The Brilliant Bronte Sisters

when i was living in this road as a child i spent a lot of time immersed in the fantasy world of the books that i got from the library but my top favorite especially in the film version was wuthering heights make the world stop right here make everything stop and stand still and never move again make the moors never change and you and i never change and this was my morse i would run around being the wild child kathy calling for heathcliff i was so in love with him he was my ideal man older and wiser i realized that hollywood had misled me they'd left a lot out wuthering heights never was a sentimental love story and heathcliff is far from the rather soppy romantic lead lawrence olivier portrays in the film emily bronte's masterpiece is a dark study of the wild extremes of human obsession and my childhood heartthrob is a vicious psychopath emily's older sister charlotte wrote another book that transfixed me the shocking gothic romance jane eyre one of the best-selling novels of all time [Music] while anne bronte's brilliant the tenet of wildfell hall scandalized victorian society and is now widely regarded as an early feminist classic i rate each of the bronte sisters amongst the greatest novelists i have ever read but i am left with a question how did three spinsters who spent most of their life in a remote parsonage on the edge of the moors come to write books that i find shocking erotic profoundly moving and quite wonderful [Music] my journey starts in the yorkshire village of howarth as i search through the life and work of the bronte sisters for some kind of explanation for this family's unique genius patrick bronte was appointed perpetual curate at howarth in 1820 and he and his wife mariah and six young children moved here to the parsonage he was a self-made man born in a tiny shack in ireland yet he got to cambridge where he got a first class degree just six months after arriving in health mariah died of cancer leaving patrick with six children under the age of eight his two eldest daughters succumbed to tb less than four years later the four surviving children charlotte emily ann and their brother branwell were raised by their father at the parsonage with the help of his late wife sister aunt bramwell [Music] patrick encouraged the remarkable creativity of his precocious offspring this is a little pencil drawing by bramwell when he was 11 years old it's rather sweet each of the young brontes showed some promise as artists this is really good i think it's it's a painting by emily of her dog she had several dogs but this is keeper i think but storytelling seems to have been their great passion each week the rev bronte would prepare his sermon in the study while upstairs the wild imaginations of his four children would run riot in the small bedroom where they gathered to create exotic fantasy worlds inspired in part by a childhood gift of 12 toy soldiers we have a lovely account by charlotte a father buying the soldiers and returning back to howath with them which uh which i can show you you're right a park bought grand will some soldiers at leeds i snatched up one and exclaimed this is the duke of wellington it shall be mine mine was the bonniest and perfect in every part emily's was a grave looking fellow and we called him gravy adams was a queer little thing very much like herself branwell chose bonaparte oh that's wonderful they would act out little plays with the soldiers and they went from acting them out to writing them down and this is by charlotte bronte should have been 14 when she wrote this and it's designed to be small enough for the toy soldiers to read but it had the advantage of being like a secret code amongst the children and their father or their aunt just wouldn't have been able to read it why was it so secret was it because they were naughty stories or well as they got older they probably not what you would expect the vicar's children to be writing their reading was uncensored so they were reading byron and all kinds of gothic books and everything fed into these stories an extraordinary dream by lord charles wellesley in this slumber i thought i was walking on the banks of a river which murmured over small pebbles at the bottom gleaming like crystals through the silver stream and the green buds of the wild rose trees around were unopened and a mild warmth was shed from the sun then at its height in the blue sky that's obviously from their walks isn't it branwell and charlotte created dozens of these little books writing about life in a glamorous exotic realm called angrier it was people by aristocratic characters and setting these grand halls with balls and all the things really that i think the bronte sort of lacked in their everyday life their younger sisters emily and anne felt excluded from the angrier adventures so they invented a country of their own emily even added their imaginary land gondola to a geography textbook with a location in the north pacific i just love the idea of these children in this tiny room creating these extraordinary worlds [Music] and i'm sure this early writing work would have developed the skills of all the brontes but while charlotte and anne drew on their adult experiences to produce their later masterpieces their sister never abandoned the stories she wrote as a child for emily the fantasy world that she created in gondol was used later as the basis for the only novel that she ever published wuthering heights but whereas the imaginary world was set in tropical climates she set this in a landscape that she knew very well the wild moors that lay at the back of the home that she lived in since she was a toddler i'm