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The History of Literature
752 The Brontes' Sibling Rivalry (with Catherine Rayner) | My Last Book with Keith Cooper
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- [00:02]
A
The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Black Friday Savings are here at the Home Depot, which means it's time to add new cordless power to your collection. Right now, when you buy a select battery kit from one of our top brands like Ryobi or Milwaukee, you'll get a select tool from that same brand for free. Click into one of our best deals of the season and stock up on tools for all your upcoming projects. Give Black Friday Savings happening now at the Home Depot. Limit one per transaction exclusion supply full eligible tool list in store and online. Toast the holidays in a new way and raise a glass of Rumchata, a delicious creamy blend of horchata with rum. Enjoy it over ice or in your coffee. Rumchata. Your holiday cocktails just got sweeter. Tap or click the banner for more. Drink Responsibly. Caribbean rum with real dairy cream, natural and artificial flavors. Alcohol 13.75% by volume 27.5 proof. Copyright 2025 Agave Loco Brand, Wisconsin. All rights reserved. Hello. The tragic early deaths of two of the Bronte sister novelists, Emily and Anne, left Charlotte alone to tell the tale, as Ishmael might have put it. But while Ishmael was a fictional character and seems reliable enough if limited, Charlotte was a real life person with motivations of her own. How much did she distort the story and why did she do it? We talked to author Katherine Rayner about the sibling rivalry of the Brontes. Plus we hear from Keith Cooper, expert in science fiction and science fact, about his choice for the last book he will ever read. That's all coming up today on the History of Literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson, your host. I'm glad you're here. Let's jump right in. The story starts with a grave, a mystery around a grave. Anne Bronte was buried in Paradise, a place called that. Literally. Author Catherine Rayner noted that piece of trivia and noted that paradise was 70 miles away from where the rest of the Brontes were buried. She was curious about that, and she started tugging on some threads and she wound up with enough to write a book about it. These Brontes were, of course, like any other family, full of cliques and alliances, supportive, squabbling, jealous at times, rivalrous. They were not like any other family in a couple of big ways. One is the inordinate amount of tragedy that they knew. Disease and death was a constant in their lives, a daily constant with all those funerals that their Father presided over dissolution was big, too. The other big way. Of course, the reason why we're talking about them is that three of the daughters wrote novels that have come down the ages, through the ages, to us as fixtures in the English literature firmament. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, the tenant of Wildfeld hall. The first two in particular, being on the short list of fan favorites and critical darlings. The success of the Brontes makes their lives interesting to us. But what were those lives really like? How might the sisters, in particular the eldest of the three, Charlotte, have played a role in creating the biographies that we have come to understand about the Brontes? Was she motivated to distort the truth in some way? Our guest will help us explore all of that. Let's go straight to that interview now. Okay. Joining me now is Katherine Raynor, who's been studying and researching the lives of the Bronte family for over 40 years. She's a life member of the Bronte Society, has written two theses and various articles on Emily Bronte. And in addition, she's a qualified nurse who has studied the effects of childhood on the development and psychology of adults. She's here today to discuss her new book, the Bronte Sibling Rivalry and A Burial in Paradise. Kathryn Raynor, welcome to the history of literature.
- [04:42]
B
Thank you.
- [04:44]
A
So before we get to the Brontes, I thought we could just start a little bit with just the concept of sibling rivalry. What do we know about the pecking order of a family, and in general, what does that tend to mean for, let's say, the eldest or the youngest in the family hierarchy?
- [05:03]
B
I think sibling rivalry has always existed. You only have to look at Cain and Abel going right to the beginning to get the gist of how and why children rival against each other. And so very often the eldest child and the youngest child take on a particular role. Any child in between is sort of part of the middle section and tend not to get the attention that the eldest and the youngest receive. I've researched a tremendous amount of both recent and older research into child psychology and the family dynamics. And it was very obvious that the Bronte family were a very good example of what happens when the eldest child dies and one of the other siblings moves into the first place.
- [06:12]
A
Right. Okay, so let's get the Bronte family onto the table here. There were six children. Maria Elizabeth. Charlotte was third, then Branwell, the boy was fourth. And then Emily and Anne. They were all born, I mean, in a very close period of time, 1814. Maria was born in 1820. Anne was born so they're all very close in age. Maria and Elizabeth both died in 1825, but Maria, the mother, had already died in 1821, just a year after Anne was born. So that's what is really interesting, because, as you say, the oldest and the youngest tend to have this particular role. But then there are instances where maybe someone is the youngest for eight or 10 or 12 years and then another child is born and then they're taken away from being the youngest, which is kind of an interesting psychological development. Or as in the case of the Brontes, Charlotte did not start out as the oldest, she was third. But then she was elevated to that position through tragedy. And, you know, you say the Brontes were not a straightforward or typical family of their time. And I guess even though there were a lot of deaths and so on back then, it does seem like this element of Charlotte suddenly becoming the oldest and the kind of the mother of the family in another sense as well. What did that mean for her and how did it change her?
