Charlotte Bronte Part I

Charlotte was the oldest surviving daughter of Patrick and Maria Bronte and in some ways the dominant figure in the family. She was, as a girl, closest to her brother Branwell; she and he created the world of "Angria" together and wrote their stories and poems.

As the eldest of the girls, she helped to educate her 2 younger sisters, and was conscious that she had to try and earn a living, but she was very much unsuited to governess work which was the only role that a young woman like her could find.

She was very shy, but also snobbish…. she hated being under an obligation to the families who employed her, and who treated her like a servant.  Although her father had come from a farming background, she felt that she was a lady, since he had become a clergyman.  She saw herself as higher in rank (and was better educated) than the mill owning or wealthy trade families who were now the "new rich" of Yorkshire and who hired governesses for their children. 

Opinions differ on how accurate are Charlotte’s portraits of the families she worked for. Some commentators feel that she was quite right in seeing them as snobbish, rude, and unpleasant and unfeeling.  Others feel that Charlotte was touchy and proud, and quick to see slights and insults where none were intended.   She was also not very fond of children, and not good with them.  She generally had little good to say of her employers or their children.  The children were seen by her as badly behaved and stupid brats, but she was not allowed to discipline them.  She wasn't a natural teacher, was not fond of children, and felt that it was very hard to get any knowledge into their heads.   

At the age of 26, she persuaded her aunt to help her and Emily to go to Brussels, so that they could improve their languages and learn more, and the plan was to prepare to open their own school.  It would have given them more autonomy than working for other people, and she believed they could support themselves and not have to kow-tow to employers.
The Brontes were beginning to realise that Branwell who was meant to be the white hope of the family, wasn’t likely to make their  fortune...

Emily didn’t  want to leave Yorkshire but she did want more education, so she was willing to go.  Charlotte longed to travel.  Her friends Mary and Martha Taylor were studying in Belgium, and she longed to see something of the world, as well as learn more. As always she was the one of the 3 girls who was more eager to mingle with people.  Anne was too shy and Emily positively refused to mix. 

In Brussels, they were pupil teachers, working for Mme Heger and her husband, who ran a school.  Heger was also a professor at a boy’s school, but he was impressed by the Bronte girls and eager to teach them.  Charlotte took to him and worked hard to improve her French. Emily did not like him or Brussels but worked hard, to educate herself (her spelling had been terrible as a girl) and she taught music.  Neither girl liked the Belgian people much.  They were critical of the school’s “young lady” pupils…
Both were fairly narrow minded, and they felt uncomfortable with the foreign and Catholic culture.  Charlotte however took the opportunity to socialise with the local English community and with her friends the Taylors.  Emily more or less refused to go out. 

After a year or so, the Brontes’ aunt, Miss Branwell died, and they had to return to England.  Charlotte was still eager to go back to her job in Brussels. Emily, having inherited a little money from her aunt, decided that she had truly hated being away from home and now she was not going to leave.  The plan for the school was still in their minds but it was not ever a very practical one.  Emily disliked teaching, they thought of having it in the Parsonage which was not very big. Yet it seems unlikely that they could have had several girls living there with the unsociable Patrick and the increasingly difficult Branwell in residence.

So Emily remained home and kept house, for her father.  Anne was working in a governessing job, with the Robinson family and Charlotte returned to the Hegers.  However her second time in Brussels was not happy.  She found that Mme Heger was increasingly distant form her, and began to worry.  After a time, she realised that this was because Madame believed that she, Charlotte, was in love with M Heger.  This was certainly true.  Yet Charlotte was so innocent that she probably didn’t realise it herself, and had only thought of him as a beloved teacher, someone she enjoyed working with.  She hadn’t thought of a married man, as someone she could fall in love with.  She was too religious and proper for that.  She didn't imagine that he might ever reciprocate her feelings.  When she was made aware of them, she felt extremely guilty and knew that she had to come away from the school. However, she disliked Mme Heger more and more, as “un-English” in her way of running the school and later portrayed her as a villain, in her novels.

More about Charlotte will follow!

Brontes and Branwell

I’ve always been fascinated by the Bronte family who were born in Yorkshire, at the end of the Regency era.  Their parents were a Cornish mother and an Irish father.  Patrick, the father, was from a poor farming background in Northern Ireland.  He was a clever young man and overcame his poverty to go to Cambridge, as a “sizar”, i.e. a student who is taught for free in return for undertaking some duties in the college…

It was a hard life for him, to get from poverty and a peasant upbringing to being a curate of the Church of England.  He became Curate of Haworth in 1819. . By then he was married to Maria Branwell, a young woman from a middle class Cornish family and they had a growing family.

