Andrew McMillan: If you’re having a fragile day while midway through a tour, how do you take care of yourself?Kate Ceberano: It’s very infantilising, but you’ve got to feed yourself and put yourself to a little afternoon nap. You’re just going to think me completely ridiculous; I don’t know why, but I find listening to old English novels, like Emily Brontë in an audiobook, and it’s just the weirdest thing. I find it so soothing to go to a drawing room in 1870 or 1880, and know that there’s nothing out the window (in the story) except for a few lowing cows, and one spare lamb, you know? (laughs) And she’s just sitting out of that window, wondering what Darcy’s doing that afternoon. I find that has a sort of a therapeutic kind of “om” (effect) for me.So when I’m driving from one venue to the next, sometimes it’s up to 4½ hours’ drive, and I know I’ve got to recover, put it back up on soundcheck, and then the gig in the evening … God help me if I don’t go and escape to Jane Eyre, or Wuthering Heights, or Pride and Prejudice. It’s definitely comforting to me to cuddle into that space. I’m like a kid: put the kid on the couch, put on something quiet on the television, take everything away and make sure the stomach’s fed, give her a little “nanna nap” – and then she’s good to go.
The show opens with the Narrator (Kady Lyon) trying to settle on which scary story to tell the audience (“we couldn’t get Jacob Elordi so Frankenstein is out… we couldn’t get Jacob Elordi so Wuthering Heights is out”), before settling on Gagula. (Rebecca Mahar)
Tras muchos años de abandono, la ruinosa mansión de Wildfell Hall es habitada de nuevo por una misteriosa mujer y su hijo de corta edad. La nueva inquilina, una viuda, no tarda, con su carácter retraído y poco sociable, sus opiniones a menudo radicales y su extraña, triste belleza, en atraer las sospechas de la vecindad, y a la vez la rendida admiración de un joven e impetuoso agricultor. Pero la mujer tiene, en efecto, un pasado... más terrible y tortuoso si cabe de lo que la peor de las murmuraciones es capaz de adivinar. La inquilina de Wildfell Hall (1848), segunda y última novela de Anne Brontë, une al bello relato de un amor prohibido e invernal el retrato intensísimo del fracaso de un matrimonio degradado por el abuso y la violencia. (Translation)
Desde su aparición en 2020, la novela ha sido calificada como una adaptación de los elementos del gótico romántico al contexto mexicano. Sin embargo, Silvia Moreno-García, en una entrevista para el podcast “Books Connect Us”, de Penguin Random House, revela que esto no es del todo cierto.“En realidad no estaba pensando en el gótico romántico como el de ‘Cumbres borrascosas’ o ‘Jane Eyre’, sino más bien en el gótico de terror. Es decir, títulos como ‘Drácula’, ‘El monje’ o los relatos de Horacio Quiroga”, dice la autora que relata que la historia surgió de un viaje a Real de Monte en Hidalgo, donde hay minas que fueron explotadas primero por españoles y luego por ingleses. (Kevin Aragón) (Translation)
The Brontë Sisters UK publishes a video about this 1850 painting by Abraham Solomon, Portrait of Charlotte Brontë. An intriguing portrait, hardly of the real Charlotte but curious, anyway. The latest post by AnneBrontë.org marks two Brontë-adjacent clergy anniversaries: Sutcliffe Sowden, who married Arthur and Charlotte and later died tragically in a canal, and Hammond Roberson, the fiercely anti-Luddite Dewsbury vicar known to Patrick Brontë and immortalized as Charlotte's Reverend Helstone in Shirley.
Best Original Song"House" from Wuthering Heights - written by Charli XCX, John Cale, Nathan Klein, Finn Keane | performed by Charli XCX, John Cale
Brontë’s 1849 novel Shirley, set in the Yorkshire textile district in 1811-12, combined sympathy for the plight of the workers with a criticism of violence and a call for paternalism from the mill owners. (Brian Lewis)
Brontë WaterfallStation: HaworthDistance: 9kmThe Brontë sisters are legendary authors in British literature, and this two-hour route crosses the landscapes that inspired their work. From Haworth Station, climb the cobbled main street and cross the cemetery next to the Brontë Parsonage. Follow the signposted moorland track, reaching the falls and returning via the same path. (Eibhlis Gale-Coleman)
With a particular predilection for historical fiction, some of McGuirk’s early favorites were Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved Little House on the Prairie series, Charlotte Brontë’s timeless classic Jane Eyre and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which she loved so much, “I read it every six months throughout my entire childhood.” (Tripp Whetsell)
5. 'Wuthering Heights', 2011IMDb Score: 6.0/10Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights has been adapted for the screen more than a dozen times. In Andrea Arnold's version we are only introduced to the first half of the original's plot. Yet the atmosphere of Brontë's England, with its misty, heather-covered moors, is captured to perfection.The film opens with Mr. Earnshaw returning from a journey. He has brought back a dark-skinned teenager, a runaway from a West Indies plantation whom he found on the streets of Liverpool.Earnshaw names the boy Heathcliff. No one welcomes the new arrival, and the boy himself has a rough, rebellious nature. He finds common ground only with Earnshaw's daughter, Catherine. (Julia Talakh)
4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte BrontëJane Eyre follows the journey of Jane, an independent woman who struggles against hardship while searching for love, respect, and personal freedom. Jane’s character teaches the importance of self-respect and staying true to personal values.Despite facing rejection, loneliness, and difficult circumstances, she refuses to sacrifice her identity to gain acceptance. The novel shows that real strength comes from knowing your worth and choosing authenticity over pleasing others. Jane’s journey inspires readers to build confidence and trust their own voice. (Saniya Ahmad Khan)
From silky slip dresses to pantsuits, this lightweight, sheer fabric is the perfect option for battling the summer heat while living out your "Wuthering Heights"-inspired fantasy. (Charlene Teressa)
by Marta Sánchez RomeraDepartamento de Filología Inglesa, Francesa y Alemana, Universidad de MálagaMay 2026Throughout this dissertation project, I will provide some context on how Victorian values affected the relationship between women, creating a bond that sometimes went further than a simple friendship. Since the category ‘’lesbianism’’ did not exist and homosexuality was widely seen as bad, Victorians romanticised these friendships and were blinded to the fact that something deeper could occur between them. In order to reflect all this, after giving some historical context and theory, I will analyse Villette by Charlotte Brontë, in which there is a clear subtext of sapphic desire, with the aim of revealing how lesbianism was portrayed and seen in the 19th century.
by Sara MaltonJournal of Victorian Culture, vcag014, https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcag014 (July 2026)This essay focuses on the nineteenth-century ‘fasting girl’, a phenomenon scrutinized in medical writing and the popular press, as well as the period’s literature. Fasting girls were typically purported to survive on only the Eucharist and sips of water – for weeks, months, or even years. They often became objects of intense public interest, alternately the locus of legal and medical enquiry or sites of pilgrimage. In evoking earlier fasting saints, whose behaviour was considered anorexia mirabilis, the fasting girl claims to embody the miraculous consequences of devotion to her saviour. The medical establishment would increasingly seek to discredit this earlier understanding of fasting. Cases such as that of the Welsh girl Sarah Jacob (1857–1869), who has been ‘resurrected’ by authors from Dickens to Emma Donoghue (in her recent historical novel, The Wonder [2016]), were at the nexus of this transition from the perception of self-imposed starvation as redemptive sacrifice to pathologized illness, anorexia nervosa (1873). Dickens offers varying treatments of fasting women in his journalism and his portrait of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop (1841). Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849) identifies maternal healing as a tonic to destructive, idolatrous forms of self-starvation. Finally, in its depiction of dangerous religious devotion and the limits of medicalization, The Wonder offers us a prism through which we can critically examine the ongoing cultural construction of the fasting girl. Collectively, the texts considered here invite a more thorough confrontation with the religious dimensions of female self-deprivation and its vexed relationship to female agency.
