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Modern Knowledge Schools

Grade 9 English Final Exam Study Guide

For the final exam you will be tested on the materials and skills you have learned from the following texts:

Write Source Much Ado About Nothing The Bronte Sisters Funny Letters from Famous People

If you have any questions, be sure you ask before the exam. Good luck.

Write Source

From the Write Source you will need to focus on the Parts of Speech (pages 700 – 737).

You should be able to identify the parts of speech in a sentence and use them correctly. There are eight parts of speech:

1. Noun: A word that names a person, a place, a thing or an ideaa. Proper nounb. Common nounc. Concrete nound. Abstract noune. Collective noun

2. Pronoun: A word used in place of a nouna. Antecedentsb. Personal pronouns (Reflexive and Intensive)c. Number of a Pronound. Person of a Pronoun

3. Verb: A word that expresses action or state of beinga. Linking Verbsb. Auxiliary Verbsc. Irregular Verbs

4. Adjective: A word that describes a noun or a pronoun5. Adverb: A word that describes a verb, an adjective, or another adverb

a. Type of Adverbsi. Timeii. Placeiii. Manneriv. Degree

b. Forms of Adverbsi. Positive Formii. Comparative Formiii. Superlative Form

6. Preposition: The first word or words in a prepositional phrase (which function as an adjective or an adverb)

of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

7. Conjunction: A word that connects other words or groups of wordsa. Coordinating Conjunctionsb. Correlative Conjunctionsc. Subordinating Conjunctions

8. Interjection : A word that shows strong emotion or surprise

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

Author Biography

Full Name: William Shakespeare Date of Birth: 1564 Place of Birth: Stratford-upon-Avon, England Date of Death: 1616

Brief Life Story: Shakespeare's father was a glove-maker, and Shakespeare received no more than a grammar school education. He married Anne Hathaway in 1582, but left his family behind around 1590 and moved to London, where he became an actor and playwright. He was an immediate success: Shakespeare soon became the most popular playwright of the day as well as a part-owner of the Globe Theater. His theater troupe was adopted by King James as the King's Men in 1603. Shakespeare retired as a rich and prominent man to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1613, and died three years later.

Key Facts

Full Title: Much Ado About Nothing

Genre: Comedy

Setting: Messina, Italy in the 16th Century

Climax: At the altar, Claudio publicly accuses Hero of unfaithfulness, sending her into a swoon.

Protagonists: Benedick, Beatrice, Claudio, Hero

Antagonist: Don John

Historical and Literary Context

When Written: 1598-1599

Where Written: England

When Published: 1623

Literary Period: Elizabethan


Related Literary Works: Scholars believe that there are two likely sources for part of the action in Much Ado About Nothing. The first is Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1532) and the second is an untitled novella by the Italian writer Mateo Bandello (1573), whose works also provided source material for some of Shakespeare’s other plays as well. Both of these works contain elements of the Claudio subplot: an unfairly disgraced bride, a father who pretends she has died, and an eventual reunion.

Related Historical Events: Much Ado About Nothing likely takes place during the 16th Century Italian Wars (1494-1559), a conflict which involved France, the Holy Roman Empire, the Spanish Kingdom of Aragon, England, Scotland, the Ottomans, the Swiss and various Italian states. For some periods during these wars, Naples and Sicily (where Messina is located) were under the control of Aragon. These wars explain the diverse origins of the characters in the play: Don Pedro and Don John are from Aragon, Benedick is from Padua, and Claudio is from Florence.

Plot Overview

The household of Leonato, Governor of Messina, awaits the arrival of the victorious soldiers Don Pedro, Claudio and Benedick. Leonato’s niece Beatrice makes sarcastic remarks about Benedick. When he and the two others arrive, she and Benedick begin trading insults, each boasting that they are hard-hearted, and immune to the charms of the opposite sex.

Claudio tells Benedick he is in love with Leonato’s daughter Hero. Benedick mocks him, and tells Don Pedro all about it as soon as he enters the room. Don Pedro comes up with a plan to disguise himself as Claudio, and woo Hero for him at that evening’s masked dance. Meanwhile, Benedick scoffs at love and marriage—but Don Pedro swears that Benedick will fall in love before long.

Leonato’s brother Antonio learns that Claudio loves Hero, and informs his brother. At the same time, Don Pedro’s bastard brother Don John—defeated enemy in the war before the play—learns from his minion Borachio of Don Pedro and Claudio’s plans. They scheme to ruin things at the dance that night.

As they prepare for the dance, Leonato, Beatrice and Hero discuss Hero’s marriage and marriage in general. Beatrice explains why she does not want to wed. The party-goers arrive, and Don Pedro—disguised as Claudio—goes off to propose to Hero. Meanwhile, a disguised Benedick is insulted by Beatrice, who pretends not to recognize him, and calls him a “dull fool.” Benedick gets angry, and goes off alone. Elsewhere in the crowd, Don John and Borachio pretend to mistake Claudio for Benedick, and convince him that Don Pedro wants Hero for himself. Claudio is upset until Don Pedro arrives with an announcement: Hero has agreed to marry Claudio. The wedding is set for a week later, and in the meantime, Don Pedro proposes that everyone try to make Benedick and Beatrice fall in love.

Borachio and Don John make a new plan to ruin the announced marriage. They scheme to trick Claudio and Don Pedro into thinking Hero has been unfaithful, by arranging for the two to see Borachio and Margaret—Hero’s waiting-gentlewoman—having sex of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

through Hero’s window.

Unaware of Borachio and Don John’s plan, Don Pedro and his friends enact their own plant to make Benedick fall in love. Benedick, alone in Leonato’s garden, runs and hides when he sees Don Pedro, Leonato, Claudio and Balthazar approaching. Knowing Benedick is there, they speak somberly about Beatrice’s love for Benedick. Benedick is quickly convinced, and when Beatrice comes to fetch him for dinner, he reads flirtatious double meanings into her words. Later, Hero, Margaret and Ursula lay the same trap for Beatrice, who is as easily convinced.

Soon after, Don John convinces Claudio and Don Pedro that Hero has been unfaithful. They agree to come watch her window for signs of a lover, and plan to shame her at her wedding if the accusations are true.

Dogberry, the head of the town Watch, and Verges, his second-in-command, instruct the members of the night watch. As this is going on, the watchmen overhear Borachio bragging to Conrade about how he made love to Margaret and convinced Don Pedro and Claudio of Hero’s unfaithfulness. The Watch arrests arrest both men. Just before the wedding the next morning, Dogberry and Verges try to bring Leonato to interrogate the conspirators. But Dogberry has so much trouble making himself understood that Leonato dismisses the pair, telling them to do the examination themselves.

The wedding proceeds. Just as the Friar is asking if anyone has any objections to the marriage, Claudio and Don Pedro make their accusation, humiliating Hero and causing her to faint from shame. Claudio, Don Pedro and the guests leave, and Leonato is beside himself. The Friar, doubting the accusations, suggests that Leonato pretend Hero is dead. This will give them time to look into the accusations, and perhaps to change Claudio’s feelings as well. Leonato agrees, while Benedick and Beatrice swear themselves to secrecy. Outraged by what has happened to her cousin, Beatrice asks Benedick to kill Claudio, saying that she cannot love him if he won’t. After some initial hesitance about fighting his best friend, he agrees.

Dogberry and the watch clumsily interrogate Conrade and Borachio. Despite Dogberry’s misuse of words and obsession minor matters—such as when Conrade calls him an ass—they extract a confession, and plan to bring the criminals to Leonato’s.

