Learning From The Classics Podcast: Emily Bronte The Stoic

This track is a recording of my weekly LIVE PODCAST, Learning from the Classics, dated June 27th, 2025.

In this LIVE session, I will relate prompts from Classic Literature to the challenges we face every day. There is a certain sense of security in understanding that some struggles are universal and not personal to us. In such novels, there is also a reconciliation to be had with souls we cannot and will not ever meet, but who teach us so much.

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stoicism
women
female empowerment
inner citadel
inner circle
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Transcript

Today we're talking about Anne Bronte and Stoicism.

Anne Bronte wrote Tenet of Walfell Hall and she also wrote Agnes Grey and Agnes Grey is going to be something I'm going to be reading once the Tenet is has finished which won't be long now and relate it to your experience and hopefully gain something from that.

Okay Stoicism and Anne Bronte.

Now as we probably know by now the Bronte sisters,

The famous Bronte sisters,

Not during their lifetime but during our lifetime,

They're well known,

They're famous,

Were Charlotte,

Emily and Anne in that birth order.

Somewhere in between after Charlotte there was a brother named Branwell before Charlotte was born there was Elizabeth and Mary who died and their mother died too.

Lots of death in that family that they had experienced from an early age.

So you've got three sisters and a big part of their writing style was the gothic but Anne veered away from that slightly.

So this idea of a dramatic romantic ideal where you have very dark characters and a huge contrast between something that's dark and something that's light.

You don't have that,

There is an element of that in Wildfell Hall but Anne was all about the realism.

She didn't want to make her male characters picture perfect.

She wanted to create a realistic portrayal of what she had experienced firsthand because she was a governess and she had worked in a local aristocratic family's home and her brother Branwell had had an affair with the lady of the house.

So she saw all this,

She's written from first-hand experiences about adultery,

Betrayal,

The misuse of drugs and alcohol and all of that she puts into her character Alfred Huntington,

Sorry Arthur Huntington.

Okay so if you don't know the story of Tenet of Wildfell Hall,

You've got Helen Graham who was Helen Huntington.

Okay and she basically had,

She was part of an abusive marriage,

She was abused by her husband,

He was an adulterer and he treated her very poorly and the novel is about her resilience and her coping in the face of adversity and she does it in a stoic way and this is why I am focused on her today.

So again we've got the Bronte sisters and these sisters all wrote successful novels,

Charlotte with Jane Eyre,

Emily with Wuthering Heights and Anne's most successful novel was the Tenet of Wildfell Hall although she did write had this great too.

So a bit of a backdrop and I do think adversity challenges us and it calls us to become or take the path that was determined from us,

For us.

My path was definitely a stoic one,

It's worked for me and it was the same for the Brontes,

It was the same for the Blue Stocking Group,

A group of well-to-do women in the 18th early 19th century who were interested in the idea of stoicism not as a masculine pursuit but as something that women could adopt in order to be able to master their emotions and maintain a level of this kind of homeostasis,

This level of calm amongst the chaos which is what stoicism is.

So yes,

As sisters they had experienced the pain of homesickness,

They were called away to a school where there was a lot of illness and sickness,

They obviously experienced the societal constraints upon women at that time,

They endured the loss of family members,

They weren't particularly well-to-do so they had to find an income so they had to go out and work and that was difficult,

Challenging when you were asked to be a governess or somebody within someone else's stronghold,

If you like,

I.

E.

Their estate,

You don't really have much safety as a woman at that point,

You are relying on the morals and values of the master of the house,

The safety within,

You are hoping that the people around you will be kind and just allow you to do your job,

So there were very many elements that are external elements to these sisters that they have to keep at a distance and protect themselves from.

Okay,

They all worked as governesses and obviously with that as well comes demanding children,

A lack of support from employees,

The employers just want you to fix everything.

Okay,

They had limitations on their education of course because they were women but their father was a clergyman and they had access to a lot of novels and a lot of literary works,

Both fictional and non-fictional,

So this helped them with their studies and of course women weren't really taken seriously as writers at that time,

So they had that challenge too.

