Move aside Emily and Charlotte, here's Anne!
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As a eager fan of Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights' and Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre', I'm confused why Anne isn't better known for this masterpiece. The story of how heroine Helen escapes from her drunk and abusive husband is still relevant today, and was perhaps was too before its time when it was written. If only I could pen such a masterpiece at just 28!
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beautiful book
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both of anne bronte's books are excellent but this one is bigger and more detailed...superb narrative particularly when you get to her diary, that bit is just superb. You will be hooked to the end. A****
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One of life's pleasures
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This is Anne Brontë at her best. Even if I cannot say I dislike "Agnes Grey", this novel is superior in every respect. The main character, Helen, is original and really modern for those times. The plot is well constructed and the suspense so well built that it is impossible to stop reading.
The subject matter is a one-off in Victorian literature: a woman who is brave enough to leave her abusive husband.We are all indebted to women writers such as Anne who denounced in their books everything that was unfair about their society.
Undoubtedly a must-read.
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Surprisingly good
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Anne is often classed as the least talented of the Bronte sisters. In this book certainly, she can however hold her head up. She, like her sisters, takes a subject which was considered unacceptable for women to write about and turns it into a fantastically complex and richly rewarding novel.
Here she deals with the subject of alcoholism and its detrimental effects on a family. The knowledge of this is often supposed to come from her own family's dealings with their alcoholic and drug addicted brother, Branwell Bronte, and it is certain that she does have some experience of such issues, wherever they come from, because she writes with a passion and humanity that ring true.
The story is interesting because it deals with what happens to a woman who marries a man who is no good. In Victorian times there were very limited options for women of the middle classes. If they didn't marry they were forced to endure life as either a governess or a dependent of more affluent members of their family. Marriage was the best of a bad bunch, but what to do when that marriage is a living hell and you have few means of escape.
Here, the heroine, Helen, escapes from her rakehell husband for the sake of her young son, and lives a life of isolation in the country. Her burgeoning friendship and love for Gilbert Markham turns her carefully sought sanctuary upside down and puts her in an even more difficult position than previously.
This is realistic, well plotted and is incredibly suspenseful. You feel for the characters and their difficulties. If they follow their natural instincts they will be forced to break away from the society that both cocoons and imprisons them. It is this dilemma which forms the axis of the tension within the book. Great stuff.
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Disappointing for a Bronte
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After reading Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and enjoying them immensely and being obsessed with them, I thought that the third, less well known sister's novels would be of the same quality.
I was wrong, the style is pedestrian, and although the characterisation is good, the evocative language or lack of makes the book quite dull at times. It is clear why this is not regarded a classic like the other two.
Now, the book was not bad. I think Hellen, Gilbert and Mr Huntingdon were written very well, but the whole book did not feel satisfying. Do not read, unless you have read wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre first, and even then, it's not essential to read.
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