HistFest 2026: The Brontë Sisters with Dr Tara Puri, Essie Fox and Greg Jenner

[music] >> And hello, good afternoon everyone. I'm Rebecca. I'm the director of His Fest. I'm really pleased to see you all here again this afternoon. I'm just going to do some quick housekeeping notes before handing over to Jamie who's over there from PLB Limited. Just for anybody that's here fresh, but I'm sure most of you have heard this already. If you want to ask questions, you can do that towards the end of the talk. If you're in the room, just do that by raising your hand and we'll get a mic to you. Please do wait for the mic though because the online audience won't hear you otherwise. And if you're watching online, you can submit your questions via the chat box. Not the chat box, the the question box. If you need to enable captions and you're at home, you can do that as well via the app. Books will be on sale afterwards. They've been on sale all weekend and there will be a book signing also. I think that's everything I need to tell you, but I'll now hand over to Jamie to introduce the speakers and the event. Thank you. Thanks Rebecca. Hello, I'm Jamie from PLB. We're delighted that Rebecca and His Fest has asked PLB to be involved again this year. It's fantastic to be in person with all of you and it's an amazing event that we can sponsor and it promises to be a really lively discussion of the Brontë sisters. I'll just tell you about PLB. So we're a creative heritage consultancy who design and deliver interpretation to engage and infuse visitors about our shared history. So we work with museums, historic houses and galleries and this year we're looking forward to new visitor experiences opening up at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, Mentor Rubber in Abattoir, the Gurkha Museum in Winchester, and the Maltonby hoard at the Yorkshire Museum, where this internationally significant Iron Age find was discovered not too far from the far from the Yorkshire Dales location used for the new Wuthering Heights film. So, that segues quite nicely for this session, and I have the pleasure to introduce our two guests and our chair. Tara Puri is senior lecturer in Victorian literature at the University of Bristol. She researches Victorian periodicals and print culture, women's writing and history, representations of the empire, late 19th and early 20th century Indian culture. Her book, Legible Bodies, Dress, Desire, and the Female Self in Victorian Literature and Cultures and Culture is forthcoming with Manchester University Press later on this year. Her work has also appeared in a number of academic journals. We have Essie Fox, who is a historical fiction writer. Her debut novel, The Somnambulist, was shortlisted for the National Book Awards and featured on Channel 4's TV Book Club. Elijah's Mermaid, The Goddess and the Thief, and The Last Days of Lady Grey were all selected by The Times as historical books of the month. The Fascination was an instant Sunday Times top 10 best seller. Dangerous, a Regency crime thriller featuring Lord Byron, has again been selected as a Times Book of the Month. And Catherine, a retelling of Wuthering Heights, is Essie's latest novel. It reimagines Emily Bronte's gothic landscape and the plot through the eyes of Cathy's ghost. Essie also hosts a podcast talking the gothic. And our chair, Greg Jenner, is a British public historian, author, broadcaster, and has a particular interest in communicating history through comedy. He writes funny books for adults and kids and is best known as the host and creator of the chart-topping, award-winning BBC historical comedy podcast You're Dead to Me with over 140 million downloads, which pairs up comedians and expert historians. He's also worked for 11 years on the smash hit TV comedy series Horrible Histories. And in 2025, Greg was awarded an honorary doctorate and fellowship by the University of York's Institute for the public understanding of the past, where he's taught for the past decade. So, please can you give them all a very big, warm welcome. >> [applause] [laughter] >> We're arranging the furniture. Okay, good. Hello. Uh good afternoon. Thank you so much for coming. I'm delighted to be joined by two wonderful Brontë experts. Um We agree on Brontë or Brontë? How we What's the pronunciation? >> always say Brontë, but I don't know. That's just always the way I have said it. I'm the same. >> Okay. We've agreed, Brontë. Uh anyone want to disagree, you can lodge a complaint later. >> [laughter] >> Um So, we have three extraordinary lives to sort of cover in this this 50-minute period. There'll be questions at the end as well if you want to ask about what what ask our fantastic experts about the Brontës, but we'll try and get through it. It's an awful lot to discuss. I think we should probably start with the basics, which is who were the Brontës in terms of their childhood and growing up. And And Dr. Tara, if I can come to you first. Can you tell us about who Brontës were in terms of their parents and and the children? Uh so, we're talking mostly about our Charlotte and and Emily Brontë today. They're three out of six siblings. They are from this quite large family, but also quite a tragic family. They're the children of Patrick Bronte Bronte and his wife Maria Bronte. Maria dies quite young when her youngest child is only about a year old. When Emily's only is very young herself and um They're all born in Yorkshire, but they only move to Haworth after all the children have been born. And they are they grow up in family that is I wouldn't say that they're poor, but they're they struggle. They're financially struggling, but at the same time it seems like a family that's very involved in thinking about social reform, about reading, writing, the life of the mind. And from very early on, Patrick Bronte is someone who really encourages that in his children. His children seem to be extremely creative and are from very early on making up these imaginary worlds. And from very early on, they start making up their stories, these imaginative stories that they write together. And there's much work done on the Bronte juvenilia. But they start sort of imagining these worlds when they're still quite young. The oldest two siblings, the oldest two girls, again die very young, quite tragically. Both of them die when they're uh three about three months apart. The eldest one, Maria, is only 11 years old. The second sister, Elizabeth, is 10 years old. They're at They They get unwell at a boarding school and they're sent back home to Howard to recover, but they don't really recover. They they both pass away probably because of complications to do with tuberculosis. Um yeah. Yeah. It's It's a very sad I mean as a start in life Yes. >> extremely sad. So, the father is a curate, so he's a churchman. That's right. >> so they they have a little bit of of stability there, but it's a very sad beginning in life. >> That's right. Uh it he he's a curate for life at this parsonage, so there isn't there's a sense of stability, this this sense that, you know, this is home really, but it's not a large home, it's not a very prosperous home. There's a very early on there's a sense that they need to make their own way in the world. And that's why they're thinking about being governesses and school teachers from quite early on. >> I wanted to ask you quickly, what are they reading? I mean, you know, both of you actually, what are their childhood influences? What did they grow up on? >> Well, um their father was very well read and the the Brontë parsonage was full of books and um as Tara says, they in fact all of the four sisters had had gone to this boarding school at some point, Cowan Bridge, but it was if you think of Jane Eyre and Lowood School as it's described in that and also when Charlotte describes the death of her friend Helen Burns, that is very much taken directly from the experience Charlotte had going to that school. She saw what it did to her two older sisters who very sadly contracted probably typhus or tuberculosis. And she and Emily were both sent there as well and but she protested with her father and she she really did her best to say we shouldn't be here, it's not a good place. And when the other sisters died, he did agree, he brought Charlotte and Emily back and with Anne the youngest and her brother Branwell, they then were sort of homeschooled, although I get the impression