Funkcje wątków gotyckich w Wichrowych Wzgórzach Emily Brontë oraz Pogance Narcyzy Żmichowskiej (The Functions of Gothic Themes in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and The Heathen by Narcyza Żmichowska)by Szklarz, WeronikaJuly 1, 2026Zarówno w Wichrowych Wzgórzach Emily Brontë, jak i w Pogance Narcyzy Żmichowskiej występują elementy charakterystyczne dla „formuły gotyckiej”. Niniejsza praca stanowi analizę porównawczą sposobu wykorzystania przez pisarki wątków gotyckich, a jej celem jest wskazanie ich funkcji w wymowie obu dzieł. Autorka wyznacza najważniejsze cechy powieści gotyckiej, przeprowadza analizę konstrukcji przestrzeni i ich wpływu na bohaterów, a także omawia kreację postaci przypominających gotyckich łotrów. Ponadto podkreślono znaczenie sił nadprzyrodzonych w obu utworach oraz wyjaśniono, w jaki sposób gotycka maska służy wprowadzeniu kwestii takich jak związki nieheteronormatywne, dyskryminacja rasowa oraz opresyjność norm płciowych. Praca dowodzi, że wątki gotyckie w utworach Brontë i Żmichowskiej nie tylko tworzą atmosferę grozy, lecz za sprawą kategorii „niewypowiadalności” umożliwiają równoczesne ukrycie i wyeksponowanie tematów niemożliwych do wyrażenia wprost. Tym samym zestawienie Wichrowych Wzgórz i Poganki ujawnia transgresyjny potencjał gotycyzmu, pozwalający na wpisanie obu powieści w szeroki kontekst społeczno-kulturowy.Both Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and The Heathen by Narcyza Żmichowska feature elements from “the Gothic formula”. The thesis is a comparative analysis of the usage of Gothic themes, and its aim is to state their functions in the novels’ message. The author of the thesis outlines the most important features of the Gothic novel, analyses the construction of the spaces and their influence on the characters and considers the characterisation of these who resemble Gothic villains. Furthermore, meaning of the supernatural forces is highlighted, and also it is explained how the gothic disguise serves to introduce issues such as queer relationships, racial discrimination and oppressiveness of gender norms. The thesis proves that the gothic themes in Brontë’s and Żmichowska’s novels not only create horror atmosphere but also, through the category of “unspeakable”, enable the simultaneous concealment and unveiling of topics that cannot be expressed directly. Therefore, a comparison of Wuthering Heights and The Heathen reveals the transgressive potential of Gothicism, which allows both novels to be situated within a socio-cultural context.
Чартистское движение в романах Шарлотты Бронте и Элизабет Гаскелл (he Chartist Movement in the Novels of Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell)Dmitrienko K. V.Current issues of translation, linguistics, history of literature and folklore: collection of articles from the XIV International scientific conference of young scientists dedicated to the 95th anniversary of the Department of Foreign Languages (Ekaterinburg, February 19-20, 2026). - Ekaterinburg: Publishing house "Azhur", 2026. - P. 1224-1236.This article analyzes how the Chartist movement is reflected in Charlotte Brontë's social novels Shirley (1849) and Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1855). It examines ideas about Chartism that existed in British society and how they were depicted in women's fiction of the second half of the 19th century. Particular attention is paid to the images of the characters through which the writers convey their attitudes to the social problems of their era.
Extensive repair works have been proposed for Oakwell Hall to remedy damage and ensure its longevity.The Grade-I Listed Elizabethan manor house, located to the northwest of Birstall, dates back to 1583 and is set in period gardens within a 110-acre country park. The hall was visited by Charlotte Brontë in the 1830s and was the inspiration behind 'Fieldhead' in her 1849 novel 'Shirley'. It is now a museum furnished as a family home of the 1690s which is owned and run by Kirklees Council.The local authority is seeking Listed Building Consent to carry out repairs to the fabric of the building to ensure it is fit to operate for years to come. The council has appointed AHR Building Consultancy to carry out the works that will “restore damaged and age-related issues” and ensure Oakwell Hall can remain open to the visiting public, according to a supporting statement.Several issues need to be addressed, including those regarding structural movement, water ingress and backlog maintenance issues primarily affecting the external fabric of the building. Some internal areas will also be impacted where either movement has affected the structure due to plumbing leaks, or wear and tear.As a result, works would include the removal of the existing roof to allow for the installation of a bat-friendly, modern breather membrane to shield the building from water ingress. The existing stone slate roof would then be re-laid, and gutters and down pipes replaced. Repairs would also be made to the external stone, existing lead glazing, and defective areas of the underground drainage system.A new, accessible toilet would be installed at ground floor level to the rear of the property, with its walls positioned to limit the impact on the existing historical structure. The existing first floor male and female toilets, which were a later addition, would be fully removed as part of the development.The supporting Design and Access Statement put together by AHR Building Consultancy says: “The proposals detailed in this statement have been developed to minimise the continuing deterioration of the building and to provide restorative repairs to ensure the upkeep of the building is retained.“Our proposals have been developed with a core aim to protect the existing building in character and appearance and with the aim of restorative repairs to the roof and external walls whilst also improving the facilities for visitors through the provision of an accessible toilet at ground floor level.“The works are confined to the building and will therefore have no impact on the wider building’s environment and external grounds.”A target date for a decision to be made was set for Wednesday, (April 8), though this is yet to be made, according to Kirklees’ planning portal. (Abigail Marlow)
7 The Professor (written 1846; published 1857) by Charlotte BrontëThis was the first novel that Charlotte Brontë completed. It was rejected by publishers nine times. Written in the voice of a male narrator, William Crimsworth, it offers a downbeat story of everyday middle-class striving as the protagonist travels to Brussels to establish his career as a teacher. But the last publisher to see it thought it showed promise, despite being too short and insufficiently “striking and exciting”. Had the author anything else to offer? Luckily, Jane Eyre – which amply supplied the earlier book’s deficiencies – was already in train and was soon accepted with alacrity. Although The Professor remained unpublished in Charlotte’s lifetime, she continued to believe that it was “as good as I can write”; its subtly ironised male voice reveals her underlying literary sophistication.6 Agnes Grey (1847) by Anne BrontëIn 1846, the three Brontë sisters had – at their own expense – published a joint poetry collection under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. It sold just two copies. Realising that fiction was more saleable, they decided that each should write a novel under the same pen names. While Charlotte toiled over The Professor, the youngest sister, Anne, was working on Agnes Grey. It also sought to portray everyday life, but the result has a more authentic ring since she drew so directly on her personal experience working as a governess in well-to-do families. The first-person heroine is initially excited at the thought of earning her own living. But she finds herself underpaid and unappreciated by the snooty parents, while her tantrum-prone charges include a vile little boy who likes pulling the legs off baby sparrows. Had it not been overshadowed by Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights when it came out in 1847, it might perhaps have caused more of a stir as a Nanny Diaries-style exposé.5 Shirley (1849) by Charlotte BrontëThis flawed follow-up to Jane Eyre was written under trying circumstances. Charlotte’s brother Branwell and both her sisters sickened and died in quick succession during the writing of it, so it was abandoned for a while before being resumed by the bereaved author. That’s not, however, the only reason why this “condition of England” novel – which announces itself on page one as “something unromantic as Monday morning” – has failed to entrance readers as much as its predecessor Jane Eyre. Its third-person narrative does not focus on a single hero or heroine and as a result the book feels comparatively diffuse, though Charlotte herself might have defended it on the grounds that real life is diffuse. Set during the Luddite riots of 1811-12, it explores social unrest, capitalism and the “woman question”. Because of her proto-feminism, Charlotte’s ideological position has often been called progressive, yet she was in fact a political conservative.4 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1848)In feminist terms, Anne’s second novel is the most radical and socially engaged of all the sisters’ books. The eponymous tenant, Helen Huntingdon, is hiding out at Wildfell Hall with her young son after leaving her abusive husband. At the time, unequal marriage laws meant that it was very hard for a woman to get a divorce at all and nigh impossible for her to get custody of her children. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte had made Mr Rochester a sexy Byronic rake; Anne, in reply, exposed the toxic masculinity behind that character type. Despite the novel’s strong Christian message, its unvarnished portrayal of addiction and adultery shocked Victorian readers more than any of the other Brontë books. More interested in the real than the ideal, Anne was drawing on her experience as a witness to Branwell’s chaotic behaviour.3 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)The first of the Brontë novels to be published, Charlotte’s melodramatic tale of the poor plain governess and the madwoman in the attic became a bestseller on first publication. Its genius, in fact, lies less in the plot than in what George Eliot’s future partner GH Lewes, who was one of its first reviewers, called its “strange power of subjective representation”. Ditching the distancing device of a male narrator for a female voice proved Charlotte’s creative breakthrough: it enabled her to inject a then unprecedented first-person intensity into the novel form. However, Jane Eyre proved controversial at the time among sexist critics. Correctly surmising that the author behind “Currer Bell” was a woman, they decried the book as “coarse” and the heroine as too assertive for a female.2 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)It is mind-boggling to think that Wuthering Heights was written alongside The Professor and Agnes Grey, quite literally on the same dining room table in Haworth Parsonage at which all three sisters sat together working on their first novels. Emily’s masterpiece was called “a strange book baffling all regular criticism” on publication; it remains enigmatic, completely sui-generis and totally outside the norms of Victorian fiction. Justly regarded as one of the greatest works in the western canon, it’s far from the cliched love story it later became in popular culture. Though grisly with violence, it’s oddly devoid of sex. The writing is astonishing: scarcely any adjectives and not a purple passage in sight. The Victorian poet Swinburne was right to compare it to Greek tragedy.1 Villette by Charlotte Brontë (1853)Less famous than Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, Villette is Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece and deserves to be better known. Here, she goes back to the Brussels material that she had already used at a tangent in The Professor – and which was rooted in her real-life experience of studying and teaching there in 1842-4. Reworking those memories from a first-person female perspective, she now incorporated her own secret into the story: the unrequited love she had felt for her Belgian writing tutor Constantin Heger. Yet the result is anything but naïve autobiography. Instead, it shows Charlotte push the classic realist Victorian novel in new, artistically experimental directions. The unreliable narrator, Lucy Snowe, has intimacy issues and sets a challenge for the reader. Long before Freud, Charlotte was exploring questions about repression and the unconscious in a complex, self-knowing psychological novel whose generic status hovers ambiguously between naturalism, gothic and autofiction. The extent to which Villette mined and refracted her own inner life was only discovered posthumously by her biographers.
Modern artists like Manet, who portrayed purely modern scenes without conforming to the “grain,” provoked viewership fury. French critic of the time, Émile Zola, argued in an essay titled “Édouard Manet”, originally published in 1867, that public outrage simply reveals how tightly audiences cling to expectations of what art ought to resemble. The public, up until this point, had maintained neoclassical values in art: to flatter, narrate, and moralize. Manet refused all three of those familiar imperatives by producing art that felt uncomfortable and bluntly new — a choice that is now heavily applauded. True art, a point Zola returns to time and time again, does not come from a desire to conform to norms or follow the “grain” but from individual temperament and personal vision.Nearly two centuries later and across the Atlantic, my girlfriends and I visited the Cineplex on Rue Sainte Catherine to watch Emerald Fennell’s 2026 “Galentines” adaptation of “Wuthering Heights”. The reaction to the film was generally varied. Some praised it, while lovers of the novel jumped to Twitter and Reddit to vent their anger over yet another inaccurate adaptation. To give credit to these bibliophiles, Fennell abandons many of the themes that make this story so impactful by portraying a narrative based on her initial impression of the book as a 14-year-old girl. In depicting this youthful interpretation, Fennell centres the film around a glorified toxic romance between Catherine and Heathcliff. Frustrated viewers were appalled at Fennell’s tone-deafness in foregrounding obsessive love while sidestepping and softening the harsher themes of the novel, particularly those pertaining to Heathcliff’s racial marginalization and the systemic class violence in the setting.In reading tweets alleging the film’s negligence, just as I did in December when choosing my winter semester electives, I turned to modern art history. Two hundred years apart, both Manet and Fennell have something in common: they’ve both committed to their personal visions and rejected traditional expectations. Manet counters aesthetic norms and produces art that depicts the tensions of modern life in a way that is truthful to himself. Similarly, Fennell abandons the expectation that adaptations be reflective of their source material to create a film rooted in her own experience, a decision Zola might have applauded. Whether or not you enjoy or even “agree with” either of these artist’s work, they both made the choice to commit to their personal truths and abandon external expectations. In practicing artistic autonomy, they choose their own temperament as an anchor in their work.If these two artists are correct and individual temperament is the “True North” of art, it leads us to question: are there traditions or expectations that artists must uphold, or is personal vision all that truly matters? Between these contexts, “tradition” is understood very differently. For Manet, “traditions” are expectations set by the Art Academy surrounding what defines academically valid (and objectively good) art. For Fennell, “tradition” underlines the source material from which she draws her film: Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Both these artists abandon tradition in their works, making audiences question: where is the line drawn between artistic autonomy and deviations from tradition?In deviating from tradition, one can question the difference between innovation and avoidance.If artists do have a responsibility to uphold a certain tradition, both Manet and Fennell have failed to do so. Yet we celebrate Manet as a transformative turning point in modern art history. Why? In my opinion, it is because Manet’s work denies the comfort of ignorance and bluntly presents his audiences with uncomfortable social realities, forcing them to analyze their own lives through his work. In contrast, Fennell’s Wuthering Heights does exactly the opposite. While she also deviates from “tradition”, she does so by refusing to inherit the uncomfortable and darker themes of the novel. She allows her audiences to find comfort in the avoidance of difficult themes surrounding the intersection of violence, race, and class. If Manet makes audiences question how closely art should adhere to academic standards, Fennell forces them to question how much personal vision we are willing to accept in interpretations of classic narratives.In some cases, we respond well to moving away from tradition when artists depict their personal visions because it feels honest and revealing, confronting you with art rooted in social reality. This is what Manet did in pulling at the seams of academic art to reveal true modern life. On the other side of the coin, moving away from tradition can feel dishonest if viewers don’t feel it is rooted in these social truths — the very social truths that made Emily Brontë’s novel so impactful in the first place.Now, as I wrap up this article in my student apartment a few streets from campus, I have to conclude that this argument is somewhat of an open-ended question. I think that is because there is no universal line that separates avoidance from innovation in art. That line is unstable by design, and artists have always toed it by pushing their own personal vision forward while balancing a respect for tradition. Perhaps this tension is what produces great art. That being said, in my art history class, we are still marveling at Manet’s impact on the evolution of modern art two centuries later. But as I left the Cineplex on Sainte Catherine after seeing Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, I got the impression that this particular adaptation might not make it onto the syllabus of a film class in another two hundred years. (Lyla Burt)
Contemporary psychology doesn’t view their relationships as “tragic lovers divided by social class and circumstance.” Instead, people agree that this story is about two deeply wounded people who cannot escape each other’s influence.Behind the perfect visuals and stunning costumes, it’s still possible to get the idea that this movie is a “psychological horror,” as often described on Reddit. Catherine, Heathcliff, and nearly every supporting character become trapped in a cycle of resentment and revenge.
