A review by crizzle
The Brontë Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne by Catherine Reef

5.0

I loved getting to learn about the brief lives of the Bronte sisters! I marked this as "to read" when it came out in 2012; I recently requested it on our South Dakota Overdrive library and they got it in for me! So much I didn't know: their mother died when Anne was a baby, they had two older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, who died while attending their cruel boarding school, and their brother Branwell lived a sad life as an addict, losing job after job while the girls quietly worked hard as undercover authors (and stints as governesses). The sisters chose pseudonyms to go by: Anne, Emily, and Charlotte went by the manly monikers Acton, Ellis, and Currer Bell so they wouldn't have to deal with the discrimination they would as women authors in the 1800s. These girls were feminists! In the firestorm that ensued upon the release of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, Charlotte reminded readers that "conventionality is not morality". Readers struggled with these books because never before had they seen such frankness from female protagonists, nor were prim and proper Victorians accustomed to reading about the harsh realities and disfunctionalities of life. I read Jane Eyre as a thirteen year old and loved it... as an older teen I tried getting into Jane Austen and couldn't stand it. I felt redeemed when I read that Charlotte Bronte couldn't, either! "Her business is not half so much with the human heart as it is with the human eyes, mouth, hands and feet." So sad finding out that Patrick Bronte outlived not only his wife, but all six of his children. Within eight months, Charlotte lost Branwell, Anne, and Emily to tuberculosis; they were 29-31 years old. Charlotte only lived 38 years. This was a short and fascinating book, just like the lives of these quiet, smart, strong women.