The task now is to create a new meaningful work. For Haworth, and with Haworth, and for Brontë fans around the world. As a self-styled 'goth girl', what she wants is people's stories.
"For me it's about new ways, about being inspired," said Ms Peacock. "Inspired by this village, and by the people here.
"I've always been interested in elements of the sisterhood and the cult of the Brontës and the mystery of these enigmatic female sisters," she added.
"I love the way they have become these abstract figures. They are like fog.
"But they were real people. I'm walking around Haworth, trying to imagine them as real people. I'm standing on the cobbles they walked on. I absolutely adore that."
Ms Peacock, from Teesside, was selected after an open call that drew over 100 applications. Past residency writers have been poets, or performers, but Ms Peacock is a multidisciplinary artist, marrying the written word with images and objects in her work.
It's a year-long, part time position, to create new works for the museum and for Brontë fans. And she is determined to make it about local community - and about people's experience.
It comes from what she calls the 'egg in the pram story'. An offbeat tale, that she had drawn from her own mother, when talking about the extravagance of Easter gifts.
In her day, her mother had declared, there hadn't been chocolate eggs. It was hard-boiled, dipped in dye and with a hand-drawn face, that she had pushed down the street in a pram.
Ms Peacock was transfixed. "It was sad and sweet," she said. "It was absolutely real. What I would love is for people to tell me their stories. To make these connections."
It starts with an alternative take on the visitor's book. Rather than questions about guests' addresses, or their visitor experience, she wants to know whom they might lock in an attic.
The questions continue - 'Have you met a ghost'? 'What modern day item would your favourite Brontë most enjoy - like hair straighteners maybe, or a microwave'?
And 'If you could steal one item from the museum what would it be? (Please don't)'.
"I wanted to make the questions a little more pressing," said Ms Peacock. "I'm very nosy. I want to know people's deep feelings. I want to hear their egg in the pram stories."
Then there will be 'treasure' hunts, with hidden gifts through the village and moors. (Ruby Kitchen)
In Walking the Invisible, Michael Stewart sets out to understand better the wild and working landscapes that shaped the Brontë family’s lives and literature. With his canine companion, Woolfie, Stewart travels by foot over moorland, along coastlines, up fells and through cities, walking along the paths and trails that the Brontës would have trodden. Along the way, he describes the sights, sounds and smells of the post-industrial landscapes he encounters and he imagines these landscapes as they would have appeared to the Brontës and their contemporaries.
Reflecting upon his early encounters with Wuthering Heights, Stewart comments on the power of Emily Brontë’s novel, to reach beyond the classrooms and lecture halls to a socially diverse audience and sees in it, ‘something of the folk tale…[which] grabbed my young mind’. For him, their writing is placed not only within the English literary tradition but it can also be read within an equally strong tradition of stories coming from the landscape and people of Yorkshire. Walking the Invisible quietly reclaims the Brontë stories by celebrating the shared heritage and mindset of the folk who have lived in this landscape for centuries. It also highlights the immense popularity of the Brontë sisters across the world as Stewart writes of others who, like himself, discovered the novels despite never having read them at school.
Stewart is a convivial guide. It is clear he has a deep knowledge of the Brontës, their works and the social and historical settings of their literature. This expertise is fed through the lens of a walking guide thereby giving the chapters an intelligent yet easy-going style; it also infuses the writing with enjoyable descriptions of the natural (and sometimes not-so natural) world that is encountered along the way. It is part walking-guide, part literary and social history, part cultural commentary all unified by one well-informed voice and it seems to incarnate the spirit of its subjects’ fierce independence. In short, Walking the Invisible is a refreshing and charming insight into the lives and literature of some of our best loved authors and it is a book that is sure to appeal to many readers.
Carol Midgley in
The Times makes a very depressing statement:
9. Wuthering Heights (2011)
And while we're chatting about Miss Austen, we might as well get the obligatory Brontë sisters reference out of the way as well. English majors are born either Wuthering Heights gurlies or Jane Eyre gurlies (I'm not acknowledging the attention-seeking outliers who claim to be The Tenant of Wildfell Hall gurlies just to be edgy). I myself am a ride-or-die Jane Eyre stan, but I must admit that the Andrea Arnold version of Wuthering Heights is pretty damn good. It feels especially revolutionary as it casts Heathcliff as a Black man, bringing race into the equation, something that was definitely on Emily Brontë's mind to some extent, as she describes him as "dark-skinned." On a completely different note, my favorite weird element of WH is that there is definitely some weird necrophilia stuff going on in the novel. Not really addressed in this film, but like someone is gonna make that version of the film eventually, right? A24, get on it. (Matthew Huff)
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