The thing about reading a whole cadre of Brontë books, as I have done this year, is that you can become inured to the same anecdotes. Patrick’s cataracts, Emily’s fondness for animals, Anne’s lisp, Branwell’s toy soldiers and Charlotte’s domination of the whole household. The lonely moors, the tombstones in the front yard of the parish and the tragic onset of tuberculosis, etcetera.

This book held the promise of Branwell’s time away from Haworth and that interested me very much. The parish house and the moors are great and all, they’re a fabulous addition to the Brontë mythos on a whole, but it’s nice to get out once in a while. What fangirl hasn’t read about Branwell’s doomed love affair with Mrs. Lydia Robinson and his shameful return to Haworth? Who hasn’t wondered what could possibly have happened to drive the young man to destroy himself with opium and liquor? What kind of a woman was this Mrs. Robinson? Details! Details! But no.

{HERE THERE ARE SPOILERS}

Instead we have the supposition that the whisperings of what went on with Mrs. Robinson were floated around as a cover-up for an even more egregious sin. That Branwell’s inappropriateness wasn’t adultery at all, that it focused around a younger member of the household instead. And a male to boot. Yes, that’s right. Branwell was a homosexual fixated on a young boy in his care. Well, he might have been, we don’t really know.

Martin must be brave to stick to his artistic vision in promoting such an idea because I doubt it will bring much success (literary or commercial). I mean, come on, Branwell Brontë is literary gold! Other authors have mined the Brontë vault so well for male figures – look at what has been done with William Weightman and Arthur Bell Nicholls, for instance. I doubt pedophilia is attractive to the majority of Charlotte’s, Emily’s and Anne’s fanbase. It certainly isn’t to me and I hate to see Branwell squandered in such a fashion.

{SPOILERS END}

And now that we have that out of the way… another thing to mention is the tense of the prose. I’m not sure what its proper classification is but the plural-ness was hard for me to get accustomed to. There’s no “I” or “you” and the characters don’t talk to each directly in “dialogue”. Like this:

Charlotte wants to draw Branwell
He’s to sit while she draws him.
Their brother could be the model for illustrations of the Marshals of Napoleon and for all his relatives.
She could draw him while he’s writing.

Or this:

The wooden manors and cloudy skies of England, they believe they’ll grow up to live there one day. They hear of them from the books he reads to his sisters, as they sewed with their aunt in the parlor, while their father worked away at his sermon.
Branwell never went too far, just to the village.


So, altogether a strange little book and one I’m glad to put behind me. ( )