retracing the route that emily would have followed across her beloved moors to the locations said to have inspired wuthering heights the bleak remote farmhouse where heathcliff makes his home this is emily's opening description of that brutal windswept landscape pure bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times indeed one may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge by the excessive slant of the few stunted furs at the end of the house and by the range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way as if craving arms of the sun cathy's undying obsession with the cruel heathcliff is mirrored by her love of this untamed wilderness and i'm sure the author's own passion for the landscape can be heard in kathy's almost blasphemous hymn to the moors if i were in heaven i should be extremely miserable i dreamt i was there once heaven did not seem to be my home and i broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth and the angels were so angry that they flung me out in the middle of the heat on the top of wuthering heights where i woke sobbing for joy [Music] emily bronte's tortured love story continues to inspire new films musicals operas songs and ballets david nixon choreographed a recent interpretation of wuthering heights for northern ballet [Music] i sat in with david for a rehearsal of the section where heathcliff takes revenge on kathy for marrying his wealthy rival edgar linton and look he taunts kathy by toying with linton's sister isabella under her jealous gaze that was really good it's her reaction you're watching as you're touching her i know what you've always wanted but missy here is going to get it [Music] instead [Music] what theme most attracted you in the book i think there were kind of probably two themes at one point in their youth there was this absolute harmony between two young people and it had to do with the moors and how at one they all were in that space and then the the contrast to that that as we grow up and as we make choices how that actually destroys it yes absolutely it's an obsessional love affair it's something that they have to have you have to that's a lot of what we spoke about in the rehearsal we didn't actually say a lot of in love sort of things it was obsession what i just find unbelievable is that it's so true yeah she understands the nature not just a woman but a man and this is a woman that had no life experience i mean this woman's had nothing and yet she brings this truth of life i mean lust sex everything she hasn't had any of it really [Music] emily was only 27 when she completed wuthering heights yet her novel tells us so much about the darkest moments of the human condition when kathy is dying the scene between her and heathcliff is absolutely amazing anybody that's watched somebody they love die will understand that that appalling desperation of wanting to keep the person with you her present countenance had a wild vindictiveness in its white cheek and a bloodless lip and scintillating eye and she retained in her closed fingers a portion of locks she had been grasping as to her companion so inadequate was his stock of gentleness to the requirements of her condition that on his letting go i saw four distinct impressions left blue in the colorless skin i think i find watering eyes particularly moving because i have felt all the feelings that are in that book particularly the sense of loss and desperation and luckily for me great love [Music] emily expresses many of these powerful emotions using imagery from this majestic landscape and the moors do seem to have given inspiration to all three of the bronte sisters but in other ways these young women were each very different emily's talent seemed to come from her yorkshire roots and a wild imagination but she wrote only for herself now her older sister charlotte was quite different she was ambitious and adventurous and hungry for fame the three bronte girls were raised in humble surroundings by their current father patrick and their late mother sister aunt bramwell emily charlotte and anne would go on to write classic victorian novels but before their books were published the sister spent many years trying to find other ways to earn money in the 19th century most middle class women with no independent means had to either get married or work as governors and teachers something that the bronte sisters did and wrote about in their books when they were young they came as students to this school here row head school later charlotte came here as a teacher it wasn't altogether a happy situation she wanted to be a writer but circumstances dictated that she had to be a teacher there's a wonderful bit that charlotte writes in the row head journal am i to spend all the best part of my life in this wretched bondage forcibly suppressing my rage at the idleness the apathy and most asinine stupidity of these fat-headed doves i think that's wonderful that must sum up a lot of teachers attitudes what she's wanting to do is write about her imaginary world angrier and she can't she has to sit there and teach these wretched children while she was teaching at rowhead charlotte wrote to the poet laureate robert salvi asking for his opinion of a selection of her poems he wrote back to her literature cannot be the business of a woman's life and it ought not to be the more she is engaged in her proper duties the less leisure she will have for it even as an accomplishment or a recreation now you and i i'm sure will be up in arms about that but the point about the whole letter is that he's actually saying to her yes it's okay to write poetry but don't try to be famous with your writing write poetry