Charlotte Bronte occasionally manifests a rather black and snarky sense of humour - e.g. the curates at the beginning of Shirley and the Frenchwoman (?Hortense) are sent up rotten, and her letters have a vein of the satirical (she refused an offer of marriage partly on the grounds that the man in question would not get her satire; or her enthusiasm). I believe there are a number of comic episodes in the Bronte 'Angria' juvenilia but it possibly wasn't really among any of their major strengths. I also wonder, vis a-vis Wuthering Heights, whether Emily thought she was writing grimly black comedy, which has ever since been taken as Romantic Tragedy.
But for humour in Victorian novelists it's Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot - I've heard that Fanny Trollope (mother of the more famous Anthony) wrote some amusing novels but I've never actually read any of them.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-12-28 11:19 am (UTC)But for humour in Victorian novelists it's Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot - I've heard that Fanny Trollope (mother of the more famous Anthony) wrote some amusing novels but I've never actually read any of them.