellows from Æsop's Fables; and the Islanders from several events which happened. I will sketch out the origin of our plays more explicitly if I can. First, Young Men. Papa bought Branwell some wooden soldiers at Leeds; when Papa came home it was night, and we were in bed, so next morning Branwell came to our door with a box of soldiers. Emily and I jumped out of bed, and I snatched up one and exclaimed, 'This is the Duke of Wellington! This shall be the Duke!' When I had said this Emily likewise took one up and said it should be hers; when Anne came down, she said one should be hers. Mine was the prettiest of the whole, and the tallest, and the most perfect in every part. Emily's was a grave-looking fellow, and we called him 'Gravey.' Anne's was a queer little thing, much like herself, and we called him 'Waiting-boy.' Branwell chose his, and called him 'Bonaparte.' [1]

During this time Branwell acquired several sets of toy figures such as soldiers, Turkish musicians, and Indians. These toys were the impetus for the founding of the imaginary lands of Angria and Gondal. The children began to write plays about the figures, with Emily and Charlotte composing "bed plays" that they kept secret from the adults as well as from Branwell and Anne. In "Tales of the Islanders" (1829) Charlotte gave a history of the early plays, underscoring Emily's early affiliation with the works of Sir Walter Scott, for she chose the Isle of Arran for her island and Scott for her "cheif [sic] man." This affinity grew with Aunt Branwell's 1828 New Year's gift to "her dear little nephew and nieces," a copy of Scott's The Tales of a Grandfather (1827-1829). In addition to Scott's works the Brontë children drew material for their plays from the family library of Aesop's Fables, The Arabian Nights' Entertainment, and wood-engraver Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds. Their most important influence during these early years was most likely Blackwood's Magazine, whose satires, political commentaries, and extensive book reviews provided them with a wealth of detail that seeded their imaginations throughout their early years of creativity.

In 1831, after Charlotte left for Roe Head School, Emily and Anne began to concentrate their energies exclusively on the Gondal saga, distinct from the Angrian fantasies of their brother and sister, a special form of imaginative play in which the two younger sisters alone engaged for the remainder of their lives. Emily's first mention of Gondal occurs in her diary paper for 24 November 1834, a series of notes written by Emily and Anne about every four years and the earliest piece of Brontë's writing to have survived.

Read more:  www.poetryfoundation.org/

 November the 24

1834 Monday

Emily Jane Brontë

Anne Brontë

I fed Rainbow, Diamond, Snowflake Jasper phesant (alias this morning Branwell went down to Mr. Drivers's and brought news that Sir Robert peel was going to be invited to stand for Leeds Anne and I have been peeling apples for Charlotte to make an apple pudding and for Aunt's [? - unreadable] and apple Charlotte said she made puddings perfectly and she was of a quick but lim[i]ted intellect Taby said just now come Anne pillopuate (ie pill [peel] a potato Aunt has come into the kitchen just now and said where are you feet Anne Anne answered onthe on the floor Aunt papa opened the parlour Door and said B gave Branwell a Letter saying here Branwell read this and show it to your Aunt and Charlotte - The Gondals are disc discovering the interior of Gaaldine.
Sally mosley is washing in the back kitchin. It is past Twelve o'clock Anne and I have not tid[i]ed ourselvs, done our bed work or done our lessons and we want to go out to play We are going to have for dinner Dinner Boiled Beef Turnips potato's and applepudding the Kitchin is in avery untidy state Anne and I have not Done our music exercise which consists of b majer Taby said on my putting a pen in her face Ya pitter pottering there instead of pilling a potate I answered O Dear, O Dear, O Dear I will derectly with that I get up, take a Knife and begin pilling (finished pilling the potatos papa going to walk Mr Sunderland expected. Anne and I say I wonder what we shall be like if all be well and what we shall be and where we shall be this year if all goes on well in the year 1874 -- in which year I shall be in my 57th year Anne will be going in her 55th year Branwell will be going in his 58th year And Charlotte in her 59th year hoping we shall all be well at that time We close our paper.
Emily and Anne November the 24 1834