The Frankenstein Trio: A Romantic Writing Methodology

Given my analysis of the Brontës’ writing methodology and reading habits, alongside their evidenced engagement with a Shelleyan narrative in print, it is expected the sisters likely continued this methodology in their first three novels, The Professor, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey (1847). Probably due to Charlotte’s own description in an 1846 letter, of their work being ‘three distinct and unconnected tales’, scholars have not proposed a possible mutual subject for a collaborative basis in the first three novels. But Charlotte’s term ‘three distinct and unconnected tales’ was in all probability not intended to apply to the thematic content of the work but rather the format of the ‘tales’ in terms of publication. In the nineteenth century, books tended to be published in three parts—as was The Last Man and Frankenstein—therefore Charlotte was likely signalling each of the sisters’ books was not intrinsically an adjoining three-part trio but rather tales to be independently read. She follows this point in her letter with the suggestion the three novelettes ‘may be published either together, as a work of three volumes, of the ordinary novel size, or separately as single volumes’. Read in the context of this adjacent sentence, being as standard practice in the nineteenth century, Charlotte’s letter simply advises the three works can be published independently as stand-alone tales that do not need to be read concurrently to be understood, not because, like their juvenilia, the sisters’ novels had no source connection. Since Emily’s Wuthering Heights was significantly longer than Agnes Grey and The Professor, when Thomas Courtley Newby agreed to publish Emily and Anne’s work in 1887, he eventually did so as a three-part novel, consisting of two volumes for Wuthering Heights but with the exclusion of The Professor, which was consequently never published in its author’s lifetime. This chapter there discusses how a mutual, source theme adjoins the trio of the first three Bronte novels, as evidenced in a textual correlation with Mary Shelley’s work.