These are my lesson plans that started this blog:

B.

The Brontës, Rebel Angels of the House

Ellen M. Tsagaris, J.D., Ph.D.

Week 1

I. Course Introduction.

II. Background women’s housework and women’s lives v. women’s writing lives:

Plato
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
John Donne and Barbara Pym on Excellent Women
Pym on Housework in Less than Angels
Bronte Sisters
Coventry Patmore and his Angel of the House
The Marquis and the Customs House Agent; Hawthorne and his unfortunate comment about “That Damned Mob of Scribbling Women” which included Harriet Beecher Stowe and E.D.E.N Southworth
Southey and Charlotte; Ironic in light of Charlotte’s hero worship of Lord Byron [Byron’s “dry bob” comment in Don Juan].
The Feminine Mystique
Poets and chapbooks
Juvenilia and Politics including The Duke of Wellington and Byron

III. Brief Bios:

A. Charlotte/married name Mrs. Arthur Bell Nicholls , pseudonym Currer Bell/(1816-1855)Writer. Born April 21, 1816 in Yorkshire, England. Said to be the most dominant and ambitious of the Brontës, Charlotte was raised in a strict Anglican home by her clergyman father and a religious aunt after her mother and two eldest siblings died. She and her sister Emily attended the Clergy Daughter's School at Cowan Bridge, but were largely educated at home. Though she tried to earn a living as both a governess and a teacher, Charlotte missed her sisters and eventually returned home.

A writer all her life, Charlotte published her first novel, Jane Eyre, in 1847 under the manly pseudonym Currer Bell. Though controversial in its criticism of society’s treatment of impoverished women, the book was an immediate hit. She followed the success with Shirley in 1848 and Vilette in 1853.

The deaths of the Brontës are almost as notable as their literary legacy. Her brother, Branwell, and Emily died in 1848, and Anne died the following year. In 1854, Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls, but died the following year during her pregnancy. The first novel she ever wrote, The Professor, was published posthumously in 1857. biography.com.

B. Emily: Emily Brontë Biography: pseudonym Ellis Bell, in full Emily Jane Brontë-(1818–1848). (born July 30, 1818, [both mine and my parents’ wedding anniversary!] Thornton, Yorkshire, Eng.—died Dec. 19, 1848, Haworth, Yorkshire) English novelist and poet who produced but one novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), a highly imaginative novel of passion and hate set on the Yorkshire moors. Emily was perhaps the greatest of the three Brontë sisters, but the record of her life is extremely meagre, for she was silent and reserved and left no correspondence of interest, and her single novel darkens rather than solves the mystery of her spiritual existence.

Her father, Patrick Brontë (1777–1861), an Irishman, held a number of curacies: Hartshead-cum-Clifton, Yorkshire, was the birthplace of his elder daughters, Maria and Elizabeth (who died young), and nearby Thornton that of Emily and her siblings Charlotte, Patrick Branwell, and Anne. In 1820 the father became rector of Haworth, remaining there for the rest of his life.

After the death of their mother in 1821, the children were left very much to themselves in the bleak moorland rectory. The children were educated, during their early life, at home, except for a single year that Charlotte and Emily spent at the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. In 1835, when Charlotte secured a teaching position at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head, Emily accompanied her as a pupil but suffered from homesickness and remained only three months. In 1838 Emily spent six exhausting months as a teacher in Miss Patchett's school at Law Hill, near Halifax, and then resigned.

To keep the family together at home, Charlotte planned to keep a school for girls at Haworth. In February 1842 she and Emily went to Brussels to learn foreign languages and school management at the Pension Héger. Although Emily pined for home and for the wild moorlands, it seems that in Brussels she was better appreciated than Charlotte. Her passionate nature was more easily understood than Charlotte's decorous temperament. In October, however, when her aunt died, Emily returned permanently to Haworth.

In 1845 Charlotte came across some poems by Emily, and this led to the discovery that all three sisters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—had written verse. A year later they published jointly a volume of verse, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, the initials of these pseudonyms being those of the sisters; it contained 21 of Emily's poems, and a consensus of later criticism has accepted the fact that Emily's verse alone reveals true poetic genius. The venture cost the sisters about £50 in all, and only two copies were sold.

