Brontë, Brontë and Brontë (and Branwell)
The lives and rapidly approaching deaths of Charlotte, Emily and Anne (and their brother Branwell, and their sisters Elizabeth and Maria, and their mother, and their aunt).
It is the early 18th century in misty West Yorkshire. The moors, bleak and beautiful, surround the village of Haworth and its parsonage,nestled close to St Michael and All Angel’s Church on the edge of town. The 1800’s was a time of enormous change in the North of England, and Yorkshire was well-placed to take advantage of the swift advances; the world at the end of the century would not be the same. However, this mattered not to the Brontë children however, for they were playing in their own world, an intricate imaginary world dreamed up through play and storytelling.
But let’s step back for a second. Before the Brontë’s became the Brontë’s, their patriarch was Patrick Brunty, who moved out of his birthplace of County Down in Ireland to attend St. John's College at Cambridge University, where he changed his name to the flashier ‘Brontë’. Perhaps he was hoping to reach BNOC status. He then embarked on a career as a minister, and preached in several parishes, marrying and having five children along the way, until the Brontë’s landed in Haworth in 1820. Mortality-wise, it was all downhill from there.
At this time, it wasn’t unusual for curates to have a side hustle, apparently preaching the word of God left a lot of free time in the afternoon. Bored curates across the country found time to compile Icelandic dictionaries (George Bayldon), invent the power loom (Edmund Cartwright), write the first scientific description of dinosaurs (William Buckland), and breed terriers (Jack Russell) all between hurriedly writing sermons about God’s love and/or wrath. Patrick’s extracurricular of choice was literature and poetry. Before 1820, he had published four volumes, with a fifth coming in 1835. This love was clearly passed onto his children, no guesses as to why I might figure that.
It is also not hard to ascertain why the fictional might be preferable to the real. Haworth at this time was pretty grim, showcasing the best of the worst of the Industrial Revolution. Real estate options were cramped, dirty and unhygienic; the average lifespan was 24 (an age far better suited to clubbing than dying). The parsonage in which the Brontë’s resided was one of the largest houses in the village, but in terms of other similar positions it wasn’t anything special. Likewise, though patriarch Patrick’s living of £200 provided by God and his earth-bound subsidiaries was larger than that earned by the working class, it was nothing compared to the thousands raked in by the landed classes. The Brontë family existed therefore in a kind of social and economic no man’s land.
Case in point. The Brontë's mother, Maria Branwell, must have really hated Haworth, because less than a year after they moved, she died. Her sister, Elizabeth, moved up from Cornwall, first to tend to her, and when that didn't turn out so well, to live fulltime with the family as a housekeeper. By all accounts, the Cornwall to Haworth pipeline was a downgrade.
In 1824, the Brontë sisters left home to attend girl’s school. It is said that it was this school that inspired the infamous Lowood school in Charlotte’s Jane Eyre. Take from that what you will. It was here that, unfortunately, the bad luck continued for the Brontës, when in 1825 oldest sister Maria was taken ill and soon died, aged only 11. Second oldest Maria followed only a month later, having taken ill at the same time as her sister.
The remaining kids would escape from their miserable reality by creating imaginary worlds, often using Branwell, the only sons’, toy soldiers as inspiration and play. All the kids were voracious readers, unusual for the time, though the Brontës were a cut above the working class as a curate’s children, with God paying the bills. The kids even made tiny, functional, books for their toys, ensuring even the non-sentient occupants of the house were well-read.
The next big challenge in the Brontë children’s lives however was yet to come. Education had already killed two of them, but now it was time for those who remained to face an infinitely scarier proposition: employment. Let’s talk through the process.
With Patrick’s position meaning the family had no private income and equally low social clout, the sisters had to chase work experience that might lead them to the only respectable position for poor people, the role of Governess. To this end, new-eldest sister Charlotte was sent to Miss Woder’s School, which she hated, but still eventually became a teacher herself, taking on her younger sisters as pupils for a time. Emily also tried to become a teacher, hating her pupils and her work, until the stress forced her to return home.
The youngest, Anne, ended up working as a governess, unhappy in the position but taking it on the chin regardless. The life of governess at this time existed in the same no man's land that the Brontë family had known their whole lives. Not part of the family, yet also not considered a servant, they were left to feel awkward at all times, unsure of their place. It must have been the worst.
Finally, Branwell, tutored extensively by his father, was always up for a chat and pretty good at it too. He was less accomplished however at holding down a job. For a time he toyed with applying to the Royal Academy of Arts in London, a dream that ultimately went nowhere. He returned to Haworth, and after getting fired from two consecutive jobs, he worked for a time as a private tutor with the family that Anne worked as governess for. This ended dramatically when Branwell was fired again, this time allegedly for an inappropriate affair with the family matriarch.
