Bad or mad?: Branwell Brontë, mental health, and alcoholism in Sally Wainwright's To Walk Invisible

Our chapter investigates the notoriously maligned figure Branwell Brontë, the little-known brother of the Brontë sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, as depicted in the BBC’s To Walk Invisible (2016). Written and directed by Sally Wainwright, the series validates the longstanding myth that Branwell was not simply the family failure, but a reprobate bent on wreaking havoc and misery on everything and everyone he touched. For many Brontë fans and scholars, Branwell was little more than a nuisance who left a black mark on the Brontës’ otherwise legendary reputation. In highlighting the domestic turmoil that plagued the Brontës’ lives throughout the 1840s, and shrewdly communicating the devastating impacts his destructive behaviour had on the Brontë household, To Walk Invisible brings into sharp focus Branwell’s ills, addictions, problematic behaviours, and psychological torment. Despite its popular and critical success, one of the more underappreciated features of the series is its strong evocation of the cultural politics of mental health in both the mid-nineteenth century and contemporary society. Victorian physicians’ understanding of Branwell’s symptoms, including substance abuse, behavioural inconsistencies, and emotional outbursts, were apt to be diagnosed under the umbrella of ‘madness’ or ‘insanity’, terms loaded with connotations of moral failings rather than any accepted medical disorder. Our chapter looks at the political ambivalence Wainwright evokes around the Brontë brother. We argue that the implied medicalisation of Branwell’s behaviour generates a long-overdue discussion about the extent to which history has unduly maligned him and the way that the drama’s informed retrospect generates an important debate about Victorian medical narratives more broadly.