![]() ![]() In The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Gaskell reconstructs the Romantic myth of the solitary (male) genius struggling against society, offering instead a portrait of a woman artist enmeshed in gender-specific constraints and reaping few of the benefits of literary fame. ![]() The softening veil is blown away when such exhibitions of feeling are given to the world’.1 Oliphant’s response notes Gaskell’s ‘revelation’ of the private details of Bronte’s life, but more significantly she acknowledges her ‘revolution’ in writing ‘a new kind of biography’, an account of the life of a woman writer. That cry shattered indeed altogether the “delicacy” which was supposed to be the most exquisite characteristic of womankind. The Times blew a trumpet of dismay the book was a revolution as well as revelation. Gaskell ‘originated in her bewilderment a new kind of biography. She later recalled its impact on the reading public’s idea of women writers: Mrs. Margaret Oliphant, the late Victorian novelist and biographer, was twenty-nine when Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Bronte first appeared in 1857. ![]()
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