‘In the dead of night I suddenly awoke’ – The Gothic Mode of ‘Villette’

Simon Marsden, a senior lecturer at Liverpool University and author of Emily Brontë and the Religious Imagination, has in the past explored Gothic elements in Emily Brontë’s work rather than Charlotte’s. At the Brontë Society’s 2018 Emily Brontë conference to celebrate her bicentenary, he spoke on ‘Emily Brontë and Spectrality’. 

But for his Zoom talk to the Brussels Brontë Group on 16 March 2022, Simon turned to Charlotte Brontë and Villette, examining Gothic aspects of Charlotte’s last novel and the book’s relationship to early nineteenth-century Gothic literature. 

Some thoughts on a member’s talk

A few years ago, Robynn Colwell was walking home through the beech forest near her house in Brussels, when she stopped to enjoy the autumn colours. She had been puzzling over the role of Charlotte Bartlett, in E.M. Forster's novel A Room with a View. The sight of the trees caught her attention; in a few moments, she resolved the conundrum that had been bothering her. 

Robynn told of what she had learned in a presentation to the Brussels Brontë Group last week. Her talk, Seeing the Wood for the Trees, was beautifully written and delivered, making for a memorable evening.

Secondary Characters That Aren't So Secondary

We should pay more attention to the somewhat minor characters in literature. That's the message from Robynn Colwell in an engaging presentation on secondary characters in nineteenth century literature, the latest of member talk for the Brussels Brontë Group. In her talk on 9 February, Robynn focused on the interesting and important roles of key secondary characters in several 19th-century novels:

A Room With a View by E.M. Forster
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James  
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

In memoriam: Freddy Thielemans, former Brussels mayor and his encounters with the Brussels Brontë Group

Charlotte's Irish honeymoon with a different approach

I feel like a very spoilt woman: after I had read the book “Charlotte & Arthur” (which I reviewed some weeks ago) my husband accidentally came across another book on Charlotte Brontë’s Irish honeymoon, “Charlotte Brontë – An Irish Odyssey”, which takes a very different but interesting approach.