interviews Brontë Parsonage Museum Director Rebecca Yorke.
“The Brontës ‘belong’ to all of us,” she says. “The Society’s mission is to celebrate their lives and works, widening access to their legacy and sharing their contemporary significance with a global audience. That audience is vast and varied and so are the elements that engage them, whether it’s the novels, the poetry or the latest TV adaptation.”
Emily, Frances O’Connor’s recent film about the second youngest of sisters, upset some Brontë fans and scholars due to its artistic licence. But Yorke says that “personally, I feel that if modern interpretations encourage someone to pick up Wuthering Heights, or visit the museum, where they can learn what is fact and what is fiction, then that can only be a good thing. There is room in the Brontë community for all of us.” [...]
“It’s an honour and privilege to take on the role of director, as well as a huge responsibility. There are 32 members of staff and over 20 volunteers whose well-being and job satisfaction I care about, over 1,500 Brontë Society members across the globe who care about our world-class collections, plus many thousands of local residents, visitors, fans and online audiences who have a passionate interest in the Brontës and their legacy. It’s a varied and fascinating role, with no two days the same and I feel very lucky.
“My aim is to lead the organisation with vision, integrity and respect for what has gone before, while ensuring that we evolve and adapt our offer and ways of working so that we can meet the challenges of the 21st century. There are also many stakeholders to consider. The Brontë Society receives considerable annual funding from Arts Council England, in return for which we deliver a programme of events, exhibitions, outreach and learning opportunities, all of which seek to widen access to the museum and highlight the contemporary relevance of the Brontës’ story.”
This sounds like a lot to take on. I ask what Yorke is hoping to achieve in the role, and if there is scope for anything above steering the ship.
“Over the next few years, I would like to expand our digital offer, engender a sense of pride in the museum in our local communities and seize all the opportunities presented by Bradford becoming UK City of Culture in 2025 and the museum celebrating its centenary in 2028.” [...]
Of all the great replies, a few made it to my interview including ‘Does the museum have any information on the ratio at which visitors ask about each sister – do people come as specific Emily, Charlotte or Anne fans or just to appreciate the Brontës as a whole?’
“There are definitely people who are Team Charlotte or Team Emily, and certainly in more recent times, Team Anne,” Yorke says. “What the ratio is would be hard to say, although Emily certainly holds a lot of intrigue for many.” I’m sure nobody has the time for this, but the nerd in me would like to compare sales of the Team Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell badges in the Brontë Parsonage Museum shop to find the answer. [...]
“Until last year there were many manuscripts, including several ‘little books’ by Charlotte Brontë, which hadn’t been heard of for over 80 years, but which then came to light as part of the Honresfield Library. They were due to be sold by auction in separate lots, but a consortium of institutions led by the Friends of the National Libraries worked together to fundraise and save them for public benefit. I will never forget going to Sotheby’s with Ann Dinsdale, our principal curator, and seeing them for the first time. It was incredibly moving, especially knowing that these manuscripts had been written in the Parsonage, where we now work, almost 200 years ago. Some of these items will be on display in 2023.”
On the topic of something she would like to discover, Yorke says: “We have little in the collection relating to Emily Brontë, so it would be extremely exciting if the beginnings of a second novel or a poetry manuscript, or even a letter written in her hand, were discovered.” (Amy Stone)
With Emily, O’Connor doesn’t follow the prevailing revisionist trend in biopics and costume dramas where modern-day political attitudes are transposed onto the past, teasing out instead a resonance between the Romanticism of the Brontës’ time and the more drastic individualism of our own. She paints her characters’ sensibility as a reaction against Enlightenment strictures, at once invigorating and naïve, not yet fully aware of the dark paths to despair and isolation down which valorization of the self can lead. Mackey’s portrayal finds real pathos in Emily as a sort of pioneer in the contradictions of Romanticism, which gave rise to and still inform our contemporary restlessness—isolated, sensitive, buffeted by stormy impulses.
Edited as to suggest that Emily wrote Wuthering Heights practically overnight, the film’s ending feels rushed, almost an afterthought. It also threatens to undermine Emily’s imaginativeness by presenting its eponymous figure’s accomplishment as a mere extrapolation of life events. Another way to read it, though, would be to see Emily’s novel as finding the sublime in the tragic, a transcendence of the mortality that hounded her. Either way, faced with a reflection of ourselves in Emily that doesn’t erase the historical distance between us, it’s easy to forgive. (William Repass)
0 comments:
Post a Comment