Event – ONLINE

Join Our Next Happy Hour:
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know:
The Brontë Sisters
Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Join us for our second ESU Happy Hour on Wednesday, August 5, 2020 at 3:00 pm Central Time. Happy Hour programs are free and you can register for this Happy Hour program at the link below. Our guest speaker is Marie Kervin.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)  and her sisters Emily Brontë (1818-1848) and Anne Brontë (1820-1849) have charmed, inspired, and even shocked readers from the Victorian age to the present.  Raised in Haworth, Yorkshire, the three sisters produced such classics as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.  Influenced by British Romantic poets like Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron, the Brontës produced a cast of unforgettable characters such as the devoted governess, Jane Eyre, and the lovers, Heathcliff, Cathy, and Hareton. 

In her Happy Hour session, Marie Kervin will scrutinize the pearl of received wisdom that sisters Charlotte, Anne, & Emily were mild, decorous examples of Victorian womanhood. This lecture will explore the themes of domestic violence, opium addiction, extramarital affairs, alcoholism, necrophilia, sadism and coercive control apparent in the sisters' work. We will be debunking the myth.

Click here to register for this ESU Happy Hour Program.

About the Speaker: Marie Kervin

Marie grew up in the heart of the beautiful Lake District in northern England, the land of Wordsworth, Southey, and Tennyson.When Marie's twins were 3 years old, they all moved to the West Coast of Ireland, where Marie worked from Galway University, compiling a collection of autobiographical writing and artwork in a book called 'Living Scenes.'

Returning from Ireland to West Sussex, in England, Marie set up a Shakespeare Company called 'Wordsmiths', taking the works of Shakespeare into schools and youth groups across the south of England.

Marie ran the debate leagues linked to Oxford and Cambridge University from her school, Prior's Field in Surrey. A school established by Julia Huxley, to provide an equal education for young women. There, Marie invited luminaries such as Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Ex-Head of MI5 Stella Rimmington and adventurer and explorer Ranulph Fiennes to give lectures and appear on her radio station: Girls Allowed. She founded the only broadcasting radio station from Independent Schools in the UK at the time.

Her next adventure is in Jacksonville, Florida where she lives with her husband, twins, Emily and William, and rescue dog, Cassie.

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