they were probably very much left to their own devices and they could read whatever they wanted from their father's shelves and even as young children they were reading the poetry of Byron. They were reading books like Faust, Goethe's Faust. They were reading European classics in translation. So, all of this really really fired up their imaginations and yes they wrote these about these amazing worlds Gondal and Angria, Glass Town. They imagined they must have had a globe of the world because these these worlds were in you know in different parts of the Pacific. They they would take different parts of the world and create empires. So, the whole idea about which they would have been very aware of the British Empire. So, they were feeding on that as well. And they were they were geniuses really. They were all so clever and and prodigies. So, that was the foundation of imagination to come with their novels later. But what you were saying about the parsonage being their home and it being quite stable. Yes, it was while their father was alive. But if Patrick Brontë were to die, they would lose their home. And I think first of all it was hoped that Branwell their their brother would grow up and he was deemed to be a great genius. They had great hopes. Patrick certainly had great hopes for his son. That didn't turn out. We'll probably come on touch on that later. But at that point I think the girls all realized well if something was to happen to our father, we would be homeless. So, they did think about they they they they educate themselves to become governesses. They also thought and planned on opening up a school. That didn't ever come about because of the other plan was to write books and to make a living that way. Did they try to open the school but they couldn't get any pupils for the school? Maybe partly also to do with quite remote location of the parsonage. That's where they were hoping to have a boarding school. But but I Um, I think the word you used uh, genius is really interesting and it's a word that was also really, um, uh, an interesting word for Charlotte. She herself thought about genius quite a lot. What does it mean to be a genius? And for her it was something, especially early on in her, um, writing life, which I guess is very, very early on given how early they start writing all the siblings. Uh, but it was something really to do with, uh, something that was innate and that was to do with spon- spontaneity and emotion and passion. But as she gets older and especially in her last novel, Villette, um, there's a there's a kind of change in tone and she begins to rethink what this idea of genius might mean and maybe it's not about spontaneity but it's also about restraint. Um, yeah, but we can come back to that maybe a little bit later. >> the question I wanted to ask both of you is these three sisters, I mean, poor Branwell sort of gets left out. We're always like, "Three sisters and Branwell." Um, are they all cut from the same cloth in terms of, um, temperament, in terms of interest? I mean, it sounds like interest. >> think they're all quite quite, quite different. I think Charlotte was perhaps a little bit more domineering. She had plans, she would decide what they would do and she was very sensible. >> After Branwell. And, um, is she older or younger than Branwell? She's older than Branwell. than Branwell, so she's she's very much and then her two older sisters have gone. Yeah. Um, they're all all about a year apart. >> Yeah. Yeah, so Anne's the youngest, Charlotte's the oldest but they're all sort of in the same catchment area. So, I think if I put it really like in, you know, very succinctly, I think Charlotte is the sensible one and Emily is what everybody calls the strange one. She's wilder, she perhaps, uh, doesn't necessarily crave friendship or contact or or or going away. She She did, like um, Charlotte and Anne go away to work as a a governess at one point but she hated it. She wanted She got so homesick and when she went to Brussels with Charlotte, she just wanted to come home and she was much, much more content doing the cooking with her books propped up on the side while she was baking bread, learning German in the kitchen while she was kneading, get being out on her own on the on the moors with her dog Keeper with her injured cur hawk called Merlin she nursed back to health. She I think she was just so much a child of the moors which is what Charlotte called her. And then Anne very much the youngest. I think we get the impression that Anne is is sweeter natured, is quieter, but I think when we look at her books which we will do, she she had a great independence of spirit. It's quite it's a kind of classic family sitcom dynamic. It's the sensible old one, the emo goth, the >> [laughter] >> the sort of son who should try harder and then the kind of the youngest one who everyone loves but actually maybe is sort of struggling to sort of get their their voice heard. [clears throat] And and you've mentioned actually the the parsonage. The house parsonage is obviously a great it's a wonderful location. It's extraordinary on the moors. It's a beautiful house. How much is that location vital to their creative work, to the imagination, to the world that they conjure in their books as well as the world that they lived in? I think hugely important. >> Hugely important. The parsonage itself isn't Who's been to the parsonage? Lots of you have been to the parsonage. So you know it's not a massive house. So everything, you know, that goes on if if if when Branwell is descending into his his addiction with drink and opiates and having arguments with his father and turning up, you know, drunk or being dragged back from the the pub. Everybody would have been aware of that. It would be very hard to escape any dramas going on in that house. So I think from that point of view, I think when Anne writes about in Wildfell Hall about alcoholism and abusive husbands. uh This was very much probably taken personal experience. I think that looking out over the graveyard which they did which is just in front of the parsonage would have been very influential. Certainly wasn't Emily. Emily's the churchyard in Wuthering Heights features very strongly in the novel. But and also death because they would have seen a lot of death within their own family but because in the village of Haworth the water that the the village would drink run down from the moors down through the churchyard. You literally have this grave water and the average age of death was 25. So there probably would have been just as many funerals going on as christenings in that church and I think you know we we have to bear in mind that that the development of the mills and the that whole age of the industrial revolution would have had a quite bad effect on people's health at the time as well and mining, slavery, all of that was going on and they would have been very acutely aware of it. And I think the way in which the domestic settings are represented more broadly speaking and actually the works I was going to talk about Charlotte Bronte but actually in the writings of all the three sisters domestic the domestic space is not a safe space for most of them for almost all the characters that we see in you know if we look at Jane Eyre or we look at Wuthering Heights the domestic space is not a safe space. It's something that needs to that's often a space of imprisonment. That's often a space of suppression, of repression, of sort of all kinds of complicated emotions and often the female protagonist need to escape the domestic space in some way in order to free up some of some ways of some new ways of thinking and new ways of being. And the landscape sort of harks back to I suppose a sense of the gothic. You know, you mentioned Faust, you mentioned some of the things they might have read growing up, Byron, Wordsworth sort of Wordsworth I think was a big inspiration. >> Milton. Milton, right. So, there's sort of >> Paradise Lost is hugely influential. And especially for me in in Emily's work, the idea of heaven and hell is very much there. And there there was something which I was going cuz you know, obviously Cathy tells um Nelly Dean in that famous kitchen scene that she dreamt she died and gone to heaven, but she didn't want to be there. And the angels threw her down onto the heath and she cried not from up being sad, but because she was so happy to be