The biographical process: writing the lives of Charlotte Brontë

Focusing on multiple versions of the life of Charlotte Bronte, I explore the
development of biography over a period of 140 years, examining a range of
biographical forms, the process of re-visioning the subject, and the relationships
between biographies and their historical placement. Eight versions of the life of
Charlotte Bronte, from Elizabeth Gaskell’s first Life published in 1857 to Rebecca
Fraser’s 1988 biography, are examined in detail, with consideration of ten additional
Bronte biographies. The impact of the discoveries of new documents is noted, but
of particular interest is how strategies of interpretation and form have altered, thereby
influencing the conceptualization of the subject. A study of versions of Charlotte
Bronte’s life illustrates that, within one relatively stable set of documents, there can
be numerous stories. Versions of Bronte biographies interact with one another
manifesting an interesting development from competitive displacement to
complementary inclusiveness. In following the development of the genre, I examine
the impact on biography of changing attitudes to subjectivity and objectivity,
completeness and definitiveness, the relationship of the biographer to the subject, the
construction of self, and the use and types of novelistic strategies. One dominant
mode of conceptualization, the view of Charlotte as a divided personality, has
significantly changed over this period, particularly as a result of the different
emphases adopted by feminist biographers and by the postmodern challenges to the
concept of a unitary self. Each chapter of the thesis deals with specific developments
in the genre, illustrating the particular contributions of individual biographers and the
correlation between interpretation, form and historical placement.