Skipton author Philip Dent celebrates the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth with a new fictional novel about her life
21st April 2016 marks the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth, but how much do you know about the woman behind literary masterpieces that include Jane Eyre and Villette? Author Philip Dent has written a new novel, Mutable Passions, that celebrates Charlotte’s own experience of love.
Charlotte Brontë’s life was empty; she suffered from extreme loneliness, ill health and sleepless nights. Her siblings were dead, and living in the parsonage with only her father for company was hardly fun.
Based on facts, Mutable Passions brings Charlotte to life. The novel is a sensitive portrayal of courtship and marriage, focussing upon the strong emotions that arose after Arthur Nicholls proposed to her. ‘Speaking to people about Charlotte Brontë, it struck me how few were aware that she did in fact find love and marry,’ observes Philip.
Often portrayed a dowdy spinster downtrodden by Victorian tradition, Mutable Passions contradicts this, exploring the feelings and passions that Charlotte would have experienced herself. Mutable Passions is a unique novel that conveys an imagined, but sensitive, account of Charlotte’s own love affair.
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