A Chainless Soul: A Life of Emily Bronte

By Katherine Frank

Book Overview

"A fine retelling of the Bront s' story . . . It does much to throw light on the achievement of one of the greatest geniuses of nineteenth-century literature."-- The New York Times Book Review In this compelling, beautifully written book, Emily Bront emerges for the first time in the full complexity of her nature--the most gifted and intelligent of the Bront sisters, and also the most passionate, willful, and self-destructive. Katherine Frank, whose biography of Mary Kingsley won wide critical acclaim, brings a novelist's dramatic flair and a brilliant gift for analysis to this bold reinterpretation of Emily Bront 's life: the negligence of her sickly father, her affliction with anorexia, the fierce need to rebel that produced Wuthering Heights and her magnificent poetry. Probing the depths of Emily Bront 's dark nature as no other biographer has done, Frank also sheds new light on her special place in her gifted, doomed family and her consuming relationships with Charlotte and her alcoholic brother, Branwell. A Chainless Soul paints an intimate, vivid, and deeply affecting portrait of one of the greatest, and most misunderstood, artists of nineteenth-century fiction.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0449906612
• ISBN13: 9780449906613
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.0" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Informative

I found this novel to be well written and did teach me about Emily Bronte-or what I did not know about her already. I have read quite a bit on the Bronte's (including all of their books) so I had a wealth on of information on the Bronte's before I read this biography. Frank's idea of Emily starving herself was very convincing and she made a plausible case. I did not agree with her view on Branwell or Charlotte. Sometimes I felt that Frank was writing a bio on Charlotte rather than Emily. It is understandable because so much is already known about Charlotte, but I thought she focused her attention a little to much on the older sister, and I did not agree with some of her views on Charlotte. Frank made it very clear that she hated Branwell and she made him out to be a one dimensional villain straight out from one of the sisters novels. Frank ignored Anne almost completely, and if I had not been a fan of Anne's novels, I would have forgotten that there was another sister almost completely. Frank draws from a wealth of research. She clearly did her homework, and knew a lot about life at the Parsonage. I liked how she started off talking about Emily's parents and their relationship so you got a clear view on her family. Sometimes I felt like I was reading a story rather than a biography because she wrote it so well, but this also was a disadvantage because sometimes Frank treated it as if it was her own story. I would give this five stars but, as stated above, I felt that she under developed Anne and Branwell, and over developed Charlotte, as if they were characters in her own story, and people that had actually lived and breathed.

Not as bad as you might believe...

Many of Frank's arguments were convincing to me--especially those regarding Emily's peculiar eating habits. All of her conclusions were backed up with sources, etc. Although I didn't believe this spin on the life of the Brontes word for word, I do think it was worthly of more than 1 star, hence my review. Check it out--you may disagree, but isn't that part of the fun?