“On the Death of Anne Brontë” by Charlotte Brontë

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Charlotte Brontë’s tribute poem to the loss of her baby sister, Anne, serves as an example of the reflections that occur in a grieving person’s mind when they lose someone for whom they deeply loved and cared.

Within the span of 10 months, Charlotte Brontë lost three siblings, culminating with Anne’s death. A what-is-now-believed-to-be tuberculosis epidemic quickly killed first her brother Patrick Branwell, then her sister Emily (best-known for Wuthering Heights) before Anne lingered with it for about five months.

Unlike Branwell and Emily, Anne tried to fight as hard as she could to overcome the advanced tuberculosis — through the medications and advice available to her at the time — rather than to succumb to the devastating disease.

“On the Death of Anne Brontë” commences with Charlotte’s opinion of witnessing her sister’s death firsthand and the emotions that the loss of her sister has instigated. She says, ‘There’s little joy in life for me,/And little terror in the grave;/I’ve lived the parting hour to see/Of one I would have died to save.” These lines allude to Anne’s whirlwind of a final visit to Scarborough — a place where she had spent many holidays — with Charlotte and their lifelong friend, Ellen Nussey.

Initially, they made the trip because Anne was feeling slightly better and was hoping that a change of scenery would jumpstart a possible recovery. Instead, as the few days since they left progressed, Anne’s health rapidly deteriorated.

She realizes that the hope for recovery has passed and she must accept her sister’s impending death, so that her sister can die peacefully.

Within a day of consulting a doctor, Anne calmly took her last breath at the age of 29 with Charlotte and Ellen by her side after telling a distraught Charlotte to “take courage.”

This most likely explains why Charlotte describes herself at the scene as “Calmly to watch the failing breath,/Wishing each sigh might be the last;/Longing to see the shade of death/O’er those belovèd features cast.” She realizes that the hope for recovery has passed and she must accept her sister’s impending death, so that her sister can die peacefully.

Thanking God appropriately fits the Brontë siblings’ upbringing with their clergyman father.

Charlotte Brontë’s sketch of Anne Brontë
(Credit: Wikipedia)

Charlotte comes to terms with the gravity of her loss and the immensity of grief associated with losing someone so close to her by giving thanks to “God from my heart,/To thank Him well and fervently;” because “Although I knew that we had lost/The hope and glory of our life;/And now, benighted, tempest-tossed,/Must bear alone the weary strife.” Thanking God appropriately fits the Brontë siblings’ upbringing with their clergyman father.

The contrast between Anne representing the light in the lives of her loved ones and her death representing the extinguishing of that light demonstrates how such a significant loss of a young daughter and sister can drastically change how her loved ones view the world once she is gone.

Grief can have such a powerful effect over those left behind that viewpoints can forever be altered. Where one might have seen beauty and light in life when the person was alive, this can quickly change to seeing the world as a gloomier and “benighted, tempest-tossed” place. This viewpoint often lasts a long time when dealing with grief over a loss, especially if the grief becomes complicated.