By midsummer of 1847 Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey had been accepted for joint publication by J. Cautley Newby of London, but publication of the three volumes was delayed until the appearance of their sister Charlotte's Jane Eyre, which was immediately and hugely successful. Wuthering Heights, when published in December 1847, did not fare well; critics were hostile, calling it too savage, too animal-like, and clumsy in construction. Only later did it come to be considered one of the finest novels in the English language.

Soon after the publication of her novel, Emily's health began to fail rapidly. She had been ill for some time, but now her breathing became difficult, and she suffered great pain. She died of tuberculosis in December 1848.

Wuthering Heights: Emily Brontë's work on Wuthering Heights cannot be dated, and she may well have spent a long time on this intense, solidly imagined novel. It is distinguished from other novels of the period by its dramatic and poetic presentation, its abstention from all comment by the author, and its unusual structure. It recounts in the retrospective narrative of an onlooker, which in turn includes shorter narratives, the impact of the waif Heathcliff on the two families of Earnshaw and Linton in a remote Yorkshire district at the end of the 18th century. Embittered by abuse and by the marriage of Cathy Earnshaw—who shares his stormy nature and whom he loves—to the gentle and prosperous Edgar Linton, Heathcliff plans a revenge on both families, extending into the second generation. Cathy's death in childbirth fails to set him free from his love-hate relationship with her, and the obsessive haunting persists until his death; the marriage of the surviving heirs of Earnshaw and Linton restores peace.

Sharing her sisters' dry humor and Charlotte's violent imagination, Emily diverges from them in making no use of the events of her own life and showing no preoccupation with a spinster's state or a governess's position. Working, like them, within a confined scene and with a small group of characters, she constructs an action, based on profound and primitive energies of love and hate, which proceeds logically and economically, making no use of such coincidences as Charlotte relies on, requiring no rich romantic similes or rhetorical patterns, and confining the superb dialogue to what is immediately relevant to the subject. The somber power of the book and the elements of brutality in the characters affronted some 19th-century opinion. Its supposed masculine quality was adduced to support the claim, based on the memories of her brother Branwell's friends long after his death, that he was author or part author of it. While it is not possible to clear up all the minor puzzles, neither the external nor the internal evidence offered is substantial enough to weigh against Charlotte's plain statement that Emily was the author.

Biography.com. Joyce M. Tompkins, ed.

C. Anne- (1820-1849). Writer. Born January 17, 1820 in Yorkshire, England. Said to be the meeker and less talented Bronte sister, Anne was raised in a strict Anglican home by her clergyman father and a religious aunt after her mother and two eldest siblings died.

Largely educated at home, Anne worked as a governess for a several years before publishing her first novel, Agnes Grey, in 1847. Her second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was published in 1848 and sold well despite the fact that both books were considered more conservative than those of her sisters.

D.Branwell: Branwell Bronte was born on June 26th 1817 at Thornton, Bradford in Yorkshire, fourth child of the six Bronte children. His mother died in 1821.

Branwell Bronte received no formal education, partly due to financial restrictions as his father was struggling to keep the family together after his wife's death. Branwell does not appear to have suffered as he was a very capable scholar with an enthusiastic desire to learn. He indulged in the Gondal stories and enjoyed writing with Charlotte.

In February 1836 at the age of 19 Branwell was proposed a freemason, and later became secretary of the Lodge. Meetings were held at the Black Bull until 1833 where they were held at Lodge St.

From June 1838 to May 1839 Branwell was working as a portrait painter in Bradford. In January 1840 he took up position as tutor for the Postlethwaite family at Broughton-In-Furness, in June 1840 he is dismissed. In April 1841 he was employed as Clerk in Charge of Luddenden Foot station near Hebden Bridge. While there he was known to frequent the Lord Nelson Tavern. In March 1842 he is dismissed from his post as there was found to be a deficit in the station accounts, attributed to Branwell Bronte's incompetence rather than theft. January 1843 Anne has managed to secure post of tutor for Branwell with the Robinson family at Thorp Green. In July 1845 he is dismissed from his post as tutor, It was discovered that he had an affair with Mrs Robinson.

For the next three years Branwell's state physically and mentally take a rapid decline due to his dependence on drink and opium and an increased state of self pity and worthlessness. He hears of the death of Mr. Robinson and attempts to try to rekindle his relationship with Mrs Robinson which fails.