A fight almost breaks out between Leonato and Claudio, joined by Antonio and Don Pedro. Benedick arrives, and puts an end to the fight by challenging Claudio to fight him the next day. Don Pedro and Claudio do not take him seriously at first, but eventually decide that his love for Beatrice has driven him to do it. As they discuss Benedick’s change and challenge to Don Pedro, Dogberry, Verges and the Watch arrive with Conrade and Borachio, who confesses to the deception. Horrified, Claudio and Don Pedro beg Leonato’s forgiveness. Leonato agrees to forgive Claudio if he will hang an epitaph on Hero’s grave, clear her reputation, and then marry his niece.

Benedick tells Beatrice that he has agreed to fight Claudio. Ursula, a lady of the household, brings the news that Don John’s treachery has been discovered, and that he of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

has fled from Messina.

Don Pedro and Claudio go to Hero’s grave to hang an epitaph. Afterward, they proceed to Leonato’s for the wedding. There, Claudio is presented with Leonato’s niece, who is wearing a mask. To his surprise, when the mask is removed the “niece” turns out to be the still-living Hero. Claudio is overjoyed. Meanwhile, Benedick unmasks Beatrice, whom he has been given permission to marry. Just before they do, they realize that they were tricked into falling in love by the others. They decide to marry anyway, and Benedick calls for dancing before the weddings.

Characters

Hero – Leonato’s daughter, Beatrice’s cousin, and the beloved of Claudio. On the night before her wedding, Hero is unknowingly impersonated by Margaret and framed for being unfaithful to the groom, Claudio. She is publicly shamed at her wedding, and her father Leonato hides her away, pretending she is dead until the slander has been discredited. Hero is one of the characters who participates in the scheme to bring Benedick and Beatrice together.

Claudio – A young Florentine soldier who fights for Don Pedro, and a friend of Benedick. He falls in love with Hero and plans to marry her, but disgraces her publicly after he is tricked by Don John and Borachio into thinking she has been unfaithful. By the end of the play, after her faithfulness has been proven, he marries her. Claudio is one of the characters who participates in the scheme to bring Benedick and Beatrice together.

Benedick – A witty young Lord of Padua and a soldier. He is extraordinarily successful with women, but is fanatically committed to a bachelor’s life. He has a “merry war,” of wits and insults with Beatrice, whom he hates. By the end of the play, Claudio, Don Pedro and Leonato have tricked him into falling in love with Beatrice, and he marries her.

Beatrice – Leonato’s niece, an extremely witty and strong-willed young woman. Beatrice has a “merry war,” of wits and insults with Benedick, whom she hates. Like Benedick, Beatrice never wants to marry. All the same, she is tricked by Hero and Ursula into falling in love with and marrying Benedick by the end of the play.

Don Pedro – The Prince of Aragon. He is always involved in the affairs of the other characters. Don Pedro woos Hero for Claudio. He also comes up with the idea of setting up Beatrice and Benedick. He helps Claudio disgrace Hero at the wedding, and then helps him make up for it. By the end of the play, he is the only one of the three soldier friends to stay single

Don John – The bastard brother of Don Pedro, and the antagonist of the play. When the play begins, Don John has just been defeated by his brother in battle while trying to usurp him. Out of desire for revenge and a general bad attitude, Don John schemes to destroy the marriage of Hero and Claudio. He almost succeeds, but his treachery is confessed by his minions Conrade and Borachio, who have been arrested and of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

interrogated by Dogberry and the watch. By the end of the play, he has been captured while trying to escape from Messina.

Leonato – Governor of Messina and father to Hero. When Hero is publicly disgraced at her wedding, Leonato is outraged, and cannot decide whether or not to believe in his daughter’s faithfulness to Claudio. Leonato participates in Don Pedro’s scheme to bring Benedick and Beatrice together.

Antonio – Leonato’s brother. At the wedding in the final act, he poses as father to Leonato’s niece: in reality, this is Hero in disguise.

Balthazar – A servant of Don Pedro’s. He flirts with Margaret at the masked dance, and plays music in the garden where Leonato, Don Pedro and Claudio have arranged for Benedick to overhear them. He is witty, and makes puns on the words nothing and noting.

Borachio – A minion of Don John’s. He is paid for coming up with and carrying out the scheme to ruin Hero and Claudio’s marriage. Borachio is arrested by the watch after boasting to Conrade about his villainy.

Conrade – A minion of Don John’s. During his interrogation, he calls Dogberry an ass, which obsesses the constable for the rest of the play.

Dogberry – A constable of Messina. Dogberry is not strict with criminals, and cautions the other members of the watch to also leave criminals alone. He misuses language terribly, and his inability to articulate himself is one of the reasons it takes so long for Don John’s treachery to be revealed.

Verges – A headborough of Messina. He works with Dogberry, and is insulted by him for being old.

Friar Francis – He conducts the two weddings. When Hero is disgraced, he is the first one to suspect that she might be innocent. It is his idea to pretend that Hero is dead while the matter is investigated.

Margaret – Hero’s witty and flirtatious waiting-gentlewoman. Margaret is seduced by Borachio on the night before the first wedding, as part of his scheme to ruin Hero. Don Pedro and Claudio are looking on from outside, and are lead to believe that Margaret is Hero.

Ursula – Another of Hero’s waiting gentle-women. Ursula helps Hero make Beatrice fall in love with Benedick

Themes

Love and Masquerade

Love, in Much Ado About Nothing, is always involved with tricks, games and disguises. Every step in romance takes place by way of masquerade. Hero is won for Claudio by of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

Don Pedro in disguise. Benedick and Beatrice are brought together through an elaborate prank. Claudio can be reconciled with Hero only after her faked death. Altogether, these things suggest that love—like a play or masquerade—is a game based on appearances, poses and the manipulation of situations.

Love, in Much Ado, is like chemistry. If you put people together in a certain way, a certain result occurs. Lovers in the play are like masked dancers: the pose and the situation matter more than who the other dancer really is. The lover is a piece in the game, a mask in the crowd, and everyone—no matter who they are—falls victim in the same way. Don Pedro manipulates Benedick and Beatrice like a scientist conducting an experiment, or a playwright setting a scene. The play suggests that love is not love without its masquerade-like sequence of poses and appearances, even if they must be imagined or faked.

Courtship, Wit, and Warfare

Much Ado About Nothing constantly compares the social world—masquerade balls, witty banter, romance and courtship—with the military world. War of wit and love are compared to real wars in a metaphor that extends through every part of the play. The rivalry of Benedick and Beatrice is called a “merry war,” and the language they use with and about each other is almost always military: as when Benedick complains that “[Beatrice] speaks poniards, and every word stabs.” Romance, too, is made military. The arrows of Cupid are frequently mentioned, and the schemes which the characters play on each other to accomplish their romantic goals are similar to military operations. Like generals, the characters execute careful strategies and tricks.

Don John and Don Pedro, enemies in the war before the play begins, face off again on the field of social life: one schemes to ruin a marriage, another to create one. Benedick and Beatrice are “ambushed,” by their friends into eavesdropping on staged conversations. Borachio stations Margaret as a “decoy,” in Hero’s window. The “merry war,” of Much Ado About Nothing ends just like the real war that comes before the beginning of the play: everyone has a happy ending. At the very beginning, Leonato says that “A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers”—in this, the end of a good comedy resembles the end of a good war

Language, Perception and Reality

Much Ado About Nothing dwells on the way that language and communication affect our perception of reality. It is important to remember nothing (besides marriage) actually happens in the play—there are no fights, deaths, thefts, journeys, trials, illnesses, sexual encounters, losses or gains of wealth, or anything else material. All that changes is the perception that these things have happened, or that they will happen: that Hero is no longer a virgin, or that she has died, or that Claudio and Benedick will fight.