for its own sake not with a view to celebrity but if you are a woman living in a vicarage you are going to have to aim for success and we wouldn't have heard of any of those girls if charlotte hadn't wanted celebrity but even for a woman as ambitious and driven as charlotte bronte saudi's letter was a major setback charlotte kept the envelope and she wrote upon it saudi's advice to be kept forever row head april 21st 1837 my 21st birthday oh really and then at the top she's written mel pommeny and that's the muse of tragedy [Music] when she went back to school all she would concentrate on was doing her duty as a teacher and you think that was partly a result of his letter i'm sure it is because it closed that door for her the route to a literary career seemed to be shut off for the brontes their early efforts in education had proved a dead end so it was time to start out on a new path the three sisters now all in their twenties hatched a plan they would establish a school of their own their ever-loving aunt bramwell gave them the money to set up the school and charlotte and emily used part of it to go to brussels to improve their french and other subjects so that they had better credentials charlotte's time in belgium was to have a profound effect on her [Music] i joined a tour of the belgian capital run by the brussels bronte society to find out more about the sister stay in the city brussels was cosmopolitan city it was also cheaper than paris so a lot of english people sent their daughters to be educated here the bronte sisters attended services at the protestant chapel that we see there and charlotte in particular enjoyed watching the ladies coming out and the way they were dressed far better dressed than the english ladies charlotte's interest in belgium fashion is certainly at odds with her reputation as a simple country girl but more importantly the tuition she received in brussels at the pensioner here would transform her as a writer the pensioner where the sisters stayed and studied was straight in the middle of this street charlotte described mr aj their teacher as a brilliant man and she felt that she was respected for her passion for writing and for her willingness to learn is it true also that he made her economize in language he he told them discipline the improvements in charlotte's writing was enormous monsieur aj certainly helped his pupil to develop her writing style he may also have aroused unfamiliar passions in this 27 year old yorkshire woman driving the dutiful daughter of an anglican minister to an extraordinary visit to the catholic cathedral in brussels a remarkable episode in charlotte's life happened here she felt so bad she decided to enter the cathedral and confess there was a letter to emily where she said to heaven say don't tell father because he was so absolutely against catholicism yes of course yeah it's a fascinating idea of how desperate she must have been feeling that she felt the need for that in the end she uh she felt she had to find comfort somewhere even with a catholic priest we will never know exactly what charlotte said in the secret of the confessional but there are strong clues that she may have been experiencing the sort of terrible emotional turmoil she would later write about in her classic novels [Music] evidence of charlotte's state of mind can be found back in london at the british library in a series of letters she wrote to monsieur aj after leaving brussels they probably the most important relics of charlotte bronte they tell us about her feelings for a man who was her mentor at a crucial point in her life she said some very daring things to monsieur she said you showed me a little interest in brussels i demand that you show me the same interest now unsurprisingly this father of five under the watchful eye of his wife madame ajay does not seem to have been very pleased to receive these passionate letters from his former pupil he tore them up put them in his waste paper basket and what i imagine is that madame plucked them out she has threaded a needle and patiently sewn the pieces of the letter together because she had to understand the dynamic between her husband and his star pupils and she understood from reading these letters that she should have nothing more to do with the brontes and she refused to have english pupils for some years can you give me an example of why you think that she was really in love with this well what we have here is the last letter she wrote to monsieur and this is the one letter we have that wasn't torn up she says i must say one word to you in english and she goes on to tell him that she delighted in speaking in french because it reminded her of him and she says every word was most precious to me because it reminded me of you i love french for your sake with all my heart and soul oh dear so i think that monsieur never replied to this letter and by enlarging this letter for the camera we have discovered that that full stop is actually in the shape of a heart so it is it is a heart this is amazing so she sent this message to monsieur but i don't think we can think of love in our present-day sense it isn't adulterous it isn't an affair but it's more than friendship because for a very proper young woman in the middle of the 19th century she had to imagine love rather than enact it and that imagining was crucial for her writing one of the great myths about the brontes is that they never experience the emotions that they express so powerfully in their books i certainly don't think that is true of charlotte and her great classic jane eyre in which the young heroine has a doomed passion for the married mr rochester this is jane