Review of "To Walk Invisible The Brontë Sisters" :-)

I had the pleasure of watching To Walk Invisible The Brontë Sisters  the other night on PBS and I loved it. Three remarkable, brilliant sisters, two of whom died (spoiler alert!) very young at 29 and 30 of tuberculosis, all of whom wrote lasting works of literature and poetry. Think how much richer our world would be had they lived longer! As women, they had such limited options that they had to write under men's names to be published and to be taken seriously. I'd like to think we have come so far, but when I consider that Joanne Rowling was highly encouraged to write under the name J.K. Rowling for the same reason, I feel a bit discouraged. Ultimately, Charlotte reveals herself to be Currer Bell and enjoys popularity and fame during her lifetime. I highly recommend this beautiful period drama. 

Written and directed by Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley, Last Tango in Halifax), To Walk Invisible depicts the evolution of secluded, dutiful clergyman’s daughters into authors of the most controversial fiction of the 1840s. The drama stars Finn Atkins (Eden Lake) as Charlotte, who shocked society with her edgy epic, Jane Eyre; Chloe Pirrie (War and Peace) as Emily, author of the darkly gothic and disturbing Wuthering Heights; and Charlie Murphy (Happy Valley) as Anne, whose penned the true-to-life love story The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Also starring are Jonathan Pryce (Wolf Hall) as their distracted father, Reverend Patrick Brontë; and Adam Nagaitis as the sisters’ only brother, Branwell, whose wild and dissipated life contributed to vivid characters in each of their novels.

Based largely on Charlotte’s letters, the film follows the Brontë sisters in the eventful three-year period that saw them rise from ordinary, unmarried women, taking care of the household and their widowed father, to the secret authors of the world’s most sensational literature.