Charlotte's first novel was rejected by the publishers and they ended up publishing under pseudonyms which were male names.

So,

All of this along with the health problems,

Along with the threat to young health,

The constant threat and watching people around them dying of consumption and the various illnesses that feature in their novels,

It was quite a tough time,

We think we got it bad,

It was tough.

And they battled on through and produced these wonderful works.

Now,

Tenet of Wildfell Hall did come up to critical acclaim for the simple reason that it is exposing the truths,

It's exposing the hardships,

It is not sugarcoating the life of women of that time,

Whereas most romantic novels to some degree did.

Even if it's a gothic romance as in Jane Eyre,

You still have the dramatic backdrops and you know the pathetic fallacy,

The lightning cutting through the clouds and striking the tree,

There's none of that in the Tenet of Wildfell Hall,

It's hard-hitting,

This is crap and you're just going to have to read about it.

It's quite a tough read,

Some people don't listen for that reason because they don't want to,

Maybe they have had experiences that themselves,

They don't want to hear that and that's perfectly understandable,

Isn't it?

With Anne,

She developed a stoicism because she had to persevere as a governess,

They needed money within the home,

So she was working as a governess for extended periods and of course,

You have to protect yourself during that time,

As I've said before.

Her reported last words,

She died very young,

Just after the age of 29,

Were take courage.

Despite these social and personal difficulties,

Her inner citadel remains strong,

She keeps everything in tight,

She pulls it together and remember,

She's writing about devastating situations in a woman's life,

In that time when a man owned her,

Owned her property and everything else,

She is writing about the experiences of a woman who goes through that and she's seen it first hand,

So that's really,

For a woman at that time,

It doesn't get much worse than that.

And this domestic abuse with Helen Huntingdon,

It's something that was known to be prevalent and yet nobody spoke of,

So it was very,

Very brave,

She had a lot of courage to put that in writing and hope that people would read it,

You know,

And of course it mirrored her own spirit,

This mirrored that spirit of defiance,

Because she's saying,

I am going to write about this,

Whether it be socially acceptable or not,

I have no control over how it will be perceived,

How it will be accepted or discarded,

But I do have control over my own voice,

And within my inner citadel,

I understand that my own voice is king and queen and everything else that comes in between,

And I will be heard.

And that's wonderful,

Even if it is unsettling,

Even if people don't want to hear it,

You know,

She's going to say it anyway,

Which is a very,

Very brave thing to do,

Isn't it?

Okay,

So looking at one of her quotes,

She says,

Smiles and tears are so alike with me,

That neither of them confine to any particular feelings.

I often cry when I'm happy and I smile when I'm sad.

And I like this quote because what it's saying is,

I am a mixture of emotions,

And no one emotion can be attributed to any one thing,

And that's okay.

I understand whichever emotion comes along,

I will see it,

I will feel it,

I will experience it,

But it doesn't define me.

Sometimes I'm going to cry when I'm happy,

Sometimes I'm going to smile when I'm sad.

These are not definitions of my character.

It's just a definition of the emotion,

And that's a separate entity,

Right?

That's a really big,

Bold statement to make,

And it's true.

So when we feel heightened emotions,

When we feel an extreme sense of whatever it might be,

It might be loss,

It might be anger,

That is an emotion that is happening to us,

But it does not need to control us.

We need to let it out,

It needs to happen,

Right?

We need to give it voice,

Yes,

But it's separate from us.

It's just an emotion,

And there has to be a detachment that we make as Stoics,

So we understand that we're mastering this.

It's not mastering me,

And it will come out,

And this is why when it's suggested,

Well,

Stoicism,

You know,

It's just masculine,

And it's just suppression.

Well,

It's not,

And I'm here to show you it's not,

Right?

Look at the state of my face now.

You can't suppress anything,

It's going to come out.

That's the point.

It will come out,

And you don't deny that.

I'm denying nothing.

I knew this would happen.

