A Thursday Talk at the Brontë Parsonage Museum
This talk will explore the impact of hero-worship on the Brontë family, which is especially visible in the juvenilia of Branwell and Charlotte. Through their early lessons from the Reverend Patrick Brontë, the Brontë children were led to support the great men of the Victorian period, like the Duke of Wellington.
As seen through early recollections from Charlotte these lessons greatly impacted the games and juvenilia of the Brontë children, with Charlotte naming her toy soldier after the Duke of Wellington. Branwell however did not adopt the same admiration and named his soldier after the anti-hero, Napoleon.
We’ll examine the impact of hero-worship on Branwell’s writing as an adolescent, seen through the early depictions of Napoleon within his juvenilia.