Review: ‘Glass Town: The Imaginary World of the Brontës’ Explored 

Ever wake up from a good dream and try to pick up where you left off by staying in bed or thinking about that dream the next day? That’s what it sounds like Glass Town was like for the Brontës, except they created a world together. After a few nights you usually let a dream go or move on to the next one. A lot of the juvenilia written by the Brontës (or at least by Charlotte and Branwell) can be read today because they wrote everything down. In order to continue their stories, they had to know what came before and in Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel, Glass Town: The Imaginary World of the Brontës, Charlotte Bronte does just that by recounting the story of how Glass Town came to be.

The last of her siblings (the others passed away), it’s been years since Charlotte has written any new Glass Town stories and the world is grayer for it. When color returns, though, courtesy of one of the characters they created paying her a visit, Charlotte allows herself to remember the good times and the bad.
A lot of that paragraph could sound like metaphor but it’s actually how Greenberg tells this story, right down to the use of color. Charlotte and Charles Wellesley don’t have the same baggage Frankenstein and his monster did but that connection between creator and creation is central to Greenberg’s graphic novel, which tackles the costs and benefits of being creative.
Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne really did write stories set in magical worlds they created from scratch. Greenberg’s graphic novel, however, is a work of historical fiction. As long as there were books to read on their father’s bookshelf, the Brontës knew how to entertain themselves. Candles to read those books by were less assured and the first time we see the Brontës start to work on their kingdom, it’s because it’s too dark to read but they don’t want to fall sleep.

The next step is creating people to live there and the Brontës absorb themselves in the task. From the beginning, though, there’s a trace of sadness to Glass Town and Charlotte’s narration gives off a Lemony Snicket vibe. The reason the four siblings are home is because their older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died while at school. Creating Glass Town becomes a comforting distraction. It’s also portrayed as an addiction that Charlotte has to cut herself off when she starts to lose sight of what’s really going on.
It’s the real world, though, that first throws a wrench in the works, when Charlotte has to go back to school to train as a governess. Collaborating on Glass Town wasn’t easy on the best of days, but Charlotte’s departure causes problems between the siblings to come to a head.
Greenberg prepares us for these differences in opinion early with a scene where Charlotte and Emily can’t fall asleep. Emily goes over to Charlotte’s bed to join her, but when she tells her about a queen character she’s been working on and Charlotte argues that it should be a king, Emily goes back to her own bed, their body language reflecting their growing rift.
In other scenes, Greenberg experiments with space and time, by having characters appear almost as shadow selves. Instead of marking time’s passage with panels, everything goes on at once. Motion becomes more dream-like even in the real-world scenes. Proportions are also hugely important in delineating which characters are real and which are fiction.
The word “juvenilia” may call to mind “juvenile” but the Brontës covered many mature topics in their early years, like loving someone who’s bad for you, colonization and racism. A time jump going into the last chapter is a little confusing, in terms of how Charlotte, Emily, and Anne went from writing about Glass Town to the books they would become famous for, like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. This may not be the book to read if you’re looking for a strictly biographical take on their lives, but what it does excel at is showing both the guilt and the joy wrapped up in pursuing something you love.
Glass Town: The Imaginary World of the Brontës is available now from Abrams ComicArts. The book itself is beautiful and, if you take off the book jacket, there’s additional art than what appears on the cover.