Anne Brontë's Labors

Unlike her sisters Charlotte and Emily, Anne Brontë professed to write for the moral edification of her readers, a duty she saw as God-given and part of her Evangelical calling. This article considers Brontë's literary principles, most clearly communicated in the Preface to the Second Edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by exploring her religious poetry and establishing her sense of authorship as Christian labor. Drawing on the many uses of "labor" in her poetry, this discussion examines the necessary connections Brontë affirms between an inward labor of spiritual self-improvement and the labor she hoped to do in the world "amid the brave and strong." A close reading of Brontë's final poem offers another opportunity to reevaluate Charlotte Brontë's portrayal of Anne, given in letters and published writing after Anne's death, that mischaracterizes her artistic aims and aspirations.