Tricks of language alone repeatedly change the entire situation of the play. Overheard conversations cause Benedick and Beatrice to fall in love, and the sonnets they have written one another stop them from separating once the prank behind their romance has been revealed. The idea that we live in a world of language and appearances, beyond


which we cannot see, is common throughout Shakespeare. The famous quote that “All the world’s a stage,” is another example.

By the end, the false language in Much Ado About Nothing has almost overwhelmed the reality. Characters have fallen into the roles given to them in the lies told about them: Benedick and Beatrice have become lovers, and Hero is treated like a whore by her own father. Ironically, the only character with the knowledge to replace this false language with the truth is the completely inarticulate Dogberry.

Marriage, Shame, and Freedom

For the characters of Much Ado About Nothing, romantic experiences are always connected to issues of freedom and shame. If dignity comes from having a strong and free will, then love, desire and marriage are a threat to it. This is the position taken by most of the characters. Benedick, for example, compares the married man to a tame, humiliated animal. The events of the play confirm this position on love and dignity taken by most of the characters. Benedick and Beatrice begin the play seeming witty, aloof and superior to the others. But by the end, their love has made them somewhat ridiculous. Like puppets, they are manipulated by their friends.

Ironically, Much Ado About Nothing suggests that the characters fear of shame in love is more likely to lead to embarrassment than love itself will. Terrified that marrying Hero will dishonor him, Claudio shames her publicly. But when the truth comes out, his outburst seems silly. The same goes for Beatrice and Benedick: their extreme resistance to love and marriage (and the accompanying shame and loss of freedom) makes them look all the more ridiculous when they finally give in. They also lose more of their freedom: while Claudio chooses Hero, Benedick and Beatrice are chosen for each other.

At the same time, Much Ado suggests that giving in to our strong feelings for other people is unavoidable. Despite the shame of going back on their principles, despite the knowledge that the whole thing was set up by others, Benedick and Beatrice are happy in love—perhaps this happiness is more important than dignity and freedom. As Benedick puts it, “man is a giddy thing,” and the play ends with joyous dancing.

Symbols

Nothing

The title of Much Ado About Nothing was originally a double-entendre. Elizabethans pronounced the word “nothing,” in the same way as the word “noting.” Both of these meanings are important. First, most of the action in the play is based on nothing. The drama is not based on actual events—actual things that have happened—but rather on mistaken perceptions: Hero is never really unfaithful, Hero is never really dead, Benedick and Beatrice do not really love each other (at first), and Don Pedro is not really courting Hero for himself. What really drives the action of the play is that characters are noting these nothings. The double-entendre of nothing/noting alludes to one of the major themes of the play, that perceptions, even wrong ones, can change reality. Noting nothing makes it something.


Beards

Beards are a complicated symbol of masculinity in Much Ado About Nothing. Benedick’s beard symbolizes his rugged bachelorhood, while Claudio’s clean-shaven face indicates his “softness,” and vulnerability—Benedick at one point calls him “Lord Lack-beard.” Beatrice’s dislike of beards symbolically stands for her resistance to men in general. Much Ado connects beardlessness with falling in love: the first thing Benedick does when he falls in love with Beatrice is to shave. Altogether, the connection between beards, love and masculinity in the play seem to suggest that falling in love, for a man, comes with the risk of losing one’s masculinity—as represented by the beard.

Eyes

Eyes are a metonym for perception in Much Ado About Nothing, which means that the word "eye" is often mentioned by a character who really means by it any kind of perception, not just sight. Eyes come up especially often whenever one character’s perceptions are being influenced by another character’s tricks. Leonato, for instance, says that Benedick and Beatrice have got their “eyes” for each other from other characters; he means that they see each other a certain way (adoringly) because he and the others have tricked them into it. Borachio deceives the eyes of Claudio and Don Pedro when he poses with Margaret at Hero’s window. At one point in the play, Claudio asks the rhetorical question “Are our eyes our own?” In Much Ado About Nothing, the answer to this question is often no.

The Savage Bull

Don Pedro teases Benedick that “In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke.” This image acts as a symbol for marriage throughout the play. Just as the free and proud bull is broken and tamed by the farmer, the bachelor is tamed by responsibility when he becomes a married man. The bull’s horns are another part of the image: the cuckold—or man whose wife is cheating on him—was depicted as having horns sprouting from his head. Altogether, the image of the tamed bull suggests that marriage robs a man of his freedom, turns him into a beast of burden, and comes with a risk of cuckold-like shame. But the meaning of the image changes as the play goes on. In the fifth act, Claudio reassures Benedick that his horns will be “tipped with gold,” like those of Jove (Zeus), who transformed himself into a bull to seduce Europa. Just as Benedick’s view of marriage becomes more positive, so too does the image of the bull. The bull first symbolizes a humiliated beast of burden, but by the end becomes associated with the mythological adventures of Zeus, King of the Gods

Quotes

Act 1, Scene 1 Quotes

“There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her; they never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.”(62)

Location: Act 1, Scene 1


Speaker: Leonato Mentioned or related: Benedick, Beatrice Related themes: Courtship, Wit, and Warfare

“Well, as time shall try: ‘In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke.’”(262)

Location: Act 1, Scene 1 Speaker: Don Pedro Mentioned or related: Benedick Related themes: Marriage, Shame and Freedom

“A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers.”(8)

Location: Act 1, Scene 1 Speaker: Leonato Related themes: Courtship, Wit, and Warfare

“...he wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block.”(75)

Location: Act 1, Scene 1 Speaker: Beatrice Mentioned or related: Benedick Related themes: Love and Masquerade, Courtship, Wit, and Warfare

“Shall I never see a bachelor of threescore again?”(199)

Location: Act 1, Scene 1 Speaker: Benedick Mentioned or related: Claudio Related themes: Marriage, Shame and Freedom


“I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain.”(32)

Location: Act 1, Scene 2 Speaker: Don John Related themes: Love and Masquerade, Courtship, Wit, and Warfare, Language,

Perception and Reality


“Friendship is constant in all other thingsSave in the office and affairs of love: therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues; Let every eye negotiate for itself


And trust no agent; for beauty is a witchAgainst whose charms faith melteth into blood.”(174)

Location: Act 2, Scene 1 Speaker: Claudio Mentioned or related: Don Pedro Related themes: Love and Masquerade, Language, Perception and Reality

“Speak low, if you speak love.”(99)

Location: Act 2, Scene 1 Speaker: Don Pedro Mentioned or related: Hero Related themes: Love and Masquerade, Courtship, Wit, and Warfare

“Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much.”(306)

Location: Act 2, Scene 1 Speaker: Claudio Related themes: Language, Perception and Reality

“He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me; and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.”(36)

Location: Act 2, Scene 1 Speaker: Beatrice Related themes: Love and Masquerade, Courtship, Wit, and Warfare


“Note this before my notes; There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.”(54)

Location: Act 2, Scene 3 Speaker: Balthazar Related themes: Language, Perception and Reality

“One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well; another virtuous, yet I am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.”(26)

Location: Act 2, Scene 3 Speaker: Benedick Related themes: Love and Masquerade, Marriage, Shame and Freedom



“…of this matterIs little Cupid’s crafty arrow made,That only wounds by hearsay.”(23)

Location: Act 3, Scene 1 Speaker: Hero Related themes: Love and Masquerade, Courtship, Wit, and Warfare, Language,



“Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.”(28)

Location: Act 3, Scene 2 Speaker: Benedick Related themes: Language, Perception and Reality

“Even she: Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, every man’s Hero.”(106)

