Glass Town: The Imaginary World of the Brontës
“None of this would’ve happened, if six hadn’t become four.” So Charlotte Brontë begins the story of how the remaining Brontë siblings – Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne – created their own imaginary world, Glass Town, after the death of their two older sisters, Elizabeth and Maria.
This graphic novel intertwines the storylines of Glass Town with real events in the Brontës’ lives, primarily Charlotte’s. Glass Town and its inhabitants, their lives, loves and adventures, were the fruit of the Brontës’ juvenilia, their “scribblemania,” and it shows in the melodramatic and often childishly overwrought lives of the Glass Town characters. Charlotte retreats further and further into her imaginary world as one by one she loses her siblings in the real world. It’s easy to understand why she prefers Glass Town, where she can control events, to real life, where addiction claims her brother Branwell, though not before he squanders his talent and disappoints the entire family, and illness takes all her sisters. This leaves Charlotte alone in the rectory on the desolate moors with her curate father.
Greenberg’s drawings are childlike and simplistic; the galley provided was black and white, but the finished hardcover will feature full-color illustrations, which should show the storyline to greater advantage. While there is sadness here, the main takeaway is the beauty of a child’s imagination – something modern children may have lost, with their faces constantly planted in screens. Greenberg showcases the excitement that literature, their father’s library, brought to these siblings, how they used it to stoke their creativity, craft these worlds which so stimulated their minds as well as provided an escape from the harshness of reality. Readers will enjoy joining Charlotte as she loses and finds herself again through her relationships with the inhabitants of Glass Town.
