3 Stars
In the 1840s, Charlotte, Anne, and Emily live with their father Patrick and brother Branwell in the parsonage in Haworth. Life is not easy: their elderly father is losing his vision and Branwell is troubled, drifting from job to job and squandering money on alcohol and drugs. There are also constant financial worries. The three women want to publish their poetry and novels in order to provide financial security for the family but have difficulty finding a publisher. In the meantime, Emily, in her wanderings across the moors, meets a man living in a once-abandoned cottage. She visits him periodically and the two become intimate friends.
A mystery in the novel is whether the man in the cottage, Jonathan MacConnell, is real or a product of Emily’s imagination. The entire time Emily spends with him no one else sees him. It’s emphasized that Emily lives in a world of her own, and she thinks, “He hadn’t seemed real to her, and then he was so real she could feel his breath.” During one encounter, “Her vision blurred for a moment, and this kind, redeemed man also blurred before her as if he dissolved into the air.” All the sisters seem to believe “that the things we imagine are as real to us as the things that everyone else can see; if we love them enough, we give them life.” So did Emily really have a love life unbeknownst to her sisters or did she create him just as she created Heathcliff? In the end, though, it hardly matters.
The title is actually misleading. Jonathan is actually not present in that much of the novel. The focus is on the women, Emily and Charlotte in particular, so surely they should be given prominence. By naming the novel after Jonathan, the author is giving him a prominence he doesn’t deserve and the women do – another example of women being treated as subordinates to men!
The three sisters are clearly differentiated. Charlotte is the one who takes charge; after her mother’s death, she was tasked with being the mother in the family. Emily complains that Charlotte will “’be directing us how we should have our lives. You’ve done it since you were a child.’” Her intelligence is obvious, but we also see her loneliness and desire to be loved despite her plain appearance. Emily is an interesting character. Solitary and introverted, with an aversion to social situations and a dislike of being touched, Emily has traits that today might identify her as being on the autism spectrum. Both Charlotte and Emily are described as being virtually possessed when they write: “Something touched the small of [Charlotte’s] back and gently pushed her into the chair” and she begins Jane Eyre; and Emily writes Wuthering Heights in a type of frenzy after “her novel woke her like something shaking her arm,” and when she tries to rest from writing she has to pull the pillow over her head “against the strange people in her room and whispers from the corners.” Anne receives the least attention; she seems a quiet and gentle soul. Though they possess different personalities and sometimes annoy each other, there is no doubt of a strong bond among them. The novel shows their joys, sorrows, struggles, and hopes and dreams.
Branwell is not particularly likeable. He is self-pitying and has a tendency towards histrionics. Anne seems to understand her brother’s failings well: in a letter to her sisters, she writes, “’he sees great things he could be but has no idea of the patience it needs to get there. . . . He wants to step into greatness as if he opened a tower door. . . . He feels he ought to be above such mundane clambering.’” The sisters are enablers. Emily, for instance, regards Branwell as a “little god” who when he shows himself to be very human, she thinks of as “broken bits of a tiny statue . . . she knew she would work to put together once more. . . . From the time she was small, trying to mend his hurt feelings, his insecurities, while at the same time, convincing him of his greatness.” He is constantly being rescued by his father or sisters, yet he embarrasses his family by having an affair with a married woman, drinking, and accumulating debts.
The writing style is flat and doesn’t flow. For instance, in one sentence Charlotte is looking at Emily’s cabinet piano and in the next sentence she is thinking about how a man she loved said “her name ponderously with his French accent as if giving it serious thought.” What is the connection? Dialogue often sounds disjointed. For instance, Emily says, “’I sometimes watch the stars at night too and think I hear voices from centuries ago. My two eldest sisters died when I was young.’” Charlotte says, “’Emily, no one speaks more clumsily than you do,’” but they all seem to speak in a disordered way, often with a long series of questions. Charlotte speaks this way (“’Why are you here? How was he caught? What did he do?’”) and so does Emily (“What do you mean it’s ended? Oh, dear God, what has happened? Are you well? . . . What is it? What can I do?’”) and so does Jonathan (“’You have the book still? Good. And your brother’s come back after all? And your sister as well?’”)
As I stated at the beginning, this book will probably appeal to lovers of the Brontës. I enjoyed their novels, but this one about them not so much. The style is unimpressive and the magic realism elements are not to my liking either.
Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
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