Location: Act 3, Scene 2 Speaker: Don John Mentioned or related: Claudio Related themes: Love and Masquerade, Courtship, Wit, and Warfare, Marriage,

Shame and Freedom


“Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this fashion is? how giddily he turns about all the hot bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty?”(130)

Location: Act 3, Scene 3 Speaker: Borachio Mentioned or related: Conrade Related themes: Love and Masquerade, Language, Perception and Reality

“I think they that touch pitch will be defiled.”(57)

Location: Act 3, Scene 3 Speaker: Dogberry Related themes: Marriage, Shame and Freedom


“There is not chastity enough in languageWithout offence to utter them.”(97)


Location: Act 4, Scene 1 Speaker: Don John Related themes: Language, Perception and Reality, Marriage, Shame and Freedom

“O! that I were a man for his sake, or that I had any friend would be a man for my sake! But manhood is melted into courtesies, valour into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too: he is now as valiant as Hercules, that only tells a lie and swears it. I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving.”(137)

Location: Act 4, Scene 1 Speaker: Beatrice Related themes: Courtship, Wit, and Warfare, Marriage, Shame and Freedom

“But mine , and mine I lov'd , and mine I prais'd, And mine that I was proud on, mine so much That I myself was to myself not mine, Valuing of her; why, she— O! she is fallen Into a pit of ink…”(136)

Location: Act 4, Scene 1 Speaker: Leonato Mentioned or related: Hero Related themes: Love and Masquerade, Marriage, Shame and Freedom

“Oh what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not knowing what they do!”(19)

Location: Act 4, Scene 1 Speaker: Claudio Related themes: Language, Perception and Reality, Marriage, Shame and Freedom


“O that he were here to write me down an ass! but, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.”(75)

Location: Act 4, Scene 2 Speaker: Dogberry Related themes: Language, Perception and Reality


“Charm ache with air and agony with words.”(26)

Location: Act 5, Scene 1 Speaker: Leonato Related themes: Language, Perception and Reality


“For there was never yet philosopherThat could endure the toothache patiently,However they have writ the style of godsAnd made a push at chance and sufferance.”(35)

Location: Act 5, Scene 1 Speaker: Leonato Related themes: Language, Perception and Reality


“I was not born under a rhyming planet.”(40)

Location: Act 5, Scene 2 Speaker: Benedick Related themes: Love and Masquerade, Courtship, Wit, and Warfare, Language,



“…get thee a wife, get thee a wife: there is no staff more reverent than one tipped with horn.”(123)

Location: Act 5, Scene 4 Speaker: Benedick Mentioned or related: Beatrice Related themes: Marriage, Shame and Freedom

The Bronte Sisters, The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne by Catherine Reef

Catherine Reef offers a detail-rich look at the lives of the Brontë sisters, whose works shocked, entertained, and provoked the minds of their Victorian audiences. This chronological account is three biographies rolled into one, reflecting the sisters’ intertwined lives. In a matter-of-fact yet conversational style, Reef anchors their stories in the historical context of industrial 19th-century England. Names and dates are many, but the narrative also quotes from the Brontës’ poems and letters, as well as those of others (a friend of their brother, Branwell, who died an alcoholic, reflected, “That Rector of Haworth little knew how to bring up and bring out his clever family.... So the girls worked their own way to fame and death, the boy to death only!”).

Charlotte Bronte

Charlotte Brontë was born in 1816, the third daughter of the Rev. Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria. Her brother Patrick Branwell was born in 1817, and her sisters Emily and Anne in 1818 and 1820. In 1820, too, the Brontë family moved to Haworth, Mrs. Brontë dying the following year.


In 1824 the four eldest Brontë daughters were enrolled as pupils at the Clergy Daughter's School at Cowan Bridge. The following year Maria and Elizabeth, the two eldest daughters, became ill, left the school and died: Charlotte and Emily, understandably, were brought home.

In 1826 Mr. Brontë brought home a box of wooden soldiers for Branwell to play with. Charlotte, Emily, Branwell, and Ann, playing with the soldiers, conceived of and began to write in great detail about an imaginary world which they called Angria.

In 1831 Charlotte became a pupil at the school at Roe Head, but she left school the following year to teach her sisters at home. She returned returns to Roe Head School in 1835 as a governess: for a time her sister Emily attended the same school as a pupil, but became homesick and returned to Haworth. Ann took her place from 1836 to 1837.

In 1838, Charlotte left Roe Head School. In 1839 she accepted a position as governess in the Sidgewick family, but left after three months and returned to Haworth. In 1841 she became governess in the White family, but left, once again, after nine months.

Upon her return to Haworth the three sisters, led by Charlotte, decided to open their own school after the necessary preparations had been completed. In 1842 Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels to complete their studies. After a trip home to Haworth, Charlotte returned alone to Brussels, where she remained until 1844.

Upon her return home the sisters embarked upon their project for founding a school, which proved to be an abject failure: their advertisements did not elicit a single response from the public. The following year Charlotte discovered Emily's poems, and decided to publish a selection of the poems of all three sisters: 1846 brought the publication of their Poems, written under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Charlotte also completed The Professor, which was rejected for publication. The following year, however, Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Emily's Wuthering Heights, and Ann's Agnes Grey were all published, still under the Bell pseudonyms.

In 1848 Charlotte and Ann visited their publishers in London, and revealed the true identities of the "Bells." In the same year Branwell Brontë, by now an alcoholic and a drug addict, died, and Emily died shortly thereafter. Ann died the following year.

In 1849 Charlotte, visiting London, began to move in literary circles, making the acquaintance, for example, of Thackeray. In 1850 Charlotte edited her sister's various works, and met Mrs. Gaskell. In 1851she visited the Great Exhibition in London, and attended a series of lectures given by Thackeray.

The Rev. A. B. Nicholls, curate of Haworth since 1845, proposed marriage to Charlotte in 1852. The Rev. Mr. Brontë objected violently, and Charlotte, who, though she may have pitied him, was in any case not in love with him, refused him. Nicholls left Haworth in the following year, the same in which Charlotte's Villette was published. By 1854, however, Mr. Brontë's opposition to the proposed marriage had weakened, and Charlotte and Nicholls became engaged. Nicholls returned as curate at Haworth, and they were married, though it seems clear that Charlotte, though she admired him, still did not love him. of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

In 1854 Charlotte, expecting a child, caught pneumonia. It was an illness which could have been cured, but she seems to have seized upon it (consciously or unconsciously) as an opportunity of ending her life, and after a lengthy and painful illness, she died, probably of dehydration.

1857 saw the postumous publication of The Professor, which had been written in 1845-46, and in that same year Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë was published.

Emily Bronte

Sealed in her art-world, the moor strategically placed for escape above the house, no domesticating and limiting mother to weaken her capacity for identification with whatever sex she chose to impersonate at a particular moment, polite society at a safe distance, and a father who seems to have selected her as an honorary boy to be trusted with fire-arms in defence of the weak, Emily Brontë's life exemplifies a rough joy in itself, its war-games, its word games and its power to extend its own structuring vision out upon the given world. [Davies, 9]

Emily Brontë was born at Thornton, Bradford, Yorkshire, and just after the birth of her sister Anne (20 April 1820), she moved with her family to Haworth, near Keighley, Yorkshire, where she spent most of her life. Today remembered chiefly as the author of the eighteenth-century romance Wuthering Heights (1847), set in her native Yorkshire, Emily Brontë was the second surviving daughter and fifth child of Cornishwoman Maria Brontë and the Ulsterman Reverend Patrick Brontë (1777-1861), "perpetual curate" (rector) of the remote village of Haworth on the Yorkshire Moors from 1820 until his death in 1861. Maria died on 15 September 1821, survived by her husband, five daughters, and a son, Branwell (1817-48). Emily and her sisters (except Anne) attended Cowan Bridge School, a Church of England clergymen's daughters' boarding school (the original of Lowood in Charlotte's Jane Eyre). Emily spent a total of just six months there: 25 November 1824 to 1 June 1825. The eldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, became so ill that they had to be taken home, and died shortly after their return, the former on 6 May and the latter on 15 June 1825. From then until 1830 the surviving children remained at Haworth. From 29 July through October 1835 Emily taught at Miss Wooler's School at Roe Head, where Charlotte had taught in 1831-32.

