Educational Media Reviews Online

This addition to the already abundant resources on Charlotte, Emily, and Ann Bronte takes a different twist by considering them and their works through their relationships with the men in their lives, both real and fictional. Following a lovely, elegiac introduction, it uses effective dramatizations, well-selected excerpts from their letters, and period illustrations to characterize the Brontes and their world.

It begins with their father, Rev. Patrick Bronte, describing his simple background and showing how, as a widower with six children, he had an enormous influence on the girls' education. It proceeds to their brother, the charming but dissolute Branwell, who joined them in the imaginative games of their childhood. The video then focuses on some of the men of their imaginations: Heathcliffe from Wuthering Heights; the men of Ann's fiction; the Duke of Zamorna, the prince of Charlotte's dreams; and Rochester from Jane Eyre. Charlotte's real life loves, Constantin Heger, the husband of the principal of the school she attended in Brussels, and then her husband Arthur Bernickels, whom she married at age 38, are also included.

Although the video is organized around the theme of their masculine relationships, it does a good job of showing other important factors in the sisters' development as the extraordinary authors that they were. Commentary by the Bronte scholar, Dr. Juliet Barker, speaks to the reliability of the information presented here. Like most films by Films for the Humanities & Sciences, this one has outstanding technical qualities. Recommended for academic libraries and secondary media centers.