All the seven Brontë novels are concerned with education in both senses, that of upbringing as well as that of learning. The Brontë sisters all worked as teachers before they became published novelists. In spite of the prevalence of education in the sisters' lives and fiction, however, this was the first full-length book on the subject when it was published in 2007. Marianne Thormählen explores how their representations of fictional teachers and schools engage with the intense debates on education in the nineteenth century, drawing on a wealth of documentary evidence about educational theory and practice in the lifetime of the Brontës. This study offers much information both about the Brontës and their books and about the most urgent issue in early nineteenth-century British social politics: the education of the people, of all classes and both sexes.
This is the first full-length study of religion in the fiction of the Brontës. Drawing on extensive knowledge of the Anglican church in the nineteenth century, Marianne Thormählen shows how the Brontës' familiarity with the contemporary debates on doctrinal, ethical and ecclesiastical issues informs their novels. Divided into four parts, the book examines denominations, doctrines, ethics and clerics in the work of the Brontës. The analyses of the novels clarify the constant interplay of human and Divine love in the development of the novels. While demonstrating that the Brontës' fiction usually reflects the basic tenets of Evangelical Anglicanism, the book emphasises the characteristic spiritual freedom and audacity of the Brontës. Lucid and vigorously written, it will open up new perspectives for Brontë specialists and enthusiasts alike on a fundamental aspect of the novels greatly neglected in recent decades.
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