- [07:46]
B
I think it's so important to see that, first of all, they lost their mother when they were very young. And Maria and Elizabeth. Maria was described as a highly intelligent child who, after the mother's death, she definitely took on that mother role. Their Aunt Branwell, their mother's sister, came to stay with them on a permanent basis. And because she knew these children, she had. She had attended some of their births and was known to them. But Aunt Branwell was quite a bit older than their mother, had a totally different upbringing in Cornwall, in Penzance, in a wealthy family, and to move to Haworth at that time and suddenly be in charge of six small children was a tremendous whole new world for Aunt Bramwell. And I would argue that she could not be expected to take on the role as the mother of these six small children. She did have a certain affinity with them because she too had lost four or five of her siblings, and I think that's very important. She was able to support them to some extent after the deaths of their mother and their elder two sisters. But Maria, the child. Maria had taken on that mother role when she was seven or eight, very well thought of by her father, who looked to Maria as very much a highly intelligent child who needed lots of stimulation and needed to be nurtured. So we've got Charlotte, who's the third daughter in a family of six. She is not a bonnie child and she knows she's not. Was told by various friends and relatives, even described herself she was very small, very plain, ugly, even Very short sighted. She had almost nothing going for her. She was the third daughter. She wasn't even the first daughter. She was just one of the middle children. But when her siblings died, Charlotte suddenly became the eldest child. Took on a role that she didn't want or expect. But for the rest of her life, she was the eldest child. She was the support to her father. She didn't, from what I can gather, particularly get on well with Aunt Branwell because Aunt Branwell, like anybody in that position, was again drawn to the youngest because Anne was only a baby when her mother died and also to the one and only boy, Branwell. And especially, I mean, we still do it now, but especially 200 years ago, the boy of the family was the most important child. They only had one boy. So the plan was that Branwell would even exceed his father when he grew up. He would be highly intelligent. He would look after the family if and when his father died. He would make sure that his sisters were well catered for and well cared for. Of course, that never happened.
- [11:18]
A
Yeah. So let me ask about Branwell. So he, I know he was, he was very artistic and he was also troubled, especially as an adult. Did that start to show as a child as well? Was he not viewed as a responsible prospective heir to the father and the paternity? Or did that only start as he became more of an adolescent and teenager?
- [11:45]
B
I think there were two or three influences. First of all, there is speculation that he suffered from epilepsy. Whether or not that's true is very, very hard at this distance of time to determine. But it does seem likely. He was certainly highly excitable and mercurial child. And because he was the only boy in a family of girls, he got a great deal of attention, which probably made him feel more important than he actually was. Made him feel that he could achieve things that he actually couldn't. But also Mr. Bronte, his father was highly educated and he didn't send Bramwell to school. He chose to teach himself. And you could argue quite rightly so, because Patrick Bronte was probably far more educated than most of the teachers of that time. But by keeping Branwell at home until he was 16 or 17, Branwell never got the opportunity to mix with boys his own age or to make friends with boys his own age. So he was, was very, I would say almost had his hands tied behind his back. He couldn't develop like any teenage boy. He couldn't have fights, he couldn't argue, he couldn't have. Just couldn't knock about with Boys his own age. Yeah. Always surrounded by women, and that. That was a tragedy. Charlotte was his closest friend throughout his early life, but they bickered and argued very close in age. But Charlotte always wanted now to be the dominant one. And when she left home to go to Roe Head School when she was 15, Branwell lost his one and only friend. And because Charlotte did very well at school and made new friends, Branwell got pushed into the background.
- [13:49]
A
What did it mean for Emily and Anne that Charlotte was suddenly in this role? I mean, did they struggle to see her as now the leader? They must have been mourning the loss of Maria and Elizabeth, which happened so suddenly. But do we know if they kind of resented Charlotte taking over this role or appreciated it or what do you think the dynamic was there?
- [14:13]
B
I'm not sure how they felt at the actual time, but I think as they grew up, I think it becomes very obvious that Charlotte is dominating the family. And Anne and Emily took on the roles of Emily as the middle child who doesn't get a great deal of attention and does what a lot of children in that circumstances do, they're withdrawing to themselves. She's not the oldest girl. She's not the oldest child. She's not the youngest. And therefore she doesn't get any special attention.
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A
She's not the boy.
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B
No.
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A
Yeah. She's the only one of the four that doesn't have some reason to get attention.
- [14:57]
B
Absolutely. Absolutely. She was very tall. And even nowadays, some girls do not feel comfortable at being taller than their siblings and certainly not taller than their brother. And I think that's just another area where Emily probably felt different to the others. It's a very small area, but it's notable.
- [15:20]
A
Yeah.