where she wanted to be. And there was um there's another quote um if I can find it where um Cathy is describing and this I feel really must come from Emily's heart. She's saying um the idea of a heaven was being um rocking in a rustling green tea tree with a west wind blowing and bright white clouds flitting rapidly above and not only larks, but throstles and blackbirds and linnets and cuckoos cuckoos pouring out music on every side and the moors at a distance broken into cool dusky dells, but close by great swells of long grass undulating in waves to the breeze and woods and sounding water and the whole world awake with wild joy. And I just feel that's Cathy talking, but I just feel that's Emily's view of the moors and she also saw that heavenly aspect of the moors, but she also saw the hellish aspect of the moors when it was a winter and it was cold and oppressive and the storms. And in Wuthering Heights, you have a scene when Heathcliff the night Heathcliff hears Cathy telling Nelly Dean that she's going to marry Edgar Linton, but he doesn't hear the whole of it, only enough to make him go away for 3 years. And when Cathy realized he's overheard, she runs out into the black night where there's a storm going on, and a lightning bolt strikes the chimney above the kitchen, and the chimney collapses, and it all comes down the chimney. And there's a similar There's a lightning bolt bolt in Jane Eyre. Yeah, there is. That brings down the tree. >> That brings down the tree. That That's That strikes, and the tree it where where um It's a kind of signal of what is to come. >> It is yes, because it's where >> going to where Jane's been proposed to, isn't it? >> That's right. And Rochester's proposed her there, and then that tree gets struck by lightning and in two. So, you you you there have that trope, that sort of symbol that their love is going to be broken. And and as will the house. The house itself will have to be uh demolished in some way, and some something new has to come up again. So, there's a very gothic thing going on with nature and the moors and the wildness. >> also But there's also something really um not with uh Charlotte Bronte, this um description of um heaven as a kind of moor uh reminds me also of a description in uh Villette. Uh so, uh Lucy Snow, the main protagonist of Villette, is a really awkward character. It's really It's It's such a lovely novel. It's my favorite novel of all the Bronte novels. Also because it's just a really awkward novel. Um and and I just I just love it. And in this novel um um all the uh school girls um the school where she's uh teaching Lucy Snow is teaching, all the school girls are preparing for a fete. And all the school girls are dressed, we're told, in the virgin's colors. So, they're all dressed in these uh white diaphanous muslin gowns with a blue sash around them. Uh and everyone's feeling really really beautiful. And um And Lucy Snow decides that she does want to get dressed, but she does not want to get dressed in these showy virginal colors. She wants to choose her own colors. So, she goes out shopping and we're told about the shopping expedition and she goes out shopping and she finds a gown she finds the cloth to buy with which she wants to have this gown stitched and she says it's the perfect color because it's the gown it's it's going to be a gown of shadows and it's the perfect color because it's the color of a mist in blue of a of the moor in bloom. Right. So, it's a purply So, it's a purply kind of heather, yeah, yeah. purply heathery color but one that's a sort of a gown of shadows and for her this is something really beautiful but says something about her own subjectivity about who she thinks she is and connected very much with a kind of emergent sexuality that's not that kind of showy virginal sexuality of these young girls. And also in Charlotte's Jane Eyre when Jane Eyre leaves after this after her wedding day when somebody turns up says he's already married has a woman in the attic. So, she runs away and she spends three days which is quite biblical on the moors and in misery and absolutely desperate. And it turns it becomes almost sort of spiritual experience for her, doesn't it? While she's on the moors during those three days and then she sort of moves on and comes to her senses and decides to carry on with her life. Yeah. And those sorry. >> I was just going to say that we're talking here about we've used the word gothic a few times. We should perhaps define it. I don't know if the audience needs a definition. I'm sure you're all very literate but I should can we agree on what we mean by gothic? What is the gothic movement? What is what is I mean you're a gothic novelist. >> Well, the gothic you you you have [clears throat] certain tropes. You usually have I mean if you go back to the first gothic novel in the English language which was The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole it's based in a castle. So, we have this idea of castles often ruined but with dungeons or towers and the and in the older form of the Gothic like that which has sort of developed into any sort of building that might be slightly dank or crumbling or menacing in some way often dark. Even in the modern day you could have a modern you could have a Gothic novel set in a very modern flat but there will be something about it there might be mold in the bathroom there might be a smell coming up through the drains there will be something ominous and persistent going on and you usually have around that building nature itself will be often woodlands. Something isolating and isolating situations say with the Brontes you've got the moors often with other books you have forests. And then you will have nature so you will have very often oppressive weather lots of storms lots of thunder and lightning which is there to echo the experiences of the characters. You will very often in the older Gothic novels have a female often young often abducted at peril of losing her her her life or if not that the corruption of her body and her soul and all that will go on. You will have symbols of birds or animals that will foretell of dark things so in my book Catherine I have a crow there isn't actually a crow like that in Wuthering Heights. But Wuthering Heights is full of birds as in that that little description I read to you birds are everywhere and there is there's always this thrumming sense of supernatural which you get in the Gothic. As well. Yeah and I I think the Gothic for Emily is quite different from the Gothic for Charlotte. Charlotte writes >> [laughter] >> we were talking about this earlier Charlotte writes in a more realist mode but there are these sort of very Gothic moments but for her those Gothic moments are more sort of interludes rather than a full mode of writing. And in those Gothic moments I think I think of the Gothic as you say you know it has certain tropes that can be pinpointed in this kind of way, but the Gothic is um I also think of it as a kind of um a mode of representation that is sort of pre-psychoanalytic. Yes, like fractured psyche. It's all about what's going on in here. And showing that in the symbolism of outside. And I think there's apparently been quite a resurgence of the Gothic of late. Mm. And I just think look at the world we're living in. It's a way of trying to explain it and it's a way of it's a feeling of isolation and it's a feeling of otherness and being out of control. Yeah, it's a it's a way of describing a kind of internal world without yet having the vocabulary in which we often use to describe our inner selves now. Uh so without a sense of you know an id or an ego or um or the unconscious. These are this vocabulary we take very much for granted now, but this is still a very very um it isn't a vocabulary that doesn't exist for the Brontës or for other writers in that period. So the Gothic becomes a way for of explaining or in some ways accessing uh internal um emotions, thoughts, feelings that are difficult to represent uh linguistically otherwise. Um so the Gothic and the Gothic symbolism becomes a way of uh expressing this kind of more unconscious desires. I think even in Heathcliff's name, Heathcliff, you know, there's the heath which is like the moors and the cliff which could be the rocks, the stones of Peniston Crag. And and he is a character who is sometimes deemed deemed as a romantic hero. Actually, he's a very Gothic