The Bronte Sisters and Their Poetry

Standing intact from the so-called Victorian conflict between religion and science, faith and unfaith, and experientially believing in the mutual relationship of trust and responsibility between god and humankind, the three Bronte sisters would under all circumstances praise and pray to God for his beauty and bounty, and would occasionally stand in relation to him in a way of visionary experience. Dr. S.N. Singh and Dr. Apeni Lotha trace the genesis of the sisters’ made, and probe the mystery of agonies they suffered for their belief in a God-governed world here and hereafter/ Such critical concerns on the part of the two authors lead them to a theocentric study of the Bronte poetry which they call ‘a fountain of faith’ – slender in size and spatially limited but naturally perennial – juxtaposed against ‘the Sea of Faith’ then receding. Since the sisters complement and supplement and converge for the most part on the theme of theocentricity in their poetry, Dr. Singh and Dr. Apeni club their discussion of the sisters’ poetry under an integrated thematic structure, which they believe, may be a significant contribution to the fascinating Bronteana. The two authors unravel the fact that the sisters’ theocentricity collectively rests upon the living reception of religious belief based on their conscience and conviction, but that while Charlotte Bronte and Anne Bronte with all their attitudinal differences invariably cling only to the Anglican Church, Emily Bronte, usually agreeing with them, would occasionally sound an universal and a culturally neutral tone in hr poetry on the existence of God and his relation to the immortality of the human soul and all that look existing: Though earth and moon were gone and suns and universes ceased to be And thou wert left alone Every existence would exist in thee. Whether we view it from Western or Indian perspective, this is a purely theocentric potry that transcends time, space and culture. Dr. Singh and dr. Apeni expect the book to be a source of instruction and delight to the students of literature, especially of English and the Bronte lovers.