‘Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? … Let us not desert one another’ (Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, chapter 5)Charlotte Brontë claimed not to have read an Austen novel until after the publication of Jane Eyre. In 1848 she recorded her reading of Pride and Prejudice, on the recommendation of George Henry Lewes. Two years later she added Emma to her list, telling her editor, W. S. Williams, in April 1850, that ‘I excite amazement by replying in the negative’ when asked ‘whether I have read’ Jane Austen.Now, Charlotte, we at Jane Austen’s House know that is a fib!Charlotte Brontë, we can reveal, was a secret admirer of her sister novelist. Why else would Jane Eyre, in its story and heroine, so closely mirror Mansfield Park? Ours is not to question why Brontë withheld information about her private reading: the workings of the creative mind are, we acknowledge, mysterious and secret. It is enough that she paid Austen the compliment of revisiting in Jane, the servant-heroine, Austen’s tale of Fanny, the servant-heroine, both of them outsiders ‘born to struggle and endure’, caught between religious duty and desire.We, in our turn, confess openly our admiration for all the works of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. The three sisters were, like Jane, that rare thing, great writers even in childhood. In Catherine Earnshaw’s cry ‘I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free’ (Wuthering Heights, ch. 12), we hear something that chimes with the joyous anarchy of Jane’s teenage writings.At Jane Austen’s House we stand in solidarity with our sister novelists, daughters, like Jane, of the parsonage. This time last year, Ann Dinsdale, Principal Curator at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, and I were preparing a joint presentation for Ilkley Literary Festival (listen again here) on the importance of protecting a public right in cultural objects: in the manuscripts, artefacts, and houses that represent our shared literary heritage. Such objects are constituent of a thriving culture. Back in September 2019 we could not imagine how, a year on, our argument would seem even more urgent.We are living through desperate times for literary houses and museums, for theatres, concert halls, for the arts in general. Yet this is the time when we need more than ever what novels, music, plays offer us: windows onto alternative lives and ways of being, and the opportunities for reflection and for solace and companionship that they give us.We have the books, streaming services, and ingenious virtual alternatives, but we need the public spaces and real encounters too. The museum inside the house is a supplement to our reading, a kind of authentication. This is where Jane Austen or Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë wrote. Readers from all over the world come to these places to find confirmation of the intimacy of connection that we discover in their writings. Literary houses are powerful places, freeing the visitor to imagine how life is transformed into art. Though we still have the books and the films, we’d all be the poorer without these special places. Part of our common culture, we all have a stake in them. It is in our interest that we ensure they continue, stay open, and thrive. We owe it to ourselves to save them.
Before it was a GCSE set text, and long before Kate Bush was singing about it, Wuthering Heights was a novel so sensational that when it was published in 1847, reviewers recoiled from its 'savage cruelty and outright barbarism'. [...]
The family's parsonage in Haworth is now the Brontë Parsonage Museum (bronte.org.uk). Visitors can see the dining table where Emily wrote Wuthering Heights.Stay next door at Weavers Guesthouse, a beautifully restored 19th Century weavers' cottage (weaversguesthouse.co.uk).It's a short walk from here, past the Old School Room – built by Patrick Bronte in 1832 and where all the sisters taught – to St Michael and All Angels' Church, where all of the Bronte siblings, except Anne, are buried.Though touristy, Haworth is a beautiful moorland village. Catch your breath, along with a cup of tea, at 10 The Coffee House, or the Fleece Inn (fleeceinnhaworth.co.uk), which serves hearty pies and local ale.Then follow in Emily's footsteps out on to the moorland.Three miles west, past the Bronte Bridge, is the desolate Top Withens, reputedly Wuthering Heights itself. You can also steam across the moors – heritage Keighley and Worth Valley Railway (kwvr.co.uk) stops at Haworth. (Jennifer Cox)
Ultimately, the story is in our own imaginations. Thus we feel that the landscape of desolation and boundlessness is an appropriate match for the passion that fuels Heathcliff’s revenge against the family that owned the property and treated him as property.This is Nelly Dean’s world. She herself is a product of this place. She knows that wind, that daily desolation, She may be projecting it onto Catherine and Heathcliff. People living in a fierce, provincial place with wild weather are subject to dangerous passions, Nelly seems to be suggesting. “We don’t in general take to foreigners here,” she explains to Lockwood. Young Catherine’s attraction to the dark-skinned boy doesn’t set well with her, and Catherine herself mistreats Nelly, so Nelly has her own reasons for fashioning the story as she does. Lockwood is compelled by the tale, having experienced the weather and Heathcliff’s wrath firsthand in the first few pages. Lockwood, who is susceptible to wild dreams, hears the ghostly voice of Catherine and nearly loses his mind. Nelly Dean and Lockwood are coloring this story of wuthering weather from their own experience of it and they are glad to spin a yarn, but it is the genius of Emily Brontë that pulls the wool over their eyes and makes us feel the depth and strangeness of this powerful love tale.
In Brontë’s Mistress, author Finola Austin, aka the Secret Victorianist, takes the gossip surrounding Branwell Brontë’s affair with the older, married Lydia Robinson, and develops a complex and compelling tale that gives Lydia a voice. The novel opens (deliciously) with the discovery in a Yorkshire school’s “storage room” of a manuscript written by Lydia that describes her scandalous relationship with Branwell, the ne’er do well brother of novelists Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—all of whom would certainly have blushed to read this account of their illicit romance. (Rebecca Rego Barry)
Wuthering Heights (2009)Wuthering Heights is adapted from a novel. He starred in two seasons of the show. He was one half of the destructive lovers, Heathcliff. Tom Hardy portrayed the character in a very dark yet strangely charming way doing justice to Emily Brontë's source material. (Isha Khatu)
Andrea Arnold’s ‘Wasp’ (2003)The bleakness and beauty of the British auteur’s visual style, from Fish Tank (2009) to Wuthering Heights (2011), can be traced back to this stunning social-realist fable, which earned Arnold an Oscar for best live-action short film. (Radhika Seth)
Malham , the iconic Dales village (with the extraordinary Malham Cove above) which has been used as one of the filming locations for All Creatures. "The dramatic limestone pavement just above Malham Cove is also a recognisable location from productions such as Wuthering Heights, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and The Trip," Screen Yorkshire says. (Stephen Lewis)
Bush was, however, prepared to accede to the wishes of her record label. That was quite a change from 1978 when, at just 19, she faced down EMI over the choice of her first single. She had wanted “Wuthering Heights”, the record company preferred “James and the Cold Gun”. This unknown teenager put her foot down and was vindicated as the track went to No 1 (making her the first female artist in UK chart history to top the charts with her own composition). (Ed Power)
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