Charlotte Bronte's Thunder
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Charlotte Brontë, author of 'Jane Eyre', spent most of her life concealing a secret. Like a wizard or magician, she could conjure thousands of anagrams in her mind and then hide them inside the pages of her writing. At first, this talent was a playful novelty in her childhood, but as she grew older and more proficient, her secret code took on immense proportions and serious consequences when she began writing about corruption and murder in her township. Charlotte was a small, defenseless woman, so this attack against the criminals took courage and resolve; she was terrified the men would detect the dark truths hidden in her fiction. To protect herself and her family, she shielded her identity through a filter of three male pseudonyms: Currer Bell, Ellis Bell, and Acton Bell. Charlotte knew she was playing a dangerous game in giving voice to the thieves’ conspiracy of silence, but her anger at the injustice and her desire to speak the truth outweighed her fear of reprisal. The anagram messages she left for her readers show how a diabolical fraud continued for years in her village. Her code also explains why she perpetrated a hoax of three literary sisters. By the end of 'Charlotte’s Brontë’s Thunder', you will admire this amazing writer even more. You will also be convinced that she wrote all the Brontë works. This book proves that Charlotte Brontë was an exceptional woman and an even greater literary genius than was first imagined.
Customer Reviews
Charlotte Brontë’s Thunder
This is an intriguing read for any Brontë fanatic who is already very familiar with the famous novels, as well as the biography of the Brontë family. The strength lies in Carter’s examination of Masonic references in the novels, and research into how enmeshed the Masons were in the politics, estates, business, and clergy of Haworth, and how this influenced the Brontë family in their deeds and works. To my knowledge, no other researcher has done this, though the novels’ blatant Masonic imagery certainly demands this.
Carter’s thesis is that Charlotte was secretly aware of certain crimes committed by the local Freemasons, and left anagram clues in the Brontë novels, as well as in letters to friends and associates that detail the crimes and point to the perpetrators. Carter has independently found some documented evidence to support Charlotte’s supposed claim.
Carter is less convincing with her argument that Charlotte was the sole author in the family. I find myself open to the possibility, but not completely convinced, perhaps willing to concede that there was more collaboration between the sisters than has been imagined. One error is that she doesn’t include Emily’s essays completed as a student in Belgium, which show tremendous authorial potential and perhaps provides the missing link between her lackluster diary/birthday papers and her masterpiece Wuthering Heights. However, there are mysterious aspects to the Brontë biography that no one thus far has been able to decipher, so I applaud Carter’s courage to take on the questions in bold, avant-garde ways.
In this way she also provides satisfying reasons for some of the odd, seemingly inexplicable details in WH and JE. Some more convincing than others - her explanation of Lockwood’s function in WH seems perfectly and chillingly true. I came away with a new way of deciphering the Brontë literary enigmas and a sense that there may be much more to uncover.