when mr rochester is proposing to her she thinks he's just talking about her having to leave but i feel it's something to do with what charlotte bronte felt when she had to leave the man she loved in brussels i grieve to leave form fields because i have lived in it a full and delightful life momentarily at least i have talked face to face with an original a vigorous and expanded mind i have known you mr rochester and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel i absolutely must be torn from you forever i see the necessity of departure and it is like looking on the necessity of death i'm sure she was thinking of her lover or her not a lover [Music] i think that jane eyre is a wonderful novel it can drive me to tears and laughter at the same reading and for me that spirit has really been captured by artist dame paula rego oh yes that's a strange one she has produced a series of works based on texts from the book many of the pieces cover the cruel treatment of jane as a young orphan often in the house of her aunt mrs reed this is marvelous this is my office they punish her by throwing her all alone in this big room she's flat on her tummy oh she's all crumpled and i call this crumpled this is one of my favorite dish because it's just how it was how it was for her yes has it ever been like that for you i felt crumpled there scared stiff and these pictures reflect the characters as they are written not the more sentimental versions often portrayed in adaptations jane was ugly she says so herself but nine times out of ten if you see a movie the girl is pretty you know sort of no makeup that's the conception of ugliness but you actually make no bones about it here that is not a beautiful woman that is jane in charlotte's novel jane does eventually find love in the form of the aloof unattainable mr rochester you're showing him with this dark sort of glowing look yeah what do you think of rochester well i think he's a pompo street and i think he's not kind and he's very very nasty to women he cares about jane though do you not think in the end i think he's pleased that he's alive because he could have been dead charlotte does allow her unfortunate heroin a happy ending after all the passionate love and shocking gothic carryings on this is what happens reader i married him a quiet wedding we had he and i when we got back from church i went into the kitchen and i said mary i have been married to mr rochester this morning mary bending again over the roasts said only have you miss well for sure so funny to end up with something so casual and nonchalant brilliant charlotte based her clever passionate and witty books on her own rich and varied emotional life her sister emily drew on her childhood fantasies for her only published novel but anne bronte was different again her greatest work was a campaigning novel now seen as a groundbreaking feminist classic [Music] by 1845 charlotte emily and ann bronte were all living with their father patrick back in the parsonage the two older girls had returned from brussels but there were no takers for their planned school in hearth probably because of its remote location the bronte sisters now in their late 20s and yet to start writing their novels still needed to find a way to earn a living then charlotte came upon something that would change their lives forever on a little writing desk like this she found a notebook full of emily's poems like this one maybe even this one she wrote i know no woman that ever lived ever wrote such poetry before emily was furious that charlotte had invaded her privacy she didn't even want her poetry read but she was persuaded that they should publish a collection of their works this is the very first edition of poems by kara ellis and acton bell they decided to adopt pseudonyms because they recognize that there was a kind of double standard in the way writing was reviewed and they wanted to be viewed as writers not particularly women writers there's one here that i like by ellis and it's called to imagination so hopeless is a world without the world within i doubly prize the world where guile and hate and doubt and cold suspicion never rise where thou and i and liberty have undisputed sovereignty it must rank some of the biggest failures in the history of publishing there were two copies sold despite some very favorable reviews and charlotte sent some of the remaining copies to authors accompanied by this note so my relatives ellis and acton bell and myself have committed the rash act of printing a volume of poems the consequence predicted have of course overtaken us our book is found to be a drug no one needs it or needs it in space for a year our publisher has disposed but of two copies and by what painful efforts he succeeded in getting rid of these to himself only knows that's tragic but funny as well bless her i mean she's she's making a joke of it that's right well it must have been crushing disappointment but she was determined um to carry on with the publishing it had given a zest to life having lost money on their volume of poetry the bronte sisters resolved to focus their formidable energies on a more lucrative side of the literary business they set to work writing novels every evening at about nine o'clock patrick would leave his study wind up that clock and then make his way to bed with him gone the three girls would come into the dining room and promenade around this table reading extracts of their work to one another this production line produced three classic novels emily's wuthering heights anne's agnes gray and charlotte's the professor and the first two were accepted for publication charlotte's was rejected however she just