The Brontë Parsonage Museum

 

The Brontë Parsonage Museum is located in Haworth, West Yorkshire, and is maintained by the Brontë Society.  This museum interested me because it revealed a new, intimate side to the Brontë sisters; I always thought there was an air of mystery around Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë as they were known to keep to themselves.  However, looking at some of their personal items seemed to fade this mystery a little, and a realisation set in: the Brontës were real. 

It seems like an obvious thing, but having heard their names and their books mentioned throughout my life, and weaved into popular culture, I seemed to have forgotten this.  When the Brontës are mentioned I immediately think of their literary success, and how, despite the resistance they encountered simply for being women, they pursued their ambition of becoming published authors.  It is easy to forget that the sisters experienced the mundanity of everyday life.  The Brontë Parsonage Museum makes the sisters human again through their personal items: writing quills, a pair of reading glasses, gloves and handwriting snippets.

 One theme that really interested me was the idea that the parsonage was not just a home, but also a place for their creativity and imaginations to thrive.  Through my work, I wanted to communicate how important the parsonage, surrounding moorland, and sense of place was for the Brontës.

I was also fascinated by the family history, and the siblings as children.  I became absorbed in learning about their made up worlds of Gondal and Angria, which they wrote in code, and hand-bound into tiny books.  

The sadness and suffering of the Brontës in their later lives was a harsh comparison to the charming childhood stories.  Branwell Brontë’s fall into drug and alcohol abuse, and the devastating effect consumption (now known as tuberculosis) had on the family also influenced my work.