She stalked away from her one paid job (teaching) after only a few months, invested cannily in railway stocks, “she refused to use her rackety health as an excuse, instead throwing herself into strenuous physical domestic labour. … And if by time travel magic we could fast forward Brontë to the age of the suffragettes we would find her snorting in derision and, quite possibly, setting a large dog on the women in purple and green. In other words, Brontë is not on ‘our side’ and were we to meet her, we would not like her. And that, really, is the point.”