sat down and in a few weeks she produced jane eyre jane eyre was published first and was an instant hit wuthering heights and agnes gray followed two months later they were less successful but all three of the sisters were now published novelists their brother branwell however was in a desperate state as a young man branwell had been the golden boy of the bronte family he was the guiding force behind their childhood writings had poems published in local papers and harbored serious ambitions to become a professional artist here in the national portrait gallery is bramwell's only surviving painting of his three sisters originally he was in the picture there you can see a faint outline but for some reason he painted himself out with a pillar which is fortunately beginning to fade so we know what happened it's a slight mystery as to why he did that i mean i think the official reason is that it was because he thought the composition was better without him or maybe he just painted himself really rather badly but i think it's an amazing image of what was going to happen later either through lack of ability or lack of application bramwell never made it as a portrait painter and he was later dismissed from a succession of jobs by the time his sisters started to win famous writers he had been sacked as a tutor seemingly because of an affair with his employer's wife he returned grief-stricken to the parsonage where he sank into serious alcohol and drug abuse this is a room that eventually brahmor shared with his father what happened was that he came back paralytic one night and he managed to set fire at his bed clothes and emily rescued him and patrick decided that he had to keep an eye on him can you imagine what it was like in this house his whole life was disintegrating this beloved brother and son in front of their eyes but out of it came a wonderful book by anne the tenant of wildfell hall it is one of the best studies of alcoholism and its effect on the family and everybody around them that i have ever read brahmo used to blame his alcoholism on a sad affair that he had with a married woman and it is sometimes a trait of addiction that people are apt to blame other people for their terrible illness the character in huawei hall turns on his wife and blames her for all his bad behavior and this is a typical passage of that as for him for the first week or two he was peevish and low fretting i suppose over his dear annabella's departure that's his mistress and particularly ill-tempered to me everything i did was wrong i was cold-hearted hard in sunset my sour pale face was perfectly repulsive my voice made him shudder he knew not how he could live through the winter with me i should kill him by inches and the tenant of wildfell hall was a revolutionary depiction of the powerlessness of a woman in an abusive marriage and i think it's every bit as good as the better known bronte books in fact all three sisters produced enduring masterpieces how did it happen how was it possible three victorian spinsters living in isolation on the yorkshire moors award-winning playwright polly thiel has written extensively about the brontes i joined polly to talk about this unique literary family at the dining room table where so many of the bronte classics were produced when they're writing and walking around this table they must have had such a laugh and they must have inspired one another it must have been a kind of furnace mustn't say right from when they were children because they did that with angry and you know the books the little tiny books and their father gave them this extraordinary access to literature and they read in a way that was would have been very unusual for for girls at that time and in fact you could only go to the local library if you were a man and so they had to get branwell to bring the books back for them our books are covered in flower and spatters of gravy the library have complained well not to us we are not allowed to go there fathers and sons only but our brother tells us that a carrot peeling was found lying like a bookmark by the librarian i think none of them would have written but for the existence of the others even bramwell i think they could almost smell it off him these affairs these adventures that he was having living this life out there in the world whilst they were really confined to this very domestic world that women occupied do you think they would have written the books if they'd had the kind of freedom that we have perhaps but the power of the books comes out of that repression you know it's almost like in their writing there was an opportunity for them to take revenge on a world that didn't allow them a voice and yet here alone in this room they could say whatever they wanted to it seems that the safe haven of the parsonage and the bonds that formed between the four bronte children within its walls were crucial to their art [Music] but this was also a very unhealthy place to live [Music] the average life expectancy in hearth was just 25 partly as a result of the church graveyard polluting the drinking water as it flowed down from the moors the two old disbronte girls mariah and elizabeth had died of tb or consumption as it used to be known as young children in 1848 this terrible disease would strike again at the family was the first to succumb dying in september that year at the age of 31. his sister emily aged just 30 followed only three months later anne too developed the symptoms of consumption and as her condition deteriorated she wrote this heartbreaking letter i wish it would please god to spare me not only for papa and charlotte's sakes but because i longed to do some good in the