Charlotte Bronte: A Passionate Life

In this eloquent revisionist biography of English novelist Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855), Gordon (Shared Lives) argues that she hid a passionate nature beneath the facade of a dutiful Victorian woman. She and her sisters Anne (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) and Emily (Wuthering Heights) penned fiction and poetry during Yorkshire evenings at the Haworth Parsonage where they lived with their dictatorial father. Although the sisters initially published under male pseudonyms, Charlotte revealed their identities after she wrote Jane Eyre (1847). Gordon draws on letters and her analysis of Charlotte's autobiographical fiction (Shirley; Villette) to reveal an ambitious writer with tart humor who raged against the constraints society placed on her sex, as well as a woman who, after two unrequited love affairs, embarked on a brief but happy marriage. Earlier accounts that portrayed Charlotte as a lonely, tragic figure, Gordon maintains, were skewed because of the morality of the times and Charlotte's grief at the deaths of her two sisters and brother Branwell. Illustrations. (Jan.)