figure in that he is quite monstrous. We were talking earlier and I was saying I really do feel that Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights um is like a connection between Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula because they are all books about monsters. And there are vampiric allusions in Wuthering Heights. Um Heathcliff is described particularly later in the book by Nelly Dean when she comes across him she goes into the into the hall one day and he's sitting by the fire. It's dark, it's night. Um the firelight is just gleaming and she actually doesn't realize he's there and she sort of has a shock when she sees him because she says, "Well, you look so like a ghoul." And you know, his teeth to her look pointed and vampiric. And there are all these constant references particularly in the second half of the novel, although they are there in the first as well, when Heathcliff is described as being ghoulish or like a goblin. Um or or, you know, like some sort of folklorish monster that people would talk about in Yorkshire folk tales on the moors. Yeah, I mean I think I you know, in my head it's it's Greek tragedy. I when I Wuthering Heights for me the the tropes are very tragic. Absolutely. >> how but going back to the childhood actually, the all that reading list, all the things that they read as children. You can see a percolation of all these different um genres. You can see classical, you can see Miltonian poetry, which is sort of high themes and and so on. And we haven't talked about poetry, but they're the Brontës are poets as well as novelists. Oh, yes. >> All of them. So, their their mastery of language and meter, their understanding of rhythm and cadence, they're brilliant writers. I just wanted to ask actually, how did they end up as writers? Cuz they're young women when young women are not usually allowed to publish under their own names and they don't publish under >> don't. No, they don't. They they they publish under um you know, Acton, Ellis, and um Currer. Currer Bell. >> Um because it is very difficult in those days for a woman to be a novelist. But how do they do it? I think it's like we were saying, they were trying to think of ways in which they could actually be independent. They could see how it was going with Branwell. He was drinking himself to death and taking opiates. >> They if as I said, if their father died, they would be homeless. And there was no there was no social network you could fall back on and they knew they had to do something. So, they knew they could write because since very early children, they they'd made these little tiny books. You can see them in the house. They're about 10 cm. >> Parsonage Museum. Yes, tiny little writing. They also illustrated them and they were they were all very good artists as well. Um so, all round is a prodigies really and I think it was just one of these things that they thought well we'll try and do this and they sat down at that table in the in the parsonage and they wrote their novels. I do think that that before that um when Emily was writing her poems, I think first of all Charlotte came across these poems one day and Emily was absolutely furious because Emily didn't really want fame and fortune. She She I think was was a very very interesting character. She really did do it from her heart and because she just had to do it and she wrote these wonderful poems. In fact, I've alluded to one in my novel No Coward Soul is Mine. It's a wonderful poem. Um and her poems expressed her faith as well, her great religious faith, but it was also sort of set against her great faith in romanticism as in the romantic poets and the idea that nature as in super nature as if nature you could find God and and faith through nature as much as you could in an invisible sense of heaven which which I don't know how that went down with her father and his his idea of faith. That's interesting. I also think Joseph, the character in Wuthering Heights, is a little bit of a religious maniac and he's a real Bible-thumping and he's he's made fun of a lot in in the book. He is he's an absolute um always going on reading from the Bible, quoting, boring them all to death every night when they have to sit there and listening to him reading from the Bible. And um I do wonder if that was based on any of the curates or even her own father. Perhaps he he sat down and sat and down and read to them from the Bible every night. I don't know. >> It's a bit of a trope. I think Austin does the same, right? We have slightly boring church men who you're like, "Please stop talking." Um But going back to the first collection of poems that they published, so the first thing that they published is is a is a collection of poems. >> Yeah. And she Emily was so angry when Charlotte went through her belongings and and what Charlotte was doing going through Emily's drawers, I don't know, but she found these poems. And Emily was absolutely furious because she felt they were so personal to her. But Charlotte persuaded her. She said, "Look, these could be published." And they sent the poems away. And yet when it's published, the I think they're only about two copies are sold. Uh so so the first publication is not a success by any any stretch of the imagination. >> isn't it? I mean we And yet there was a real sense I I think it gave them a real taste for publication. >> Yeah. And even if they're not publishing under their own names, it gave them a real uh taste for seeing their work in print. And even though only two copies are sold, uh Charlotte uh does send uh copies of the poem to all the uh big poets, all the famous poets who are around. She sent post posts these copies to them. And there's a sense of pride, clearly. And again, going back to that idea of or that that yeah, that notion of genius, there's a sense that she recognizes that there's something special about what they're doing and what they and and the kind they're kind of creative output. But um equally sort of going back to how they start publishing, I think we're talking about the kind of reading material that they have. But another unusual uh kind of reading material, especially for Charlotte, is um a magazine called The Ladies' Magazine. Uh so The Ladies' Magazine is the first women's magazine or really the first successful women's magazine um in Great Britain, uh published from the late 18th century onwards. And uh most of the uh And uh Charlotte is uh loves this magazine, uh reads it religiously, um and uh most of the uh the contributors to these magazines are women and they're all the contributions are published anonymously. So there's a even when women are writing the the um it's usually anonymously at best it would be with a pseudonym which is what the Brontes do but usually it would be anonymously but the Ladies Magazine and looking at reading it so carefully gives her a model of writing as well and model of professional uh the professional female writer is beginning to emerge through these kinds of magazines. Patrick uh uh Bronte is really not happy to discover Charlotte reading the Ladies Magazine and >> Oh I was wondering how she got I was wondering did cuz I I was thinking their father must have been very permissive did he No he he did not. No I think I think she [laughter] I don't quite know how she got her her hands on it but apparently when he found out he was absolutely furious and talked about it as trash. >> he did there were other sort of poetry magazines that he would have subscribed to and I know that Branwell who also wrote poetry as well as writing his own his own fiction and articles as well. He was published in certain magazines. He used to write to he wrote to Wordsworth he wrote to Robert Southey. He was so proud of he sent them examples of his poetry and received quite damning response and I think the problem I think with that with Branwell is his confidence was gradually shattered and shattered and he had bad experiences in life and he had such ambitions. There was that time when he his father saved up to send him to go down to London to be part of the Royal Academy of artists because he again was was quite artistic and because of Branwell we now have the pillar portrait which shows the three sisters and I think what's terribly sad about that is that called the pillar portrait because there's the three sisters and then there's the pillar area blocked out behind them which was