Meanwhile, Charlotte and Emily were understandably sick to death of work and studied for a time in Brussels, aiming to get the right language accomplishments to open a school in Haworth. Luck wasn’t on their side however, as no pupils signed up. Devastating.
In 1846, all remaining Brontë siblings were once again in Haworth and unemployed. Branwell spent his time at the pub, the sisters would write. Their luck turned paradoxically, with yet another death in the family: that of their aunt Elizabeth. The sisters used her legacy (money) to publish poems in 1846. All three sisters wrote using pseudonyms, something I would never do, but not revealing their shocking status as women did not help the commercial success of their work. Though reviews were favourable, no one reads poetry, and only two copies were sold.
This literary failure did not deter the sisters however, in fact, the very next books published are names you have definitely heard before. ‘Jane Eyre’, written in dreary Manchester which honestly explains so much, by Curer Bell (Charlotte Brontë) was published by Smith, Elder & Co. of London in 1847, only a year after poetrygate. ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Ellis Bell (Emily Brontë) and sleeper hit ‘Agnes Grey’ by Acton Bell (Anne Brontë), followed only two months later in December, published by the shifty Thomas Cautley Newby, just in time to buy for your mum at Christmas.
The publishing of all three books brought with them much speculation about who was behind these darkly enigmatic novels, and the pseudonym game proved tumultuous. In fact, when Anne published her second novel ‘Tenant of Wildfell Hall’ in 1848, their asshole publisher tried to pass off the work as that of Curer Bell, as Charlotte had enjoyed the lion's share of success for ‘Jane Eyre’. To prevent this, Anne and Emily revealed themselves to Charlotte’s publisher, George Smith, though they rejected his attempts to show them off around town.
Celebrations of success were short lived however. Death wasn’t done with the Brontë family just yet; Branwell had never settled into an occupation, and fell back increasingly into alcohol and opium. He contracted tuberculosis and soon died in 1848 at 31. Emily and Anne were similarly afflicted. Emily never left the house in Haworth again after Branwell’s funeral, dying three months later. Anne meanwhile travelled to Scarborough with Charlotte to attempt a sea cure, this proved unsuccessful, and she died soon after at 29.
Sidenote - You might look at the Brontë's frequent brushes with the Grim Reaper as incredibly bad luck, but it is also important to remember that life at this time was no cakewalk. As I stated, the average lifespan in Haworth was 25, mortally in many ways the Brontës exceeded expectations.
Charlotte was now the last woman standing, and understandably devastated. And she was in Scarborough, so it just got worse and worse. Like Brontë children would in their childhood, Charlotte buried herself in imaginary worlds, and took up writing with increased fervour. Her fame as an accomplished novelist allowed her to enter social circles previously undreamed of in London, though her crippling grief held her back from fully enjoying the attention. A curate studying under her father asked for her hand, and though she at first refused, when learning that her father was against the match, she accepted the proposal in protest of his judgement. Even though she had said no first, make that make sense. They proved a good match, though marital bliss was short-lived when Charlotte died from complications in the early stages of pregnancy in 1855.
And that was that. Patrick Brontë lived for another six years after the last of his children had died, cared for diligently by his son-in-law until the end.
The Brontë’s live on through their works, which bear striking similarities to their own lives. I won’t summarise them here because I am not your English teacher, but the books are indeed evocative, complex and brutal. The Brontë’s are best understood through their context, you might notice I have been pushing the perpetual limbo that the Brontë family exists in. This reflects in the novels, we must assume the sisters had to write in secret, because much of their work involved sharp and not exactly flattering depictions of their social superiors and the families for whom they worked. Much like Jane Austen, the novels were a poignant exploration of the society in which they lived and the behaviour it encouraged.
By writing under pseudonyms, Charlotte, Emily and Anne were increasing their mystique, even after they were revealed. They never really left Haworth, and preferred the seclusion of the Northern town to the cosmopolitan bustle of London. People from London can never understand why other people not from London would prefer not to be in London.
It is also difficult to discuss the Brontës without engaging in their untimely deaths and difficult life as governesses. We do love a tortured artist, and the sisters’ grief seems to be unending, and their prose brutal in its directness. Does one inspire the other? In addition, the Yorkshire moors ties looms large in all these novels. Not always explicitly stated, but a powerful character nonetheless, lending bleak credibility to the suffering the Brontë’s characters would endure.
Do not make the mistake of denying the sisters their imagination however. These were women who truly understood the society in which they lived, their viewpoint is endlessly valuable, even as they rejected the norms pushed upon them. Thank you ladies.