The Bronte Family

I did extensive research into the Bronte Family so I could gather as much information on possible inspirations of Wuthering Heights and discover the answers to questions I have about the story. Emily Bronte took major inspiration from her personal family life when writing Wuthering Heights, so researching her family would allow me to see character's in a different way and find some context to their actions. A lot of this research also comes from The Bronte Museum we visited.

Emily Bronte

Born: 30 July 1818 (Leo)

Died: 19 December 1848

Best known for Wuthering Heights which was written just a year before she died and wrote over 200 poems across her career.
Her sister, acclaimed writer Charlotte Brontë, described her poetry as ‘a peculiar music - wild, melancholy, and elevating.’
Emily was the fifth sibling in the Bronte family living in remote Haworth, Yorkshire among the moors.
Their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell became their mother figure due to their birth mother’s death when Emily was three. Her father provided them with liberal and academic education whilst Elizabeth taught them details of domestic values.
As children they created imaginary worlds, creating maps and writing stories. Charlotte and Branwell created the Kingdom of Angria, and Emily rather stubbornly created the breakaway island of Gondal with her sister Anne.
Wuthering Heights, which was published in 1847, is reminiscent of Gondal in its moorland setting and passionate war between two families

Surviving poems about this fantasy world show the influence of Wordsworth, Walter Scott and Byron. By then Emily was the tallest of the sisters, slim and graceful with – in the words of family friend Ellen Nussey – ‘kindling liquid eyes’.
She was, however, very reserved, and it soon emerged that she was unsuited to life away from Haworth. ‘Stronger than a man’, Charlotte wrote, ‘simpler than a child, her nature stood alone.’
Emily’s work first appeared in print when, on Charlotte’s urging, a collection of the three sisters’ poems was privately published in 1846 under the names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; outstanding among them is Emily’s ‘No coward soul is mine’.
Emily began another novel, but it was destroyed by Charlotte after Emily’s death, aged 30, from tuberculosis in December 1848.

When Wuthering Heights was first published it sold poorly and Victorian readers found the book shocking and inappropriate in its depiction of passionate, ungoverned love and cruelty (despite the fact that the novel portrays no sex or bloodshed), and the work was virtually ignored.

Even Emily Brontë’s sister Charlotte remained ambivalent toward the unapologetic intensity of her sister’s novel. In a preface to the book, which she wrote shortly after Emily Brontë’s death, Charlotte Brontë stated, “Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know. I scarcely think it is.”
What is incredibly interesting is that Emily was never actually in love, she never had a partner or turbulent relationship, she was independent and reserved. This is peculiar as she supposedly wrote one of the greatest love stories of all time. What does this say about her perspective of love?
Emily took a lot of inspiration from people in her personal life in Wuthering Heights, Hindley was representative of her brother, Edgar - her father and Cathy was representative of herself. Additionally her housemaid Tabby Aykroyd was the inspiration behind Nelly.
Both Emily and Charlotte travelled to Brussels to study literature in 1842. What impact did this have on her writing?

Charlotte Bronte

Born: 21st April 1816

Died: 31st March 1855

She’s the eldest on the three Brontë sisters who survived until adulthood.
She originally enlisted in school at 14, but had to leave in order to teach her sisters and then returning in 1835 as a governess.
She left after a few months, and her and her sisters left for Haworth- this is where her and her sisters opened up a school but didn’t attract many school kids.
This allowed them to turn to writing and each of them published their first novels under their pen names, Charlotte’s being Currer Bell.
Her identity was kept secret until they all admitted to their pen names in 1848, and by the following year were celebrated in London’s literary circles.
Charlotte was the last to die out of all of her sisters- she became pregnant after her marriage in June 1854 but died shortly on March 1855, from hyperemesis gravidarum , a complication from pregnancy causing vomiting and nausea .

Charlotte Brontë is most relevant for her story of Jane Eyre- this is a story of an independent governess who overcomes hardships while remaining true to her principles. While writing Jane Eyre, Charlottë was influenced by the death of her older sisters as well as the time she spent as a a teacher and a governess and her relationship with Constantin Hèger.
Charlotte’s first novel, The Professor (1857), shows her sober reaction from the indulgences of her girlhood. It is based on Charlotte’s experiences there, with a reversal of sexes and roles. The necessity of her genius, reinforced by reading her sister Emily’s Wuthering Heights, modified this restrictive self-discipline, and, though there is plenty of satire and dry, direct phrasing in Jane Eyre, its success was the fiery conviction with which it presented a thinking, feeling woman, craving love but able to renounce it at the call of impassioned self-respect and moral conviction.

