Emma Brown: A Novel from the Unfinished Manuscript by Charlotte Bronte

by Clare Boylan

Book Overview

Charlotte Bront?s death in 1855 deprived the world of what might have been her masterpiece. The twenty unfinished manuscript pages that are the nucleus of Emma Brownsignaled her most compelling work... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670032972
• ISBN13: 9780670032976
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 435 Pages
• Weight: 1.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A Great and Twisting Odyssey

I love the Victorian era and this book provides a wonderful glimpse into its underside. The intricate plot keeps both readers and main characters discovering and learning. Highly Recommended. James Conroyd Martin, Author of PUSH NOT THE RIVER Push Not the River

Total fun!

It's nearly impossible to recreate another author's writing style. In fact, Clare Boylan undoubtedly took this project on knowing that it could possibly subject her to all manner of abuse. Nevertheless, I think she did an excellent job. The things that indicate she is NOT Charlotte Bronte are subtle ones. The author indicates at the end of the book that Bronte was leaning toward social reformation at the time of her death, and she developed her story along those lines. One of the tip-offs that the writer is not 19th century is the very modern shock and dismay at 19th century social conditions. Most of the main characters are, or become fired up with 1960s idealism, and try to save the world from poverty and injustice. A true 19th century writer wouldn't feel - or more likely wouldn't dare to challenge to this degree - a social structure England took for granted at that time. More likely she would comment on it and tug at your heartstrings like Dickens, and set the story up to enable the wealthy to save the poor heroine, but wouldn't have them indignantly devoting their wealthy lives to the betterment of the poor. It would have made a 19th century author appear "odd". But that's one of the delightful things about the novel. When I read 19th century books (and I've read many) I often get irritated by shallow concerns the characters have, like the obsession with Tess of the D'urberville's loss of her virginity (yeah, so?) and building an entire book around how it ruined her life. A 19th century audience could relate. A modern audience would not see or fully appreciate what the problem was. So we have a book with all the elements of a 19th century novel, but a story with an appeal to a 21st century audience and characters slightly more evolved and socially conscious than your typical 19th century English lords and ladies. That's nice. Emma Brown is a not very pretty young girl who has no memory of her past, and from the little she can recall thinks she has been "ruined" and is not fit to live. She is plopped by a Mysterious Man into a school for girls dressed as a wealthy heiress and then is revealed to be a pauper (much like Shirley Temple in "The Little Princess"). The school is run by three women who love her when she's rich, and hate her when they learn she's poor. In steps a local widow, who takes the child to live with her until she runs away with a sum of money intended for the repayment of her room and board at the school. In steps a local bachelor who devotes time and money to alternately attempt to locate the Mysterious Man among the wealthy and Emma somewhere in the teeming filth of the London slums. Enter an angelic, crippled, ragged slum child whose "baby doll" is the corpse of a little infant she found in the gutter (she would replace him with another corpse as soon as he began to look "unnatural" - infant corpses were everywhere, she explains, and she likes them because they keep her company), whom Emma befriends while she is liv

The mystery of "Emma Pilgrim."

The first two chapters of this novel are the work of Charlotte Bronte (JANE EYRE). When Bronte died in 1855, she left behind a 20-page manuscript written after VILLETTE and before her marriage. It was her last piece of fiction (p. 436). In EMMA BROWN, Clare Boylan has used Bront's fragment of a story as the starting point of her own Victorian novel, which tells the mysterious story of a young girl (Matilda Fitzgibbon), abandoned at a boarding school (Fuschia Lodge), and later entrusted to Boylan's narrator (Isabel Chalfont), before she returns to London's dirty, Dickensian streets (where she discovers her real name, Emma Brown) in search for her true identity and the mother who sold her to a gentleman for a guinea (p. 292). Matilda proves to be "no ordinary child." She is melodramatic and smart beyond her years, and when questioned about her past, says only, " I was sold like a farmyard creature. No one wants me. Only God may help me now" (p. 52). At the heart of Boylan's mystery, there is a startling secret about Victorian society. It doesn't matter whether this is the novel Bronte ever actually intended to write. Boylan's novel will nevertheless appeal to readers (like me) who enjoy reading Victorian literature. (And, oh, how I love reading Victorian novels!) With compelling parallels to Dicken's character sketches and Michel Faber's more recent, THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE (2002), EMMA BROWN is really a novel about the underside of nineteenth-century England: homelessness and child prostitution in Victorian London. The result is a satisfying novel with all the pathos of Bronte, Dickens, or Hardy. Emma is a strange girl, with the ability not only to steal wallets, but to steal hearts as well (p. 215). G. Merritt

Hooray for Emma Brown

I purchased this novel for two reasons. One, I am a big fan of the Bronte sisters (my favorite novels include both "Wuthering Heights" and "Jane Eyre) and two, because my daughters name is Emma Brown. Boylan does a wonderful job of being true to Bronte's style while infusing her own thoughts and nuances to the story. Interesting characters and a true Victorian feel make this book well worth reading. I have always been interested in the Victorian era. The last "modern Vicotrian novel" that I read was "The Crimson Petal and the White" by Michel Faber. I loved the writing style and the detail but was ultimately let down by a lack of ending. "Emma Brown" does not disappoint.

Bronte lives!

The first two chapters are Bronte's, the last fiction before her death in 1855. Acclaimed Irish writer Boylan continues this sketch, remaining true to Bronte's interests and style in developing a romantic mystery of identity and Victorian social issues.Bronte's narrator, Isabel Chalfont, a youngish widow, takes in a young girl called Matilda Fitzgibbon. Her purported father had delivered the child, along with a trunk of sumptuous clothing, to the fledgling, struggling, Wilcox School. But her fees went unpaid, her father's address proved fictitious and the man himself had disappeared.Petted as a wealthy prize, the child is reviled when proved poor. Introverted and miserable, her memory clouded, she nevertheless arouses maternal feelings in the childless Isabel. But shortly after remembering her real name - Emma - the girl runs off to find the mother who sold her, and efforts to discover her origins and whereabouts meet little success.Boylan branches out to tell the story from several perspectives. Chief among them are Isabel, Emma, and Mr. Ellin, a man of indolent habits with hidden depths and a secret past, the one who brought Emma to Isabel and now undertakes to find her "father." Emma, alone and soon robbed, finds herself among the lowest of the low in heartless London - but not so low she can't take on another girl, even younger and less fortunate than herself. Together they face hunger, homelessness and the work available to children, including prostitution.Each character's present is illuminated by their past - unjust treatment and romantic reversals deform or temper character - and the plot comes together in a proper Victorian tangle. Boylan's writing ("Holy Pictures," "Beloved Stranger") is always choice and atmospheric, and the Bronte connection gives her free reign to incorporate melodrama, romance and unsavory Victorian attitudes towards class, parental rights, poverty and the ownership of children and women.A sweeping, involving, Bronte-esque novel.