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B
And Anne, of course, was, after the death of her mother, became the youngest child, because I don't think there's any doubt that the Brontes would have gone on to have more.
- [15:34]
A
Patrick came from a family of. He was the eldest of 10 and. And his wife Maria was the 11th of 12 children.
- [15:42]
B
Exactly. So we're talking about an age when there was no birth control. Their religion told them that children were a gift from God. So you, you know, you did not try to avoid having children. Yeah. So they would have naturally gone on to have more children.
- [16:01]
A
Even though I was reading this about recently a book about the Austin siblings. And they made the point that I think women. It was something like 20% of women who gave children died in childbirth. So the odds very high. And if you think about it, you know, if you have a 1 in 5 chance of dying during childbirth and you're planning to have 10 children. That's a pretty. You're really rolling the dice there. And indeed, you know, as we saw in the case of Maria, it was. She did not live long enough to.
- [16:39]
B
And again, researchers have questioned whether she actually died of stomach cancer. A famous gynecologist during the 1970s, I can't remember his name, but he wrote an article to say that it was probably when giving birth to Anne that the mother developed infection and in internal issues that eventually led to her death.
- [17:03]
A
Right, right.
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B
So perhaps Maria Broncy did not escape, you know, that she didn't actually die in childbirth, but she died possibly as a result of it.
- [17:15]
A
Mm. Mm. Okay. So what help did. I mean, did these children have any help in navigating these shocks? We're talking about it as if Charlotte has kind of inherited this role, but maybe not fully exploring what it means to have these losses like this. And I mean, were they a family that was. Was kind of adrift, or do you think that Patrick and with the help of his sister in law were able to kind of steady things so that the children had kind of a bit of stability to cling to, or was this a family that was kind of in turmoil?
- [18:01]
B
I think all those things, yes, they were in turmoil. They were very young children. They were bereft of their mother and their mother substitutes. And they. After the deaths of the two elder siblings, Patrick Bronte quite rightly kept his children at home. He kept them at home for the next five years. And they were very, very isolated. They weren't allowed to mix with the other children in the village, so they sort of turned in on themselves. Now, Aunt Bramwell, as I say, had lost five of her siblings, so she had some inkling of what they were going through. But religion was the order of the day. And religion in that household was Christian. It was evangelical. It was whatever happened was God's will. And the children had to accept that and would have been taught to, you know, to believe in that.
- [19:06]
A
Yeah.
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B
That if their mother died, if their sisters died, it was God's will. And you can't argue with that and you can't rail against it because God is all seeing that there's total belief in God in that household at this time.
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A
Right.
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B
But certainly at this time. So those poor children were an awful dilemma of believing one, that the mother and their sisters were all together in heaven, which would be comfort, but also bereft of them, you know, and as. As happens in cases like this, these children fell in amongst themselves. The father was heartbroken. Obviously. Aunt Branwell was probably out of her depth completely. So these children do what all children do under those circumstances. They turn in on themselves and begin to imagine a life that is better than the one they've got.
- [20:09]
A
Yeah. Let's take a quick break and then come back because I want to ask you how this, this led into their creativity, which was so remarkable even at such a young age. So we'll take a quick break and then come back with more from Katherine Raynor.
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C
Foreign.
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A
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- [24:15]
B
No, it's certainly not unique at all. Research shows that children, for all sorts of reasons, turn to fantasy. And in the Brontes case, it was. I think it was far more marked because they had no control. And it's that loss of control, in their case especially, which makes them more creative. They can't avoid death. That house must have been just full of memories and full of toys and clothes and, oh, everything you could think of that, that had been there when these people were alive. How would you escape from that? How do you get some control over your life? Yeah, you make up a life that's different from yours, where you can dictate and control everything that happens. Yeah. And that's exactly what they did. And to say that they have no distractions, they had lessons every day. They weren't out playing with other children. They didn't actually. When they first went to school, the children didn't know how to play. They'd never interacted in that respect. So the only other thing that they had was the Moland. And as you know that the moors that came up to the back door of their own home.
- [25:48]
A
Yeah.
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B
Was such a marvelous escape for them as well as the fantasy they had out on the moors. His life, everywhere on those moors, life. There's water, there's fresh air, there's. There's animals, there's birds, there's noise, there's rain, there's snow, there's everything you can think of that. That talks of life.
- [26:09]
A
Yeah.
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B
And so they had that as a massive influence and they had that need to explore Death. And in some of the stories, they allow their characters to come alive again. Yeah, that gives you control.
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A
Right? Right. Yeah, we see that in Wuthering Heights.
- [26:32]
B
Absolutely.
