Brontesaurus! Quiz | Bronte Sisters

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Of the Bronte siblings who reached adulthood, who was the youngest?

Answer: Anne

Anne was born in 1820 and died in 1849, at 29 years of age. Charlotte was born in 1816 and died in 1855, aged 39. Emily was born in 1818 and died in 1848, aged 30! That means not one of the sisters reached their fortieth birthday and yet their timeless appeal remains, in spite of their earthly mortality.

2. Emily's psychologically tortured creation, "Heathcliff," appeared in which book?

Answer: Wuthering Heights

"Wuthering Heights" was the only novel by Emily Bronte.

3. Charlotte Bronte wrote under the name Currer Bell.

Answer: True

Charlotte, like her sisters, chose to publish her work under a male pseudonym. There was much debate at the time about the ability of women to write "good" literature - even the Poet Laureate in 1837 said, " Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life." What did he know and do you read his poems today? (His name was Robert Southey!)

4. In which novel does the "Madwoman in the Attic" appear?

Answer: Jane Eyre

Feminist critics have suggested that the madwoman depicted in "Jane Eyre" was really Jane's inner self - a woman of passion, rage and frustration locked away by a repressed society!

5. Of which novel by Anne Bronte did a "Spectator" critic say on 8 July 1848, "... there seems in the writer a morbid love of the coarse, not to say the brutal"?

Answer: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Published under the pseudonym Acton Bell, Anne's "tenant" is a woman who leaves her marital home in order to protect her young son from an abusive father and husband. Ahead of its time, the novel shocked readers by showing a woman capable of independent action who earned her own living as an artist --while still juggling with social respectability in a world where separation was frowned upon.

6. Which famous male novelist was a great supporter of Charlotte's fiction?

Answer: William Makepeace Thackeray

When all Charlotte's remaining siblings had died of tuberculosis, including her much-loved brother Branwell, she visited London regularly to meet up with her literary friends Thackeray and Elizabeth Gaskell.

7. Charlotte Bronte died nine months after her marriage to the Reverend A. B. Nicholls.

Answer: True

Charlotte's death is generally believed to have been hastened by a difficult pregnancy.

8. Where was the father of the Bronte sisters born?

Answer: Ireland

Patrick Bronte (17 March 1777 - 7 June 1861) was born in Loughbrickland, County Down, Ireland. He came from a poor Irish family and was a strict Methodist. His authoritarian nature is believed to have had a deep influence on his daughters' fictional narratives as well as their psychological development.

9. Charlotte Bronte fought to have Anne's, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," published in spite of public disapproval for its subject matter.

Answer: False

Charlotte believed strongly that the novel's subject matter was an "entire mistake" and sought to have further publication suppressed after Anne's death! However, years after Charlotte's death, public opinion began to favour married women's rights and in 1882 The Women's Property Act achieved full reform - enabling women marked independence from their husbands.

Then Anne's Tenant, Helen Huntingdon, would surely have been vindicated in Charlotte's eyes!

10. Who was "a waif of twenty years"?

Answer: Catherine Linton

Catherine Linton, Heathcliff's soulmate in "Wuthering Heights," is this forlorn creature.

Source: Author bagendbo

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor Lanni before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

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