Wuthering HeightsWe went to see Wuthering Heights within the last two weeks, and we totally loved it. I know that a lot of people felt really mixed about it, but we loved it, and so I took the opportunity to see if she might be into listening to Jane Eyre on Audible. I thought she might want to hear what another Brontë sister was writing, but I got sort of a mixed reply on it. We listened to her for a little bit, but I’m still trying. (Padma Lakshmi as told to Marah Eakin)
9 October 2025, 7-9pmElizabeth Gaskell's HouseLiterature is full of impressive female characters and now you can enjoy four feisty females from your favourite novelists!So join us this autumn/winter for cosy nights in with other literature fans to take a fresh look at feisty females Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Shirley from Charlotte Brontë's Shirley, Margaret from Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South and Esther from George Moore’s Esther Waters.All four heroines hold fast to their principles, and they get what they want by the end of their respective novels. But which one impresses you most? Do any of them sell out? Do they have any weaknesses? And what are their authors saying about the choices that women have in their respective periods?Join the debate with Sherry Ashworth’s new online course. Each month we’ll focus on one heroine in her novel.This month’s session will focus on Shirley from Charlotte Brontë’s ShirleyThe class will begin with us all reading a key passage together, and then there will be breakout discussion in which everyone gets to express their view. The course is suitable for the general reader who wants to delve deeper into 19th century writing. Knowledge of the novels is desirable but not essential, just a willingness to get stuck in!Sessions will take place on zoom and numbers are limited to allow an inclusive discussion with the chance for all to take part. Please note these sessions will not be recorded as we do not have permissions from attendees.Every second Wednesday* of the month September – December 2025, 7-9pm
by Peiran Peng, Durham UniversityJournal of Victorian Culture, vcaf010, https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcaf010In Charlotte Brontë’s novels, men and women from across the social hierarchy demonstrate an obsession with gardens and gardening. In Villette, as Lucy Snowe enters her precarious position as teacher and nursery-maid in the continental pensionnat, she devotes herself to cultivating an obscure garden nook. In Shirley, the newly immigrated entrepreneur Robert Moore struggles to gain footing among antagonistic local workers, while devoting time and energy to growing a patch of garden. Shirley Keeldar, the landed heiress, also constantly manipulates her garden resources (nosegay-making and floral gift sending) as she navigates contentious social relationships. What motivates Brontë’s characters to seek the garden repeatedly? Focusing on Shirley, this article offers an explanation for this garden obsession by suggesting that manipulating garden spaces constitutes an important means of affective regulation. To do this, the argument leverages insights from what is known by philosophers as the ‘extended mind’ framework, and more specifically the extended account of affectivity, according to which human minds exploit environmental supports for cognitive-affective-mnemonic functioning. My reading of Brontë argues that garden spaces are particularly important external environments that structure and support affective experiences. Contrary to the conventional view that affective regulation occurs internally, within the inner world of individual psychological experience, this reading argues that it is often achieved through close interactions with the external environment. This interdisciplinary approach seeks to show that the garden obsession in Brontë’s fiction should be understood as meaning-making and affective management practices that are central to her expansive conception of subjectivity.
9, 16, 23 and 30 OctoberDelve into Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley in the first-ever Brontë Parsonage Museum read-along event! Across four weekly sessions, we’ll be joined by Dr Jo Waugh of York St John University and Dr Claire O’Callaghan of Loughborough University to delve into the novel. Suitable for all readers, we’ll guide you through each volume. You can read the book in advance, or in sections before each session, or be inspired to read it after the series. Each session is 1 hour.Shirley was Charlotte’s second published novel and a perceptive exploration of the industrialising Yorkshire she observed around her. Though set in the Luddite era, many of her characters were inspired by people she knew in her own time, including her sister Emily and best friend Mary Taylor. Shirley provides a powerful analysis of women’s experiences in a changing Britain.Session 1 - focuses on Volume 1Session 2 - focuses on Volume 2Session 3 - focuses on Volume 3Session 4 - The last session will be a live Zoom event with an opportunity to ask questions as we summarise the book and its themes and impact.To book, please purchase a ticket here and a link to the recording will be sent out on each weekly date. The final session on 30 October will be live from 7:30 pm to 8:30 pm. The link will be sent with your ticket, and a recording will also be made available afterwards.
by Elizabeth TeVaultThe Faculty of Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University, 2025This project explores how nineteenth-century authors use textile work—mending, knitting, embroidery—not only as symbolic markers of character and class, but as material metaphors for social repair and resistance to industrialization. By foregrounding the embodied knowledge embedded in domestic craft, the dissertation repositions needlework as a feminist-materialist heuristic, revealing how authors conceptualize alternative visions of community, political agency, and historical continuity through the logic of textile labor. Rather than evaluating the accuracy of their portrayals of class or the feasibility of their proposed solutions, the project traces how authors like Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot use the processes of textile work to model responses to industrial unrest. In Shirley and Mary Barton, domestic craft patterns are scaled to social repair, with varying outcomes. Felix Holt and North and South shift the metaphor’s origin to economic critique, emphasizing incremental, embodied, and provisional solutions. Across these texts, women’s handiwork becomes a material politics of care—an alternative to the violent ruptures of industrial conflict. Through close readings of these Condition of England novels, the project argues that textile metaphors offer a powerful framework for imagining social cohesion, community resilience, and the transformative potential of women’s domestic labor in the face of modernity’s upheavals.
