'The 'Charlotte' Cult: Writing the Literary Pilgrimage from Gaskell to Woolf

摘要

This chapter analyses how writers and literary tourists imagined Charlotte Brontë during the fifty years after her death. It is framed by the accounts of Elizabeth Gaskell and Virginia Woolf, both of whom travelled to Yorkshire to find evidence of Charlotte Brontë’s life and to assess her legacy as an author. While Gaskell's biography unleashed the 'Charlotte cult' of devoted followers, Woolf questioned the value of the literary pilgrimage and the myths of authorship surrounding Charlotte Brontë’s legacy.