Patrick was interested in literature –he wrote some poems and tried his hand at stories.  But he was not as talented as his children would become.  He was very busy with the work of a curate in a poor Parish.  Haworth was full of poor families, and had very limited facilities. The infant mortality rate was high and hygiene conditions were appalling by modern standards.  He had to function as a sort of social worker and activist, trying to get conditions improved.

He was a good hearted man, but was in many ways awkward in his social relations.  Possibly it was difficult for him to mingle in society, when he had come from such a modest background.  As he grew older, he became reclusive and only did as much “mixing” as was necessary for a clergyman.  This had an effect, a negative one, on his children.  However he was an intelligent well-meaning man, and in spite of his stiffness, he was a kindly loving father.

He and Maria had six children, 5 girls and one son.  But when Anne, the youngest was a baby, Maria died of cancer.  Her husband became more retiring, but he did make one attempt to marry again, to find a mother for his brood. Alas, he made a comical mess of it, writing to an old flame and reminding her that she was still single… provoking the lady to write back angrily and with a tart refusal.  He gave up then, and seems to have resigned himself to living alone.  He brought in his sister in law, Elizabeth Branwell, to keep house and look after his children.

The Bronte children were highly intelligent and had a strong creative impulse, hat clearly came from their father.  But his social isolation affected them.  They were not used to mixing much outside their own circle and apart from Branwell, found it hard to make friends. 

Patrick’s income was moderate, as a perpetual curate and he didn’t have a lot of friends or influence in the church, to secure a better paid or more comfortable living. 

The money was adequate while he was alive, but when he knew that when he died, his family would have nothing.  He needed to ensure that they were equipped to earn their living.  He educated Branwell himself, believing that his son was a very talented young man who would be able to help look after the girls financially.  The girls would probably have to go out as governesses, since that was almost the only job a genteel girl could do.  So he sent them to a school for the. “daughters of clergymen” which was supposed to provide a good education at low cost.  However, like a lot of private schools at the time, it was badly run, and conditions were terrible.  The food was bad, the discipline was harsh.  The girls were poorly fed, the building was extremely cold.  Patrick’s 2 eldest children, Maria and Elizabeth, were taken seriously ill during an epidemic.  Patrick brought them home, together with Charlotte and Emily who had been sent there more recently.  However it was too late, the older girls both died. Charlotte never forgot the callousness with which she and her sisters had been treated and took her revenge by writing about the school in Jane Eyre.

The girls were educated at home for a time... Patrick must have been desperately disappointed with his choice of a school to help educate his girls.  Later- he found a more pleasant school, Miss Woolers, in Yorkshire and sent Charlotte there, first.  She was happy there, made a few friends and furthered her education.  She even spent time there as a teacher.  But Emily who came to the school a bit later, hated being away from home and soon departed.  She was the most reclusive of the girls.  All of them were shy, and disliked going among strangers or leaving home.  They hated the thought of being governesses, having to move away from their home and family, mix with a strange family and put up with spoiled children.  Anne and Charlotte did not like the work but forced themselves to do it.  Emily again found it nearly impossible and only worked briefly as a teacher in a girls’ school.

The family’s traumas certainly affected the children a lot, in different ways.  Patrick’s preference for a quiet reclusive life added to their natural shyness and made it positively painful to them, to work away from home.  Charlotte had a few outside friends, and Branwell had many because he was the only one who did enjoy social life.  However their isolation and enjoying each other’s company helped them to create the fictional worlds that they wrote about – Angria and Gondal...which were the seed bed for their later writing.   Their home education made them far better read than most children of their age.  Emily particularly loved the outdoors around Haworth, which became an important part of her writing. 

I think that Emily was more affected by her mother’s death than the other children.  They were very shy, but with Emily it was much worse.  I believe that her mother’s death, when she was very young, followed by the experience at their awful school, made her deeply suspicious of people, and she trusted almost nobody. She preferred animals to people.   Yet it is possible that her isolation and her deep and unusual nature fostered her genius, and helped her to develop as the most brilliant of them all in terms of being a writer.

