The Brontës as examples of their time

There are two recent entries on the Catallaxy blog where the Brontës are mentioned and used as examples of their times.

This is what they wrote yesterday:

A doctor noted that the conditions in the factories compared favourably with the great public (private) schools, rife with bullying and sadistic disciplinary practices, where the gentry sent their own children. Others pointed out that the domestic servants of the Tories who supported the reform worked longer hours than the millhands. Various of the Bronte girls, barred from factory work by their class and working as governesses, recorded bitter discontent in their letters at their hours and their pay compared with the situation of the girls in the mills.

Charlotte's comments on Emily's work at Miss Patchett's school are well-known by now:

It gives an appalling account of her duties - hard labour from six in the morning until near elevn at night, with only one half-hour of exercise between. This is slavery. I fear she will never stand it.

So, yes, governessing may have been somewhat more sendetary, but one can't say it was a relaxed kind of work preceisely.

And today they write about one of Patrick Brontë's best know customs:

The Reverend Patrick Bronte, living on the outskirts of a Yorkshire village through the Luddit disturbances, slept with a loaded pistol at his bedside in case of attack. (Each morning he discharged his pistol through the bedroom window into the nearby cemetery).

In fact, if you go to Haworth and look at the side of the church tower facing the Parsonage you will see what it is sad to be said bullet marks from these discharges.

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