Maria and Elizabeth Bronte

Maria Brontë, firstborn child of the family, was named after her mother and, according to her father, writing when she was nine years old, had 'a powerful intellectual mind'

In 1823 Maria and the Brontës' second daughter Elizabeth were sent to the fashionable girls` boarding school Crofton Hall at Wakefield. Fees were high, however, and Mr Brontë`s stipend would not stretch to the same education for all five girls.
By modern standards the school's regime was harsh, although no more so than other boarding schools of the period. Subsequent investigations showed that food was ill-prepared in unhygienic conditions, and many pupils became ill.
In February 1825 Maria was diagnosed with tuberculosis and returned home.
Patrick Brontë used to say that he 'could converse with Maria on any of the leading topics of the day as freely, and with as much pleasure, as with any adult.' Even Miss Andrews, the unbending teacher at Cowan Bridge, admitted Maria was 'a girl of fine imagination and extraordinary talents.'

Elizabeth Brontë died just aged 10 . Less is known about her than any other member of the family.

She was born February 8th,1815 in the village of Hartshead , when Patrick, her father, was then the Church of England curate, in the west riding of Yorkshire.
She was named after her Aunt Elizabeth.
Many suspect that we don’t much about Elizabeth and that she was purposefully missed out on the Brontë family history because of her lack of talents unlike her other siblings.
Elizabeth liked the more orderly and tidy side of life- we know this because when her father Patrick had had learned how reserved his children were, he decided to overcome this by asking them questions behind the anonymity of a mask. To Elizabeth he asked :’ What’s the best mode of education for a woman?’ And she replied ‘ That which would make her rule the house well’- basically anything that would teach her how to be a good house wife.
From this we know that she has different priorities to her siblings and liked the more practical things in life.
She went to school with Maria Brontë on 1st of July 1823, and in the following months would be joined by both Emily and Charlotte.

Patrick Bronte

Patrick Bronte was born on St Patrick's Day, 1777, in a two-roomed cabin at Emdale, in Northern Ireland. It was not a promising start, but by the age of sixteen Patrick had opened his own school. He was hard working, ambitious, and saw education as his best means of advancement. In 1802 Patrick entered St John's College, Cambridge, where his ability attracted some influential sponsors including William Wilberforce, the Anti-Slavery campaigner.

It was at Cambridge that he changed his name from Brunty to the more impressive-sounding Bronté. Patrick graduated in 1806 and was ordained into the Church of England. He held curacies at Wethersfield in Essex then Wellington in Shropshire before heading north to Dewsbury and Hartshead in Yorkshire. During this period Patrick Bronté published his poetry and prose. His rags-to-riches story made a profound impression on his children, who were to grow up accustomed to books carrying their family name on the Parsonage shelves.

(Information from The Bronte Museum)

Death In The Bronte Family

(Information from The Bronte Museum)

Branwell died suddenly on 24 September 1848, aged 31. Soon after Emily and Anne became ill. Emily died from tuberculosis on 19 December 1848, at the age of 30. Anne was anxious to try a sea cure, and on 24 May 1849, accompanied by Charlotte and Ellen Nussey, she set out for Scarborough, where she died just four days later at the age of 29. To spare her father the anguish of another family funeral, Charlotte had her sister buried in Scarborough, then she returned to Haworth alone.

In 1854 Charlotte accepted a proposal from her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, and the couple were married in Haworth Church on 29 June 1854. The marriage was happy, although short-lived. Charlotte Brontë died on 31 March 1855, in the early stages of pregnancy. Mr Bronte lived on at the Parsonage for six years, cared for by his son-in-law. He died on 7 June 1861 at the age of 84, having outlived his wife and all of his six children.

It is really interesting to draw parallels between Emily's life and Wuthering Heights as it provides explanations to moments that happen in the play. The play and novel are riddled with death, sure it represents how young people died in the 18th century but it is so representative of Emily's life. She lost many immediate family members growing up and their house was right by a graveyard. Death was normalised, which is why it happens so often in the play. To left is an illustration that Branwell did called 'A Parody' and I think he has perfectly captured what death meant to the Bronte family, and I think to Nelly also.

What The Bronte's Wore:

Shawls:

From the late eighteenth century until the end of the 1860s there was no fashion accessory as versatile or pervasive as the shawl. They covered the shoulders of all classes of women and came in a multitude of colours, textures and shapes. The most desirable and costly shawls came from Kashmir, where they were laboriously hand-woven using the superfine fleece of Tibetan mountain goats. But though Kashmiri shawls continued to be imported in large numbers all throughout the early to mid-nineteenth century, European manufacturers sought to design cheaper alternatives made from sheep's wool or a silk/wool combination. In Britain, production was centred around Norwich, Edinburgh and Paisley, though many 'Paisley' shawls were also manufactured in Thornton, near Bradford Charlotte Bronte's birthplace.