The girls' real education, however, was at the Haworth parsonage, where they had the run of their father's books, and were thus nurtured on the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Sir Walter Scott and many others. They enthusiastically read articles on current affairs, lengthy reviews and intellectual disputes in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and The Edinburgh Review. They also ranged freely in Aesop and in the colourfully bizarre world of The Arabian Nights' Entertainments. . . . [Cambridge Guide, 118

After service as a governess in Halifax, Yorkshire (the second half of the year 1838), in 1842 Emily accompanied her surviving sisters, Anne and Charlotte, to Brussels, where from mid-February through the beginning of November they attended the Pensionnat Héger with the goal of improving their proficiency in French in order to start their own school. Their 1844 plans for their own school, however, foundered, and the sisters were of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

reunited at Haworth in August 1845. When in the autumn of 1845 Charlotte accidentally discovered the manuscript of Emily's Gondal verses, she initiated the publication of a volume of poems by all three sisters, who as a clergyman's daughters thought it advisable to adopt the noms des plumes Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily), and Acton (Anne) Bell (probably with a pun on "Belle"). In the preface to the 1850 edition of the poems, Charlotte herself recalls the moment of discovery:

Of course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse: I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me, — a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, not at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear, they had also a peculiar music — wild, melancholy, and elevating. [cited by Ian Jack, p. 359]

A year after the publication by Thomas Cautley Newby, London, of Wuthering Heights (December 1847), Emily died of tuberculosis. On 19 December 1848, she suddenly expired as she stood with one hand on the mantlepiece of the living room in the Haworth parsonage. She was just 30 years old but had already produced a romantic tragedy in novel form, written over the course of 1845-46, yet to be surpassed in the English language. As Paul Lieder points out,

Emily Brontë wrote so little in her short life that it is difficult to appraise her work with any surety. One point is generally agreed upon: that in both her prose and poetry there is, in spite of minor faults, a rare power.

In her poetry, Emily Brontë achieves a remarkable effect by the energy and sincerity, and often by the music, with which she portrays her stoicism, independence, and compassion in stanzas which in many instances are the commonplace vehicles used by mere rimers. It is as though she were brought up to feel that certain forms of verse were the patterns, and had, with dogged acceptance, poured into them her emotions with an honesty that made the outward form seem negligible. [Lieder 287-288]

Anne Bronte

Anne Brontë was a British novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.

The daughter of a poor Irish clergyman in the Church of England, Anne Brontë lived most of her life with her family at the parish of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. For a couple of years she went to a boarding school. At the age of nineteen, she left Haworth working as a governess between 1839 and 1845. After leaving her teaching position, she fulfilled her literary ambitions. She wrote a volume of poetry with her sisters (Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, 1846) and in short succession she wrote two novels. Agnes Grey, based upon her experiences as a governess, was published in 1847. Her second and last novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall appeared in 1848. Anne's life was cut short with her death of pulmonary tuberculosis when she was 29 years old.

Anne Brontë is somewhat overshadowed by her more famous sisters, Charlotte, author of four novels including Jane Eyre; and Emily, author of Wuthering Heights. Anne's two novels, written in a sharp and ironic style, are completely different from the romanticism of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

followed by her sisters. She wrote in a realistic, rather than a romantic style. Her novels, like those of her sisters, have become classics of English literature.

Family Background

Anne's father, Patrick Brontë (1777–1861), was born in a meagre two-room cottage in Emdale, Loughbrickland, County Down, Ireland. He was the first of ten children born to Hugh Brunty and Eleanor McCrory, a couple of poor Irish peasant farmers. The family surname mac Aedh Ó Proinntigh had been earlier Anglicised as Prunty or sometimes Brunty. Struggling against poverty, Patrick learned how to read and write and from 1798 to teach others. In 1802, at the age of twenty-six, he won a place at Cambridge to study theology at St. John's College. There he gave up his original name, Brunty, and called himself by the more distinguished Brontë. In 1807 he was ordained in the priesthood in the Church of England. He served as an assistant priest or curate in various parishes and in 1810 he published his first poem Winter Evening Thoughts in a local newspaper, followed in 1811 by a collection of moral verse, Cottage Poems. In 1811, he was made vicar of St. Peter's church in Hartshead in Yorkshire. The following year he was appointed an examiner of Bible knowledge at a Wesleyan academy, Woodhouse Grove School. There, at age thirty-five, he met his future wife, Maria Branwell, the headmaster's niece.

Anne's mother, Maria Branwell (1783–1821), was the daughter of a successful, property-owning grocer and tea merchant of Penzance, Thomas Branwell and Anne Crane, the daughter of a silversmith in the town. The eighth of eleven children, Maria had enjoyed all the benefits of belonging to a prosperous family in a small town. After the death of both parents within a year of each other, Maria went to help her aunt with the teaching at the school. A tiny, neat woman, aged thirty, she was well read and intelligent. Her strong Methodist faith immediately attracted Patrick Brontë.

Though from vastly different backgrounds, within three months Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell were married on 29 December 1812. Their first child, Maria (1814–1825), was born after their move to Hartshead. In 1815, Patrick was made curate of a chapel in the little village of Thornton, near Bradford; a second daughter, Elizabeth (1815–1825), was born shortly after. Four more children would follow: Charlotte, (1816–1855), Patrick Branwell (1817–1848), Emily, (1818–1848) and Anne (1820–1849).

Early Life

Anne, the youngest member of the Brontë family, was born on 17 January 1820, at number 74 Market Street in the village of Thornton, Bradford, Yorkshire, England. When Anne was born, her father was the curate of Thornton and she was baptised there on 25 March 1820. Shortly after, Anne's father took a perpetual curacy, a secure but not enriching vocation, in Haworth, a remote small town some seven miles (11 km) away. In April 1820, the Brontë family moved into the Haworth Parsonage, a five-room building which became their family home for the rest of their lives.

Anne was barely a year old when her mother became ill of what is believed to have been uterine cancer. Maria Branwell died on 15 September 1821. In order to provide a mother for his children, Patrick tried to remarry, but he had no success. Maria's sister, Elizabeth Branwell (1776–1842), had moved into the parsonage, initially to nurse her dying sister, of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

but she subsequently spent the rest of her life there raising the Brontë children. She did it from a sense of duty, but she was a stern woman who expected respect, rather than love. There was little affection between her and the eldest children, but to Anne, her favourite according to tradition, she did relate. Anne shared a room with her aunt, they were particularly close, and this may have strongly influenced Anne's personality and religious beliefs.

In Elizabeth Gaskell's biography, Anne's father remembered her as precocious, reporting that once, when she was four years old, in reply to his question about what a child most wanted, she answered: "age and experience".

In the summer of 1824, Patrick sent his eldest daughters Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily to Crofton Hall in Crofton, West Yorkshire, and later to the Clergy Daughter's School, Cowan Bridge, Lancashire. When the two eldest siblings died of consumption in 1825, Maria on 6 May and Elizabeth on 15 June, Charlotte and Emily were immediately brought home. The unexpected deaths of Anne's two eldest sisters distressed the bereaved family enough that Patrick could not face sending them away again. For the next five years, all the Brontë children were educated at home, largely by their father and aunt. The young Brontës made little attempt to mix with others outside the parsonage, but relied upon each other for friendship and companionship. The bleak moors surrounding Haworth became their playground.