I knew once the funeral was over and everything was finished,

I'd get home and this would happen.

I knew that.

I was prepared,

And sure enough,

It did,

But it doesn't mean I didn't feel anything during the funeral.

I was very upset.

Well,

I did actually have an anxiety attack,

But that's another story,

But that was just the anticipation of it,

But when I was in there doing my thing and reading the eulogy and all that,

It was fine because I had control,

But I wasn't denying anything.

I wasn't suppressing anything.

I was saying,

Right,

That's the time for your mental breakdown outside.

Then it's performance.

If you can do that,

We can't all do that,

But that's my thing,

So that was fine,

And then I know when I get home,

It's going to kick off,

Yeah?

My stress reaction's going to kick off,

And it did.

We're not denying anything.

We are mastering it so it has its place because otherwise,

If we don't,

Life is chaos.

We never know whether we're up,

Down,

Sideways,

Forward,

Backwards,

Any which way at any time,

And that can lead to severe complications in our life,

So there has to be,

One,

A very good understanding of emotion,

Two,

How that emotion affects us,

And three,

An acceptance and a willingness to master it.

Can't just float along,

Let things happen to us,

And just allow it all in.

Just come in,

Yeah?

I'm just going to be a complete mess all the time because that will destroy us,

Right?

So we keep this understanding,

Just like Anne Bronte did.

Well,

She's saying,

My morals and virtue is,

I need to say something about this because it's a dreadful thing.

I understand that it might be received very poorly.

I'm going to feel scared,

I'm going to feel frightened,

I might feel attacked,

I might feel angry and bitter about the fact that it's not received well,

But that doesn't control me because I'm staying true to my virtue,

My morals,

My,

You know,

My standards,

And I'm doing what I want anyway.

Okay,

Fortitude,

Courage,

That's what we're looking at here.

That's what these people,

They've already walked the walk,

We can learn lessons from that.

That's what these people have done,

And that's what we're here to learn from.

She says,

This is Anne Bronte,

I am satisfied that if a book is a good one,

It is so whatever the sex of the author may be.

All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read,

And I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman,

Or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.

How a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman,

Or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.

You know,

Don't censure me,

If you've done something wrong,

I'm going to say it,

That's what she's saying.

Don't disgrace women.

I mean,

It must have been so difficult,

Because all they had were men writing about women.

I mean,

Don't write my story.

You know,

If I had a pound for every self-help guru who's a male telling me as a woman how I should do this and do that.

Wow.

And that's why I'm here.

This is my mission.

And this is just the beginning.

I don't want to hear from,

I have complete respect for men.

Of course I have a son,

Have a husband,

Right?

But no,

You don't own my story.

You don't speak my truth.

We may have similar viewpoints,

Yes,

But a woman needs to be guiding a woman,

Right?

Because you walk the same path.

Okay.

Anne's demonstrating an unflinching commitment to her own set of values,

Which is one of the core principles of Stoic philosophy.

When we have to do with vice and vicious characters,

She says,

I maintain it's better to depict them as they really are,

As how they would wish to appear.

She doesn't want to romanticise Arthur Huntingdon.

She doesn't want to,

In any way,

Portray him as being anything other than a thug and a philanderer and a drunk.

That's why it's hard hitting.

A review in the London Magazine of the Times said,

It represents women as superior in every quality,

Moral and intellectual to all the men and characters which appear at once coarse,

Brutal and contemptibly weak.

Yeah,

She's taking a stand and she's taking the opposite stand,

But guess what?

That's the ultimate slap in the face,

Because all that she's ever read is at a man's hand.

And this is the problem.

This is why we should be discussing female literature more,

Because there's not enough record of it as there is.

We have to grab hold of everything we've got and really digest that,

Because so much of it has been scratched,

Etched out of,

Burnt out of history.

And I'm here to say,

Well,

You know what,

We've got some,

We've got more than the you know,

Who lived before us,

And the others had that lived before them.

So let's,

You know,

Let's,

Let's really learn from this,

Right?