probably Branwell. It was probably his self-portrait with his sisters. But for some reason, he's he's white he's whited out, so it just looks like a pillar. And I think that's absolutely tragic in that as they gradually came to be published, he wasn't. He was always the hope, and it was happening to them, not him. He had a disastrous affair when he went to off to tutor in a great house where Anne was also a governess, and Anne lost her job Branwell having an affair with the mistress of the house, and he just sort of it was everything he touched sort of fell apart, really. It was so terribly, terribly sad. I don't know if everybody's seen Sally Wainwright's film Walking the Invisible, and I I think there's a beautiful scene at the beginning when the children are small and they're writing their little books, and they're making up their imaginary worlds, and they're depicted as having these flames above their heads, and it's as if these are the flames of genius. These are the the the great you know, this this these worlds and these these whole imagined characters and everything is coming out of their heads in glorious flames, and then there's a scene at the end when it's all gone wrong for Branwell, and and he is is dying or dead, and he goes back, and there's a scene where in this sort of eerie, otherworldly scene, he sees his three sisters writing at a table, writing, and there the flames are coming out of their heads. And as Branwell stands there, and I feel really emotional about this. I I feel so sorry for Branwell. He's depicted as absolutely no no flames. They've gone. And I think he's a tragic, very tragic figure. Yeah. I think it's I mean, they the interesting thing about the Brontës is we I don't know how the audience feels, but [clears throat] when you knew you were coming here today, did you assume you were going to be learning about the three sisters, or were you thinking about the family? Because I think he he's often excluded from the family. And I think it's sad because you as you say, he he's sometimes part of the trouble, he's sometimes part of the reason they are struggling, but he's also part of this family and he too has suffered loss. He's lost his mother, he's lost his two sisters. It's >> Yeah. And he's part of that first world that they created together. He's very much the catalyst for it and actually, um, you know, the uh, Glass Town and all of those stories, uh, in a very large part they derived their, uh, impetus from, um, uh, a set of soldiers that, uh, Branwell received when he was 9 years old, uh, and those soldiers somehow fired the imagination of these children and they decided to start making up stories about each of them and that's how all these empires came up. And finally, actually, we were talking about how, um, you know, Charlotte seemed to dominate, but, uh, sort of a few years into making these stories together, uh, Emily and, uh, Anne sort of pulled apart a little bit because they felt they were being dominated by the older siblings and they started making their own stories, which were sort of connected, but different. And and Emily's, one of Emily's main characters was very much based on Lord Byron and they and all of these characters would have um, tumultuous love affairs. And with these little children, you know, goodness knows what they were reading. And and they were they were writing about these, you know, these great passionate affairs and these very strong women in these little books as well. Very strong female characters. >> Lots of wars, lots of heroism. That becomes such an important theme in the later novels, right? So, I mean, the the thing to say that shocked me cuz I didn't know it until this morning when I sort of looked it up. 1847, all three sisters publish a masterpiece. Yeah. In the same year, I mean, the uncanny ability, all of them are working on books and they all come out the same time. But we get Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and is it uh, Tenant or is it Anne Agnes Grey? Agnes Grey. All in the same year. That's right. And poor Branwell is not publishing. But But actually, I think still sorry to interrupt, but it's still worth remembering that when Agnes Grey and, uh, Wuthering Heights were published together, they were published as part of a in one book. It was a kind of deal. But, uh, The Professor was meant to be part of that deal, Charlotte Brontë's first novel, but it was actually rejected. So, she is not published together, she's published separately and she writes a new manuscript which is Jane Eyre. So, her Jane Eyre comes out separately from the other two and she of course becomes the writer that's sort of some ways is the the most celebrated, but her first novel is is rejected and it's only published posthumously. So, even though if they're all published together, the publication history is a little bit more complex, I think. And in terms of these these young women well, they're writing extraordinary women. There is an element that there's a hero in each book or heroine in each book, but they're very different women. They're very different sort of genres or characters that you know, that we have these robust, strong, determined women, moral sometimes, but also Cathy is not the same as Jane Eyre in terms of where they're from or their approach to things. >> No. So, what is you know, what are we what do we make of the different heroic characters that they produce? >> Well, I think um taking Anne first of all, I think in Wuthering Heights we have Helen who is a wife who has escaped an abusive husband and alcohol alcohol steeped home and her son is in danger and I think that Anne probably drew a lot on their experience with Branwell, but also it was very interesting that she takes a character who's a very strong independent woman who is making her own living through painting. So, this is she's thinking about this. How how would you if you were on your own if you had to get away from something? But it's also interesting that she drew on something real that did happen to them. Apparently one day somebody knocked on the parsonage door and it was the wife of one of curates and one of Patrick's curates and she was in a terrible state and was telling Patrick Bronte that her husband was very abusive and beat her and she had these children, and she didn't know how she could go on. And instead of Patrick telling her, "Go back to your husband." because in those days a wife was the property of her husband. She had And if she was married, she would have no um wealth of her own. And he actually advised her to leave the curate and go and make a new life on her own and take her children away, which was very forward-looking and very interesting. And you can see the echoes of that in Wildfell Hall, definitely. Yeah, but also illegal, because the children are the property of the husband. The wife has no legal right to the children, so she can't just leave with the children. So, in making that character of Helen in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, she's actually doing something really um quite radical. Uh she's not only uh creating this character who's um a female professional, a professional artist who can live on her uh the earnings from her work, but she's also a single woman who is actually uh escaped her husband uh in a legal sense. I also think in in it makes me think of Wuthering Heights with when Cathy come when Cathy's married to Edgar Linton and and Heathcliff turns up 3 years later, very wealthy, and she is absolutely, you know, suddenly realizes this is the man I love. And her home, this beautiful home of Thrushcross Grange where she's living with Edgar Linton, becomes like a prison to her. And sometimes I I think why didn't she then leave and go with Heathcliff? Because she could have gone abroad. If Heathcliff was so wealthy, and who knows where his money came from, um they could have gone elsewhere. They could have taken on new identities. But of course, she was pregnant at that fact. I think that was so clever that Emily did. She made her character pregnant just at the time when Heathcliff comes back. And I think there's so much that's not said in Wuthering Heights. But of course, that child would have been the property of Edgar, and it would have been very, very difficult for Cathy to leave and have the child of of another man when going off with somebody else. Um I mean, in other ways it's a very transgressive