'A really, really strange garment' worn by Charlotte Brontë

The Guardian has a fascinating article on Defying Expectations, the new exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Source

A new side of Charlotte Brontë, showing the author of Jane Eyre’s unexpected penchant for colourful, fashionable, even “sensual” clothing, is revealed in a new exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Displaying everything from Charlotte’s bright pink wrapper, which she would have worn around the house, to the extraordinary item known as an “ugly bonnet” which was the height of fashion at the time and which she sported to protect herself from the Yorkshire weather, the exhibition opened this week at the Brontës’ home in Haworth, West Yorkshire.

“My personal favourite is her pink wrapper, which is a really, really strange garment,” said Dr Eleanor Houghton, a historian, writer and illustrator who has co-curated the exhibition. “It was a sort of house coat with a matching cape. It’s hideous, pink, with little flowers on it, very bold, very bright and huge – very voluminous. It’s absolutely the opposite of anything you would ever associate with Charlotte Brontë.”

This item of clothing would have been part of Charlotte’s wedding trousseau when she married Arthur Bell Nicholls in 1854. “It’s a sensual garment, it’s something that she would have been seen in in the house, and with Nicholls. So while it’s not exactly a negligee, it’s sort of a Victorian equivalent. It’s an intimate garment,” said Houghton.

Dresses of red and orange, and paisley patterned materials, are also shown in the Defying Expectations exhibition – along with the ugly bonnet, a fashion item Charlotte would have bought on a trip to London, and was likely to be the first person in Haworth to own.

“It’s a really fascinating item: it was a sort of hands-free parasol,” said Houghton. “It was worn around the front of the bonnet rim to help protect the wearer’s face from the sun. It pulls down, a bit like a pram hood. I have to say I can’t imagine it catching on again, but it’s great seeing her within the context of these slightly mad innovations – we just don’t associate Charlotte with that at all.”

The exhibition also features a striped evening dress, which was found hidden away during previous renovations of the Brontë Parsonage Museum and which Houghton’s research has confirmed for the first time as being owned by Charlotte. And it includes a pair of beaded moccasins believed to have been a gift from her publishers in New York.

“Those moccasins may well have influenced her writing of Shirley – there’s lots of references to Mohawks, and that is exactly where her moccasins come from,” said Houghton. The academic has also done experiments on the fabric of the striped dress, working with the University of Southampton to discover that it is partly made from alpaca fibres – a cutting-edge material at the time, likely to have been manufactured nearby.

“All these things really connect her to the place in which she was living but also to this much more globalised world. It helps to release her from the myth that she was holed up in Haworth separate from everyone else, because it’s simply not true. There were many more forces at play, and I think that it shows a much more vital and relevant person,” said Houghton. “The items that have been placed on display wonderfully and tangibly demonstrate that the prevailing preconception that Brontë remained entirely unaffected by the fast-changing world of which she was part is untrue. Moreover, these garments prove that Charlotte and her most famous protagonist were not, in sartorial terms at least, interchangeable.”

The exhibition is the first time Brontë has been “celebrated through her clothes”, said the museum, which will run the display of more than 20 pieces of her clothing and accessories until 1 January 2023.

“When I first started working here, we couldn’t display some of the items included in this exhibition as people simply wouldn’t have believed that they belonged to the family – they were so outlandish,” said principal curator Ann Dinsdale. “Seeing the personal items these young women wore brings out an emotional response from audiences; it reminds us that these globally significant writers were also human. I think this exhibition, showing Charlotte’s sense of style and her interest in contemporary patterns and materials, will surprise visitors.”

The author was around 4ft 10in, and the museum said visitors were always surprised by her size. (Alison Flood)

Literary Hub is also pretty impressed by the 'sensual' garment in question.

The Guardian also has a guide to this week's entertainment which includes

Wuthering Heights

National Theatre, London, to 19 March, then touring

Emma Rice’s new take on Emily Brontë’s passionate love story storms into the National. Lit up with powerful music and dance, Lucy McCormick and Ash Hunter are Cathy and Heathcliff.

The Times reviews A Class of Their Own: Adventures in Tutoring the Super-Rich by Matt Knott:

Although he doesn’t state it explicitly, Knott is following in the footsteps of another would-be social counter-jumper, Jane Eyre. The modern tutor and the Victorian governess may seem a breed apart, but when Horace, Nicholas, Felix or another of his young charges eventually becomes prime minister, Knott will be able to look at them and think, not without vexation: “Reader, I tutored him.”

A columnist from The Canberra Times discusses the evolution of literary heroines.

When I was growing up in the late 90s and early 2000s, and obsessively reading everything I could get my hands on, there was a consistent trend across the classics of a certain type of female lead. Jo March in Little Women, Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables, Jane Eyre in the eponymous novel - these were all feisty, independent women who were consistently told that they had too much emotion, were too invested in the world around them, to the point where it was unseemly. (Zoya Patel)

Mirror still can't believe the trigger warnings for university students.

Salford University students are warned that scenes in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations might upset them. Even more incredibly, at Chester University “trigger warnings” were issued about the risks of reading Harry Potter. Crazy.

I spent much of my first year at university reading Russian novels such as Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. They would give the little dears a nervous breakdown.

But fiction that accurately reflects reality prepares you for life better than a whole library of woke warnings. (Paul Routledge)

Apollo features artist Howardena Pindell.

In 1972 she was a founding member, along with artists including Harmony Hammond, Nancy Spero, Sari Dienes and Ree Morton, of A.I.R. Gallery, the first all-female artists’ cooperative gallery in the United States. (Pindell came up with the name, which derived from Jane Eyre, but which also stood for ‘artists in residence’ – the official designation that permitted industrial SoHo lofts to be inhabited by artists.) (Jonathan Griffin)

Aventuras na História (Brazil) recommends 6 passionate classics including Wuthering Heights. The Eyre Guide imagines Jane Eyre and Rochester as Mickey and Minnie Mouse.