- [26:35]
A
And it's sort of. Just to put even more of an emphasis on this, I visited the Brontes house and I was struck by just sort of the way the landscape. They were kind of on a bit of a hill with the moors in one direction and the other direction it slopes down to their church. But in between them and their church is the graveyard. So they're kind of. And I had heard that there was an average of a funeral a day at this time in Haworth. And so the idea of the father presiding over all of this loss and all of this grief, as well as just his regular services and so on, it really is a dramatic place. I mean, sometimes we think of being out in the country as being quiet and not as busy and dramatic as the city. But this was a particular countryside that was full of the range of human emotions.
- [27:36]
B
Well, Haworth was an industrial town.
- [27:41]
A
It was.
- [27:42]
B
It was when. When the Brontes were living there, it was highly industrial. Howorth was filthy, it was full of mills, it was full of. It was full of smoke. And the average life expectancy was 25 years. And the rate of death in children, I think, was. I can't quote the exact figures, but I think it was one in five died before they were a year old. And of the remainder, another 10 or 20% died before there were five. And it was a working class town. Very much a working class town. So these children living in Haworth weren't expected to live a particularly long time. Most of them were working by the time they were five, six, seven years old. There was a level of poverty which matched the East End of London at that time. So this was a village that was barely surviving. And because at that time, birth rate was so high, the birth rate was feeding the factories. It's horrible to think of, but that is the way it was. And there is no doubt that Patrick Bronte thought it best to keep his children either within the parsonage or out on the moors for their own safety.
- [29:18]
A
Right.
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B
He saw all this more than anyone and he was quite philosophical in his behavior. He lobbied for fresh water in the village and, you know, he did an awful lot. He was a philanthropist, really, to try and improve the circumstances. But he didn't let his children anywhere near it. And quite understandably. So they'd lost two of them he didn't want to lose anymore.
- [29:47]
A
Yeah. So let's move Ahead a little bit to the point where they have taken this. This childhood where they've turned kind of inward to the family. They sort of circled the wagon, so to speak, and they've done all of this creativity. And then at some point they decide to share those books to write books that they're planning to share with the world. What sparked that. What was Charlotte's ambition for writing Jane Eyre and sending it out for publication?
- [30:21]
B
That's hard. Hard to answer, because you could argue that they began to write because they failed at other. In other areas. Especially Charlotte was a failed governess. She had tried two times to be a governess and failed quite dramatically and said herself that she didn't like children, which isn't the best attitude to have if you're going out to teach them. Emily was very withdrawn again. She tried. She tried to be a governor, she tried to be a teacher, but suffered dreadfully from homesickness. And although she probably liked children, she was quite an aloof person and didn't. Didn't get on with children. Well, the Bronte sisters were offered a school to run a school by Charlotte's former headmistress, Margaret Wooler, who I think recognized that these girls were not going to get on in life as governesses. But Charlotte by then was. Was an adult, and she turned it down. Whether she consulted the rest of the family is very hard to. To ascertain. But instead, Charlotte decided that they should be writers.
- [31:45]
A
Yeah.
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B
And again, I think that would be. That would be a decision made by Charlotte.
- [31:54]
A
She made that on behalf of Emily and Anne as well as herself.
- [31:58]
B
Well, she discovered some of Emily's poetry. Well, discovered perhaps isn't the right word. She found it. I think Emily had tried to hide it, but Charlotte. An inverted commas. Found it.
- [32:12]
A
Yeah.
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B
But Charlotte did recognize that it was very, very special, very wonderful poetry, in fact.
- [32:20]
A
Yeah.
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B
So she urged them all to publish. Charlotte had written poetry. Anne had written poetry. So the idea was that they would. They would publish a book of poems. And they did. And that book of poems sold exactly two copies.
- [32:38]
A
Yeah, I was gonna say so.
- [32:41]
B
Although we look at their poetry nowadays and see how fantastic it is, at the time, it wasn't the case. And even though they'd use pseudonyms because, as you know, most authors were male. So after that initial rush of seeing themselves in print, I think Charlotte felt that, well, you know, we can write poetry. I'm sure Shower could write novels as well, and that would allow them to stay at home. They wouldn't have to go out to work. Anymore. And they would make money by writing and selling books. So this is. This is sort of what happened. But always with Charlotte at the helm. Unfortunately, Jane Eyre wasn't the first book that Charlotte Bronte wrote. She wrote the professor first. And when the books were sent in, there was Anne's Agnes Gray, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and Charlotte's the Professor. And eventually Ann and Emily's books were accepted and Charlotte's was refused. Now, that must have been a huge blow to Charlotte.
- [33:54]
A
Yeah.
- [33:55]
B
And it set up a resentment that lasted, I think, for the rest of their lives. Charlotte then wrote Jane Eyre, which of course was an absolute number one bestseller.
- [34:06]
A
Yeah.
- [34:07]
B
And it overtook Wuthering Heights. Charlotte didn't like Wuthering Heights. She thought it.
- [34:14]
C
Yeah.
- [34:15]
B
So she thought. And of course, Anne, who was a nobody. Answer. Didn't matter at all. It was just, you know, a light story about a government, a governess.