novel, and there are and some really, you know, almost sacrilegious things happen. But I think from Cathy's point of view, she's very wild as a child. She's this wild slip, this child of the moors. But as she gets older, she looks at her life with her brother Hindley and her father's dead, her mother's dead. There is not really much scope for her unless she was going to be a governess. And of course, the character of Cathy, you can't really see her as a governess. To mar- but to marry well. And at that point, I think when she does leave to go and marry Edgar Linton, she's also thinking very strongly about Heathcliff. She makes it very clear to Nelly Dean that if she marries Edgar Linton, she will have wealth of her own, and then she can try to help Heathcliff to be educated and raise himself in the world. And one really important thing that is in all of the books is books and education. And then that is the way to raise yourself in the world and to be independent. And that very much affects the Brontës' own lives and the lives of their characters. And And Essie, I was going to ask you, you've taken this very famous story and you've you've retold it. And the most obvious [snorts] way you've retold I think is by changing the style. It's no longer with the unreliable narrator. It's you've you've given it back to Cathy. >> Uh it's it's in the it's very much Cathy's story. I when I read Wuthering Heights, when I would come to the point quite quite on into the second half of the novel when Heathcliff is telling Nelly Dean that he has dug up Cathy's grave after she's been dead nearly 20 years. And Nelly Dean is horrified and says, "Did you not fear what you would see, what you would find?" And he says, "No, I she could never repel me, whatever form she took." And it always struck me that is all that's really said of it. It's almost not glossed over, but but I thought to myself description-wise that's that's such a gothic image and I thought suddenly thought to myself one day when I was reading Wuthering Heights I could start a novel with that scene with Heathcliff digging up Cathy's grave and Cathy her spirit being awakened and then telling her story sort of going back across the moors and seeing herself as a little six or seven-year-old child looking at the window with her hand at the glass. So I've taken that hand at the window that we have with Lockwood in the original novel and I've sort of inverted that and made little Cathy alive. The ghost is on the outside but she sees herself as a child on the inside and we then remember her her life story and she tells that but when it comes to the point when Heathcliff then digs up her grave her ghost is then following through the second part [clears throat] of the novel. So that enables me to be able to describe and see what happens in the second half of the novel and how her ghost can perhaps influence or not the fate of her own daughter who has never known her mother. Beautiful. And and a lovely book I mean what a beautiful book as well. It's sort of it's got spray pages as well. It's it's a very pretty thing. We haven't mentioned Jane Eyre that much and I think maybe we you've got a couple of minutes if we could just talk a little bit about Jane Eyre because also stylistically unreliable narrator in Wuthering Heights we have a epistolary novel and we also have first person. So these three sisters are writing in three different styles. >> Yeah. Can you talk us about Jane Eyre as a it's a hugely successful book, isn't Yes. Why is it so beloved so quickly? I think it's a hugely successful book partly because of the narrative voice. There's this really strong narrative voice that draws us in right away. It's this autobiographical narrator who talks about her own life experience. It's in a in a way it's a classic bildungsroman so it tells us about the story of this uh primary protagonist from early on in her life till till maturity. Um but also going on back to a point that you made earlier, uh, it's interesting to see that both uh Anne and uh Emily, both their uh novels are really about these kind of marriages and the love affair within that marriage. But for uh um for Charlotte, all her novels stop short of just just as the marriage happens or just as the romantic union happens or doesn't happen, depending on how you read the ending of Villette. >> [laughter] >> Uh but it's partly because it the the literary imagination in some ways falls short at the at the point of marriage for uh Charlotte Brontë. She can't quite imagine what a happy ending within that kind of But that made books more conventional and that that was why I think they were received much more positively by readers at the time. Whereas poor Emily, and she died very soon after her book was published. She never lived to see its success. Some of the first reviews were absolutely terrible. People said this writer must have been eating cheese that you know who would have such wild, vivid, awful imagination. And that it was sacrilegious and that she, you know, should be ashamed and it was just the most terrible book. Someone said that, you know, it was just appalling and they couldn't carry on. It was just the most awful book they'd ever read. And I often think, oh, I wonder if Emily knows this this hundreds of years on, nearly 200 years later, how how successful her book actually Jane Eyre in that way. But but it wasn't conventional then. It for us it feels very conventional now, but in many ways the novel form itself is not as as as established in the mid-19th century, in the 1847 when this novel is published. It's part of the establishment of those kind of novelistic codes that now we take for granted, that we'll end with a happy ending. That's not always taken for granted in that moment. So she's part of setting up this the kind of um the linear progression of narrative that we expect from a novel now. And she does that with Jane Eyre, which is very successful, even though it's seen as problematic in many ways because it does quite explicitly explicitly for then, maybe not quite so explicitly for us now, show female desire. She's very much drawn to Rochester, and it is a physical attraction. It is a very sexual attraction. But she holds very Byronic but he's very Byronic but she holds the line. She doesn't Yes. you know, her morals stay true, her integrity is there, and when she realizes that he's already married or when, you know, she could have him but she won't. Yeah. There's a sort of Christian purity to her decision making. But it almost kills her that decision, right? She goes out into the moors and the moors then are not a place of safety either. It's a kind of return to a kind of mother nature, but the mother nature she almost dies there. She returns to a kind of bare life. She almost starves before she's able to rebuild herself. Yeah. And we should just say, I mean, in terms of the the deaths of which, you know, that these four brilliant young people, they died so young. So, Emily at 30, Anne at 29, Branwell at 31, and Charlotte comparatively [clears throat] did rather well, 39. Oh, such a horrible end. It's so so horrible. And of course, their their reputations were, to a certain extent, made by Elizabeth Gaskell. Mhm. But Elizabeth Gaskell was writing a biography of only one of them. Yes. >> We don't Yes, and and she was good friends with with Charlotte and I don't think she particularly liked Emily. Right. Um and and and I don't know how much we can really really take as being absolutely reliable. But But she began the process of the Brontification. >> did. But actually, Charlotte started that herself because she she was very aware actually, it became after the deaths of the other two sisters, it it became known who these three Ellis brothers were, who these writers were. So, when she when Villette was published, actually it was quite a risk for Charlotte because she knew that this book she she knew that everyone would know it's her who's written this book and it will be read autobiographically and and in some ways she was opening herself up to that. So she knew that this this kind of literary celebrity was already starting so she had a sense of what was coming even in terms of Emily. >> very aware though of the the views of Emily's novel and she did to some extent try to remove herself from that. She did she wrote an introduction didn't she and she she obviously realizes her sister was a genius and