 Branwell, the only boy, also wrote and was a painter, and he had some talent.  Yet he was unsuccessful and again, perhaps the family’s situation had something to do with it.  He was more outgoing than his sisters or father, but he lacked their strength of character.  He was spoiled by his family, because they believed that he would be the one who might make the family’s fortune or at least earn a good living and help his sisters.  But his writing was heavy and turgid and he had no success as a poet or novelist.  He tried painting for a living, for a time but wasn’t very successful.   He started to drink and use opium, which was a popular drug at the time and was prescribed for all sorts of pains.  But the drinking and drug abuse weakened his health and eventually he found it hard to keep down a job... while his sisters worked and also wrote.

I think that again the family’s isolation and their “oddness” added to Branwell’s problems.  He wasn’t really used to social life in his home.  Maria Bronte had been a lively lady who would have probably helped her husband and children to have a more normal outgoing life, meeting other people. But her death hurt the family and made them cling to each other all the more.

When Branwell went away from home to work as a portrait painter, he did get friendly with other painters and men he met in pubs etc., but he still was awkward and bumptious; foolishly he put off possible helpers and patrons by his seeming arrogance. He was a much weaker character than the girls, and because of that, he may have found drinking and drug use, a help towards relaxing in social situations.   I think he was also dimly aware that he wasn’t really as talented as his fond family thought and he failed at the various jobs he took up.  He worked as a portrait painter, then as a clerk on the railways, and also as a tutor.  He had some literary talent and did some good translations of classic poetry, but he wasn’t creative.  His one attempt at a novel was never finished and it was a heavy and unreadable work.    

Later as is well known, he secured a job as a tutor to the Robinson family, in Yorkshire...His sister Anne was governess to their girls, and got him the post.  Branwell did prosper in that positon at first; his pupil wasn’t very clever, but he himself could be an entertaining talker at times.  So he got on better with the family.  However, he may have become involved in a love affair with Mrs Lydia Robinson, the children’s mother, who was a lively lady, married to a husband who was in poor health.  It’s never been very clear how far the affair went – it is possible that Mrs Robinson was kindly to him, enjoyed a bit of flirtation, and Branwell began to imagine that it meant more.. And that he had had a full blown affair with her.  Eventually he was dismissed, by Mr Robinson, possibly because there had been an affair and he had been  caught.  Possibly however, it might have been for some other reason.  It might have been that there was a light flirtation and that Mrs Robinson was getting tired of it, or worried that Branwell was taking it too seriously.   

Branwell came home, began to drink more heavily and told everyone who would listen that he had been dismissed for being in love with Mrs Robinson and that she would marry him when she was free... However he boasted so much, was incoherent… so it is hard to decipher what the truth was. His family, deeply religious people, who were also very naive, were terribly shocked by his behaviour.   They had neve encountered anything like this.  They tended to blame Mrs Robinson rather than Branwell- whom they regarded as an innocent young man who didn’t know much about the scandalous ways of “high Society”.   Lydia Robinson was 17 years his senior and she was in their view a wicked “bad woman,”  who had seduced him and then abandoned him. 

Branwell however made his love affair into an excuse for drinking more, getting into debt and idling at home.  He seems to have made himself believe that when Mr Robinson died, Lydia would send for him and they would marry.  When she was set free sometime later, however, she did not contact him.  Instead, she was apparently quite upset by her husband’s death, and then went on with her life, administering the estate for her son, and trying to get her daughters married off...  If Lydia had ever been at all involved with Branwell, she now ignored him completely, and he was devastated.  Whether he had imagined the whole thing, or there had been something behind it, he had convinced himself and his family that he had been in love and was desperately unhappy….and that she had treated him very badly.

Branwell went downhill after the Robinson disaster, and went on drinking, over spending, and refusing to do anything but moan and bewail his lot.  His family were sympathetic, but increasingly worn out by his selfish weakness.  Eventually he died, at the age of 31.  He wasn’t a very likable young man, but his family were grieved by his death.  He was the one Bronte who never achieved anything in the literary world.  Possibly it was due to his background and family circumstances...

In a week or 2, I hope to write a bit more about the Bronte family, as individuals and how their isolated lifestyle affected them in different ways.

Welsh names for girls.