The Great Southern Killarney was honoured to extend a very warm welcome [to] Nigel West of the Brontë Birthplace Limited, a descendant of Charlotte Brontë’s husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls.Brontë was born Charlotte Nicholls [sic] on 21 April 1816 and she became a highly accomplished English novelist and poet.She [was] elder sister of Emily, Anne and Branwell Brontë and she is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, which was published under the pseudonym Currer Bell.Jane Eyre was a success on publication and is now acknowledged as a classic of English literature.The Brontë connection to Killarney runs deep. In 1818, Rev Patrick Brontë wrote the novella The Maid of Killarney while residing in Thornton, Yorkshire.Decades later, in 1854, Charlotte Brontë and Arthur Bell Nicholls stayed at the newly opened Great Southern Killarney, just days after the hotel first welcomed guests.The visit was marked by the presence of local artist Dolores Lyne, Mayor of Killarney Martin Grady and Great Southern General Manager Jamie Power in a gathering that highlighted the links between community, culture and history.“The occasion provided a meaningful opportunity to reflect on the enduring cultural legacy of the Brontë family and to celebrate the ways in which literature and heritage continue to inspire,” Jamie Power remarked. (John O'Mahony)
From a young age, Rani was surrounded by the Brontës’ legacy. At her all-girls’ school, the portrait of the Brontë sisters by Branwell Brontë was a familiar sight, and their stories felt personal, especially since she grew up walking the same windswept moors they once did. The documentary takes Rani back to those roots, exploring the spirit of rebellion that connected her with the Brontës from a young age. To her, they weren’t just quiet, knitting women. They were fierce disruptors who challenged norms and made their voices heard. It’s this strength that resonated with Rani, who always longed to break out of traditional expectations.Rani’s upbringing was shaped by her parents’ struggles as Punjabi immigrants who set up a textile factory in Bradford. Despite the hardships, her father encouraged her to break stereotypes. Unlike many traditional Indian fathers, he took her to the pub at 15 and taught her to play pool, something Rani credits for her ability to navigate the TV industry today.The Brontë sisters, like Rani, were outsiders in their own way. Rani’s documentary highlights how their stories are more than just gothic romances; they are tales of women pushing against the world’s constraints. The film also touches on modern issues, like using Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to support domestic abuse survivors. Rani’s own sense of disruption is echoed in the Brontës’ fight for female autonomy and identity.Reflecting on her journey, Rani admits that her teenage self never realised how much the Brontës’ spirit matched her own. It wasn’t just about loving Wuthering Heights or identifying with Heathcliff. It was about finding a voice and taking ownership of her story.Today, Rani continues to challenge stereotypes, inspired by the Brontës’ rebellious legacy. As she considers getting a tattoo that reads ‘Sister of Disruption,’ it’s clear that she’s not just telling their story but living it. (Pooja Pillai)
Oakwell Hall was built in 1583 and has a colourful history, being a manor house, school and latterly a museum. Writer Charlotte Bronte visited in the 19th Century and featured it as Fieldhead in her novel Shirley.
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys (176 pages)This is one that will only make sense if you’ve already read Jane Eyre, but it’s honestly one of my favourite modern classics, purely for the interesting angle and social commentary. The story follows Antoinette ‘Bertha’ Mason, the woman who eventually becomes Mr. Rochester’s ‘crazy’ wife that he locks up in the attic in Jane Eyre. But this time, the story is told from her perspective and we take the journey with her as she struggles through life in the colonies before being transported to a strange land in Britain where no one understands her and her new husband is cruel. Although we know her ending we hope for more for her, and this retelling delivers. (Amber Saunders)
Barbara HeritageStudies in Bibliography. Bibliographical Society of the University of VirginiaVolume 61, 2025 pp. 271-322On September 8, 1849, James Taylor traveled from London to Haworth, Yorkshire, to collect the manuscript of Charlotte Brontë's novel Shirley for publication. His firm, Smith, Elder and Co., had been awaiting the completion of the book for nearly a year. Readers both in England and abroad were eager to read the next work by Currer Bell, whose first published novel, Jane Eyre, had attracted so much notice. Before that, the previously unknown writer had cowritten and published only an obscure collection of poetry with Acton and Ellis Bell that few had read. The public continued to speculate about the identity of this new author, who had written with such power and originality.Composed in three physically distinct volumes for publication as a three-volume novel, the fair-copy manuscript of Shirley consists of high-grade writing paper—a mixture of wove and laid folded half-sheets—copied out in a clear, legible hand with a steel-tipped dip pen. Although the first two volumes of the manuscript are each made up of about 140 bifolia or approximately 280 leaves, the third volume is noticeably longer, composed of about 160 bifolia or 320 leaves. Examining these, one finds that the novel's text has been carefully written [End Page 271] out onto the recto of each leaf. (Only two leaves contain any content from the novel on their versos.) The upper right-hand corner of each leaf bears numbering in brown ink. At the beginning of the manuscript, the sequence appears to be regular enough. But starting in the second volume, the brown-ink numbers have been crossed out and replaced by a new series written in red ink that continues to the end of the third volume.
Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights adaptation starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi has begun filming in the UK at Sky Studios Elstree for Warner Bros.Based on the Emily Brontë novel, the story centres on the intense relationship between the daughter of a well-to-do family and the mysterious orphaned boy they take in.Further cast include Hong Chau, Alison Oliver and Shazad Latif.Fennell has written the screenplay and has a producer credit alongside Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment. MRC is financing the film.Warner Bros has set a February 2026 release date. (Ellie Calnan)
The Reverend Brontë, the father of the writers Emily, Charlotte and Anne, lived at the West Yorkshire farm in the early 19th century. Fans of the Brontës will get the chance to restore the building if they submit a successful bid in a property auction.A spokesman said: “Thornbush Farm on Miry Lane is now in a derelict state, but in the 19th century it featured two sturdy adjoining stone cottages and was better known as Lousy Farm. In 1811, it became the home of the future Brontë patriarch, Reverend Patrick Brontë, marking the foundation of one of the most famous literary families in Britain."Reverend Patrick lived at the farm after taking up his first full ministry, lodging with his landlords Mr and Mrs Bedford. While there, he met and married his wife, Maria Branwell, and they had the first of their two children, Maria and Elizabeth, who sadly died during childhood. He also found time to author and publish his first work, Cottage Poems.”During their time at the cottage, the family witnessed part of the Luddite riots and the march to Rawfords Mill, which went past their front door. This event was later described by Charlotte Brontë in her novel Shirley. (Greg Wright)
A derelict farm that was once home to the father of the Brontë sisters is set to be auctioned.Thornbush Farm on Miry Lane, Liversedge, will be sold by Auction House West Yorkshire on February 5.The Reverend Patrick Brontë's former lodging has a guide price of £380,000, plus fees.While the property is currently in a derelict state, in the 19th century it featured two sturdy adjoining stone cottages and was better known as Lousy Farm.In 1811, it became the home of the future Brontë patriarch, "marking"- per a spokesperson for Auction House - "the foundation of one of the most famous literary families in Britain."The farm is set in 8.5 acres of land and has "gorgeous" countryside views.The Reverend lived at the farm after taking up his first full ministry.He lodged there with his landlords, Mr and Mrs Bedford.While there, he met and married his wife, Maria Branwell, and they had the first of their two children, Maria and Elizabeth, who sadly died during childhood.He also found time to author and publish 'Cottage Poems.'During their time at the cottage, the family witnessed Luddite riots and a march on Rawfolds Mill, which bypassed their front door.This event was later written about by Charlotte Brontë in her novel 'Shirley.'The young family are thought to have remained at Lousy Farm until around 1815, thereafter living at Thornton, the birthplace of the authors Emily, Charlotte, and Anne, and of their brother, Branwell.Commenting on the property, director and auctioneer of Auction House West Yorkshire, James Pank, said: "This is a unique opportunity to take ownership of a site with a fascinating history and perhaps restore or reimagine a vital piece of Britain’s literary heritage."Thornbush Farm in Liversedge will be sold via livestream auction on February 5 at 12pm.To learn more about the property or to book a viewing, buyers can call Auction House West Yorkshire on 0113 393 3482 or visit https://www.auctionhouse.co.uk/westyorkshire (Will Abbott)
The popular image of the Brontë family — the world-famous novelists Charlotte, Emily and Anne, their impressive father Patrick, and their rather less famous brother Branwell — is one that’s indelibly linked to Haworth, the surrounding moors, and Haworth Parsonage itself where the three girls grew up. (Also Branwell.)The famous parsonage wasn’t the original family home, however. After graduating from Cambridge in 1806, the Irish-born clergyman and writer Patrick Brontë had several different postings within the Church of England, living in Essex and Shropshire before eventually ending up in Yorkshire. He became a curate based at the Church of St Peter in Hartshead, near Liversedge, in 1811; and whilst there lived at the chillingly-named Lousy Farm. During this stint he met Maria Branwell, who he fell in love with and married on 29 December, 1812. And Lousy Farm, where they first lived as husband and wife, is now for sale via Auction House West Yorkshire.The farm is now entirely dilapidated, which is the bad news. The good news, for literary fans looking to snap up a piece of Brontë history, is that it’s in the February 5 auction with a guide price of just £380,000, to include the buildings and almost eight acres of land. Considering that this is in the heart of West Yorkshire, between Leeds and Huddersfield, that’s a lot of land for the price.Then again, it’s clear that a lot of money — a lot — will have to be spent on the property to return it to any sort of useful state.
Sara Hildreth: Can you give readers a brief summary of The Favorites for those who haven't read it yet?Layne Fargo: A modern retelling of Wuthering Heights about the toxic, decades-spanning romance between a pair of hot mess ice dancers.SH: Can you share your initial inspiration for the novel? How and at what point in the writing process did Wuthering Heights come into The Favorites?LF: The Favorites came out of two other failed projects: a Gothic romance and a thriller about rival ice dance teams. I kept bouncing back and forth between the two, desperately trying to make them work but they just… didn’t. I picked up Wuthering Heights, which I hadn’t read since high school, hoping to find some inspiration for the Gothic book, and instead I thought: what about a Wuthering Heights retelling with ice dancers? Then I thought I’d lost my mind (this was deep into the pandemic FYI, when we were all feeling a little unhinged!), but my critique partner assured me it was a good idea. So I went for it and quickly found that mashing up Wuthering Heights and figure skating worked better than I could have imagined.Sara’s note: When I heard about this premise I immediately knew it was genius because of partner swapping. The world of ice dancing is full of messy breakups and new partnerships and so is the Gothic tale of Wuthering Heights.SH: What are some of your favorite nods to WH and the Brontës that appear in your novel?LF: Pretty much all the character names are Brontë Easter eggs. Jane Currer = Jane Eyre + Charlotte Brontë’s pen name Currer Bell. Inez Acton = Agnes Gray (Inez is the Spanish version of Agnes) + Anne Brontë’s pen name Acton Bell. And of course Ellis Dean is Nelly Dean from Wuthering Heights + Emily Brontë’s pen name Ellis Bell!I can’t get too specific about this one because it’s a spoiler, but there’s a character whose last name came from a real-life person who said some not so nice things about Emily Brontë back in the day — so giving their surname to this particular character is my petty literary revenge.
Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily BrontëEmily Brontë’s Gothic masterpiece is remembered for its tempestuous lovers, windswept moors and tragic family drama. However, when creating her novel, Emily Brontë chose to open with a violent and terrifying ghostly encounter. In the opening of the novel, Lockwood (the narrator), spends the night in a forbidden bedroom after being caught in a storm. He has read the names Catherine alongside Earnshaw, Heathcliff, and Linton, all carved in the wooden window frame.As he sleeps, he is awoken by a knocking on the window pane and, thinking it a branch, reaches out to break it. The reader is then startled to read that Linton’s wrist is grasped by the ice-cold fingers of Cathy’s ghost. Her specter cries that she has been ‘a waif for twenty years,’ have inspired countless other works of fiction including the song Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush. (Lauren Jones)
Sad girls have existed in literature for hundreds of years like my girl Jane Eyre. (Zoulfa Katouh)
Since she arrived at Dior in 2016, Ms. Chiuri has often resolutely focused on clothes so subtly accessible they can verge on the banal. But though there were pieces like that in the show, including a great little sleeveless black trapeze shift with ruffles for straps, it was the skirts, built on a carapace of bamboo, covered in trailing vines of flowers made from raffia, feathers and lace, and resembling the love child of an octopus and a parasol, that dominated. Also the playsuits and bloomers (items of clothing that normally have no place in a grown-up woman’s wardrobe) made from tulle covered in appliqués that seemed to swirl around the body like mist, popping out from under buttoned-up Jane Eyre jackets as though impossible to restrain. (Vanessa Friedman)
Hong Chau (The Instigators), Alison Oliver (Saltburn), and Shazad Latif (Magpie, Star Trek: Discovery) have landed the three remaining major roles in Academy Award winner Emerald Fennell’s buzzy Wuthering Heights adaptation for Warner Bros, MRC, and LuckyChap.Sources tell us Chau is playing Nelly Dean, the film’s chief narrator, with Oliver as Isabella Linton. Shazad plays Edgar Linton, a wealthy, aristocratic man who marries Catherine Earnshaw (Margot Robbie). The actors come to the project after Warner Bros snapping it up in a fierce bidding war, with a commitment to a theatrical run with a big P&A spend. As previously announced, LuckyChap’s Robbie and Euphoria‘s Jacob Elordi lead the cast. (Matt Grobar)
A historic property that has Brontë connections goes under the hammer next month – with a £650,000-plus guide price.Kirklees Council is selling the Grade II*-listed former Red House Museum, at Gomersal.Dating back to 1660, the house and grounds are associated with Luddite activities and the Taylor family, particularly Mary, a radical feminist and friend of Charlotte Brontë.Charlotte was a regular guest at the property in the 1830s and gave it a starring role as Briarmains in her novel, Shirley.Bought by Spenborough Council in 1969, the building served as a museum from the early 1970s until it was closed to the public in 2016.The property was then earmarked for a wedding venue and holiday accommodation, but the plan fell through.Kirklees Council announced last year it was looking to dispose of several assets when it was facing a £47m budget deficit, and was hoping to bring in a minimum of £4 million from the various sales.Bought by Spenborough Council in 1969, the building served as a museum from the early 1970s until it was closed to the public in 2016.The property was then earmarked for a wedding venue and holiday accommodation, but the plan fell through.Kirklees Council announced last year it was looking to dispose of several assets when it was facing a £47m budget deficit, and was hoping to bring in a minimum of £4 million from the various sales.“It would make an outstanding family home, as it must have been for generations of the Taylor family, and contains some really exceptional original features, including stained glass windows in the dining room that are described by Charlotte Brontë in Shirley.”He added: “Not surprisingly we have had a great deal of interest from would-be buyers.”Charitable organisation Red House Yorkshire Heritage Trust was formed in November 2019 in the hope of saving the Red House site and its buildings so they could benefit the local community.
