Violence and the Brontës:
Language, Reception, Afterlives
Sophie Franklin

The well-known and well-loved writings of Anne, Charlotte and Emily Brontë are full of violence. From the many battles waged in their early writings to the violent emotions and threats expressed in their published novels, the Brontës’ representations of brutality shocked Victorian reviewers and continue to surprise readers in the twenty-first century. Violence and the Brontës accounts for such intense reactions by reading the sisters’ literary violences as transformational, encompassing harm, pain and suffering while at times also signalling creativity and even renewal. Through a new reading of the Brontës’ major works, as well as film, stage and television adaptations, this book argues that violence is at the centre of the Brontës’ imaginative engagements with nineteenth-century life. In the process, it demonstrates how violence continues to be vital to interpreting the Brontës’ reception history and afterlives in modern culture.

Link to purchase: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-violence-and-the-brontes.html

Sophie Franklin is a DOROTHY MSCA COFUND Postdoctoral Researcher at University College Dublin. She is the author of Charlotte Brontë Revisited: A View from the Twenty-First Century (2016) and co-editor of Consent: Legacies, Representations, and Frameworks for the Future (2023), as well as several articles and book chapters on the Brontës. She is currently an Associate Editor of Brontë Studies.