A Portuguese reading of the Brontë sisters’ poetry as collaborative representation of romantic autobiography

Abstract

Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell was published in 1846 to considerable speculation regarding its authorship but apparently only selling two copies. Yet, this small volume alternating different poetic voices or personae is important in that it was the first attempt made by the three Brontë sisters to present a consistent literary work of collaborative poetic autobiography to the public. In this paper, I propose to read the poems of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, written between 1836 and 1846, both from a Portuguese critical perspective and as a distinctive example of Romantic autobiography, thus introducing the issues of the reception of Englishwomen authors abroad and challenging literary periodization. If, as novelists, the sisters have become part of the Victorian canon, as poets this classification is not so clear-cut, namely due to their earlier contexts and respective influences in their work. I will, thus, attempt to show how each of the three sisters challenges important periodological notions and assumptions about the female authorial voice both in their personal and fictional compositions. While Anne Brontë skillfully uses the Enlightenment/Pre-Romantic emphasis on rational argumentation in her dialogised songs and hymns, Emily Brontë’s personal voice and fictional personae express mostly a High Romantic concern in existential issues and creative freedom. Finally, Charlotte Brontë’s comparatively smaller poetic output bears considerable evidence of Late Romantic/Early Victorian themes and forms; namely, those of class and gender issues and the dramatic monologue. According to a Continental and/or Portuguese critical framework, which does not possess or contemplate a Victorian correlative, this description suggests the way in which the sisters’ oeuvre self-represents and embodies the development or evolution of the Romantic Movement (lacto sensu) in England and, in particular, one of its most typical generic manifestations - poetic autobiography.