On the 24th September 1848 Branwell died of chronic bronchitis / consumption, aged 31. On 28th September he was laid to rest in the family vault at Haworth church. The service was conducted by William Morgan.

www.haworth-village.org.

E. Maria:

Birth:	1813 Yorkshire, England
Death:	May 6, 1825 Yorkshire, England
First of the six children born to the Rev. Patrick Bronte and his wife, the former Maria Branwell, 12-year-old Maria Bronte was the model for the character Helen Burns in "Jane Eyre", the classic novel written by her celebrated younger sister Charlotte. Born in Hartshead, Yorkshire in 1813, Maria was a toddler when her parents moved their growing family to the town of Thornton, where her more famous siblings--Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne--were born in quick succession. The young Brontës enjoyed a loving and creatively stimulating childhood, although in 1821, when Maria was seven years old, they suffered the loss of their mother to cancer. By this time the family had come to the parsonage at Haworth, on the Yorkshire moors, and Maria and three of her sisters had lived there happily until 1824, when they were sent away to Cowan Bridge School, a semi-charitable institution for the daughters of clergymen. Life at the school, which provided the model for "Lowood" in "Jane Eyre", proved miserable for the Bronte girls, and ultimately lethal for the two eldest, Maria and Elizabeth. Underfed and undernourished, exposed to extreme cold and disease, and continually subjected to fire-and-brimstone harangues by the staff and bullying by older girls, they became consumptive. Patrick Bronte withdrew all four by the year's end, but Maria's and Elizabeth's health had been irreparably damaged. They both died of tuberculosis--the disease which would eventually claim the lives of all six Bronte siblings--in the spring of 1825, Maria predeceasing Elizabeth by six weeks.

Burial: St Michael and All Angels Churchyard Haworth West Yorkshire, England
Created by: Nikita Barlow Record added: Feb 19, 2007 Find A Grave Memorial# 17994336

F. Elizabeth:

Birth:	Feb. 8, 1815 Yorkshire, England
Death:	Jun. 15, 1825 Yorkshire, England
The second of six children born to the Rev. Patrick Bronte and his wife, the former Maria Branwell, 10-year-old Elizabeth suffered a fate similar to that of the character Helen Burns in "Jane Eyre", the classic novel written by her celebrated sister Charlotte. Born in Hartshead, Yorkshire in 1815, Elizabeth and her elder sister Maria were babies when their parents moved to Thornton, which in short time became the birthplace of their more famous younger siblings: Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne. Raised in a loving, creatively stimulating atmosphere, the young Brontës' happy childhood had been saddened only by their mother's death from cancer in 1821, an event which occurred soon after the family had moved to the Haworth parsonage on the Yorkshire moors. Elizabeth was then six years old. Three years later, in 1824, she and her sisters Maria, Charlotte, and Emily were sent away to Cowan Bridge School for clergymen's daughters, a semi-charitable institution which inspired the miserable "Lowood" of "Jane Eyre". Girls at Cowan Bridge were underfed, malnourished, exposed to extreme cold and disease, and routinely subjected to bullying by older students and fire-and-brimstone harangues by the staff. Both Elizabeth and her elder sister Maria became consumptive, and the Rev. Bronte withdrew them, along with Emily and Charlotte, before the year was out. The elder girls' health had been irreparably damaged, however. Both Elizabeth and 12-year-old Maria died of tuberculosis--the disease which eventually claimed the lives of all six Bronte siblings--in the spring of 1825, Maria having predeceased Elizabeth by six weeks.

Burial: St Michael and All Angels Churchyard Haworth West Yorkshire, England
Created by: Nikita Barlow Record added: Feb 19, 2007 Find A Grave Memorial# 17994492

IV. Chronology:

April of 1814: Maria Bronte (daughter of Patrick and Maria) born

February 8, 1815: Elizabeth Bronte born

1815: Patrick becomes curate at Thornton

April 21, 1816: Charlotte Bronte born

June 26, 1817: Patrick Branwell Bronte born

July 30, 1818: Emily Jane Bronte born

January 17, 1820: Anne Bronte born

April 20, 1820: Patrick becomes Reverend of Haworth; family moves

September 15, 1821: Maria Bronte (wife of Patrick) dies of tuberculosis

1824: Maria and Elizabeth attend Cowan Bridge school. Charlotte and Emily follow later in the year.

