Maria Frawley

I've given this 3½*** – generously – for its contribution to Brontë studies, because of the relative paucity of studies of Anne; but the book suffers from excessive "academese." For example (p. 147),

This focus provides for a Bakhtinian approach to meaning that emphasizes the heterogeneity of social voices, of the multiple "selves" fashioned and invoked by individuals. In turn, a variety of poststructuralist theories has made it fashionable to dismiss the notion of an organic, unified show more self entirely and to adopt in its place the less essentialist concept of subject positions.

Once get past the academese, however, and there is interesting material on Anne's poetry (though in no way comparable to Janet Gezari's superb study of Emily's poetry, Last Things) as well as a substantial discussion of the use of Helen's (Wildfell Hall) diary.

Unfortunately, the citations to passages in the novels seem to be to the original T.C. Newby first editions, which isn't very useful to a reader who won't have access to such rarities. Frawley does use the 1979 Chitham edition of the poems, which likely will not be available to the average reader either; but in fairness here, there really isn't a conveniently available and authoritative collection of Anne's poems, in contrast with Janet Gezari's Penguin edition of Emily's complete poems.

For the sake of quibbling, I'll also note a couple of errors in biographical details. Emily and Anne did not in their Gondal juvenilia break off from Charlotte and Branwell's Angria juvenilia when Charlotte "left home to join the two eldest sisters at the Cowan Bridge school" (p. 26); the break occurred later, when Charlotte left for Margaret Wooler's school at Roe Head. In fact, when Charlotte and her two older sisters attended Cowan Bridge (and the two older girls died) in 1825, Charlotte was only nine, Branwell eight, Emily seven, and Anne five (ages approximate).

Also, I'm not sure I'd call William Smith Williams a "publisher" (p. 28) but, rather, an employee of Charlotte's publisher, George Smith of Smith Elder & Co.

More seriously, though, I don't agree with Frawley's assertion that Anne, by "traveling to London with Charlotte Brontë to prove her separate existence to a doubting publisher," was "actively and vehemently ... establish[ing] her own autonomous identity as an author" (p. 29). The trip by Charlotte and Anne to the Smith Elder offices was actually motivated by Charlotte's desire to prove to George Smith that she, Charlotte, was not the author of Wuthering Heights or Agnes Grey, which Emily's and Anne's unscrupulous publisher had claimed were written by the author of the best-selling Jane Eyre, exposing Charlotte to a complaint from George Smith that Charlotte had reneged on an agreement to furnish Smith Elder her subsequent novels. This isn't a mere quibble on my part considering that Frawley uses this episode to portray Anne as a self-assertive personality, a view that is important to the thesis of Frawley's book. In fact, though here I'm speculating, I suspect Anne accompanied Charlotte because the reclusive Emily positively refused to go along and Anne, generally a conciliator, was trying to keep the peace between her two older sisters.

In any event, 3½*** to Maria Frawley for her contribution to the relatively ignored Brontë sister, but only 3½*** in view partly of some factual errors but more seriously because of the book's tone of academese. show less