I’ll admit I’ve been on a Brontë kick this summer; heat tends to drive me toward stories about simmering characters in cooler climes, a sure recipe for a Brontë book. But, for all of my repeated readings of Charlotte Brontë‘s prose and my disaffection for sister Emily’s Wuthering Heights, I never bothered to read the work of Anne Brontë. Now, I want to bang on the front doors of all my English teachers and yell, “Why didn’t you assign her books to your courses? What were you thinking?” Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall may be the surprise sensation of my summer reading. It seems the book has always defied expectations. Published when English Women had no right to vote, own property or even have custody of their children, it’s a challenge to that “civilized” society. It dealt with issues like addiction and adultery so realistically it was a literary sensation when it was first published. It was so controversial, that sister Charlotte tried at one point to suppress the book’s being reprinted. The story’s subtitle could be “the mysterious new girl in town, ” and it’s told by Gilbert Markham, a young, rather satisfied, gentleman farmer whose family has “always” been part of the community….
Many people read the Bible throughout their lives. It teaches and comforts them and never becomes tiring. I like that kind of relationship with a story, where the characters are so developed and the narrative so strong that the book reveals different strengths as you re-read it at different points in your life. I suppose the book I’ve had the longest relationship with is Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. I first tried reading Jane when I was in junior high, too young to understand most of it. The part I did understand was the child Jane of the first nine chapters. Here was a fearsome little girl, capable of attacking a bully or standing up to adults when necessary. Since I didn’t have the nerve to do either, I loved the little hellion and cheered her on. I didn’t really understand her friendship with the gentle Helen Burns (like Jane, I have too much original sin to identify with the saint-like Helen) but I was sad to see her go, with an exit that still gives me a chill. Imagine waking up next to a corpse! Teens and twenties are high times for romance and that’s when I dwelt in the…