world before i leave it i have many schemes in my head for future practice humble and limited indeed but still i should not like them to come to nothing and myself to have lived to so little purpose but god's will be done [Music] and came here to scarborough with charlotte she thought somehow it would make her feel better [Music] she had been here before when she was governors to her family and she fell in love with the place [Music] sadly her condition worsened they couldn't get her back to house and she died here in 1849 aged only 29. anne's death was a gentle and brave one and almost her last words were take courage charlotte take courage so charlotte was on her own she wrote it is over emily bramwell anne all are gone like dreams i have watched them fall asleep on my arm i've closed their glazed eyes i have seen them buried one by one desperately lonely charlotte threw herself into her work and less than six months after anne's death published a new novel shirley i met biographer lucaster miller at the red house in gumasol modeled for the home of the york family in shirley to find out how the now celebrated author would cope with her terrible loss charlotte came back from scarborough and there she was alone with patrick must have been a nightmare mustn't it have come back to us there's an absolutely heart-rending story of charlotte going down to the dining room where previously she and her sisters used to walk around talking about their writing and going round and round the table on her own really i mean it's an absolutely appalling sense of loss and bereavement and charlotte was facing further problems the bronte sisters had written a series of controversial novels jane eyre was about the relationship between a married man and his governors both van's books were campaigning attacks on conventional victorian society whilst wuthering heights was considered amoral and ungodly when it became known the authors of these novels were actually women victorian society was scandalized a storm was brewing against the work and the morals of the brontes charlotte's response would be to create a new work of fiction she republished wuthering heights which gave her the opportunity to write a short biographical notice of her sisters she is trying to get the public almost to forgive them for having written these shocking books it's a piece of victorian spin she creates this myth of the moors and how earth as if that was all there was to their inspiration she presents her sisters as being uneducated she says neither emily nor anne were learned when in fact they were voracious readers you know they were highly they spoke french and they highly they'd written all their lives exactly i had already discovered that the bronte sisters were not the isolated uneducated country girls of popular imagination they enjoyed an excellent if unconventional education and quite a wealth of experiences for young women of the age what i hadn't realized was that this story was partly concocted by charlotte to protect the reputations of the sisters whose loss she mourned so deeply but it seems charlotte may have dealt a much more substantial blow to the bronte legacy she went through all her sister's papers after they died when she prepared some of their poetry to be published in some cases making really quite substantial changes she actually changed words she actually changed words and more tragically it's also possible that charlotte destroyed the unfinished manuscript of a possible second novel by emily that's not true it's so awful how would she have destroyed it will we find it and is it likely to be in somebody's attic in pieces i think if she did destroy it she probably would have burnt it you can be particularly if you're insane with grief you can make strange decisions can't you and thinking they wouldn't like that and and try and do what you think is best i suppose that's what she was doing but it's just tragic for us if there was a second book we will never know if emily wrote a second novel but charlotte herself produced one more book villette based heavily on her experiences in brussels she also found some brief respite from the crippling loneliness she had felt since the death of her brother and her sisters in 1852 arthur bell nichols the curate to patrick in howarth proposed to charlotte to begin with she wasn't particularly interested and patrick opposed it but nichols won them round and in 1854 they married in the father's church the villager said that she looked like a snowdrop he was a nice man he wasn't at all like the rather sadistic heroes of the girl's novels but sadly after a few months charlotte died in the early stages of pregnancy charlotte only 38 years old was laid to rest alongside her mother her brother and three of her sisters beneath the church where her father served as rector for more than 40 years i hope with all my heart that the beautiful last paragraph of emily's wuthering heights which is actually about the graves of kathy and heathcliff and linton could also be applied to the graves of the brontes i lingered round them under that benign sky watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hair bells listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth jack handed in danny's phone but will it hold the key to what really happened and with the truth about his past in the press can the police protect him the drama continues in broad church tomorrow at 9 you

Channel: Dale J

Views: 454,076

Rating: 4.8675618 out of 5

Keywords: Bronte Sisters Haworth Moors Charlotte Emily Ann Documentary

Id: dLI1Bm6rNuc

Length: 47min 20sec (2840 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 06 2016