- [34:25]
A
Yeah.
- [34:25]
B
So by now Charlotte is thinking in terms of that. She is the novelist. The other two are not particularly good at writing. They don't write good, clever books like she does. So she takes on this role of the novelist. And she was very successful. I mean, I'm not ever going to disparage Charlotte as a novelist. It's as a sister that I question her behavior.
- [34:53]
A
What do we know about that behavior and how do we know it? Did it come down to us through letters or diaries?
- [35:02]
B
I've always been influenced by Dr. Edward Chitton, who is the leading biographer of Anne Bronte. And Edwards has always said that, in his opinion, Charlotte Bronte was the spokesperson of the Bronte family, and that Mrs. Gaskell speaks through Charlotte. In other words, most of what Mrs. Gaskell wrote and she wrote as a novelist, not as a biographer, came from Charlotte.
- [35:32]
A
And she was sort of sent to write about this author of the bestseller the Beloved Jane Eyre. And so she kind of was able to get to know Charlotte, which was not. It wasn't very common. I mean, people were just getting to know who the Brontes were.
- [35:53]
B
Yes.
- [35:54]
A
And then Mrs. Gaskell's biography of Charlotte ended up kind of setting the narrative in the public mind of who these people were.
- [36:04]
B
Unfortunately, because it tells the tale of the Brontes and of Charlotte as a novel, it isn't necessarily based on fact. Mrs. Gaskell only got to meet Charlotte after all her siblings had died. So Charlotte ended up in a very unique place where she could say anything about her siblings, truth or otherwise. After they died, Charlotte destroyed a lot of their work. She also denigrated the work. I Found it more and more upsetting. Charlotte was the worst critic of her sisters.
- [36:51]
A
Yeah.
- [36:52]
B
And Branwell, that she dismissed them. She dismissed the work. She dismissed them as not following her example. She denied that they shared the stories between themselves when they were writing, having said for a long time that they. They shared everything and they wrote around the same table. Charlotte said afterwards that sort of, if only they'd listened to her advice, they would have written better stories.
- [37:25]
A
Yeah. Do you think this came from this pain of her novel being rejected and the other twos being accepted, where she then kind of, it's very likely, was.
- [37:37]
B
Only published after Charlotte's death, quite a long time after Sherlock's death. There is no doubt she wrote a brilliant novel. She wrote more than one brilliant novel. I mean, Shirley and especially Villette. Wonderful piece of English literature. But it's like back to sibling rivalry. You can only be on top by standing on the shoulders of other people.
- [38:03]
A
Yeah. Right.
- [38:04]
B
I think there was some of that going on.
- [38:07]
A
I get the sense sometimes in reading Charlotte's writing about Wuthering Heights in particular, that she was kind of embarrassed by the characters and by the response to them. And was part of this, her saying, this might have been a great book if someone else had written it, but I don't want this to be what's associated with the Bronte's name.
- [38:30]
B
Exactly. I think she wanted to separate herself from within completely.
- [38:35]
A
Yeah. And to say these characters are. They're unlikable, they're strange, they're, you know, they're evil. This is not a good, healthy book.
- [38:45]
B
And I think that tells us a lot about the relationship between Charlotte and Emily and Charlotte and Anne. I think, although they shared the. The same house, they shared the same beds, this shared most of the lives. There was not necessarily an empathy, certainly, between Charlotte and her siblings. I think Anne and Emily had some empathy with one another. Yes. And Branwell possibly too. But Charlotte was. Always Comes across to me as a loaf. She's the eldest. She's got all the knowledge. She knows what's best for everybody or thinks she does. And I don't say that in a. In a nasty way. A lot of people, and I'm one of them, think that I know better than most people. It's how you live your life. You think, well, you do your best.
- [39:43]
A
Yeah.
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B
You think you're doing the best for people, but it isn't always the case because you have to know what their needs are above your own. And I'm as guilty of that as. As anybody else. I try to do my best for other people, but I very often get it wrong.
- [40:03]
A
Yeah.
- [40:03]
B
I think that's what Charlotte is. I don't like to just sit here and say Charlotte was horrible at times. She was. But I think she had the best intentions at heart, but made a mess of it sometimes.
- [40:21]
A
Now, the one who outlived all of them is Patrick, the father. And he was, I mean he was really a remarkable person. He was a self made person, a scholar and clearly intelligent. Did he, where was he in all this? Did he have any role in their literary reputation and did he weigh in on, on any of the, you know, the narrative that was, was arising around Charlotte or.
- [40:52]
B
It's very hard to understand Patrick Bronte's reaction to his children as adults. Well, as teenagers and adults. I think he protected them until they got into their teens and then he sort of let go.
- [41:09]
A
Yeah.
- [41:10]
B
Whether he believed that God would take over and God would make sure they were okay. You know, his religion. You have to remember that he had a parish of over 4,000 people. And as you say, almost daily funerals, births, weddings. To say he was busy is a massive understatement.
