"We are three sisters"

the long version

"In "We Are Three Sisters," Drew Lamonica focuses on the role of families in the Brontes' fictions of personal development, exploring the ways in which their writings recognize the family as defining community for selfhood.". "Drawing on extensive primary sources, including works by Sarah Ellis, Sarah Lewis, Ann Richelieu Lamb, Harriet Martineau, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, and Elizabeth Gaskell, Lamonica examines the dialogic relationship between the Brontes' novels and a mid-Victorian domestic ideology that held the family to be the principal nurturer of subjectivity. Using a sociohistorical framework, "We Are Three Sisters" shows that the Brontes' novels display a heightened awareness of contemporary female experience and the complex problems of securing a valued sense of self-hood not wholly dependent on family ties."--BOOK JACKET.