The Brontes Were Not ‘Gifted’!
April 28, 2010 by Riya Agnihotri
Filed under Blog, Developing Genius
So you think that The Brontes, Beethoven and Mozart were genius’s? You will be forgiven for thinking that these people all had a ‘natural’ god given talent.
But as I have repeated (a little too much –sorry); genius is not and cannot be wholly natural. Therefore the phenomenal ability of these world renowned artists was down to something other than their ‘lucky’ genes.
It is hard to get your head around such ideas – but the sooner you do, the more that you can do for yourself and for your children in terms of acquiring skills and talent.
So let’s begin by taking a look at the lives of The Brontes. Daniel Coyle refers to these siblings to make his point about the necessity of deep, sustained practice in order to bring about ‘supernatural seeming talent.’
As we are all aware some classic literature was produced by the Brontes: Jayne Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – amongst other literary greats. The myth that the Brontes were endowed with a divine gift of unsurpassed creativity and genius, was mostly perpetuated by Elizabeth Gaskell in her 1857 biography – The Life of Charlotte Bronte. Many subsequent biographies were written, but they all tended to fall in line with the Gaskell’s earlier assertions.
However Oxford Historian – Juliet Barker, disagreed vehemently with Gaskell’s analysis. See her website: http://julietbarker.co.uk/books/brontes.html.
According to Barker the Brontes were not ‘natural’ born writers and novelists. ‘Gasp.’ I’ll let that sink in. In fact their first little books were ‘cute’ – Barker uses the word ‘amateurish’.
According to this Oxford historian the Brontes showed no signs of genius at all. Barker continues to say that the writing in these books was ‘slapdash’, their spelling was ‘appalling’ and apparently they made very little use of any punctuation!
So where did all of this talent come from? As Coyle describes; it was through deep sustained practice over a number of years -that this supposed genius emerged. Natural – no. Cultivated? Most definitely!
By Riya Agnihotri
www.averagetoexceptional.blogspot.com