Volume 23, Number 19 · November 25, 1976

Justice to Charlotte Brontë

By Diane Johnson
Charlotte Brontë: The Self Conceived
by Helene Moglen

Norton, 256 pp., $11.95

Since their own day, which misprized Emily, the Brontës have been installed in the literary constellation in fixed relation: Emily with her colossal masterpiece, and with the moral advantages of a solitary nature and an early death, has been set far above not only the sad Anne and Branwell but also the more heroic Charlotte, whose unlucky combination of passion and candor exposed her to the strictures of her contemporaries—for being coarse and preoccupied with sex—and whose confessions of timidity and more prosaic needs for company and usefulness have qualified the regard of posterity.



Review, 3084 words

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