the writing is wonderful but she she tries to separate herself from the strangeness and from the the more extreme passions that are I don't think she really understood Emily's you know her affinity with that wildness that gothic world of the moors. >> Yeah. I think we should take questions. You've all been sitting very politely and and nodding along. I don't know if we have we have a roving microphone this is fun isn't it? Right. Do we have two roving microphones? Okay, we do. Does anyone want to ask a question to our excellent guests? Yes, okay I've been the red t-shirt I think we'll start there. Thank you. Keep thinking of questions come on. >> [laughter] >> Use your imaginations like the Brontes. Um it's hard with Emily because if we only have the one book to go on but certainly with the other two there are some real contrasts in their writing and the way that they come across and I think you know The professor to the letter quite similar artistically Jane Eyre is a complete departure from that. Um and then obviously you've got the contrast between Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as well. I kind of wonder how authentic are those voices that we now see and which ones are probably reflecting their characters the most? Um Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz Jane Eyre's always felt a bit piecemeal to me and Yeah. >> Interesting. >> I put it to you. So how how reflective are the characters most authentic to them? It's a really hard question to answer. I don't know if I can answer that question. I think if we're looking for which novel most um most closely uh represents their author, I think that's quite hard. What I would say is that for me, Villette and Shirley are in some ways the novels that are the most uneven, but also the ones that are in some ways quite awkward. And I think I I say awkward because I mean that they don't open themselves up to an easy reading. Um it's not always easy to see where a relationship might be going or where a plot line might be going. But they do express uh certain contradictions in emotions and feelings and relationships that I find really really um interesting to keep coming back to. And for instance, if you look at Shirley and we look at the relationship between Shirley and Caroline. And it's just interesting that the novel itself is called Shirley, right? Because we see so much more of Caroline in it than we do of Shirley. But that relationship between the two of them is a relationship of sisterhood and friendship, but it's also a relationship of rivalry. Yeah. And but it's not quite clear what is happening there. And then we see uh Caroline herself uh you know you you talked earlier about how for all the sisters reading was so important. But in this, we see Caroline go into this kind of slow decline. She falls into this kind of illness that we think we we're not sure she'll recover from. And part of that illness is because she doesn't know what to do with her life. She feels like she's lost her romantic love interest. Uh she feels uh you know she tries to read and tries to better herself from with education, but that doesn't work for her. She tries to look at these other old maids and thinks maybe they will provide her a model uh by which to live her life, but that's that's not adequate either. And she just goes into this slow decline. And we have the novel suddenly turns into this kind of illness narrative. And you're suddenly not sure as a reader what do you do with this? Where is this going? And actually she recovers from that illness on not on the coming back of the love interest, but when she discovers who her mother is. It's as if it was a kind of the illness was a mother ache and the mother mother's return however inadequate the mother might be in that role in that mothering role, her return allows her to recover. So I think I'm not answering that question very well. So I don't I don't know where we might find the most authentic self of those authors, but I think in some of the novels that are the most puzzling, we might find some of the questions that those novels are trying to work work out for themselves and those questions because they're difficult to work out might be the questions that those writers are struggling with and working through themselves. Yeah, and I think I think with Emily with with Wuthering Heights, I think we do see a lot of what she was struggling with, but I think her understanding of the human condition and and the good and the bad is what she would have seen in her own home, but also through her father's work and it's just I wonder, you know, there was a letter from a publisher talking about her second novel and looking forward to seeing it. >> Ooh. And that has never been found and I wonder if Charlotte destroyed it. Which was not unusual at the time. We have other authors and and writers whose diaries and and and manuscripts were destroyed by their friends. >> memoirs were destroyed. >> Yeah. And Queen Victoria's letters were destroyed by her daughter. Yes. >> So it's Christina Rossetti's lots of her writings private. >> protect the brand by, you know, >> But um yes, I I I feel Charlotte was very much protecting her her reputation. It's interesting. I mean Jane Eyre is it's quite conventional in some ways, but as you say at the time was quite >> Yes. >> quite challenging, isn't it? >> That's right. But I think I mean the obvious question is how many of these novels have been adapted for film and for, you know, and Jane Eyre we see all the time, Wuthering Heights we see and the other novels much harder to get into the But also with Jane Eyre, the when they are adapted and and some of the adaptations are lovely, but they they are they're adapted as a straightforward romantic toy tale and it's the same for Wuthering Heights. They're adapted as straightforward romantic tales and they always stop before the second generation begins because the second generation just makes everything just really weird. >> [laughter] >> Do we have any more questions? Anyone this Oh, okay, center of the room. Another red top. This is good. We're going to go for it. Anyone wearing red, this is your chance. >> [laughter] >> Hi. Um so you talked about the sisters all sitting around the table in the parsonage writing and I was just wondering if there was any sort of indication that at any point they were, you know, um sharing their works in progress with each other? Are they giving each other feedback? Are they giving critiques? Or even just what, you know, they thought of each other's work, each having such different styles, you know, their own opinions on each other? more about that. I'm sure they would I I'm sure they would have done, but I don't know more about that. Uh unfortunately, I yeah, I wish I I could say, you know, there's some notes in some margins somewhere, but I I don't know enough about that, but I I am absolutely certain that they would have read each other's work and written together because even from the if we look at the juvenilia, it's all sort of co-written. It's all very collaborative writing. There are some parts where it's easier to see if there's one of them who's written some parts, but most of it was collaboratively written. So right from the start there's this shared uh shared work that they're doing. The writing is their shared work. >> They also from time to time wrote a you know, compiled a sort of a a a day a day diary. So they there was what there's one very famous one when they're writing and um Emily's talking about, you know, today we did this. It's very mundane things, very domestic cuz their life was very domestic as well. So they were very involved in all of the running that, the cooking, the cleaning, and everything. But just talking and saying, "I wonder, you know, looking at the forward about 50 years. I wonder when we're sort of we're this age, we're 50 so and so, what our lives will be, what will be doing. Will we Will we be happy on that day?" And it's so sad to think they they would never ever get to that age. But they were obviously very optimistic and hoped they would and looked forward to that and had great plans for everything. It's It's a nasty side, isn't it? But I think this this sense of We call them the Brontës as if they're a kind of supergroup. As if they sort of found, you know, they they were formed and then they sort of workshop things together. But we've we've To a certain