Podcast Summary:

New Books Network
Guest: Dr. Jessica Campbell
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Episode: Jessica Campbell, "The Brontës and the Fairy Tale" (Ohio UP, 2024)
Date: November 1, 2025

Overview

This episode explores Dr. Jessica Campbell's groundbreaking book, The Brontës and the Fairy Tale. The discussion delves into how fairy tales and folklore deeply influence the works of all the Brontë siblings—not just in the ways often acknowledged by scholarship (such as happy endings), but across genres, tones, and forms, including their lesser-known juvenile writings. The interview reveals how understanding fairy tales and folklore through a Victorian lens reshapes our reading of the Brontës’ poetry and fiction, both in famous texts like Jane Eyre and in more enigmatic works like Villette and Shirley.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Fairy Tales? The Origins and Scholarly Context

[02:41]

• Dr. Campbell has a background in both Victorian and fairy tale studies, and was struck by the prevalence of fairy tale tropes in ostensibly realist Victorian novels.
• She noticed that previous scholarship largely limited fairy tale analysis to novels with happy endings, missing the depth to which all sorts of Brontë works use fairy tales—including those with tragic or ambiguous resolutions.
  • Quote: "People weren't accounting for novels that had zillions of fairy tale references, but ended in a tragic or maybe a murky way." (04:03, C)
• Her dissertation focused more broadly on fairy tale influences in Victorian literature (including Dickens and Hardy), but the Brontës stood out for a book-length study.

2. What Did "Fairy Tale" Mean to the Victorians?

[05:00]

• The definition was broader than today, encompassing supernatural folklore, orally transmitted local legends, and literary fairy tales. It wasn’t strictly tales involving fairies, nor always implying happy endings.
  • Example: In Jane Eyre, "fairy tale" is used for magical stories, local beliefs, metaphorical happiness, and even disappointment at not seeing elves.
  • Quote: "What matters most for my purposes here is that the Brontës and the Victorians in general were just surrounded by non realist narratives, however they were categorized." (06:55, C)
• This richness of definition is crucial for understanding Brontë uses of fairy tales.

3. How Did the Brontës Encounter Fairy Tales and Folklore?

[09:16]

• Siblings encountered these narratives through circulating libraries and periodicals (notably Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine), which carried fairy tales from around the world, reviews, and supernatural anecdotes.
• Some influences are speculative, but references to stories like Bluebeard and Arabian Nights are explicitly documented in Brontë writings.

4. Fairy Tales and Folklore in the Juvenilia

[12:11]

• Charlotte and Branwell’s childhood writings (their “juvenilia”) are vast and packed with fantasy elements: magical rings, Genii, fairies, and invented fantasy kingdoms (Glass Town, Angria).
• Even in "scribbles," Charlotte subverts dark folk endings to opt for happiness and paradise for her protagonists.
  • Quote: "She doesn't want the wonder and splendor of encounters with supernatural creatures to have to come at such a steep cost." (15:44, C)
• In Charlotte’s most mature juvenilia, supernatural elements decrease, but they surge again in her published novels—a surprising arc.

5. Supernatural Elements in Emily and Anne's Poetry

[17:13]

• Emily and Anne use supernatural imagery to articulate experiences that resist ordinary, realist expression.
• For Anne, magic is sometimes opposed to divine power but often allied to it. For Emily, the supernatural animates and personifies nature.
  • Quote: "The supernatural provided a way to convey the human individual's experience of nature." (17:54, C)
• Emily’s poetry remains consistently infused with supernatural references, regardless of whether it’s “juvenile” or “adult” work.

6. Real and Unreal: The Case of Branwell

[20:32]

• Branwell presents contradictions: he mocks supernatural “airy fairyism” yet peppers his writing with supernatural allusions—sometimes unconsciously illustrating how pervasive these references were in 19th-century culture.
  • Quote (Branwell): "I for one, will always fly from the sickly tales…airy fairyism and shadowy fancies of what has never been…" Yet he uses a 'Barmecidial feast'—a reference from Arabian Nights—in the very same passage. (21:13, C)
• For all siblings, fairy tale references often articulate psychological truths and ineffable inner experience—beyond psychological realism.

