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ABAnne Brontë

Anne Brontë

Life dates: 1820 AD — 1849 AD

Anne Brontë’s defence of truthful writing differs from Gilbert’s claim to enjoy silent companionship. Read the author’s second-edition preface and the quiet walk with Helen as distinct voices, each with a listener or audience.

▷ Play this voiceSearch these words ↗Place in time ↗lovetruthfaithmindlifehappinesstimefriendship

Life and writing

The catalogue identifies Anne Brontë with lifetime years 1820–1849. It names Mrs. Humphry Ward as the author of introductory material and David Price in the digital credits. The linked text separates that introduction, the author’s preface to the second edition and the novel. These sections should not be collapsed into one voice. The checked HTML ISBN belongs to the electronic edition; its underlying print publisher remains unspecified.

The author’s preface explains her wish to tell the truth in response to the work’s reception. This is a statement of literary purpose, not a promise that any asserted truth automatically improves a reader. In Chapter IX, Gilbert tells Helen that he can enjoy a friend’s company in silence, hesitating and correcting himself along the way. Helen does not wholly believe him and turns to the foliage. Both selected extracts match the linked text under limited normalization, retaining their different rhetorical settings.

Reading this voice

Begin with the author’s preface, distinguishing it from Ward’s introduction. Then read Gilbert and Helen’s whole exchange in Chapter IX. Compare a public explanation of writing with a personal claim whose listener can question it.

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Quotations and sayings

08c. 1834 AD
There is another life both for you and for me,’ said I. ‘If it be the will of God that we should sow in tears now, it is only that we may reap in joy hereafter. It is His will that we should not injure others by the gratification of our own earthly passions; and you have a mother, and sisters, and friends who would be seriously injured by your disgrace; and I, too, have friends, whose peace of mind shall never be sacrificed to my enjoyment, or yours either, with my consent; and if I were alone in the world, I have still my God and my religion, and I would sooner die than disgrace my calling and break my faith with heaven to obtain a few brief years of false and fleeting happiness—happiness sure to end in misery even here—for myself or any other!
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09c. 1834 AD
After breakfast, determined to pass as little of the day as possible in company with Lady Lowborough, I quietly stole away from the company and retired to the library. Mr. Hargrave followed me thither, under pretence of coming for a book; and first, turning to the shelves, he selected a volume, and then quietly, but by no means timidly, approaching me, he stood beside me, resting his hand on the back of my chair, and said softly, ‘And so you consider yourself free at last?’‘Yes,’ said I, without moving, or raising my eyes from my book, ‘free to do anything but offend God and my conscience.
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14c. 1834 AD
Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking,' pursued she: 'and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves? - or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse?''Very likely they do,' said I; 'their shallow minds can hold no great ideas, and their light heads are carried away by trivialities that would not move a better-furnished skull; - and their only alternative to such discourse is to plunge over head and ears into the slough of scandal - which is their chief delight.
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