May 6, 1825: Maria dies of tuberculosis

June 15, 1825: Elizabeth dies of tuberculosis

June of 1825: Charlotte and Emily return home

January of 1831: Charlotte attends Roe Head School

May 1832: Charlotte returns home

1835: Branwell goes to Royal Academy Schools in London, never gets to the schools, and returns home

July of 1835: Charlotte becomes a teacher at Roe Head School. Emily becomes a student there.

October of 1835: Emily returns home. Anne takes her place.

September of 1837: Emily becomes teacher at Law Hill School

December of 1837: Charlotte and Anne return home after Anne becomes ill. Charlotte resigns her position.

1838: Branwell goes to Bradford to become a portrait painter

March of 1838: Emily returns home from Law Hill School

April of 1839: Anne becomes governess to Ingham family

December of 1839: Anne is dismissed by the Ingham family

May of 1840: Anne becomes governess to Robinson family

August of 1840: Branwell works as assistant clerk in Sowerby Bridge Railway Station

February of 1842: Charlotte and Emily go to Brussels as pupils at the Pensionnat Héger

October 29, 1842: Aunt Branwell dies

November of 1842: Charlotte and Emily return home

January of 1843: Charlotte returns to Brussels as a teacher in the Pensionnat Héger. Branwell becomes tutor in Robinson family

January of 1844: Charlotte comes home

June 11, 1845: Anne resigns from position as governess to Robinson family

July of 1845: Branwell is dismissed from Robinson family for having an affair with Mrs. Robinson

May of 1846: Publication of Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

**October 19, 1847: Charlotte's Jane Eyre published**

**December of 1847: Anne's Agnes Grey and Emily's Wuthering Heights published**

**June of 1848: Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall published**

September 24, 1848: Branwell dies of tuberculosis

December 19, 1848: Emily dies of tuberculosis

May 28, 1849: Anne dies of tuberculosis

**1849: Charlotte's Shirley is published**

**1853: Charlotte's Villette is published**

June 29, 1854: Charlotte marries Arthur Bell Nicholls

March 31, 1855: Charlotte dies of tuberculosis and complications in pregnancy

**1857: Charlotte's The Professor is published**

June 7, 1861: Rev. Patrick Bronte dies

V. Brief documentary, if time, from Biography.

VI. Books and artifacts brought:

A. 1848 edition of Jane Eyre.

B. Illustrated Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights

C. Ann Parker Doll

D. Greek Wuthering Heights

E. Films, tapes

F. Biographies, criticism and other books

G. Branwell shot glasses and j

Week II – will be expanded as we get to second week

A. Jane Eyre

a. Virginia Woolf on “The Continuing Appeal of Jane Eyre”

b. Barbara Hardy “Dogmatic Form: Charlotte Bronte” this and above essay from

Norton Critical Edition

c. Plot

d. Main Characters

e. Estate issues, Bertha, and Mr. Rochester as second son

f. Unsuitable attachments and Barbara Pym; could this love story really have come true

g. Bertha’s POV; is Jane really that nice?

h. Fraser and biographical elements in the novel

B. Wide Sargasso Sea- novel by Jean Rhys and Film

C. Life of Charlotte Bronte and Mrs. Gaskell

Week III - will be expanded as we get to third week

A. Wuthering Heights

a. Plot

b. History and photos of the real houses; Emily’s historical sources

c. Major characters

d. Themes

i. Destructiveness of love

ii. Estate and real estate issues and Heathcliff

iii. Nature v. culture

iv. Moors [Deanna Raybourn and Silent on the Moor]

v. Ghosts

e. Questions to ponder:

i. Given the similarity of many of the names in the novel, what role do you think names play in Wuthering Heights?

ii. Compare Edgar to Heathcliff; do you think Catherine can really love Edgar?

iii. Describe the personality of Nellie Dean, aka, Ellen.

iv. Contrast Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.

v. Would it change your view of Heathcliff if he turned out to be an elder son of Mr. Earnshaw? Why or why not?

Miss Pym and a Friend

Friday, April 17, 2020

Memoir; Writing your Life Story: House Arrest

Saturday, April 4, 2020

The Class that Began this Blog

B.