BLOG: Brontë 101

I speak as a historical novelist when I say that sometimes it is a real challenge to write women protagonists. Most women through history, up to say the last one-hundred years or so, have led rather quiet lives in comparison to many today. When I wrote Julia Hancock in WEST OF SANTILLANE, one of my well-respected beta readers kept telling me to "give her more agency". Well, that was difficult, giving a sixteen year old girl from rural 19th century Virginia much authority or influence. Yes, her family was one of the most respected in their tiny hamlet of Fincastle, but women in Julia's day followed a rather expected path. Grow-up, learn how to keep house, marry, and have children to raise.

Think about it before you read another women's fictional narratives. By the early 1900's, certainly some women stepped out as suffregists, demanding equal rights. However, before that? Societal norms made it unheard of, not to mention unacceptable. That's why we historical writers have to paint our female mains with a little more color--adventure, a sassier personality, or literally create a fictitious sub-plot for them to engage in. It must be plausible, but readers today look for bolder women, because that's how independent-minded women and girls are today.

This week, I welcome author Stephanie Cowell to the Journal. Her new book is based upon the life of Charlotte Brontë, who you'll discover from Stephanie's post would not have lived an easy life. She and her sisters were different, and she will explain why. But suffice it to say that I'm rather relieved to live in the 21st century, where I can have all the agency I desire, and MORE! I'm sure Stephanie would agree with me, when I state that having studied women in history to write my stories, we ladies of this century are mighty fortunate.

Be sure to scroll down and learn more about Stephanie's characters and her novel, THE MAN IN THE STONE COTTAGE. It sounds like fabulous historical fiction!

READ ON, EVERYONE!

Brontë 101

By Stephanie Cowell

What place did the three gifted writers, the Brontë sisters (Charlotte, Emily and Anne), have in the 1846 Victorian society of their day? What were their marital prospects?  What did life look like for them socially as women in a small industrial town on the Yorkshire moors, as daughters of an intellectual clergyman? In their secretive private lives, they were the authors of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.  Yet that did not further social prospects; they published under pseudonyms.  They were anonymous. For a few years at least, everyone thought the authors were men.

Social and marital prospects were few in their town of Haworth which was full of farmers and factory workers.  In its streets, there were few possible romantic partners for three highly educated brilliant and penniless women who studied German verbs while baking bread.  Often daughters of clergymen found other clergymen to marry, and such a young man came into Anne’s world as curate to her father. However, sadly, in visiting a poor parishioner, he caught typhoid and died. There might have also been a barrister or a doctor in Haworth who looked the way of the sisters. If so, they did not look back. I do not think there were dances held there and doubt the sisters would have attended if there were. There were certainly no balls or the budget to make ball gowns.

The truth was that intellectual poor women fit very few places in Victorian England, and the three literary sisters were odd and individual and not exactly what the average man was looking for in a wife. There were few men like the writer George Eliots’s partner who dedicated himself to her and her novels, or the clergyman husband of the novelist Mrs. Gaskell. Mrs. Gaskell would become Charlotte’s biographer.

So to earn money before they sold their books, Anne and Charlotte became governesses and teachers. Mostly they loathed it. Governesses, as we learn in Jane Eyre or Anne’s other novel Agnes Grey, fit neither with the servants of a large house nor with the masters. The social walls kept them apart and left them solitary. That Jane’s wealthy employer Mr. Rochester fell in love with her was an exquisite fantasy and an enduring one because so many girls through the 175 years since it was published have adored that story!

But marriage? Emily who had just published Wuthering Heights did not even want to leave her parsonage home and was a bit strange even though she was an excellent housekeeper and fine baker and cook.  Nothing of further romantic partners appears about Anne in her biographies. Charlotte desperately wanted a love who was her equal, but she was bad at keeping a house and could not cook. She had a few offers of marriage by clergymen but the last thing she wanted was her mother’s life of near poverty. 

Sometime after Charlotte published Jane Eyre, she took the train to London with Anne where they introduced themselves to Charlotte’s publisher, revealing they were women. He was astonished and courteous and to entertain them, took them to the opera. He was then even more astonished. All the women he knew dressed gorgeously to go out in society and these two small women with their accents from the north or their Irish father had nothing to wear but their plain dark dresses and those dresses were probably worn. As Charlotte received royalties, she and Anne dressed better. But even if she wished to fit into society, she could not. Later when very famous everyone wanted or meet her and would find not a witty conversationalist but a shy, clumsy woman who took offense easily. This was the lauded author of Jane Eyre?

Yet even in London, that huge cultural city accessible by an overnight train ride, they found the strict class system: the upper classes where a bride came with a dowry and a wardrobe of gorgeous clothes, the middle class with a lesser dowry and the poor in their rags. Where did a poor brilliant woman fit in?

Emily and Anne never married, but Charlotte did (I do not want to spoil the story of my novel THE MAN IN THE STONE COTTAGE by revealing who). We can hope she was happy. From their plain parsonage and living outside society, I do not know if Charlotte was aware that even Queen Victoria read and loved Jane Eyre. In her private diary, the Queen wrote, “…a wonderful book, very peculiar in parts, but so powerfully and admirably written, such a fine tone in it, such fine religious feeling, and such beautiful writings.” Definitely, the Queen gave Charlotte a five-star review!

ALL ABOUT THE BOOK

“A haunting and atmospheric historical novel.” – Library Journal

In 1846 Yorkshire, the Brontë sisters— Charlotte, Anne, and Emily— navigate precarious lives marked by heartbreak and struggle.

Charlotte faces rejection from the man she loves, while their blind father and troubled brother add to their burdens. Despite their immense talent, no one will publish their poetry or novels.

Amidst this turmoil, Emily encounters a charming shepherd during her solitary walks on the moors, yet he remains unseen by anyone else.

After Emily’ s untimely death, Charlotte— now a successful author with Jane Eyre— stumbles upon hidden letters and a mysterious map. As she stands on the brink of her own marriage, Charlotte is determined to uncover the truth about her sister’ s secret relationship.

The Man in the Stone Cottage is a poignant exploration of sisterly bonds and the complexities of perception, asking whether what feels real to one person can truly be real to another.

Praise for The Man in the Stone Cottage:

“A mesmerizing and heartrending novel of sisterhood, love, and loss in Victorian England.” - Heather Webb, USA Today bestselling author of Queens of London

“Stephanie Cowell has written a masterpiece.” - Anne Easter Smith, author of This Son of York

“With The Man in the Stone Cottage, Stephanie Cowell asks what is real and what is imagined and then masterfully guides her readers on a journey of deciding for themselves.” - Cathy Marie Buchanan, author of The Painted Girls

“The Brontës come alive in this beautiful, poignant, elegant and so very readable tale. Just exquisite.” - NYT bestseller, M.J. Rose

“Cowell’s ability to take readers to time and place is truly wonderful and absorbing.” - Stephanie H. (Netgalley)

“Such a lovely, lovely book!” - Books by Dorothea (Netgalley)

ALL ABOUT STEPHANIE

Stephanie Cowell

Stephanie Cowell has been an opera singer, balladeer, founder of Strawberry Opera and other arts venues including a Renaissance festival in NYC.

She is the author of seven novels including Marrying Mozart, Claude & Camille: a novel of Monet, The Boy in the Rain and The Man in the Stone Cottage. Her work has been translated into several languages and adapted into an opera. Stephanie is the recipient of an American Book Award.  

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