7. Fairy Tales in the Major Novels

a. Jane Eyre

[26:49]

• The novel is saturated with fairy tale motifs—Bluebeard, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella—deployed self-consciously by both author and protagonist.
• Previous scholarship focuses on single fairy tale origins; Campbell, however, explores how multiple conflicting fairy tales (especially Beauty and the Beast vs. Bluebeard) create Jane’s central dilemma regarding Mr. Rochester.
  • Quote: "What really stood out to me about Jane Eyre was the way that the influences of multiple tales interact with each other." (28:10, C)

b. Shirley

[30:30]

• Often seen as a dry, realist novel, Shirley is in fact “constant” in its fairy tale allusions (especially tragically connoted tales of supernatural brides/animal brides, like mermaids and swan maidens).
• These motifs question, even undercut, the supposed “happy ending” (the heroines’ marriages) by stressing loss rather than gain, especially for women and nature in the face of industrial progress.
  • Quote: "To develop these associations with tragic fairy marriage tales, and then to conclude the novel with a lament over the forced departure of the fairies...emphasizes what is lost in these marriages." (34:23, C)

c. Wuthering Heights

[36:07]

• Lacks overt fairy tale structure, but is informed deeply by supernatural folklore. Heathcliff is repeatedly compared by others to folkloric monsters/demons (“basilisk”) while the narrator draws subtler analogies to “pixie-led” humans—those irreparably changed by supernatural encounters.
  • Quote: "What it does have is a certain quality of the elemental and the ineffable that for me make it tonally in keeping with folktales surrounding the supernatural." (36:24, C)

d. Anne Brontë's Novels

[39:56]

• While Anne’s style seems antithetical to fantasy (and centers realism and morality), Agnes Grey echoes Cinderella, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall strikingly parallels Bluebeard—demonstrating Anne’s engagement with fairy tale structures for moral and social critique.
  • Quote: "Agnes Grey…is in many ways a textbook Victorian Cinderella retelling." (41:56, C)
  • Bluebeard’s theme of entrapment and danger in marriage underlies Wildfell Hall's concern for women’s rights.

e. Villette

[44:38]

• Often treated as strictly psychological realism, but Campbell proposes Lucy Snow’s narration “enchants” the reader: Lucy manipulates narrative, withholds and reveals information, and the novel is “bursting with references to fairy tales, folktales, supernatural creatures and so on.”
  • Quote: "Some of narrator Lucy's stranger narrative techniques as a kind of enchantment that she performs on the reader..." (46:00, C)

Memorable Quotes

• On Victorian Definitions:
  • "These stories have a way of leaping over the boundaries that we attempt to use to divide them." (05:03, C)
• On Brontë Children's Fantasies:
  • "Their fantasy kingdom was largely ruled by Genii, who represented the Brontë children themselves." (13:53, C)
• On Literary Technique:
  • "[Brontë] is using tools that we've been trained to associate with the unreal, these fairy tale references, in order to address real experiences in the world that transcend the power of ordinary realism to articulate." (23:49, C)
• On Lucy Snow in Villette:
  • "Enchantment in traditional fairy tales often actually reveals the truth ... sometimes that's what we have going on with Lucy in Villette as well." (48:25, C)

Important Timestamps

• [05:00] - Defining "fairy tale" in the Victorian period
• [09:16] - How the Brontës encountered fairy and folk tales
• [12:11] - Fairy tales in the juvenilia
• [17:13] - Supernatural in Emily and Anne’s poetry
• [20:32] - Realism vs. supernatural in Branwell
• [26:49] - Fairy tale elements and interpretive dilemmas in Jane Eyre
• [30:30] - Tragic fairy tales and anti-happy endings in Shirley
• [36:07] - Folklore’s role and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights
• [39:56] - Fairy tales in Anne's novels, especially The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
• [44:38] - Enchantment, psychological realism, and fairy tales in Villette
• [50:19] - Dr. Campbell's current projects and what’s next

Closing & What’s Next for Dr. Campbell

• Teaching classes on Wuthering Heights and adaptations, continuing to teach and research fairy tales, a chapter on Gaskell forthcoming, and a new research pivot toward queer studies and women’s relationships in 19th-century fiction.
  • Quote: "I love participating in scholarly dialogue. I can do it all day." (51:55, C)

Takeaways

• Fairy tales and folklore are not marginal but central tools in the Brontës’ entire body of work, regardless of genre or tone.
• Recognizing the breadth and depth of fairy tale allusion—far beyond the “happy ending” model or children’s literature—forces a reevaluation of Brontë novels as interwoven with myth, magic, and the complexities of the real and unreal.

For more, read Dr. Jessica Campbell’s book, The Brontës and the Fairy Tale (Ohio UP, 2024).