- [41:33]
A
Yeah.
- [41:34]
B
And I would imagine that by the time they reached the ages of 15, 16, 17, and their aunt was still alive at that time, he more or less left them to their own devices. He expected them, they'd been well educated. He expected them to find work. He expected them to find their own way in the world, just as he had done.
- [41:56]
A
Yeah.
- [41:57]
B
But of course that didn't happen. It certainly didn't happen with Branwell.
- [42:01]
A
I was going to say Branwell was probably kind of a heartbreaking, you know, for Patrick who was counting on the, the only son. And then he, he not only kind of couldn't make a go of it, but he, he suffered from addiction and.
- [42:15]
B
And that is very, it's very Freudian. What happened to Branwell? Freud said that, you know, you can't get through life without some kind of palliative, some. Something that will help you to get through.
- [42:29]
A
Yeah.
- [42:30]
B
And in Branwell's case, he was. He turned to alcohol and to drugs, I would imagine when he first left home because it was the first time he'd had freedom. He was suddenly came out of this all female household into the real world. How on earth was he going to cope? Yeah, not something he had any inkling. So he did what lots of people still do to gain confidence and to attract friends. He takes to alcohol because it boosts him, it makes him sociable and then finds that that becomes his staff that becomes his only way of proceeding and being successful in society.
- [43:22]
A
Yeah.
- [43:23]
B
And of course, it then all turns against and becomes his actual downfall. I mean, that's an ancient story as well. Yeah. It's a human condition, isn't it?
- [43:34]
A
Right, okay, so let's talk about the title of your book and the Burial in Paradise, which refers to Ann. How does Ann's Burial in Paradise fit into the narrative of what we've been talking about?
- [43:50]
B
Because Anne was the youngest, she was not deemed as intelligent or as clever or as experienced as her siblings. And in. In many cases she wasn't. But when she left home to go to work as a governess, she worked as a governess for six years and did very, very well, unlike her sisters. And then she wrote two successful books. So again, there's this almost resentment from Charlotte. And when Anne contracted tb, more or less straight after Branwell and Emily had both died of TB, Anne was diagnosed in the January of 1849. Yes.
- [44:37]
A
Yeah.
- [44:37]
B
And it was known even then, as it is now, that TB can't necessarily be cured, but the symptoms can be alleviated by going to a place where there's lots of fresh air out in the open, where the patient can breathe much, much more easily. So when she was diagnosed in the January, Anne began to ask, could she go to the seaside? Because although she knew that her illness was terminal, she knew that it would give her a better chance of a longer life if she could spend time away from Haworth and all the filth that was in the atmosphere. And, you know, being being stuck at home ill in bed was not, you know, helping her to get better. But Charlotte, now with only one sibling, still insisted on staying with her father and supporting her father as she had throughout her life. And Anne's pleas just went by the wayside. And eventually Ellen Nussey, Charlotte's particular friend, offered for Anne to go to her house, you know, for a change and to help just have a change of scenery and perhaps improve her health. And Charlotte wrote to her and said, no, absolutely not. It's not your place to nurse my sister. And she wrote to Ellen saying, please write to Anne and tell her that it's not convenient. Which Ellen did. Later on, as time went on, when Anne got more desperate and again asked if she could go to Scarborough because she'd lived in Scarborough as the governor, she'd lived there in the holidays with the Robinson family, Charlotte again put her foot down and said, no, you're too ill. You know, it's not a good idea. And she even Got the doctor to visit Anne and say, you know, you need to stay here. But in fact, when the doctor came, he said, yes, I think it'd be a good idea for Anne to go to the seaside. It will help her breathing. Charlotte Silver, barricaded, kept saying that she needed to support her father. So eventually, Charlotte and Ellen Nussey together, took Anne, when it was far too late, eventually took off, went to the seaside with her and she was dead within 48 hours. Now, my theory is partly the fact that anne had inherited 200 pounds from her godmother in the February, and this money helped to pay for this trip. And after Anne died, Charlotte immediately arranged a funeral. And by the time Patrick Bronte got the letter to say that Anne was dead, Charlotte had already buried her.
- [47:48]
A
So the burial in Paradise. Paradise is the name of a. Of a place.
- [47:52]
B
It's a place in Scarborough, near the parish church.
- [47:56]
A
Yeah.
- [47:57]
B
Where the parish church now stands in Scarborough. It was formerly a monastery, going back hundreds of years, and the area where the monks were buried was known as Paradise.
- [48:11]
A
Yeah, but it's 70 miles away from where the other Absolutely. Brontes were buried and.
- [48:18]
B
But Anne didn't make that decision. Charlotte did. Anne did not expect to die in Scarborough, just better to feel better for a while. There was a place in the vault under St. Michael's Church in Haworth for all the Bronte family. But Charlotte made that decision. Yeah, to bury her in Scarborough. She buried her as quickly as possible and rather than returning to the father who she'd said for years, she couldn't possibly leave.