Education

Anne's studies at home included music and drawing. Anne, Emily and Branwell had piano lessons at the parsonage from the Keighley parish organist. The Brontë children received art lessons from John Bradley of Keighley and all of them drew with some skill. Their aunt tried to make sure the girls knew how to run a household, but their minds were more inclined to literature. Their father's well-stocked library was a main source of knowledge.

Those readings fed the Brontës' imaginations. The children's creativity soared after their father presented Branwell with a set of toy soldiers in June 1826. They named the soldiers and developed their characters, which they called the "Twelves". This led to the creation of an imaginary world: the African kingdom of "Angria". That was illustrated with maps and watercolour renderings. The children kept themselves busy devising plots about the people of Angria, and its capital city, "Glass Town", later called Verreopolis, and finally, Verdopolis.

These fantasy worlds and kingdoms gradually acquired all the characteristics of the real world—sovereigns, armies, heroes, outlaws, fugitives, inns, schools and publishers. For these peoples and lands the children created newspapers, magazines and chronicles, all of which were written out in extremely tiny books, with writing that was so small it was difficult to read without the aid of a magnifying glass. These juvenile creations and writings served as the apprenticeship of their later, literary talents.

Juvenilia

Around 1831, when Anne was eleven, she and her sister Emily broke away from Charlotte and Branwell in the creation and development of the fictional sagas of Angria of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

establishing their own fantasy world of Gondal. Anne was at this time particularly close to Emily; the closeness of their relationship was reinforced by Charlotte's departure for Roe Head School, in January 1831. When Charlotte's friend Ellen Nussey visited Haworth in 1833, she reported that Emily and Anne were "like twins", "inseparable companions". She described Anne at this time: "Anne, dear gentle Anne was quite different in appearance from the others, and she was her aunt's favourite. Her hair was a very pretty light brown, and fell on her neck in graceful curls. She had lovely violet-blue eyes; fine pencilled eyebrows and a clear almost transparent complexion. She still pursued her studies and especially her sewing, under the surveillance of her aunt." Anne also took lessons from Charlotte, after she came back from the boarding school, at Roe Head. Later, Anne began more formal studies at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head, Huddersfield. Charlotte returned there on 29 July 1835 as a teacher. Emily accompanied her as a pupil; her tuition largely financed by Charlotte's teaching. Within a few months, Emily was unable to adapt to life at school, and by October, was physically ill from homesickness. She was withdrawn from the school and replaced by Anne.

At fifteen, it was Anne's first time away from home, and she made few friends at Roe Head. She was quiet and hard working, and determined to stay and get the education that would allow her to support herself. Anne stayed for two years, winning a good-conduct medal in December 1836, and returning home only during Christmas and the summer holidays. Anne and Charlotte do not appear to have been close during their time at Roe Head (Charlotte's letters almost never mention Anne) but Charlotte was concerned about the health of her sister. At some point before December 1837, Anne became seriously ill with gastritis and underwent a religious crisis. A Moravian minister was called to see Anne several times during her illness, suggesting that her distress was caused, at least in part, by conflict with the local Anglican clergy. Charlotte was sufficiently concerned about Anne's illness to notify Patrick Brontë, and to take Anne home where she remained to recover.

Employment at Blake Hall

Little is known about Anne's life during 1838, but in 1839, a year after leaving the school and at the age of nineteen, she was actively looking for a teaching position. As the daughter of a poor clergyman, she needed to earn a living. Her father had no private income and the parsonage would revert to the church on his death. Teaching or being a governess in a private family were among the few options available to poor but educated women. In April, 1839, Anne began to work as a governess with the Ingham family at Blake Hall, near Mirfield.

The children in Anne's charge were spoilt and wild, and persistently disobeyed and tormented her. She experienced great difficulty controlling them, and had almost no success in instilling any education. She was not empowered to inflict any punishment, and when she complained of their behaviour to their parents, she received no support, but was merely criticised for not being capable of her job. The Inghams, unsatisfied with their children's progress, dismissed Anne at the end of the year. She returned home at Christmas, 1839, joining Charlotte and Emily, who had left their positions, and Branwell. The whole episode at Blake Hall was so traumatic for Anne, that she reproduced it in almost perfect detail in her later novel, Agnes Grey.


William Weightman

At Anne's return to Haworth, she met William Weightman (1814–1842), Patrick's new curate, who began work in the parish in August 1839. Twenty-five years old, he had obtained a two-year licentiate in theology from the University of Durham. He quickly became welcome at the parsonage. Anne's acquaintance with William Weightman parallels the writing of a number of poems, which may suggest that she fell in love with him. There is considerable disagreement over this point. Not much outside evidence exists beyond a teasing anecdote of Charlotte's to Ellen Nussey in January 1842.

It may or may not be relevant that the source of Agnes Grey 's renewed interest in poetry is the curate to whom she is attracted. As the person to whom Anne Brontë may have been attracted, William Weightman has aroused much curiosity. It seems clear that he was a good-looking, engaging young man, whose easy humour and kindness towards the Brontë sisters made a considerable impression. It is such a character that she portrays in Edward Weston, and that her heroine Agnes Grey finds deeply appealing.

If Anne did form an attachment to Weightman, that does not imply that he, in turn, was attracted to her. Indeed, it is entirely possible that Weightman was no more aware of her than of her sisters or their friend Ellen Nussey. Nor does it follow that Anne believed him to be interested in her. If anything, her poems suggest just the opposite–they speak of quietly experienced but intensely felt emotions, intentionally hidden from others, without any indication of their being requited. It is also possible that an initially mild attraction to Weightman assumed increasing importance to Anne over time, in the absence of other opportunities for love, marriage, and children.

Anne would have seen William Weightman on her holidays at home, particularly during the summer of 1842, when her sisters were away. He died of cholera in the same year. Anne expressed her grief for his death in her poem "I will not mourn thee, lovely one", in which she called him "our darling".

Governess

Anne soon obtained a second post: this time as a governess to the children of the Reverend Edmund Robinson and his wife Lydia, at Thorp Green, a wealthy country house near York. Thorp Green appeared later as Horton Lodge in her novel Agnes Grey. Anne was to have four pupils: Lydia, age 15, Elizabeth, age 13, Mary, age 12, and Edmund, age 8. Initially, she encountered the same problems with the unruly children that she had experienced at Blake Hall. Anne missed her home and family, commenting in a diary paper in 1841 that she did not like her situation and wished to leave it. Her own quiet, gentle disposition did not help matters. However, despite her outwardly placid appearance, Anne was determined and with the experience she gradually gained, she eventually made a success of her position, becoming well liked by her new employers. Her charges, the Robinson girls, ultimately became her lifelong friends.

For the next five years, Anne spent no more than five or six weeks a year with her family, during holidays at Christmas and in June. The rest of her time she was with the Robinsons at their home Thorp Green. She was also obliged to accompany the family on their annual holidays to Scarborough. Between 1840 and 1844, Anne spent around five of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

weeks each summer at the resort, and loved the place. A number of locations in Scarborough formed the setting for Agnes Grey 's final scenes.

During the time working for the Robinsons, Anne and her sisters considered the possibility of setting-up their own school. Various locations, including their own home, the parsonage, were considered as places to establish it. The project never materialised and Anne chose repeatedly to return to Thorp Green. She came home at the death of her aunt in early November 1842, while her sisters were away in Brussels. Elizabeth Branwell left a £350 legacy for each of her nieces.