In the past 100 years there has been an increase in Welsh names becoming popular,  and new Welsh names being coined… due to the increase in nationalist and localist sentiment.   Names such as Sian have become more common in the UK as a whole.
I got interested in Welsh names as a kid through reading the Arthurian legends.  The names there are usually Celtic but have been adapted and changed -with a French influence or anglicised.  So they are likely not the original names of the characters.  Guinevere was in the earliest version  of the tale -Guenhumara.  Later it became more like “Gwynhwyfar”.  The name is of uncertain meaning, but the Gwyn at the start means “fair “or “white”.  Morgan, Arthur’s sister or in some versions his mistress, means “Sea born”.   Elaine, usually Lancelot’s wife or love for a time, could derive from Elen, the Welsh for Helen or a word that means hind or fawn.  Enid is another name which has been used a good deal and it means “soul”.  Lynette, in the story of Gareth and Lynnette, in Tennyson, may derive from Eluned…  

I like Welsh names but I’m always afraid that I’m likely to be mispronouncing them.  Sian, the equivalent of Jane, is pronounced “Shan”…  The Welsh F is pronounced as V, and a double Ff, such as in Ffion, is an “f” sound.  Myfanwy, a name brought to public notice by John Betjeman in one of his  light hearted love poems, is pronounced MuhVanWy… and mean “My woman”.

 Other names with the suffix “wen” have become popular, such as Ceinwen “lovely and fair”..  The “wen” is a variant of “Gwen” or “Gwyn” signifying white or fair.  Others are Ceridwen – fair poetry, the name of the goddess of poetry.  There is Bronwen, “white breast” and Blodwen “white flowers”.   Arianwen means “white and silvery”…

 Other “Gwyn” names are Gwyneth, Gwendolen (white circle), Gweneira (White snow) and Gwenllian(white Foam).
 In the 20^th century, new names were coined, mostly “nature or flower names” from Welsh words. These include Eirlys (Snowdrop), Celyn (Holly),  Heulwen (sunshine), Eira (snow) and Briallen (Primrose).   Others are Aderyn (bird),  Meinwen (slender and fair),  Aeronwy (berry), and Dilys which means genuine or true.
Other older female names are mentioned in Welsh legend and poetry.  There is the story of Olwen -who had the faculty of making white flowers spring up behind her as she walked, the name means  white footprint. In the Mabinogi, Angharhad (meaning  intense love) falls in love with Peredur..

I hope to write something on Welsh male names, next week....

Barbara Castlemaine Royal mistress

I have just been reading a novelised biography of Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland.
She was the most famous mistress of Charles II.  She was born into the aristocracy and grew up in the years of Civil war and when the King was exiled.   It was a time when the upper classes who were loyal to the King often impoverished themselves to try and restore him to the throne.  Barbara was said to be free with her favours even prior to marriage and to have been the mistress of Philip Lord Chesterfield.  She was a member of the Villiers family and cousin to the Duke of Buckingham.  However she married an obscure Royalist gentleman Roger Palmer.  He was a quiet dull man who was hardly a suitable husband for such a wild and passionate young woman.  Barbara showed her loyalty to the King by bringing him money during his exile, just prior to his return to London as King.
She probably became his mistress on her visit to the continent, and on his return she became known as his favourite.  She was considered to be very beautiful and flamboyant.  She was also extravagant, wild and selfish. In the early years of the Restoration she was constantly by Charles’ side, and produced several children by him.  Charles was an affectionate father and a generous lover, but as time went on Barbara sought other lovers to amuse her when he was not around.

She was considered to be promiscuous -and conservative royalists were horrified by the King’s selfish and sexed up lifestyle.  It was considered wrong that he allowed his mistresses to be prominent in court life. When he married Catherine of Braganza, he found that while he and his mistresses were able to produce children easily, his wife was less fertile and after a few years it was clear that he would not have a legitimate heir.   Barbara did annoy her royal lover as time passed by being less than respectful to his wife.

Barbara was the most hated of the royal mistresses and she was the subject of vulgar rhymes.  She separated from her husband Roger, because he was angry at her promiscuity and her producing children who were not his.  He went to live in France.  Barbara and Charles’s love affair, passionate at first, began to decline in intensity, and when her sixth baby was born, Charles refused to acknowledge the daughter as his.  It was more likely that the child was conceived by Barbara’s lover, John Churchill.   There was a story that Charles surprised Churchill in Barbara’s bedroom and when the younger man fled, Charles called after him “I forgive you, Mr Churchill because I know you do it for your bread.”
 http://www.amazon.com/Lovers-Road-Nadine-Sutton-ebook/dp/B00YQAL98C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1443951309&sr=1-1&keywords=nadine+sutton

