The Mother of the Brontës: When Maria Met Patrick
Journalist Sharon Wright brings her keen reporter’s eye to this vibrant biography of Maria Branwell, the mother of literary lionesses Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Brontë as well as their three siblings. Taking the reader through Maria’s childhood as a daughter of a merchant in lively coastal Penzance and her marriage at age 29 to the charismatic Irish cleric Patrick Prunty (who changed the name to “Brontë”), to her untimely death from cancer at 38 – leaving behind the six children she bore in nine years – Wright portrays a woman of intelligence, social savvy, wit and strength as well as a love for books that she shared with her husband. We even get a glimpse into the origins of the Brontës’ literary influences: Maria avidly devoured the gothic tales published in popular magazines during her youth.
Whether she influenced daughter Emily, author of Wuthering Heights, or Charlotte, who wrote Jane Eyre, isn’t definitively known: both girls were very young when their mother died. But their aunt Elizabeth Branwell, who brought them up with their father, surely kept Maria’s memory alive – as Wright has done for the rest of us with this engrossing tale. She describes the trappings and travails of daily 19th-century English life using details vivid and minute enough to excite any historical novelist or fan of period fiction. The final pages contain Maria’s letters and other writings for a satisfying appendix, but the reader will nevertheless be left wanting more – of the Brontë sisters. Fortunately, their works are still celebrated, and available, today.
