Quite dismissive, yes, but difficult to deny, and nearly impossible to ignore all of the millions of similarities of characters, plots, and themes; that this seemed the only route to publication, for a female author to "sell out," just as many authors have always done and continue to do today, other than novels like
Wuthering Heights,
The Awakening,
Middlemarch,
Silas Marner, and such classics, one can practically pick a book off the shelf, read 10 pages into it, and know roughly what will occur. Charlotte Brontė perfected the art of rhetoric; out of all of her novels, especially
Villette, I thought her language use entrancing, her descriptions remarkable, her individual character-depth astounding, but I feel she still lacked the original plot that her younger sister, Emily, could only connive (I just remembered Dr. Alfred Adler, a psychologist famed for his developmental theory, always considered creativity a quality more of middle-children than eldest or youngest
). I thought all of the Brontės amazingly talented writers, and I enjoyed all of their novels (yet snoozed a bit through
Agnes Grey), but feel that Charlotte and Anne sold out into that Jane-Austen mentality that in order to get successfully published, women writers must follow
this-and-that template; it all seemed way too easy to understand, and reading something in-depth into it, which many have attempted with Austen, seemed a lot like leading one's self on, rather than finding a pearl in the oyster shell.
Trends like these exist, and always will. During the Romantic era, a poet practically had to have a graduate degree in Greco-Roman mythology in order to write well (sarcasm, of course); the English and Irish flight-of-consciousness writers of the early 20th century gained high acclaim in their time; no one can deny the Dickensian verbosity popular in 19th century English and American literature, which would leave no irrelevant crack in the wall undescribed; post-Renaissance literature obsessed about heroics and chivalry. The trends undoubtedly persist even today, and will come clearer once the early 21st century drifts into the past, but some writers prefer squeezing themselves into these common areas of thought and rhetoric, and a few others step outside the boundaries of acceptance, think beyond the common societal values, and write the forever unwritten by any other hand. Perhaps Anne and Charlotte had that ability, too, yet, unlike Emily, they refused to utilize an obviously familial talent.
Originally Posted by Neely
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