Charlotte Brontë Really, Really Didn't Seem To Like Jane Austen

Additional comment provided by Dr Michael Stewart, writer and director of the Brontë Writing Centre.

From the time the Brontë sisters first got published up until recent years, the siblings have been compared to Jane Austen. Some still get them mixed up.

And while there’s no denying that Wuthering Heights, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Eyre, and Pride and Prejudice are all classics, the writers worked decades apart. 

In fact, while Austen has been described as “very much a Regency woman” (she lived from 1775 to 1817), the Brontës were born around the time of Austen’s death and worked at the start of the Victorian era. Where Austen would have travelled by horse-drawn carriage to London, The History Press pointed out, Charlotte and Anne took the train.

All of that said, Charlotte Brontë, the author of Jane Eyre, Villette, and The Professor (the last of which has never had a TV or movie adaptation), had some choice words to share regarding the Persuasion author.

Here, we spoke to Dr Michael Stewart, writer and director of the Brontë Writing Centre, about her thoughts of Austen – and what might’ve fuelled them. 

What has Charlotte Brontë said about Jane Austen? 

“She wasn’t a fan of Austen,” Dr Stewart said. 

Charlotte once told critic G.H. Lewes she’d never read Austen (despite her very literary childhood). And after he urged her to give the books a try, she said in correspondence: 

“Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point… I had not seen ‘Pride & Prejudice’ till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book and studied it. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully-fenced, highly cultivated garden with neat borders and delicate flowers – but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy – no open country – no fresh air – no blue hill – no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses.”

This, Dr Stewart said, might be called “damning with faint praise”.

And when Lewes wrote back defending Austen, Charlotte doubled down too, saying: 

“You say I must familiari[s]e my mind with the fact that ‘Jane Austen is not a poetess, has no ‘sentiment’ (you scornfully enclose the word in inverted commas) no eloquence, none of the ravishing enthusiasms of poetry’ – and then you add, I must ‘learn to acknowledge her as one of the greatest artists, of the greatest painters of human character, and one of the writers with the nicest sense of a means to an end that ever lived.’ The last point only will I acknowledge. Can there be a great artist without poetry?”

The nicest thing she seemed to have to say about Austen was written years later to writer William Smith Williams: 

″’I have likewise read one of Miss Austen’s works “Emma” – read it with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable – anything like warmth or enthusiasm; anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all demonstration the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outre and extravagant... she ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound: the Passions are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy Sisterhood....”

Basically, her greatest compliment to the author appeared to be something along the lines of, “cool story, Austen!! Now imagine if it had literally any heart, soul, or vim whatsoever...”

Why didn’t Charlotte Brontë seem to like Jane Austen?

We’ll never truly know, but it’s highly possible the more restrained author just didn’t float Charlotte’s boat.

And Austen isn’t the only victim of Charlotte’s sharp tongue, either.

“She liked Dickens even less. She disliked his ‘ostentatious extravagance,’” Dr Stewart told us.

But it’s hard not to wonder if the writer, who was one when Austen died, was sick of unfair comparisons to the literary titan.

“I don’t think there are any meaningful comparisons between the work of the Brontës and Austen. In many ways, they are exact opposites. Although Anne’s Agnes Grey was called a ‘coarse imitation of one of Miss Austin’s [sic] charming stories,’” Dr Stewart explained. 

To that point, he noted that “Emily and Anne [Brontë] were no fans of Austen either”.