I Am, Yours Sincerely, C Bronte: Lyndall Gordon on Charlotte Bronte and Robert Southey
Lyndall Gordon examines Charlotte Bronte's response to advice from poet Robert Southey.
The Essay · BBC Radio 3
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Show Notes
In the 200th anniversary of her birth, Charlotte Bronte's true identity revealed through five powerful, poignant letters.
The poet laureate Robert Southey's letter to Charlotte Bronte is now infamous: "Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it even as an accomplishment and a recreation."
The scholar and Bronte biographer Lyndall Gordon, explores Bronte's response to this letter, in all its ambiguity: "In the evenings, I confess, I do think, but never trouble anyone else with my thoughts."
Producer: Beaty Rubens.