His Oscar-nomination plaques for Wuthering Heights, Marathon Man and Sleuth are also being offered, along with rare photographs and Plowright’s Golden Globe awards for best supporting actress for her role in the film Enchanted April and the television movie Stalin. (Dalya Alberge)
For all our generational and cultural differences, certain values and struggles still ring true. They strike a resonant chord that echoes into the present, even if our current social consciousness claims to have moved on from such archaic ideas. When Jane Eyre suppresses her passion to preserve her integrity, we can’t help but marvel at her strength of character — even as we live in a culture that would probably criticize her for “caving” to the oppressive social constructs of her day. (Pauline Kim)
Haworth, in Yorkshire is known for its literary history - the village was home to the Brontë sisters who produced several famous novels such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.After a video by Tik Tik [sic] user @amyloves.xo in which she described Haworth as “a perfect autumnal day out in October" went viral, many are flocking to the village to view just how special it is for themselves.The village is currently decorated for autumn - and tourists who want to experience this atmosphere will need to head to Haworth before winter comes.If you decide to take a trip, start off by visiting Main Street where there are a range of independent cafes, old fashioned sweet shops and other boutique stores. As you walk along the cobbled stress, you’ll be able to see the rolling green hills which surround the area. [...]While you’re in the area, you should also visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum, one of Haworth's most popular tourist attractions.One visitor on Tripadvisor said: “We visited this great little museum in quaint Haworth. Wonderfully laid out original parsonage where the famous Brontë family lived. It cleverly takes you through the property and the story of the talented Brontë family, very informative, inspirational and also very sad. The staff are friendly and helpful. It really is worth a stop here if you are in the area.” (Alycia McNamara)
Jane EyreThe wilful and accomplished protagonist of Charlotte Brontë's novel of the same name, Jane Eyre, Jane comes up across endless obstacles but refuses to give up.She also refuses to follow the paths set out for her as deemed acceptable by society, not settling as Mr Rochester's lover out of self-respect. (Jack Slater)
Elise Dumpleton: When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?[...]S.S.: I’ve always been an avid reader, so for me, the line between reading and writing was non-existent. (Which meant the line between reading Jane Eyre and then wanting to write my own problematically Byronic hero was also non-existent.) After a brief high-school stint thinking I might go into journalism, I jumped into fiction writing and never looked back!
A study commissioned by personalised book company Wonderbly found the average parent reads their children bedtime stories until the age of eight, but 10% keep up the tradition beyond 13 or even older.Daughter is 14, and I’m happy to continue our nightly ritual until she tells me she’d prefer to read alone. It’s quality “us time” at the end of the day, and I feel privileged she still values it. [...]We’ve also slogged successfully through Wuthering Heights. . . (Kirstie Newton)
“Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.” Emily BrontëAutumn loves Kentucky and we Kentuckians love our autumn.This beautiful state sparks poems during autumn months.Yes, we understand the bliss Emily Brontë identifies. (Judy Harris)
Como libro no tengo dudas: Cumbres Borrascosas, de Emily Brontë. Es el clásico que releo siempre en estas fechas, en concreto, una edición de mi abuela de 1943. El otoño invita también a eso, a conectar con otras épocas. Aunque supone nuevos comienzos, el recogimiento y la noche que llega antes, creo que la nostalgia, el recuerdo y lo espiritual conviven muy bien. Para terminar de sumergirse en el drama pasional y fantasmal de Heathcliff y Catherine, la película de 1992 con Ralph Fiennes y Juliette Binoche. También la cuenta de Instagram @bronteparsonagemuseum, que va mostrándonos las primeras hojas de otoño que caen sobre los páramos. (Lucía Márquez) (Translation)
by Jo WaughPalgrave MacmillanISBN: 978-3-031-65139-7August 2024This book argues for the significance of contagious disease in critical and biographical assessment of Charlotte Brontë’s work. Waugh argues that contagion, infection, and quarantining strategies are central themes in Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849), and Villette (1853). This book establishes the ways in which Charlotte Brontë was closely engaged with the political and social contexts in which she wrote, extending this to the representation and metaphorical import of illness in Brontë’s novels. Waugh also posits that although miasmatic theories are often assumed to have been entirely in the ascendant in the late 1840s, the relationship between miasma and contagion was a complex one and contagion in fact remained a crucial way for Charlotte Brontë to represent disease itself, as well as to explore the relationships between the individual and social, political, and cultural contexts. Contagion and its metaphors are central to Charlotte Brontë’s construction of subjectivity and of the responsibilities of the individual and the group.
This introductory chapter sets out the argument that Charlotte Brontë was a writer aware of, interested in, and often anxious about, contagion. It establishes the claims that will run through the rest of the book: that the transmission of the diseases Brontë describes in her novels is a significant, and under-explored, aspect of those representations; that contagion as a concept in the 1840s and 1850s was a broad concept which encompassed many kinds of infection; that attending to Brontë’s depictions of contagion and infection offers potential more fully to understand her analysis and diagnosis of many other aspects of human interaction and society. The chapter offers context for contagion and its implications both metaphorical and literal in the period, and outlines Brontë’s particular sense of what health and its preservation entailed in the context of the epidemic and contagious diseases prevalent in her lifetime.
Chapter 2 traces the representation of contagion in accounts of the Brontës’ deaths in biographies from Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë through the twentieth century and up to the more recent past. Brontë’s biography has a long and vexed relationship to Brontë’s scholarship, particularly in the case of 1970s’ and 1980s’ enthusiasm for retrodiagnosing Charlotte Brontë with hyperemesis gravidarum. That diagnosis, made by Sir Philip Rhodes in 1972, was reiterated in several biographies and proved influential, with some critics inferring the neuroticism then associated with that diagnosis in Brontë’s novels. Less controversially but equally importantly, this chapter argues, the ways in which biographers have at times downplayed and times emphasized the potentially contagious aspects of the deaths of Branwell, Emily, and Anne Brontë reveal much about the extent to which they have been willing to consider those writers as inhabiting a contagious world or even being vectors of contagion themselves.