To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light is doubtless the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue,

She says.

But is it the most honest or the safest?

To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light is doubtless the most agreeable course.

So what she's saying is,

I know that everybody is saying,

Yeah,

He's a bad man,

But there is good to him.

I know that everybody's writing in men with a heart,

But I refuse to give Arthur Huntington a heart.

I'm not going to portray him as anything other than a monster.

She's saying,

Is it honest to portray a bad character like that,

A brutal character in his least offensive light?

She's saying,

You're just playing it safe if you do that.

And I'm going to be more honest about this.

So again,

She's staying true to her inner voice.

Unfortunately,

She never wrote another novel after that.

She had Agnes Grey tend to Wildfell Hall,

And then she died from the same form of tuberculosis,

Which killed her sister,

Emily,

And her brother Branwell.

How bad's that?

So this Wildfell Hall,

It's studying domestic violence,

It's studying coercive control.

Helen Graham,

The tenant,

Flees a brutal marriage,

Even though it's not socially acceptable.

She escapes to one of the partially ruined properties her brother owns,

And her brother Frederick supports her so that she may sell her paintings and financially exist.

Of course,

There has to be a contrast.

It can't all be bad news.

So she meets this man.

And he is the antidote.

He's everything that Arthur Huntington is not.

But the majority of the novel is her letters that he's reading,

Or her diary,

Her journaling,

About life with a brute of a husband.

But of course,

She does give the reader some hope by introducing a local farmer to the new property that she's escaped to,

Just to try and I mean,

It fulfills a romantic demands,

The demands of a romantic novel,

By doing that.

But what she's saying is,

Yes,

It's going to be a romance,

But I'm not going to romanticize the bad bits.

I think that's very brave.

Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls,

She says,

Of life to the young and thoughtless traveller,

Or to cover them with branches and flowers?

So as we can see,

She really is determined to speak her truth.

And don't forget,

She'd seen this first hand.

Her brother was a bit of a bully,

And he was a drunk,

And he was,

You know,

He was a bit of an abuser.

He was a very nice character.

She wanted to be honest about that.

So I'll finish today with a poem which was written by her sister Emily,

And it's entitled The Old Stoic.

And it goes like this.

Riches I hold in light esteem,

And love I laugh to scorn,

And lust of fame was but a dream that vanished with the morn.

And if I pray,

The only prayer that moves my lips for me,

Is leave the heart that now I bear,

And give me liberty.

Yes,

As my swift days near their goal,

Tis all that I implore,

In life and death a chainless soul with courage to endure.

And that was The Old Stoic by Emily Bronte.

All I will say on a last note today,

If you're going to watch a dramatisation,

Fantastic,

Be aware of who's produced it.

Be aware of their other work.

Be aware of the fact that this is their voice,

Overlaid on top of a woman's voice.

If it's a man producing it,

Great,

You know,

I've not got an issue with that.

But just remember,

He's putting another voice onto,

Let's say,

For example,

It's Jane Austen,

Pride and Prejudice,

Onto Jane Austen.

That's not her voice.

And he might be doing things with that,

That she wouldn't like.

So always listen,

If you're not a big reader,

Listen to the audio books,

Understand the text first.

Because that,

That wit is,

You know,

You're only as good in a dramatisation as your actors,

As your producers.

She wrote that in.

It was funny.

It was clever.

Don't lose that,

You know,

Sometimes it's lost in dramatisation.

We don't want to lose that voice.

We don't want to lose these women's voices.

So just be aware of the original.

And then yeah,

Obviously,

You know,

Enjoy.

That's what TV's there for,

Right?

Okay,

I'm going to be off.

I shall see you next week.

Thank you very much for coming.

And onwards and upwards.

I'm going to feel much better next week.

And I hope you all do too.

See you then.

Bye.

Reviews

Ah, so good. Extremely helpful as well. Many notes written down. Thank you for these deeper layers of understanding, the background history certainly lends much, is the story. Hooray for stoic Anne Bronte. 🙏😘🌹