Anne returned to Thorp Green in January 1843. She secured a position for Branwell with her employers: he was to take over from her as tutor to the Robinsons' son, Edmund, the only boy in the family, who was growing too old to be under Anne's care. However Branwell did not live in the house with the Robinson family, as Anne did. Anne's vaunted calm appears to have been the result of hard-fought battles, balancing deeply felt emotions with careful thought, a sense of responsibility, and resolute determination. All three Brontë sisters had spent time working as governesses or teachers, and all had experienced problems controlling their charges, gaining support from their employers, and coping with homesickness—but Anne was the only one who persevered and made a success of her work.

Back at The Parsonage

Anne and Branwell continued to teach at Thorp Green for the next three years. However, Branwell was enticed into a secret relationship with his employer's wife, Lydia Robinson. When Anne and her brother returned home for the holidays in June 1846, she resigned her position. While Anne gave no reason for leaving Thorp Green, it is generally thought that she wanted to leave upon becoming aware of the relationship between her brother and Mrs. Robinson. Branwell was sternly dismissed when his employer found out about his relationship with his wife. In spite of her brother's behaviour, Anne retained close ties to Elizabeth and Mary Robinson, exchanging frequent letters with them even after Branwell's disgrace. The Robinson sisters came to visit Anne in December 1848.

Once free of her position as a governess, Anne took Emily to visit some of the places she had come to know and love in the past five years. An initial plan of going to the sea at Scarborough fell through, and the sisters went instead to York, where Anne showed her sister the York Minster.

A Book of Poems

In the summer of 1845, all four of the Brontës were at home with their father Patrick. None of the four had any immediate prospect of employment. It was at this point that Charlotte came across Emily's poems. They had been shared only with Anne, her partner in the world of Gondal. Charlotte proposed that they be published. Anne also revealed her own poems. Charlotte's reaction was characteristically patronising: "I thought that these verses too had a sweet sincere pathos of their own". Eventually, though not easily, the sisters reached an agreement. They told neither Branwell, nor their father, nor their friends about what they were doing. Anne and Emily each contributed 21 poems and Charlotte with nineteen. With Aunt Branwell's money, the Brontë sisters paid to have the of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

collection published.

Afraid that their work would be judged differently if they revealed their identity as women, the book appeared under their three chosen pseudonyms—or pen-names, the initials of which were the same as their own. Charlotte became Currer Bell, Emily became Ellis Bell and Anne became Acton Bell. Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell was available for sale in May 1846. The cost of publication was about ¾ of Anne's annual salary at Thorp Green. On 7 May 1846, the first three copies of the book were delivered to Haworth Parsonage. The volume achieved three somewhat favourable reviews, but was a dismal failure, with only two copies being sold during the first year. Anne, however, began to find a market for her more recent poetry. Both the Leeds Intelligencer and Fraser's Magazine published her poem "The Narrow Way" under her pseudonym, Acton Bell. Four months earlier, in August, Fraser's Magazine had also published her poem "The Three Guides".

Novelist

Agnes Grey

Even before the fate of the book of poems became apparent, the three sisters were working on a new project. They began to work on their first novels. Charlotte wrote The Professor, Emily Wuthering Heights, and Anne Agnes Grey. By July 1846, a package with the three manuscripts was making the rounds of London publishers.

After a number of rejections, Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey were accepted by a publisher in London, but Charlotte's novel was rejected by every other publisher to whom it was sent. However, Charlotte was not long in completing her second novel, the now famous Jane Eyre, and this was immediately accepted by Smith, Elder & Co., a different publisher from Anne's and Emily's though also located in London. However, Jane Eyre was the first to appear in print. While Anne and Emily's novels 'lingered in the press', Charlotte's second novel was an immediate and resounding success. Meanwhile, Anne and Emily were obliged to pay fifty pounds to help meet the publishing costs. Their publisher, urged on by the success of Jane Eyre, finally published Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey in December 1847. These two sold exceptionally well, but Agnes Grey was distinctly outshone by Emily's much more dramatic Wuthering Heights.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was published in the last week of June 1848. It was an instant, phenomenal success; within six weeks it was sold out.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is perhaps the most shocking of the Brontës' novels. In seeking to present the truth in literature, Anne's depiction of alcoholism and debauchery was profoundly disturbing to nineteenth-century readers. Helen Graham, the tenant of the title, intrigues Gilbert Markham and gradually she reveals her mysterious past as an artist and wife of the dissipated Arthur Huntingdon. The book's brilliance lies in its revelation of the position of women at the time, and its multi-layered plot.


It is easy today to underestimate the extent to which the novel challenged existing social and legal structures. May Sinclair, in 1913, said that the slamming of Helen Huntingdon's bedroom door against her husband reverberated throughout Victorian England. Anne's heroine eventually leaves her husband to protect their young son from his influence. She supports herself and her son by painting, while living in hiding, fearful of discovery. In doing so, she violates not only social conventions, but also English law. At the time, a married woman had no independent legal existence, apart from her husband; could not own her own property, sue for divorce, or control custody of her children. If she attempted to live apart from him, her husband had the right to reclaim her. If she took their child with her, she was liable for kidnapping. In living off her own earnings, she was held to be stealing her husband's property, since any income she made was legally his.

London Visit

In July 1848, in order to dispel the rumour that the three "Bell brothers" were all the same person, Charlotte and Anne went to London to reveal their identities to the publisher George Smith. The women spent several days in his company. Many years after Anne's death, he wrote in the Cornhill Magazine his impressions of her, describing her as: "...a gentle, quiet, rather subdued person, by no means pretty, yet of a pleasing appearance. Her manner was curiously expressive of a wish for protection and encouragement, a kind of constant appeal which invited sympathy."

In the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which appeared in August 1848, Anne clearly stated her intentions in writing it. She presented a forceful rebuttal to critics who considered her portrayal of Huntingdon overly graphic and disturbing. (Charlotte was among them.)

When we have to do with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear. To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light, is doubtless the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers? O Reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts–this whispering 'Peace, peace', when there is no peace, there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience."

Anne also sharply castigated reviewers who speculated on the sex of the authors, and the appropriateness of their writing to their sex, in words that do little to reinforce the stereotype of Anne as meek and gentle.

I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man."

The increasing popularity of the Bells' work led to renewed interest in the Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, originally published by Aylott and Jones. The remaining print of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

run was purchased by Smith and Elder, and reissued under new covers in November 1848. It still sold poorly.

Family Tragedies

Only in their late twenties, a highly successful literary career appeared a certainty for Anne and her sisters. However, an impending tragedy was to engulf the family. Within the next ten months, three of the siblings, including Anne, would be dead.

Branwell's health had gradually deteriorated over the previous two years, but its seriousness was half disguised by his persistent drunkenness. He died on the morning of 24 September 1848. His sudden death came as a shock to the family. He was aged just thirty-one. The cause was recorded as chronic bronchitis – marasmus; though, through his recorded symptoms, it is now believed that he was also suffering from tuberculosis.

The whole family had suffered from coughs and colds during the winter of 1848 and it was Emily who next became severely ill. She deteriorated rapidly over a two month period, persistently refusing all medical aid until the morning of 19 December, when, being so weak, she declared: "if you will send for a doctor, I will see him now". It was far too late. At about two o'clock that afternoon, after a hard, short conflict in which she struggled desperately to hang on to life, she died, aged just thirty.

