Dark Quartet

When Dark Quartet came up on Brotherhood Books I was intrigued. I'd never come across this 1976 novelisation of the lives of the tortured Bronte siblings by the author of The L-Shaped Room and The Indian in the Cupboard. Dark Quartet follows the Bronte family from early childhood until (spoilers!) the death of Anne, which left Charlotte the only remaining child out of the original six. Banks continues the story of Charlotte's later life and literary success in the sequel, Path to the Silent Country.

I had some trouble initially immersing myself in this novel, which is written in a fairly high flown style and with some dialogue reproduced from letters and other original sources. But gradually I found myself carried away by the intensity of the story. I already knew the bare facts pretty well, but there was something compelling about living through it with them which made their awful history so much more vivid. The power of fiction, eh? Who knew?

Branwell in particular had always been a shadowy figure to me, much as in the famous portrait in which he painted out his own image. But Dark Quartet paints a stark picture of his disturbed and unhappy life, complete with what seems to be a gang rape by a gang of Irish labourers, and paedophile tendencies, as well as an ill-conceived passion for his married employer. I'm really not sure how much of this, if any, is based on fact, but whatever the case, for the first time I appreciated the central place that Branwell filled in the family, and the misery of his loss. It's easy to focus just on the three gifted sisters and forget about the equally creative (if possibly less talented) brother.

Dark Quartet definitely brought to dramatic life the family dynamics and the stuttering attempts of the sisters to gain employment. Literary success arrives only at the very end of this novel, and is immediately undercut by the heart-rending parade of deaths that left only Charlotte and her father alone at the parsonage. I've always been more of an Austen fan than a Bronte girl, and I prefer Charlotte to Emily, but Dark Quartet has left me with a deeper fascination for the whole family. Banks writes particularly well of the siblings' imaginary worlds, a difficult topic to handle; Dark Quartet is light on the details but emphasises the obsessive and addictive nature of their 'plays.'