- [48:49]
A
Yeah.
- [48:50]
B
She stayed on the course for another three weeks. I found that quite the conundrum.
- [48:57]
A
Yeah.
- [48:58]
B
Why did Charlotte stay away from her father for three weeks after Anne's death?
- [49:04]
A
Or do you have a theory?
- [49:08]
B
Well, Charlotte and Ellen were very good friends and Charlotte didn't get a lot of time to spend with Ellen, certainly not on their own. They had spent a holiday previously and I suspect, I mean, Ellen stayed for a fortnight with Charlotte after Anne's death. And they didn't just stay in Scarborough, they went to Filey, they went to Hornsey on the East Yorkshire coast. And it seems that Charlotte was almost free of Anne. She was free of responsibility, free of.
- [49:42]
A
Ann and free of all of her. I mean, she was the only survivor at that point.
- [49:47]
B
Yes. And it just seems odd to me that she spent a lot of money on a funeral, a cortege, a burial, a headstone. None of this was necessary. She could have just taken Anne's body home on the train. To Haworth, and it would have been buried in the crypt along with the rest of her family. And in my book, I say, was this Charlotte's way of almost even subconsciously thinking, well, you wanted to come. Well, now you can stay here.
- [50:22]
A
Yeah. Right.
- [50:23]
B
I might be absolutely wrong. That might be quite a nasty thought. But there must have been a reason.
- [50:29]
A
Yeah.
- [50:31]
B
It was a very odd thing to do, I find.
- [50:35]
A
Could it be. Could we. Let's see. I'm trying to think of the. To try to put the decision in the. The most favorable light. Could it be that Charlotte felt some remorse for the way that she had treated her and was thinking that it would be nicer for her to have a nice service where she was and not to be transported by train and so forth?
- [51:00]
B
Possibly, and you'd like to think so, but it still remains that she's separate from the family by 70 miles from everything she loved.
- [51:12]
A
Yeah.
- [51:13]
B
And her father never got to grieve for her as he could his other children who were in his own church.
- [51:21]
A
Yeah.
- [51:22]
B
So close to him. It. It does seem to me, and. And I've read somewhere that Charlotte regretted it and I can't remember whose letter or who said that it could have been Dr. Juliet Barker in her book. Charlotte, I think, possibly did regret it. Afterwards, of course, it was too late. There's nothing that could be done. And it remains. And I just think it's so ironic and actually buried in a place known as Paradise.
- [51:54]
A
Yeah. Does your immersion in the family story and your. Your analysis of things like this and your thinking about this, does it change the way you read the books by the Brontes, or do you keep that separate from what you know about their family and some of these dynamics?
- [52:17]
B
I read their books a lot, but I even more so read biographies of the Brontis and of Haworth and surrounding district. Great interest in the Industrial Revolution and what happened in Britain during that time and how people lived and what massive effect the Industrial Revolution had first in Britain and then in the rest of the world. So it's. That whole era to me is so fascinating.
- [52:46]
A
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, a lot of times we sort of. We get the response of, well, who cares about the life? Because, you know, the books are what matters and so on. We can read them separate from the lives. But in the case of the Brontes, it is such a historical phenomenon that there were these three siblings who produced novels of such a high quality that to me, I'm endlessly fascinated by the stories of the family, even separate and apart from how that may have played out in the novels. I mean, just the idea that these three remarkable siblings were. Well, I mean, four remarkable if you count Branwell, but just that they had such an impact on the way we read and understand English literature. And they were all living under the same roof and kind of dealing with one another as well as the outside world. It's. It's just a incredible phenomenon.
- [53:50]
B
It is. And I've always found their story a novel in itself.
- [53:56]
A
Yeah, right.
- [53:58]
B
You could write a novel on the Bronte family.
- [54:02]
A
Yeah, right.
- [54:03]
B
As a fiction. People wouldn't believe it.
- [54:06]
A
Yeah.
- [54:08]
B
That's what's so fascinating, as you say, the fact that they could write this level of literature and poetry. And Anne wrote hymns as well. They were so talented.
- [54:23]
A
Yeah. Okay, well, let's leave things there. The book is called the Bronte Sibling Rivalry and A Burial in Paradise. Catherine Raynor, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.
- [54:34]
B
Thank you very much indeed. Very nice to speak to you.
- [54:47]
A
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C
$8 only at McDonald's for a limited time only.
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A
Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California. And for delivery.
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B
This episode is brought to you by State Farm.
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A
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B
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A
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B
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- [55:27]
A
Availability, amount of discounts, and savings and eligibility vary by. And finally today, Keith Cooper was here. A while ago, after he and I talked about imaginary planets and the science that supports them, I asked him a special question. Okay. I'm joined now by Keith Cooper, an expert in science and science fiction and author of the book Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact. Keith, this question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists or describe one that has not yet been written.