Emily's death deeply affected Anne and her grief further undermined her physical health. Over Christmas, Anne caught influenza. Her symptoms intensified, and in early January, her father sent for a Leeds physician, who diagnosed her condition as consumption, and intimated that it was quite advanced leaving little hope of a recovery. Anne met the news with characteristic determination and self-control. Unlike Emily, Anne took all the recommended medicines, and responded to all the advice she was given. That same month Anne wrote her last poem, " A dreadful darkness closes in", in which she deals with the realisation of being terminally ill. Her health fluctuated as the months passed, but she progressively grew thinner and weaker.

Death

In February 1849, Anne seemed somewhat better. By this time, she had decided to make a return visit to Scarborough in the hope that the change of location and fresh sea air might initiate a recovery, and give her a chance to live. On 24 May 1849, Anne said her goodbyes to her father and the servants at Haworth, and set off for Scarborough with Charlotte and their friend Ellen Nussey. En route, the three spent a day and a night in York, where, escorting Anne around in a wheelchair, they did some shopping, and at Anne's request, visited York Minster. However, it was clear that Anne had little strength left.

On Sunday, 27 May, Anne asked Charlotte whether it would be easier for her if she return home to die instead of remaining at Scarborough. A doctor, consulted the next day, indicated that death was already close. Anne received the news quietly. She expressed her love and concern for Ellen and Charlotte, and seeing Charlotte's distress, whispered to her to "take courage". Conscious and calm, Anne died at about two o'clock in the afternoon, Monday, 28 May 1849. of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

Over the following few days, Charlotte made the decision to "lay the flower where it had fallen". Anne was buried not in Haworth with the rest of her family, but in Scarborough. The funeral was held on Wednesday, 30 May, which did not allow time for Patrick Brontë to make the 70-mile (110 km) trip to Scarborough, had he wished to do so. The former schoolmistress at Roe Head, Miss Wooler, was also in Scarborough at this time, and she was the only other mourner at Anne's funeral. She was buried in St. Mary's churchyard, beneath the castle walls, and overlooking the bay. Charlotte commissioned a stone to be placed over her grave, with the simple inscription "Here lie the remains of Anne Brontë, daughter of the Revd. P. Brontë, Incumbent of Haworth, Yorkshire. She died, Aged 28, 28 May 1849". Anne was actually twenty-nine at the time of her death.

Reputation

A year after Anne's death, further editions of her novels were required; however, Charlotte prevented re-publication of Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. In 1850, Charlotte wrote damningly "Wildfell Hall it hardly appears to me desirable to preserve. The choice of subject in that work is a mistake, it was too little consonant with the character, tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring inexperienced writer." This act was the predominant cause of Anne's relegation to the back seat of the Brontë bandwagon. Anne's novel was daring for the Victorian era with its depiction of scenes of mental and physical cruelty and approach to divorce. The consequence was that Charlotte's novels, along with Emily's Wuthering Heights, continued to be published, firmly launching these two sisters into literary stardom, while Anne's work was consigned to oblivion. Further, Anne was only twenty-eight when she wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; at a comparable age, Charlotte had produced only The Professor.

The general view has been that Anne is a mere shadow compared with Charlotte, the family's most prolific writer, and Emily, the genius. This has occurred to a large extent because Anne was very different, as a person and as a writer, from Charlotte and Emily. The controlled, reflective camera eye of Agnes Grey is closer to Jane Austen's Persuasion than to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. The painstaking realism and social criticism of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall directly counters the romanticised violence of Wuthering Heights. Anne's religious concerns, reflected in her books and expressed directly in her poems, were not concerns shared by her sisters. Anne's subtle prose has a fine ironic edge; her novels also reveal Anne to be the most socially radical of the three. Now, with increasing critical interest in female authors, her life is being reexamined, and her work reevaluated. A re-appraisal of Anne's work has begun, gradually leading to her acceptance, not as a minor Brontë, but as a major literary figure in her own right.

Poetry Terms

Sound Devices: A writer’s intentional use of language, especially in verse, to create sounds with his or her work.

Alliteration: The repetition of identical consonant sounds, most often the sounds beginning words, in close proximity. Example: pensive poets, nattering nabobs of negativism.


Onomatopoeia: word whose sound resembles what is describes (snap, crackle, pop)

Repetition: the use, more than once of any element of language

Rhyme: The repetition of identical concluding syllables in different words, most often at the ends of lines. Example: June--moon.

Rhythm: The recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse. In the following lines from "Same in Blues" by Langston Hughes, the accented words and syllables are underlined:

I said to my baby,Baby take it slow....Lulu said to LeonardI want a diamond ring

Figurative Language: Writing or speech that is not meant to b taken literally

Hyperbole: A figure of speech involving exaggeration. John Donne uses hyperbole in his poem: "Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star."

Image: Images are references that trigger the mind to fuse together memories of sight (visual), sounds (auditory), tastes (gustatory), smells (olfactory), and sensations of touch (tactile). Imagery refers to images throughout a work or throughout the works of a writer or group of writers.

Metaphor: A comparison between two unlike things, this describes one thing as if it were something else. Does not use "like" or "as" for the comparison.

Simile. A direct comparison between two dissimilar things; uses "like" or "as" to state the terms of the comparison.

Personification: Objects, animals, or ideas are given human characteristics

Other poetry terms:

Free Verse: Poetry that does not follow certain rules or patterns

Haiku: A Japanese poem in three line, of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, which represents a clear picture so as to at once to produce emotion and suggest spiritual insight

Lyric: A poem, such as a sonnet or an ode, which expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet. A lyric poem may resemble a song in form or style.

Limerick: is a humorous, rhyming, five-line poem with a specific rhythm pattern and rhyme scheme

Stanza: group of lines in a poem that forms a metrical or unit of 29 Grade 9 English Final Exam Study, SY 2014-2015

Symbol: in general terms, anything that stands for something else. Example: flags, which symbolize a nation

Mood: how a piece of writing makes the reader feel

Tone: The writer’s attitude toward the text. Tone may be playful, formal, intimate, angry, serious, ironic, outraged, serene, depressed, etc.

Funny Letters from Famous People by Charles Osgood

From the Write Source you will need to review the section on business letters and “How to write an email (pages 513 – 519).

Friendly Letter Format

Return Address Line 1 1Return Address Line 2

Date (Month Day, Year) 2

Dear Name of Recipient, 3

Body Paragraph 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Body Paragraph 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Body Paragraph 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Closing (Sincerely...), 5

Signature 6

P.S. 7

In the friendly letter format, your address, date, the closing, signature, and printed name are all indented to the right half of the page (how far you indent in is up to you as long as the heading and closing is lined up, use your own discretion and make sure it looks presentable). Also the first line of each paragraph is indented.

1 Your AddressAll that is needed is your street address on the first line and the city, state and zip on the second line. (Not needed if the letter is printed on paper with a letterhead already on it.)


2 DatePut the date on which the letter was written in the format Month Day Year e.g. August 30, 2003. Skip a line between the date and the salutation.

3 SalutationUsually starts out with Dear so and so, or Hi so and so. Note: There is a comma after the end of the salutation (you can use an exclamation point also if there is a need for some emphasis).

4 BodyThe body is where you write the content of the letter; the paragraphs should be single spaced with a skipped line between each paragraph. Skip 2 lines between the end of the body and the closing.

5 ClosingLet's the reader know that you are finished with your letter; usually ends with Sincerely, Sincerely yours, Thank you, and so on. Note that there is a comma after the end of the closing and only the first word in the closing is capitalized.

6 SignatureYour signature will go in this section, usually signed in black or blue ink with a pen. Skip a line after your signature and the P.S.

7 P.S.If you want to add anything additional to the letter you write a P.S. (post script) and the message after that. You can also add a P.P.S after that and a P.P.P.S. after that and so on


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