[Little princess]

She wasn't insane Rhub, just repressed and Victorian. A talented woman with no outlet for her talent as she grew up. Three sisters who wrote, yet lived in a tiny village up on the Yorkshire moors. Amazing really. Jane Eyre, very gloomy and unlikely, and mad I suppose. Like Emilys Wuthering Heights and Emilys tenant of Wildfell Hall. I think I read that there were 2 other Bronte sisters who died of consumption.
(Who wrote Villette?)
It was a Victorian genre maybe. Elizabeth Gaskell was different, yet George Elliott was that sort of writer, don't you think?
Amazing women for their time.
In my opinion, the most amazing of all was Mary shelley, she was 19 when she wrote Frankenstein and she also had a baby. Can you believe it?

I love Jane best, and Dickens.

[Jane Sherwood]

I think it's about time I started looking into Victorian literature...

[Stongbah]

How does any of this have anything to do with the topic?

This post has been edited by Stongbah: 02 July 2004 - 07:52 PM

[Jane Sherwood]

Oh don't worry about it, this happens all the time (just look at how the "Puffins vs. Lemurs" page is going). We enjoy trailing off topic. It's fun.

[Little princess]

Topic?

Oh that.

It's ok, we strayed into the richness of the English language and from there into English Literature.

Logical actually.

[Stalky]

And there's my cue to change the topic again.

I used to know both Hamlet's soliloquy and Mark Antony's speech from Julius Caesar.

I knew the war speech Antony recited at the corpse of Caesar after studying it two years ago in English. "Let slip the dogs of war" and whatnot. I must give mention to the late Marlon Brando who died yesterday, Friday 2nd of July, the excellent actor who played Mark Antony in the Julius Caesar film. Rest in peace.

[Little princess]

Marlon Brando "recited" the Mark Anthony speech?
He lived it.
It's the only time I ever saw and heard the speech, only read it previously.

'Friends, Romans Countrymen. Lend me your ears.' Just made us giggle.

Brando brought it to life, and the sarcastic, 'Brutus is an honourable man.'

The man was a great actor.

[der Mudda]

I did Julius Caesar for GCE O level and could recite the speech backwards at one time.

Without going to the book:

"Friends, Romans, Countrymen lend me your ears, I come to bury Caesar not to praise him, for the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones, so let it be with Caesar".

Not bad for over 37 years ago. Brando was very handsome in his youth, very ill in old age - let this be a warning to all the over-indulgers out there!

[Rhubarb]

Mary Shelley was 17 when she wrote Frankenstein, I believe. 19 might have been the publishing year... not sure. And she wrote it BECAUSE of her baby. She kept having nightmares while she was pregnant about giving birth to a hideous deformed monster, and apparently she thought they were interesting enough to write about. That's pretty damn cool. Robert Louis Stevenson did the same thing with Jekyll and Hyde. 'Cept he wasn't pregnant obviously. Actually, I think this is awesome: He wrote it all in three days. Then his wife said it was horrible, so he burned it. Then he wrote it again in another three days. There's passion right there.

And C. Bronte was indeed Victorian and repressed, but ALL the English were Victorian and repressed. No bloody excuse. Yeah, women had a terrible time, slaves to the men, blah blah, and incidentally SHE WAS ALSO INSANE. I use the term here loosely, encompassing a broad range of various neuroses and suchlike. I mean, she lived in the middle of nowhere in a small (by their standards) house as an old maid with her three old maid sisters, cooped up with little to no prospects (until she got published). That's gonna screw anyone up, even today. But my point is that the lady had some SERIOUS ISSUES.

Emily's book, Wuthering Heights, was pretty fucked up too, but at least some of the freakiness could possibly, maybe, be the fault of their brother Branwell, to whom all books were originally and mistakenly attributed. There's a theory bopping around that maybe he contributed to it by helping her, since it seems she was the slowest to get started when the three sisters all decided to write stuff, and was the closest to him. Plus he was a bit of a drunken loser as history books tell me, and had lots of angst and gloom and impossible romantic notions, which pretty much makes up the entire book. But Jane Eyre was in all likelihood all Charlotte's work. Don't want to get into an 'I know more about history than you' contest, but seriously, I don't care how repressed she was, that book is psychotic. I mean, I love it, but it's nuts.

Plus she was a bitch by all accounts. Stole her sisters' mail and bullied them and all that. A chick with a lot of issues.

And I dunno why you said 'no outlet for her talent'. She had a talent for writing... so she wrote a lot of stuff... and some actually got published. Sounds like a pretty good outlet to me. Better than my outlets, certainly.

Can't really think about Wuthering Heights without remembering that amazing Kate Bush film clip. My god. It's gonna stay with me my whole life.

All the Bronte sisters died of consumption, I believe. There were five of them, two died young, forget their names, then Emily, Anne, and Charlotte. There's a fair bit of stuff about little girls dying of consumption in Jane Eyre. There's some theory I read recently about how Charlotte collaborated with Mr. Nicholls to poison Emily and Anne and then Mr. Nicholls poisoned Charlotte. I dunno, sounds dodgy as hell, the historian guy seemed to be desperately trying to prove his point on very little evidence. Interesting read though.

I've only heard of 'Mrs. Gaskell' in terms of her stuff about the Brontes... did she do anything else? Anyway, she was pretty innacurate with it. Like, she based most of her writing on gossip and hearsay. And then changed a hell of a lot of stuff when people complained about what she wrote about them. Having said that, I never read it, this is just stuff I heard.

Charlotte wrote Vilette. Haven't read that either.

[Rhubarb]

Holy shit that was long.

[Jane Sherwood]

Indeed it was.

(*now runs off to find a copy of Jane Eyre*)

[Little princess]

You win Rhub....bows low with outstretched arms.

Mrs Gaskell wrote Cranford, I like books like this, small and gossipy and filled with characters. Haven't read any others except the thing on the Brontes.