[Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature] is a titillating title, and the contents bear it out—though not as some might think.

Miss Hardwick is no hand-wringer. She is a literary surgeon, admirably equipped to expose the nerves. The Brontës are her first patients and she sets to work on them with precision. Diagnoses: 'In the Brontë sisters there is a distinctly high tone and low spirit'. Charlotte 'underneath the correcting surface' is 'deeply romantic, full of dreams and visited by nightmares'. Emily has 'a spare inviolate centre, a harder resignation amounting finally to withdrawal'. Anne's 'religious earnestness' covers 'a secret suffering, a mute, hidden torment'. All three, quiet and repressed though they are, possess 'a disturbing undercurrent of intense sexual fantasy'. By the time Miss Hardwick has stitched them neatly up, and pronounced them heroic, we not only know the Brontës better, we also marvel...