The Brontës as Gothic Writers: “The Afflicted Imagination

This book is the first extended study of the importance of Gothic for an appreciation of the Brontes' writing. This book is the first extended study of the importance of Gothic for an appreciation of the Brontës’ writing. It resituates Gothic from the mode that gives the pleasing sensation of terror to being the source of the Brontës’ deepest preoccupations – it is the mode they use to register anxieties and fears. This monograph, through a consideration of Gothic states and places, explores the Brontës’ creative work with the genre. The author argues that to read the Brontës as Gothic poets and novelists is also to read them as post-Romantics, as they respond to the Gothic imaginations of such Romantic poets as Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley. Gothic in the Brontës, then, is not merely a collection of tropes or even an aesthetic, but a way in which they read the world.