Essay Questions

How did the narrator’s sister die?

In one of the poems in the collection, the narrator talks about the death of her sister, Anne Bronte. The narrator mentions how much the passing of her sister affected her and how much she suffered as a result of her death. The narrator goes as far as to even claim she would have liked to die in her sister’s place. Anne Bronte died at the young age of 29, in the same year when her brother and another one of her sisters died. Anne Bronte died most likely of tuberculosis, a disease which would have kept her incapacitated for some time and thus her family would have taken care of her. Because of this, Anne Bronte’s sister and her surviving family were affected by her death, because they had to stand by her as she died slowly and as her health declined over time.

Why does the narrator mention in the poem "On the Death of Anne Bronte’’ how she has to thank God from everything that happened?

In the time when the narrator wrote the poems, religion and the church had a big influence over the lives of the people. Because life was uncertain and because everyone could die at any moment, many people turned to Religion and God for salvation. Even though the church thought the people that God was responsible for the death of the people, many were still reluctant to blame God for the events that were happening and chose instead to praise him and thank him for the life they had out of fear they will be punished for their actions or words or simply because they were thought God was punishing them and thus many believed they deserved what was happening to them. Because of this, the narrator still chose to thank God for what happened to her sister even though she probably believed he was the one responsible for her death.

What could "war’’ symbolize in the poem ‘’Passion’’?

In the poem entitled ‘’Passion’’ the narrator presents herself as being a soldiers, returning from war to her beloved. In the time when the poem was written, women did not take part in war. If we take this into consideration, the question arises in regard to what the narrator meant when she mentioned war. Because women did not take part in wars, the war the narrator mentions could here make reference to a dispute the narrator had with her family or maybe the fight she has to fight when it comes to the social norms a woman had to follow.