Adherents of the Brontë cult

In its series of House Museums, Financial Times features the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

When the American Indie girl band boygenius played two sold-out shows in Halifax, West Yorkshire, back in August, they spent their free day in nearby Haworth visiting the Brontë Parsonage. The museum’s Instagram account shared a picture of the band’s three musicians — Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker — posing in front of a statue of the three Brontë sisters, and received more than 60,000 likes, quite a jump from closer to 100 for most of their posts.

The online enthusiasm for these 21st-century “sad girls” at the home of the original sad girls demonstrates the international magnetism of the Brontë Parsonage. The mythical status of Charlotte, Emily and Anne combines serious engagement with their literary work and passionate obsession with their doomed, eccentric and all-too-short lives.

Headstrong romantics everywhere continue to find solace in their jubilant strangeness and the brilliance of their stories. They have a particular resonance with the angsty, clever-but-heartbroken vibe of 2020s heroines, such as those in Greta Gerwig’s films or Sally Rooney’s books. 

The history of the Brontë Parsonage is a story of treasure hunting as much as conservation, like many house museums in Britain that endured varying levels of fortune between the death of their famous residents and their reincarnation as museums. The Parsonage was owned by the local parish church while the Brontës lived there, and remained so in 1861 after the death of their father Patrick Brontë, who outlived all of his children. Most of the furnishings and personal effects of the home were auctioned off.

The Brontë Society was founded in 1893 to track the dissemination of all this Brontëana, as it is known, and to maintain the fame and myth of the Brontë sisters. In 1928, when the parish put the parsonage up for sale, the society bought it and the museum we know today was established. In the almost-century since, the Brontë Society and Parsonage Museum have worked tirelessly to locate items and bring them home.

Visiting the house now, you are greeted by a mixture of objects actually owned by a Brontë and others that are very similar to what they would have had. The house feels full and lived in, with papers scattered across the dining table and a shawl flung over the arm of a sofa (a sofa in the exact spot and nearly exactly like the sofa upon which Emily breathed her last). It feels as if the family could have just stepped out on to the moors — because, of course, the windswept, rugged setting high on a hill is half the appeal of the place.

The modern extension to the museum houses the real relics: manuscripts, first editions and little souvenirs like gloves, brooches, pens and other items cherished for their connection to the Brontës. The level of obsession is staggering, even for someone like me, who legally changed my middle name to Jane in honour of Jane Eyre when I was 12 (really).

The Parsonage remains a place of pilgrimage for adherents of the Brontë cult. There is a sense of spiritual camaraderie among visitors and staff, with their shared reverence for the three sisters who put Brontë Country on the map — and who made melodrama mainstream. (Eliza Goodpasture)

The Mary Sue lists 'Five Classic Stories (and Their Retellings) That Challenge the Patriarchy' including

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847) 

My tweenage heart thrilled to Jane Eyre’s extravagant emotions and Gothic drama. I identified with outcast, powerless orphan Jane (never mind that I had two living parents and no need to make my living as a governess), who makes a passionate case for her own equality. “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?” she demands of her aristocratic employer Rochester. “You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you—and full as much heart!” Heady stuff.

After Rochester’s disastrous first marriage comes to light on their wedding day, Jane resists his attempts to make her his mistress. She stands against his wealth and his will until, after privations and visions and possibly divine intervention, she is ultimately triumphant. 

It took Jean Rhys’s postcolonial prequel, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), to make me see how Jane’s happy ending comes at the expense of Rochester’s Creole first wife, the “madwoman” in the attic. The tragic ending is dictated by the events to come. By giving voice to Antoinette (renamed Bertha by her husband, in a heartless erasure of her identity), Rhys illuminates not only her struggles in a white, patriarchal society but Jane and Rochester’s own power dynamic. (Virginia Kantra)

Writer Francisco Sánchez also mentions the novels in Diario Siglo XXI (Spain).

Más adelante conocí la novela postmoderna y fue toda una revelación. Destacaría Fatherland de Robert Harris, que fue mi mayor inspiración para escribir Vae Victis. También nombraría Waterland de Graham Swift, Wide Sargasso Sea de Jean Rhys, reescritura de la famosa novela de Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre. (Eva Fraile Rodríguez) (Translation)

A contributor to The Bubble discusses 'The dark reality of a white (saviourist) Christmas':

While the postcolonial conversation has only recently received due attention, there are indeed nuanced discussions of missionary work in literature, as seen in the disillusionment experienced by the heroines of both ‘The Color Purple’ and ‘Jane Eyre’ when faced with missionary work. While in both novels, missionary work is initially presented as a viable and rewarding form of moral employment, there is indeed a darker reality which underpins this glorified moral concept. (Annabel Clancy)

A contributor to The MIT Press Reader reminisces about reading Jane Eyre for the first time.

Certainly I wasn’t to find myself in a novel until several years later, when I read “Jane Eyre” for the first time. The class was divided, in a way I hope would not be sanctioned now, by gender, and all the boys were assigned Robert Cormier’s “The Chocolate War” and the girls got to read Brontë, and I opted for the latter. And there is still no scene in all of literature where I see myself as clearly as in the opening pages of “Jane Eyre,” as she sits in the windowseat, reading about birds. I never much cared about Rochester or Bertha or all the grand romance of the central narrative. I just liked the story of a lonely child who found solace in reading, and very much wanted Jane and Helen Burns to find a lasting love. (Timothy C. Baker)

Hamburger Abendblatt (Germany) reviews the performances of Cathy Marston's Jane Eyre ballet in Hamburg. Finally, an alert from the Brontë Parsonage Museum: 

Brontë Treasures By Candlelight (6 Dec 2023)

Join curator Sarah Laycock for an evening exploring some of the Museum's most precious treasures. In this intimate event, you will experience a rare glimpse behind the scenes at the Museum Library, getting a closer look at some of the most precious treasures from the collection, personally selected by curator Sarah Laycock. With almost 20 years' experience working with the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Sarah will share personal insight into the chosen items and reveal the secrets of working with our world-class Designated collection. Tickets include a glass of sherry on arrival and the opportunity to enjoy the quiet magic of Haworth Parsonage dressed for the Christmas season.