This month’s question from The Classics Club is super specific, but after almost two years I guess they would have to be start getting specific.
Contemplate your favorite classic to date. When was the book written? Why would you say it has been preserved by the ages? Do you think it will still be respected/treasured 100 years from now?
My immediate thought was any of Jane Austen’s novels and those will definitely be around for many years to come. Her wit and way with words is excellently placed when she was living but her stories and characters have a timelessness about them. So I went to my next thought, the works of Anne Brontë: Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
As the 200th anniversary for the publication of Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey approaches in 2047 I see a lot more attention being given to Anne’s works. Her works are by far the least read, but perhaps the most pertinent! She’s clearly not as famous as Charlotte or Emily, but her matter of fact descriptions and her lack of phantasmagoria provide amazing insight into the mid-19th century. When you add in that the subjects she wrote about were controversial (affairs and sex) and well ahead of their time (feminism as the first organized feminist movements occurred in the UK; female empowerment).
I don’t really have a background or reason for this opinion and I’m sure my opinion is swayed by how much I loved her works, but honestly I feel like more research will be put into (or highlighted) about the lesser known of the three sisters. And if you missed it you can check out my three part post on Anne Brontë here, here and here.
I have Anne Bronte’s work on my list and I am really looking forward to reading them.
They’re great and not at all what I thought they’d be.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is one of my absolute favourite novels. I keep recommending it to people and then they stare at me blankly when I tell them who it’s by–most of them have heard of Emily and Charlotte, but never Anne. That’s sad to me, and I hope that you are right & that her works get more attention in the years to come.
I know! It was so sad to see how little was out there about Anne when I went through my obsessive phase. Everyone can name Emily and Charlotte and their novels, but most have no idea about Anne other than there was a third sister.