Generally, I don't like biography. I find fictional people much more interesting than real people, even when the biography is about an author I love (and don't get me started on autobiography, the only thing more narcissistic than reality TV - blah). But this... I can get behind fictionalized biography. Especially when the characters are realistic, the setting and events have been researched, and the author has the audacity to be inventive about gaps in what we know. We have no idea whether Charlotte Bronte thought/felt the way she did about the topics/events/people as Gael describes in the novel. And we never will. But reading this, I could see how she might be hitting close to the mark. I've read Shirley and Jane Eyre more than once, thoroughly enjoyed Jane Slayre (haha), and enjoyed Villette. The tone of Romancing Miss Bronte matched those novels quite well, as I remember them, and I thought Charlotte was portrayed in a way that was logical. But, as I said, I don’t like biography. I like New Historicism in the fact that I think the culture and time period of when people are writing always has an undertone somewhere, but I dislike knowing too much about an author themselves. Sometimes knowing too much can sully an experience, like if you knew they were a staunch communist – it would cause you to read that ideology into their stories; I have trouble breaking free of that kind of patina when I know something about an author’s life. And I knew next to nothing about the Bronte’s going in. I had no idea any of them died or how; all I knew was that they lived an isolated life together in rural England. So this novel was great to me, because I didn’t know the plot going in! That’s always helpful. And despite thinking her dad was a sexist asshole, I was glad Gael didn’t gloss over the cultural opinions of the time and/or made Charlotte into someone she wasn’t; had she done so, it would have divorced the novel from its authentic feeling. Yet I liked that she brought in sexuality. This is something we rarely (if ever) get in real Victorian novels, and I liked how Arthur made some risqué comments later on and Charlotte talked to her friends about her concerns regarding the topic; you would be crazy to think that close friends wouldn’t talk about this stuff amongst themselves, even back then. The occasional person, perhaps, but I gather women whispered about it just as much as they blatantly talk about it now. Anyway, despite the ridiculous title, this novel was a great read. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I can't say that I was particularly fond of this novel. I adore all of the Brontë sisters' works, so I thought how interesting this novel would be to read but I was sorely disappointed.[Spoilers. Read at your own risk.]The characters were dull, flat, and terribly dreary. The only one who provoked some sort of feeling in any of the characters was that of George Smith in regards to Charlotte, being her publisher, and taking her from place to place in London to meet other authors, all of which Charlotte was painfully shy and a bit droll. Goodness me.The author did make particular note of staying close to the real-life Charlotte and Brontë family, while taking liberties with Charlotte's husband, Arthur Nicholls, who was also a clergyman like Charlotte's own father. I was disconcerted by Patrick Brontë's character throughout the entire novel, even when he was in mourning for his family, but I was just put out because he was an altogether unlikable and cruel characters. Whether he was like that in real life, perhaps it was so (I've never read non-fiction work on Charlotte Brontë), but it was dreadful. I know some may think me cruel for speaking in such a way considering he lost his wife and children years before he himself died, but that makes no different to me. His daughters practically trembled in their skirts when confronting their own father.I also wondered a lot where the "romancing" part of this novel was. I could see it a bit with George Smith but it wasn't overly fawning. It was really the same way with Arthur for a few chapters. To have him incredibly head over heels for Charlotte while she simply shrugged and merely looked the other way. She seemed to be the opposite of many of the heroines portrayed in her own novels. It was with reluctance that she married Arthur Nicholls, and it progressed that way up until a few months before she died.But despite all this, Miss Gael did show Charlotte in some slight favoring light. Although Charlotte was afraid of her father and she and her sisters took pains to hide many things from him, she was also strong when she wished to be fragile, and painfully let go of many things that held her back from moving forward in her life.Regardless of that, I still stand by my statements.
Do You like book Romancing Miss Brontë (2010)?
I wanted to like this more, but just didn't feel much for any of the characters, alas.
—FKK
This is a really good fictionalized biography of the sad life of Charlotte Bronte.
—jane24
Always love almost everything about the famously fascinating Brontes.
—layla
Interesting insight into the Bronte sisters
—saravaleification