Throughout her adult life, Charlotte Brontë described an anxiety bordering on obsession with consumption, or tuberculosis as the disease is now named. In Jane Eyre, however, she created Helen Burns, perhaps Victorian literature’s most famous consumptive. Helen is forbearing, ethereal, too good for this world: she expires painlessly and gently, and is often taken to be the archetype of the long-suffering yet patient sufferer of the disease. This chapter argues, however, that far from absorbing and replicating the tropes of literary consumption which Susan Sontag, Clark Lawlor and others have identified, the sentimentality and ethereality with which the narrative of Jane Eyre surrounds Helen Burns and her death make the case that even the most exceptional individuals are vulnerable to this insidious threat.This chapter interrogates the trope of “romantic consumption,” traces Brontë’s anxiety about the disease in her correspondence from her teens on, and gives an overview of all the Brontës’ representation of consumption in their novels. It th
en argues that the sentimentality surrounding Helen Burns’ death is knowingly, and strategically, constructed, and that Brontë drew on the potential of consumption to individualize sufferers in the literary text primarily to make the emphatic case that the disease was a universal and undiscriminating threat.
This chapter argues that the typhus epidemic described in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) shows Brontë engaging with, and offering answers to, questions about contagion, community, leadership, heroism, and martyrdom which were also in contention during the typhus epidemics in England and Scotland in the spring and summer of 1847. These epidemics generated significant coverage in local and regional newspapers, ranging from articles blaming the Irish poor for spreading contagion to reflective pieces on the responsibility of the better-off in society toward the poor, or on the dangers of assuming immunity from contagion. This chapter traces those arguments and highlights typhus’s uses in the literary text - including Charles Kingsley’s Yeast (1848) and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth (1853)—to suggest the interconnectedness of communities. The chapter then turns to Jane Eyre to argue that in this novel, Brontë dramatizes the ethical and moral implications of contagion, ultimately affirming the benefits of connectivity and community over individual heroics, or the contagionist impulse to quarantinism.
The eponymous heroine of Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849) briefly worries that she has contracted the rabies virus after she is bitten by a dog. This chapter argues that the rabies episode in this novel represents a short but violent microcosm of the text’s broader interest in the ways in which incipient threats of various kinds might be controlled, mollified out of existence, quelled or quashed. In the pages which describe Shirley’s bite, self-cauterization, and recovery, boundaries of all kinds—cutaneous, emotional, and sexual—are challenged and ultimately fortified. Shirley is, this chapter argues, persistently engaged in exploring the ways in which dangerous influences may or should be repressed, and the ways in which dangers ferment. By focusing in detail on the rabies virus as it was understood in the 1840s, the chapter shows how associated concepts of fermentation and rebellion resonate throughout the novel. It concludes by pointing to the limitations of, and contradictions in, the text’s surface alignment between rabid dogs and insurrectionists.
In her final novel, Villette (1853), Charlotte Brontë created a heroine who seems to be profoundly affected by air, weather, and atmosphere. Lucy Snowe’s encounters with contagion, by contrast, are rare. Lucy’s often “dreary fellowship,” described as exclusive to the unhealthy, with “the winds and their changes” (300) pervades the text. As several critics have noted, Brontë’s own belief that mind and body were affected by weather was legitimated by contemporary assumptions about the connections between atmosphere and health, and especially female health. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) also presented Brontë as irredeemably sensitive to the weather, in ways which this chapter argues have come to form our understanding of the writer, her health, and her own sense of the connections between weather and health. In the 1850s, to be sensitive to the weather was not always considered a positive characteristic: such sensitivity was often presented either as an affectation, or as the result of an invalid’s self-imposed excessive protection from the elements. This chapter argues that in Villette Brontë offers an active critique of the qualities of the weather sensitivity and weather wisdom which Gaskell had attributed to her, and explores the tensions inherent in either quarantining oneself from, or exposing oneself to, the weather.
Charlotte Brontë’s novels were written, published, and read, in a period in which contagious diseases were visibly present, politically contentious, and symbolically resonant whenever they appeared in the literary text. The questions contagion invites—what is our responsibility to the poor; how should contagion be managed; what does health mean, or look like, in the face of contagion; what are the risks and benefits of connection and interaction?—pervade her novels. Yet Brontë herself has often been presented in biography and some scholarship as somehow detached from contagion and all its metaphorical possibilities and political implications: accounts of her own health and death, for example, historically emphasized their connection to the weather, or her exceptional difficulties in pregnancy. Such accounts play a part in constructing a vision of Brontë as a unique, or at least exceptional, individual to whom the logic of contagion does not apply and who also did not understand the potential or implications of contagion, even though her representations of contagion and contagious diseases strongly suggest otherwise. Paradoxically, perhaps, this version of Brontë has circulated in contagious ways, and so too has her work—specifically and especially Jane Eyre. This chapter concludes the book by tracing some of those contagious and viral transmissions of ideas about the writer and her novels in popular culture and merchandising.
Sarah Gordon’s new play at the National Theatre online is an irreverent retelling of the life and legend of the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and the story of the sibling power dynamics that shaped their uneven rise to fame. (Ruth Leon)
Sarah Moss, discussing the need for white literary heroines to be thin, asserts that “Jane Eyre, invited to join dinner parties at Thornfield, skulks in corners black-clad and skinny” (‘Hunger numbed my shame and humiliation’, 24 August). Not so. Jane is not invited to those dinners, as she is the governess. She wears black as an indication of her class status and has to keep out of the way. Starved as a child in an orphanage, she is indeed “little”, as Charlotte Brontë puts it, but is able to recognise her appetite, nipping down the back stairs at Thornfield to forage in the larder for supper for herself and her charge, returning with “a cold chicken, a roll of bread, some tarts”.
A book that I find myself returning to multiple times is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Every time I reread it, I gain new insights into the characters, and their personalities and emotions.
Orson Welles smoulders in this brooding Gothic adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel. Robert Stevenson directs, though Welles’s hand is clear in the casting (Agnes Moorehead), the writing credit for John Houseman (shared with Aldous Huxley) and the score by Bernard Herrmann. Joan Fontaine tries valiantly to look plain as the heroine, and little Elizabeth Taylor glows in her uncredited role as a doomed school friend.
Among other literary greats, Cooke looks to Charlotte Brontë, who in her 1849 novel Shirley tries to capture the magic of female connection: “The minds of the two girls being toned in harmony, often chimed very sweetly together.” Membership in a close-knit group is like “a dance of belonging with no private space in it, all inside-out intimacy,” Lorna Sage says in Bad Blood. (Ceci Browning)
Yet by the time Lady Enid sashays into view, numerous other parodies have already been set into motion in Ludlam’s wicked mockery of the “penny dreadful” style of Victorian England. Sleuthing, sarcophagi, werewolves, vampires, witches, and a Wuthering Heights heath are all mixed into this undeadly brew. Plus the obligatory mummy. (Perry Tannenbaum)
Las hermanas Brontë están presente en el libro, así como Gaskell, Wilde o Collins. También Henry James o Poe, pero "por encima de todos ellos, la gran fuente de inspiración de esta novela es Pío de Baroja. " (Sara Esteban) (Translation)
Unless explicitly said
