Emma Brown: Charlotte Brontë’s Legacies

What is it about?

Soon after her death, the artistic legacy of Charlotte Brontë became a matter of debate among her contemporaries — in particular after Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography — and has been contended, interpreted, read and misread by subsequent generations of readers and critics. The so-called ‘Brontë myth’ has been alimented and nurtured by this peculiar fashioning of Charlotte’s life and works. Apart from the numberless rewritings and ‘translations’ of her novels, her unfinished fragment entitled ‘Emma’ has aroused the interest of many writers who have tried to imagine the conclusion of the story. In this respect, Clare Boylan’s Emma Brown (2003) not only represents an ultimate exercise in literary imagination, but also a neo-Victorian novel balanced between a nostalgic glance at the past and a questioning of cogent Victorian issues that are still relevant today.

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Why is it important?

This article investigates a field of recent critical interest known as the "Brontes afterlives", dealing with the various ways in which Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte's works have been rewritten and adapted by contemporary artists.