- [56:26]
C
Okay. I hope the listener that proposed the question won't be too offended by this. I did find the question a little bit depressing.
- [56:33]
B
Yeah.
- [56:33]
A
Kind of morbid.
- [56:34]
C
I don't.
- [56:35]
A
Yeah, Yeah.
- [56:36]
C
A little bit morbid. So I wanted to kind of change it a little bit so it's not necessarily the last book.
- [56:44]
A
Okay.
- [56:45]
C
But certainly a Book that I would want to read before the end, if there is an end. That could be cheeky, couldn't I? And I could say the winds of winter, but I'm not sure that's realistic. I. Okay. I think I would. It's okay if I don't go for literature.
- [57:11]
A
Sure.
- [57:12]
C
If I go for a popular science science, I would love to read one of two books. Either a book written by scientists that is saying, we have discovered alien life and this is what it's like, or a book written by scientists, again, saying, this is the theory of Everything, this is where we've come from. This is how the universe began. This is why everything is the way it is. Because I feel one of those two things, it provides some kind of closure, I guess, to, you know, two great questions that we all have. Where we come from, why we're here, where we're going. And I'd hate to not know those answers before the end. So. Yeah, quite profound. But I'd love to have some answers as to what it's all about. And I'd love to read a book in which those answers are presented, I think. Yeah, I think that would answer a lot of questions and it would put my mind at rest. I wouldn't have those questions anymore and wouldn't necessarily want it to be my last book. I'm certainly not saving any books.
- [58:35]
A
If it's there, you'll buy it and read it tomorrow if you can.
- [58:38]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [58:39]
C
But certainly something I would like to read before the end. And the way that science works is this would be a. You know, discovering these things would be a collaborative effort involving lots of people, lots of evidence, but just have. Just to get to that stage where somebody can write a report.
- [58:56]
A
A report comes out. Do you feel like those questions are a burden? Like, are you weighed down by certain. Does it become existential for you to not know certain things?
- [59:09]
C
What's our burden? Frustration, maybe, that we don't know those things?
- [59:14]
A
Yeah.
- [59:18]
C
I mean, it's the aim of science to learn more about the world that we live in. And it's perhaps a little impatient to think that we should have all those answers now, but I'd like to know those answers. So, yeah, I think that. Yeah, that would be it. I mean, I tried to think of a work of literature that I'd like to read and I don't know.
- [59:40]
A
I mean, they pale in comparison with the Theory of everything.
- [59:45]
C
Yeah, I guess so. But.
- [59:50]
A
I've got a vision for you now. I'm imagining that you are lying in your Comfortable bed, and you are well over 100. We could say you're maybe 120. As we all hope we will live. And the life expectancy is getting pushed out as we make technological gains. And someone comes into the room and puts in your hand a book and says, this is it. This is the theory of everything. And you say, wow, I can't believe I get to read this before I die. And the person says, oh, no, you died an hour ago. This is the book we greet you with. Is that optimistic for you? Or would you feel cheated that you didn't get to know while you were still a mortal being?
- [60:40]
C
I'd probably be surprised, given that I'm not religious. I guess it'd be a pleasant surprise.
- [60:49]
A
Yeah. Oh, and by the way, I'm an alien. That's what they'll say. By the way, I'm an alien who's been sent here to rescue you and bring you to our new world.
- [60:59]
C
Actually, just now you've mentioned that. There's actually one other book that I'd like to read before the other ones. It's how to live Forever. I think I'd like to read that one.
- [61:12]
A
Right. Okay. Well, this has been fun. Keith Cooper, thank you so much for joining me on the History of Literature.
- [61:19]
C
Thank you.
- [61:25]
A
Okay, there we go. That's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. This is Thanksgiving week, so we have our annual tradition of Mike Palindrome and Laurie Frankel around the corner. They'll be here on Wednesday to help you with your meal preparation. Just turn on the podcast and cook up a storm. We'll be gabbing away to keep you company, then get ready for post Thanksgiving. A post Thanksgiving treat. No, I'm not talking about leftovers, but brand new content. Christopher Marlowe with esteemed critic Stephen Greenblatt, a look at George Orwell's dystopian classic 1984. And hey, how about diving into the making of the Godfather movies? That's coming up too. That feels like the holidays. Thank you to all who have signed up for our patreon account@patreon.com Literature we truly appreciate it. It. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time. And Doug, here we have the limu emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Uh, limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Ferry Unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. You're a guy who just wants to look nice. The kind of nice where you might get a nice compliment on the niceness of your nice new outfit. Good thing Men's Wearhouse has everything from polos to jeans and yes, suits. Plus a team to help you find the perfect fit to make sure you look nice nice. Love the way you look. Men's Warehouse.