Jane Austen

Jane Austen is probably the world’s finest author... Certainly in my opinion, the greatest author in English literature.
She was writing from her girlhood, and as she died quite young, only aged 42…she only produced six novels.  She also wrote a lot of juvenilia, mostly comic short stories and 2 Epistolary Novels “Lady Susan” and “Love and Freindship”.  (Lady Susan has recently been filmed with the title Love and Friendship – inexplicable but then the film was pretty poor).
She grew up in rural England, in the late Georgian age, as the daughter of a Church of England clergyman, and one of a large family.  Her mother, Cassandra Leigh, was connected to the aristocracy; her father was genteel but far from rich.  Her family lived comfortably while he was working as a clergyman, but the 3 women of the family, Mrs Austen, Cassandra and Jane, were not well off when he had died.   Her heroines were usually daughters of country gentry, whose fathers had moderate sized estates, but she herself found herself more similar to Miss Bates, living in rented rooms on a small income.   However, she had a brother Edward, who had married well and had inherited his cousin’s estate.  In time, he was able to give his mother and sisters a cottage, Chawton, where Jane lived in the last years of her life and was able to settle down to steady writing.
She wrote the 3 novels of her maturity in Chawton and then became seriously ill, probably with Addison’s disease, a form of Tuberculosis.  She went to live in the city of Winchester, to have better medical attention and died there in 1817.
She also worked on 2 partial novels -one known as “The Watsons” which she started in the last years of her father’s life but only wrote a few chapters...Another one was “Sanditon” which she started to write on her deathbed.    It was clearly meant to be a satire on professional invalids who spend their time in watering places looking for health and trying new doctors and treatments.  Even when she herself was very ill, she could laugh and joke about something that might have been a sensitive subject.
Austen was a young girl when the English novel was developing.  She read the earlier works of authors such as Henry Fielding, and Samuel Richardson... and enjoyed them but she had her own ideas on how to write and she did not produce lengthy epistolary works such as Clarissa or Pamela.  She did produce epistolary novels at first, but turned 2 of them into narrated works, Sense and Sensibility (which began life as Elinor and Marianne) and Pride and Prejudice, originally called First Impressions.  Her novels were short, compared with the older writers.  She also read huge numbers of lighter works, mostly churned out by women authors trying to make a living... including Fanny Burney.  These circulating library novels were generally rather foolish, but Jane enjoyed them, and learned from them what to do and what not to do as a writer.
 Although she did not have a classical education, like the male authors, she instinctively understood that a novel was about people.  She knew that in some ways women, who spent a lot of time looking after or socialising with people, could be better observers of human nature and foibles.   So she didn’t pepper her works with long long chapters, or semi essays on this or that, or classics references.  She wrote about people and their ordinary lives, at least the ordinary lives of upper class country gentry.  She didn’t usually write about elopements or duels or melodrama.  She had done this in her juvenilia, but usually in a jocose spirit.  There was joking about duels, and “sensibility fits” and drunkenness and elopements.  
She referred to herself as an unlearned female - but in fact she had plenty of confidence in her own abilities, as a novelist and knew that she had gifts that were better for a writer than classical learning.
She was a very serious Christian and old fashioned in her beliefs.  But she was a Georgian woman, and not a Victorian so she was a lot earthier, while remaining within the bounds of propriety, than many later writers.
I hope to write some more blogs discussing her individual novels.

