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Like most of Daphne Du Maurier’s books, The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte is a gripping read, and as a work of literature I enjoyed it very much. As a biography, it’s marred by Du Maurier’s willingness to extrapolate wildly from Branwell’s fiction to his life.
Although Branwell, unlike his sisters, never published anything, in his youth he wrote an extraordinary amount in what he and Charlotte called their “infernal world”: a huge outpouring of stories and poetry set in their fictional country of Angria. This world, Du Maurier suggests, became Branwell’s coping mechanism, a retreat from an increasingly disappointing reality, until at last that reality grew so miserable that the infernal world no longer offered an escape. Thereafter Branwell’s rapid decline into alcoholism and death.
The break came when Branwell was abruptly fired from his post as tutor in the Robinson household. The classic explanation has been that Branwell was carrying on an affair with Mrs. Robinson (pause for Simon & Garfunkle), but Du Maurier thinks that the affair was probably entirely one-sided, if it existed at all. Perhaps Branwell fell for Mrs. Robinson, and worked up his unrequited crush into a tragic tale of thwarted mutual passion as a salve to his amour propre after he lost his job.
Or indeed, maybe the crush never existed: maybe Branwell was just romancing up an excuse to explain why he had been fired yet again. Once he told the lie, he couldn’t back out without losing face, so he had to keep repeating it; and perhaps, Du Maurier suggests, he came to believe the story he made up. At the end of his life, she believes, he was truly losing contact with reality.
Du Maurier’s theory is that Branwell’s drinking, which the Brontes saw as the root of his problem, was in fact an attempt at self-medication. Certainly the letters she quotes show that he was deeply depressed for the last few years of his life, and Du Maurier thinks that Patrick Bronte may have seen the seeds of nervous trouble much earlier than that. She further argues that perhaps Branwell had epilepsy, and either epilepsy and nervous trouble (which were considered related in the 19th century anyway) would explain Patrick Bronte’s unusual step in teaching a promising son entirely at home rather than sending him to school.
In fact, it struck me as I was reading that the Bronte daughters had many of the advantages that usually accrued to sons. Branwell was taught at home, while the girls were sent to school. Branwell had no money, while the girls all inherited legacies from their Aunt Branwell. She expected the gifted Branwell would make his own way, while the girls might need a competency to keep them after their father died. But in fact, had Patrick Bronte died, Branwell would have had to live on his sisters’ charity, as Jane Austen and countless other women lived on their brothers’.
If Branwell had also gone to school—if he had the same modest competency put by—if he, metaphorically, had the same “room of his own” that his sisters did—might he too have published a novel? Du Maurier doesn’t argue that he was as talented as the others, but perhaps he could have survived to be the other other other Bronte, instead of the drunken afterthought.
Although Branwell, unlike his sisters, never published anything, in his youth he wrote an extraordinary amount in what he and Charlotte called their “infernal world”: a huge outpouring of stories and poetry set in their fictional country of Angria. This world, Du Maurier suggests, became Branwell’s coping mechanism, a retreat from an increasingly disappointing reality, until at last that reality grew so miserable that the infernal world no longer offered an escape. Thereafter Branwell’s rapid decline into alcoholism and death.
The break came when Branwell was abruptly fired from his post as tutor in the Robinson household. The classic explanation has been that Branwell was carrying on an affair with Mrs. Robinson (pause for Simon & Garfunkle), but Du Maurier thinks that the affair was probably entirely one-sided, if it existed at all. Perhaps Branwell fell for Mrs. Robinson, and worked up his unrequited crush into a tragic tale of thwarted mutual passion as a salve to his amour propre after he lost his job.
Or indeed, maybe the crush never existed: maybe Branwell was just romancing up an excuse to explain why he had been fired yet again. Once he told the lie, he couldn’t back out without losing face, so he had to keep repeating it; and perhaps, Du Maurier suggests, he came to believe the story he made up. At the end of his life, she believes, he was truly losing contact with reality.
Du Maurier’s theory is that Branwell’s drinking, which the Brontes saw as the root of his problem, was in fact an attempt at self-medication. Certainly the letters she quotes show that he was deeply depressed for the last few years of his life, and Du Maurier thinks that Patrick Bronte may have seen the seeds of nervous trouble much earlier than that. She further argues that perhaps Branwell had epilepsy, and either epilepsy and nervous trouble (which were considered related in the 19th century anyway) would explain Patrick Bronte’s unusual step in teaching a promising son entirely at home rather than sending him to school.
In fact, it struck me as I was reading that the Bronte daughters had many of the advantages that usually accrued to sons. Branwell was taught at home, while the girls were sent to school. Branwell had no money, while the girls all inherited legacies from their Aunt Branwell. She expected the gifted Branwell would make his own way, while the girls might need a competency to keep them after their father died. But in fact, had Patrick Bronte died, Branwell would have had to live on his sisters’ charity, as Jane Austen and countless other women lived on their brothers’.
If Branwell had also gone to school—if he had the same modest competency put by—if he, metaphorically, had the same “room of his own” that his sisters did—might he too have published a novel? Du Maurier doesn’t argue that he was as talented as the others, but perhaps he could have survived to be the other other other Bronte, instead of the drunken afterthought.
