Deborah LutzReviews

This was a nice brief , accessible way to learn about the Brontes. Sometimes, I think the author was a bit overly speculative, but the objects were interesting and the research well done.

Oh man, I wanted to love this, but I kind of didn't. I think it was just too hindered by trying to connect the biographical information to the stuff. I think this would be a great read for a new entrant into the world of the Brontes, but obsessives won't really find any new scholarship.

An interesting twist on the usual biography, with tons of historical context beyond the Brontë family, as well as information about each of the Brontës which I didn't know before. A worthwhile, introspective read.

too much gay info for me.

quite interesting but sometimes too long.

Lutz shapes her biography of the Bronte sister (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne) around nine common objects that they owned, including a walking stick, tiny books they created as children, a silver dog collar, a lap desk, a collection of pressed ferns, and more. With some insight, some research, and a considerable amount of speculation, she connects the objects both to known events in their lives and to their novels and characters. The dog collar, for example, may have belonged to Emily's fierce companion, Keeper, but Lutz also connects it to the various dogs in Wuthering Heights: Cathy's favorite dog, Isabel's spaniel, and Heathcliffe's vicious guard dogs, among others. She also spends time discussing the role of dogs in Victorian society: which breeds were most popular, what kinds of dogs were owned by various famous persons, a notorious dognapping ring, etc. One might say that, like Emily wandering familiar territory (the moors), so Lutz wanders through each chapter, keeping her eye on the central object but often straying far afield. It's an interesting approach but might be frustrating to readers who were hoping for a well-researched and detailed biography or those already familiar with the Victorian era and its milieu.½

By and large, a well written and absorbing account of the Brontë family told through various objects owned by family members. There were some odd moments (that Lutz was able to get a "fleshy" smell from volumes in the Brontë library seems to me rather unlikely indeed, and likewise that Brontë manuscripts bound in sugar papers "still smell sweet"), but generally I thought she did a very decent job.½

A readable and intriguing exploration of Victorian material culture, from letters to "scrapbooks" to hair jewelry through the lives and possessions of the Bronte family.

I have been fascinated with the three Brontë sisters – Charlotte, Emily, and Anne – ever since I first read Jane Eyre in my high school days. Even then, my voracious appetite led me to read all of their novels. When I started an English degree in order to do graduate work, the first class was in the summer before the full semester started. The second class I took was on British Women Writers. The class was intense. We read everything by the Brontës, along with all of Jane Austen, George Elliot, and Elizabeth Gaskill. This reading regimen exactly fulfilled all I had hoped for in my new adventure. When I saw a review of a Brontë biography by Deborah Lutz, The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects, I put everything else I was reading aside. Deborah is a Professor of English at Long Island University, and she lives in Brooklyn, New York. She has written several books on the Victorian period.

Each of the nine chapters delves into the personal lives of the three sisters by way of examining a variety of objects they used every day. The chapters include “Tiny Books” – my favorite – “Keeper, Grasper, and Other Family Animals,” and “The Alchemy of Desks.” Along with detailed descriptions in the nine chapters, is an array of photographs of the objects.

In the “Preface,” Lutz writes, “The Brontës scribbled, doodled, and inscribed in their books – stuck plants, drawings, visiting cards in them – making their presence manifest. Some of these well-used volumes transmitted even more than evidence of reading; they had a certain secret to them, which seemed to my nose, a fleshy smell. I was lucky to be able to touch (often without gloves), turn over, bring close, and even sniff the things I handled in libraries and museums” (Preface xxii). Few things give me more pleasure than opening a new book and drinking in the wonderful aroma of paper and ink. In the “Tiny Books” chapter, Lutz adds, “The Brontës felt an intimacy with these closely handled books, made by their own limbs and clothed with materials familiar from the kitchen or the parlor. This closeness of the body and the book was an ordinary feature of daily life in the nineteenth century, a relationship no longer obvious today” (23). I blame e-readers for the loss of the tactile sensations when holding a finely made new book.

In the chapter on “Family Animals,” Lutz explains, ‘For Emily, animals weren’t pets so much as they were family” (105). I can visualize Emily talking to her beloved Keeper as he cocks his head to one side, as our beloved Lab often does. The chapter has a drawing which “Emily immortalized [Keeper] in an expressive pencil portrait she did in January 1834” (115). This pencil drawing is included, along with the color pictures of his collar and a watercolor, also by Emily, of Keeper without his collar.

Deborah Lutz has written a warm, lovely, and informative look into the secret lives of Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë. The Brontës Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects is a delicious and wonderful trip to Haworth Parsonage in the middle of the 19th century. Take a walk on the Yorkshire moors and feel their presence.

--Chiron, 6/5/16

One recalls Victorians as people who covered the legs of pianos to avoid sexual allusions.. But Deborah Lutz “. . . took a somewhat divergent stance, one attuned to this culture as not so much ‘more repressed’ than ours, but as profoundly different from it.”
I don’t believe she succeeded here. Yes, the Victorians were profoundly different to some extent. But the mores of the era reverberate today, in art, literature, religion and public attitude.
This isn’t a 101 book. The author jumps into a description of the life of Gabrielle Rossetti, casting it in a fictional tone. The first part of the book devolved (for me, ymmv) into an alphabet soup of Important Victorian Characters, most of whom I was only glancingly familiar with and some I’d never heard of. It took a while to sort them all out.
The author’s contention that the collaboration of these people – Rossetti, William Morris, and explorer Richard Burton, among others – created an atmosphere that eventually became the underpinnings of the gay rights movement is marginally persuasive. Sexual behavior that we think of as “liberated” were, as Lutz tells us, all there in Victorian London. They were just an open secret. And sometimes prosecutable at law, depending upon your politics and patrons.
Overall, the writing was not as smooth as I would hope, and Ms. Lutz handles the conflict between thematic narrative and temporal narrative by ignoring it, to the detriment of her work. But there is much to take away from this exploration of Victorian sexuality and the arts.½

Maybe a fun addition to the Victorian segment. From ,this Salon interview, some stuff I didn't know:

"Something like 50 percent of the pornography of the time was flagellation pornography. There are lots of different theories about that. One is that these gentlemen who went to private schools like Eton were whipped for punishment as kids. If they did something wrong they would be publicly birched -- a collection of birch branches tied together would be used. The boy's pants would be taken down and he'd be bent over this special block and it would be public. Any schoolboys who wanted to could come and watch. For many of these boys, of course, it was traumatic, but for other boys it's an erotic experience. It developed into this masochistic eroticism.

Another aspect is that middle-class and upper-class men were expected to be very controlled -- to control their emotions, their servants and their women -- and women were expected to be submissive. So I think a lot of men found themselves wanting to lose control, wanting to be the one who was controlled."

Interesting, right? Not that there's a shortage of bondage porn nowadays (or that's what I've heard from, y'know, other people), but it's not 50%. Weird-ass old Brits.