the trend for Flower and Jewel names

In the later 19^th century in England, a vogue came in for flower and jewel names particularly among the upper classes.  Gradually, it spread downward till by the 20^th century a lot of working class girls were called by flower names. I don’t think the jewel name trend went down the social scale so much.
In mid-Victorian times, the fashion had been for “old English” names. There had been a great interest in Saxon and older English history so these  names were revived.  Names like Hilda, Edith, Emma, Ethel were common among the Saxon nobility.  For men names like Hugo, Hildebrand, Edmund, Wilfred, and Alfred etc. came into popularity.  The queen called her second son Alfred after tithe “great” Alfred…
There was also an interest in medieval history and some Norman names were revived such as Guy, Roland Oliver, etc.  Tennyson’s Idylls of the King brought in the names of the Arthurian saga, mostly for men.  There was Arthur,  Lancelot, Gareth, Tristram, Geraint, and Gawain (which became Gavin).   There were a few women in the saga, but their names were rather exotic, like Guinevere, Nimue, Liones, Lynnette and Iseult.
But in the later part of the century, (I think because of increasing secularisation  of society and a desire for “modernity”), the upper classes began to go in for more unusual names.  Many of the “Souls” (an upper class “set” who enjoyed discussing intellectual matters) produced children in the later Victorian times, (1880s etc) who had romantic names such as Cynthia, Diana, and Venetia.  
Lady Cynthia Asquith, (well-known now as a diarist) and the daughter of a “Soul” (Mary, Lady Wemyss), had a sister in law, called Violet (known as Letty)…
 Violet was also the name of H. Henry Asquith’s elder daughter.  
Violet (Letty) Charteris, Cynthia Asquith's brother's wife, was born Lady Violet Manners, daughter of another “Soul” -the Duchess of Rutland. 
 Letty married Cynthia’s brother Hugo, who was killed in World War I.
 Other flower names that became popular, were Daisy, which had started as a nickname for Margaret, Lily, Marigold, May, Pansy, Primrose, Poppy, Cherry, Heather, Hazel and Flora.  Less popular but used were names like Lavender, Hyacinth, Iris, Clematis, and Clover.  In the 20^th century, flower names went on being popular and there was a search for more unusual ones.  Some of these have remained in use even today, such as Jasmine, Fern, Holly and even Honeysuckle.  Bryony seems to have come into popularity much much later, when the vogue was over.
I think that this trend came along because people wanted something “new” which hadn’t been used before.. rather than the old names that had been around for centuries, or a revival of names that had been around thousands of years ago.  
 Working class people in Victorian times had often used bible names and virtue names such as Prudence, Faith, Hope, Charity etc.  Others were Rebecca, Rachel, Ruth and the ever popular Sarah.
Now they too went in for flower names, mostly I think Lily and Rose and Daisy.. (All names you can find in Upstairs Downstairs notably!).
The jewel name trend was less popular  among the working classes; perhaps it seemed a bit too secular.  A few jewel names did become popular among working class girls, such as Beryl, Ruby, and Pearl. 
Diamond was used because of the Queen’s Diamond jubilee year.  There were  few upper class children who received the name.   Emerald had already been used as “Esmeralda”, (a name used in Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame).   Maud Lady Cunard, a famous socialite, adopted it as her nickname…
There are less jewel names than flower names, so perhaps the trend wore out, because it was a bit too exotic and there wasn’t much variety. But names that have been used are Amber (still popular), Coral, Beryl, Diamond, Emerald, Garnet, (used by both sexes in Victorian times) Jade, Opal, Pearl, Ruby, Sapphire (also as Sapphira- a bible name) and Topaz.

More names

Writers are always on the lookout for something new and interesting to call our characters.  So, it is not surprising that many have invented new names or have found older and unusual ones which they have revitalised or modernised for use.  Some of these names have just remained literary ones, and have rarely if ever been used in real life. Others have become very popular.  Vanessa, Swift’s invention, is one that became quite common. Myra isn’t a popular name now; it was said to be invented by the poet Fulke Greville in the 17^th century.   It may be an anagram of “Mary”.  It was common for a time, but the story of the Moors Murders in the 1960s, by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, destroyed its popularity. 

Napoleon I was a fan of James McPherson’s Ossianic poetry. He suggested the name “Oscar” for the son of his former ladylove, Desiree Bernadotte. Desiree had been engaged to him when she was Desiree Clary, but later she married Jean Charles Bernadotte, who became King of Sweden.  Because of this, some of the names invented by McPherson became popular among Scandinavian royalty…on such strange accidents as Napoleon’s liking this “fake poetry” does the popularity of some names depend!

The name Jennifer has been very much used all through the 20^th century.  In the early part of the century, it was only used in Cornwall and was an adaptation of the Welsh Guenevere, the wife of King Arthur, in legend.  This name was thought to mean “white” (Gwen and Wen/wyn are names that mean white or fair in Welsh) and “Hwyfar” which may mean smooth or soft.  The name survived in Cornwall, which was one of the places closely connected with Arthurian legend. However Bernard Shaw used it for Jennifer Dubedat in his play “the Doctors Dilemma” (1905).  This was a very successful play and the heroine’s name became well known and loved.  It is spelled in different ways -particularly in America, Jenifer, or Gennifer… Other variants of the name are Ginevra or Genevra.

Stella is another name that has been not just a literary one, but has become popular in the real world. It was invented as a name for his lady love by Philip Sidney, in his poetry “Asphodel to Stella”.  It means “star”.  It has been very popular in the 20^th century and so have variants like “Estelle” and “Estella”.

Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind” had a great influence on naming for American children…She gave her characters some very unusual names,  most notably of course Scarlett for her heroine.   Scarlett (the name of Scarlett’s paternal grandmother was Katie Scarlett) is a surname, which became a first name – which was not uncommon for boys, in Britain and America, but I don’t believe it was that common, even in America, for girls. Other names in Gone with the Wind that became popular were the male names like Cade, Brent, and Rhett…. Ashley became increasingly known as a girls’ name.