28th, 29th and 30th November 2024.
There’s a curious mythology that has grown around the Brontë sisters, one that places them in a world of isolation and innocence. The question is often asked; How could three Victorian spinsters, living in the wilds of the Yorkshire moors, possibly have written some of the greatest literature of the English language? Novels written about passion, betrayal, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, social upheaval, madness and domestic violence.
Polly Teale’s play, Brontë, currently being rehearsed by Stockbridge Amateur Dramatics Society, addresses and dispels these myths.
Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their brother Branwell were all writers, poets, musicians and artists and they lived in a world beset by great social change. From protests and riots against local mill owners to the poverty, deprivation and disease of their close neighbours and then the personal tragedy of the loss of their mother Maria Branwell, aged 38, and their two older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth aged eleven and ten respectively, they were neither isolated nor innocent of the world.
Their father Patrick, a vicar, campaigner, abolitionist and educator, encouraged his children to read everything they could lay their hands on. They read great literary works, newspapers of different political hues and the gossip and intrigue of local magazines. His children took inspiration from the exploits of explorers in far flung lands and the battles of Wellington to create incredibly detailed imaginary worlds written in tiny handmade books.
https://www.stockbridgeamdrams.org.uk/bronte
The social dictates of the day meant that Branwell, the only son, was given all the opportunities to become a great poet or artist. Upon his shoulders were placed all the hopes and expectations of his family. Whether he didn’t quite have the talent or perhaps the temperament to succeed in his endeavours, he certainly crumbled under their weight. His disastrous sojourn as the tutor of the family of Thorp Green Hall, near York, was the catalyst for a descent into drug and alcohol abuse. The affair he had been conducting for over a year had been discovered. An affair with the mother of the family; the now infamous older woman, Mrs Robinson (yes, that one).
The play Brontë revolves around this period of time in 1845 when Anne, having been governess for the Robinsons for five years, promptly resigns and returns to Haworth; shortly to be followed by her brother. The timeline jumps forward and back to explore the influences, experiences, temperaments and compulsions that enabled these three sisters, constrained by the need to earn a living and look after their ageing father, to still find time to write.
We can only imagine what the sisters might have achieved had they been afforded the same advantages of their brother. Charlotte whose talent, ambition and determination to be ‘forever known’ was almost all consuming, Emily whose intensity and passion was inspired by nature and the wild world of the moors and Anne, feminist and social firebrand who saw injustice around her and wanted to make the world a better place.
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