(Information from The Bronte Museum)

A great number of shawls belonging to Charlotte Bronte have survived. These vary enormously in both quality and design - there are lace shawls, paisley shawls, striped shawls, wool shawls, cotton shawls and silk shawls. Though all of them would have been worn by Charlotte, at least some of those that have survived would originally have been owned by her sisters, her mother or her aunt and would therefore have been imbued with strong sentimental associations. Consequently, Charlotte's surviving shawls are more than mere objects of beauty. they are also tangible reminders of the Brontes' deep familial love.

Parasols:

Parasols have a long history - they have been used to protect faces from the damaging effects of the sun since at least 2450 B.C. It was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that they began to appear in England and not until the eighteenth century that they were adopted more widely. Despite this inauspicious beginning, they soon made up for lost time. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the parasol had become a must-have item; a key fashion accessory, a status symbol and even, according to an 1850 article in the satirical magazine Punch, 'a formidable weapon of defence.

At the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign, the majority of parasols were quite plain but by the mid-1840s many featured tassels and frills and were made from heavily patterned silks and woollen fabrics. These more decorated parasols were not only more expensive but were also less practical as the outfits with which they could be worn were more limited. They did however, have the benefit of increasing the fashionability of an existing gown. It is therefore not surprising that having arrived in London to present themselves to Charlotte's publisher, George Smith, Charlotte and Anne made the decision to purchase two parasols. For these, it was hoped, would make their 'plain, high-made country garments' more acceptable to London Society.

(Information from The Bronte Museum)

Bonnets:

In the early to mid nineteenth century, a woman wore a bonnet, hat or cap for much of the day and especially when in public. These not only provided warmth and all-important propriety but were also a means by which an individual could express their personality or adhere to the latest fashion trends - even when family finances were stretched as they were at time in the Bronte household. The bonnets here are from 1840s to 1850s, the three all have a very similar shape with a crown, and brim that merge to a simple line with brim sides that curve down over the ears to perfectly frame the face. Two have been made from stiffened muslin/cotton and wire. Whereas the other pink ribboned straw one is composed of Leghorn 7 -end straw plait. By the time the bonnet was maid straw plait was being produced in the Midlands, but the quality of this one suggests it was made in Tuscany, Italy before shipped to England. Charlotte's wedding bonnet was purchased from the same shop as this pink one, Hunt and Hull 42 Commercial Street Leeds. This implies that the sisters made many trips to Leeds and didn't just stay in Haworth.

(Information from museum)

Charlotte Bronte's Wardrobe:

Her wardrobe boldly and tangibly challenge the popular preconception that the author and her most famous protagonists were sartorially at least, one and the same. For though her surviving wardrobe does contain gowns befitting the plainly dressed Jane Eyre, there are also many brightly coloured, highly patterned items. These items remind us the Charlotte's life was both ordinary and extraordinary, public and private, obscure and famous.

There were many questions about Charlotte's iconic striped dress, where she got it from, where did she wear and how did the museum get hold of it? Recent research provided some information, they know that 1936 the building had some work undertaken and box of clothing was found holed up in a cupboard behind a wall. After extensive delving into archives the striped silk dress is highly likely to be one of the garments found. Moreover, in establishing the date of the gown and comparing it to other dresses in the collection it has now been attributed to Charlotte.

Some Rooms In The Bronte Household

The Brontë sisters were expected to take a share of the household tasks, and after Aunt Branwell's death Emily acted as housekeeper whilst Charlotte and Anne worked away from home as governesses. Baking bread or ironing allowed Emily the mental freedom to focus on her writing, and she was always happiest at home.

In the Brontës' time there was a back-kitchen where the washing and heavier household work would have been carried out. This was demolished in 1878 to make way for a large kitchen extension which was added to the Parsonage by Mr Brontë's successor, John Wade. The window was blocked, the range removed and the Brontës' old kitchen became a passageway to Wade's new dining room in the large gabled wing. A kitchen range of the correct period has now been added and the room features a display of furniture, utensils and china which belonged to the Brontë family. The walls have been washed in distemper, as they would have been during the Brontës' time.

In 1854 Charlotte converted this room into a study for her husband-to-be, Arthur Bell Nicholls, whose portrait hangs above the fireplace. The room had previously been used as a storeroom for fuel, entered from the backyard. A new fireplace was created and the present doorway was opened into the entrance hall.

Mr Nicholls acted as Mr Brontë's curate and after his marriage he carried out his share of the parish business from this room. The duties of a clergyman at that time were wide-ranging and encompassed civil order, social welfare and sanitation. Today the room features displays of items connected with Haworth old church which was demolished in 1879, after the Brontë period.

A scrap of the wallpaper Charlotte used in this room, authenticated by Elizabeth Gaskell, has survived in the New York Public Library. It has been especially reproduced to paper the room, and curtains have been introduced in a complementary green-patterned fabric of the period.

(Information from The Bronte Museum)

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