ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the very specific ideological agendas at play in Elizabeth Gaskell's representation of Charlotte Bront and the manner in which Gaskell's Life has come to set the template for crafting an understanding of femininity and female genius. Gaskell's reconstruction of Charlotte also warranted a space for Gaskell in the pantheon of famed female genius. By the time of the biographies publication, Gaskell arguably needed this boost to her literary reputation. One of the primary authors considered in Women and Literary Celebrity in the Nineteenth Century, Elizabeth Robins, wrote her own testament to Gaskell's telling of Bront's story. Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth and twenty-first, a plethora of biographies and novels rose up in both Britain and United States about Charlotte and the Bront family. The Post credited Gaskell with proving that Bront's novels contained spiritual truths, and further exclaimed, No works ever written by a Saxon woman approach them in direct, Shakespearean insight.