extent, we've we've collectivized them. But they were quite different writers. But of course they were They lived together. They grew up together. >> It's funny though about them living together cuz I don't know, you know, visiting Haworth, visiting the museum. When I went there the first time, I I'd met up with the curator at first and she took me around the back into what's an annex now, which is the library. And I was talking to her about various things. And then she said, "Well, why don't you go and look around the parsonage. I'll stay here and work. You can go around." And she opened up this door which led directly into the kitchen. So it would have been the, you know, the back door. And as I walked through, I was just talking to her. I was just turned around to say, "Well, thank you very much." And suddenly I just stopped because I suddenly felt as I entered that house, as I entered the kitchen, I felt like a weight like a stone on my breast and it was really strange. >> [clears throat] >> And tears were running down my face. And I I had just been talking to her about something really mundane and totally different. And I felt such a very strong sense of not I don't think I saw a ghost, but I felt energy there. I think and a lot of people I think have said that, particularly when they go into the room where they all did their their writing. But I felt it in the kitchen. And I just felt such a strong sense. And I think all those all those books they read, all those worlds they created, all those imagined events, plus all the real events of the tragedies going on in their lives, in some way, how could that not, you know, it's like the stone tapes, isn't it? How could that not absorb still be there? It's not so very long ago, really, since they were there. >> Yeah. I mean, I'm a for my sins, I'm a historian of celebrity culture, and I'm particularly fascinated by the Brontës, but the how their their reputation was constructed after their death. They they wrote as the bells, and Elizabeth Gaskell made them famous to a certain extent as individuals, but people started to visit the parsonage in the 19th century. It became a place of pilgrimage. You would go there, and people started to revere the objects in the house, and an American tycoon with a lot of money came over, and he bought the windows, and he brought the wind the glass home with him, and he turned them into picture frames, because he believed that the Brontës' genius and light and love and and creativity was in that glass, because it had sort of held their ideas within the home, and he was convinced of that. And so, people started to treat it almost like a sort of shrine. There's almost a sense of that starting even before Charlotte dies after Emily and Anne have already died, and Charlotte is preparing the preparing Villette, and she's just writing the last couple of chapters, and she writes a letter to someone and says, you know, some some people came looking at the parsonage because they found out that this is where the Brontë sisters lived, and she suddenly got cold feet about public publishing Villette under her own name, so she wrote to her publishers and said, "Can can we publish this anonymously?" And the publisher said, "No." >> [laughter] >> It's not going to sell, yeah. And and and she did go ahead and, you know, publish Villette under her own her own name, but she knew that have doing that would bring even more attention to them, and she also knew that, you know, in Villette, in some way, she was going back to the form that she had started with Jane Eyre, you know, the sort of more autobiographical style of writing and she knew that uh there all the three sisters' lives and especially her life would be read autobiographically through Villette. Yeah. Any more questions? Yeah, we we got like Do you want to fight it out? No? Okay, we'll start here. Oh, we've got an online question. That's exciting. >> Um this is from Asya watching at home. Do we know why Emily and Anne, like Jane Austen, never married? It's funny how all are primarily known for their romantic stories now and yet their lives didn't mirror that aspect of their written work. >> Well, I think Emily um she was called the strange one. She I think she was Although you know, she she wrote this amazingly passionate story in some ways. It was more a story of obsession. It was as much about hate and revenge as it was about love. Um Anne I think and I actually have you seen the film Emily? I don't know if anybody's seen that film. There's a film called Emily which which I I like very much but lots of Brontë academics are very cross about it because it shows Emily as having a relationship with William Weightman who was one of the curates, one of her father's curates. And this curate was very very handsome. Charlotte drew a beautiful portrait of him. It was very tragic though because while Emily and Charlotte were in Brussels, I think it was, William Weightman um had been administering to a family who had cholera and he contracted cholera and he died and they came back um but it was Anne who was said to actually have had a romantic perhaps something going on with William Weightman and perhaps if he had lived, maybe something would have come of that. Um and it's so it's terribly terribly sad but also William Weightman was obviously quite a character being you know, very handsome, very popular but when he first came to work in in in the village, he heard that the sisters had never had a Valentine's card. So, he went away, I don't know where he went to, whether it was Bradford or one of the nearer towns anyway, and bought bought Valentine's cards, which he sent to all of them. And he was obviously quite a romantic, charismatic character. >> And Branwell was like, "Where's mine?" >> [laughter] >> Fair enough. >> [clears throat] >> It's a It's a good point. I mean, Jane Austen had a, you know, Jane Austen was engaged for a day, and then immediately went, "Hang on, no. No, actually no. I'm going to be a I'm going to be a great writer." But it's it's the opportunity denied to these young women, perhaps. But I think in in some ways, um part part of the answer might also lie in the fact that they're all very, very close to each other, almost codependent. I mean, all the shared tragedy that they have together, they it sort of binds them together in a way that it's difficult to to sort of move away from that and and and move away from each other in that kind of way. They also were all looking after uh the parsonage together as their father's house, uh uh Patrick Brontë, by all means, was a really um interesting and striking man, but also quite difficult at times. And yeah. >> he was renowned for being a good looker, so yeah. That's true, but also um Gaskell, and I don't know how true this might be, but she does describe him as being quite tyrannical with his daughters. So, he was quite hard work. Um and I think all of that shared history together made it quite difficult for them, even if they might have wanted it, made it quite difficult for them to form attachments with other people. >> Yeah. And perhaps caring duties, too. Perhaps Branwell, perhaps, you know, the the responsibility, perhaps. It's it's hard to read into it, isn't it? >> And I think Anne felt quite angry with Branwell that she felt that he had he tarnished her reputation in a way, because she had been a governess in a house where she was quite happy. And when, as I said, he came along, had an affair with the mistress of the house, and then Anne had to leave as well. And so, I think that perhaps she felt there was this, you know, this with her brother and his reputation that maybe that was something which went against them finding um respectable suitors. I don't know. I think there's so much we don't know. Question over here, I think. Ah, that question was so much better than mine. Um >> [laughter] >> so, um uh my question's two parts. The first one is uh there's been many film adaptations, which is your favorite of of all the books? And also, if you were to cast fan cast your own adaptation, if you were a director, then what would you do? Who would you pick? Um well, when I was six or seven years old, I saw the 1939 version with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. And that's I think when I first became absolutely obsessed with Wuthering Heights, and that obsession has never left me. And um I think that one I loved, but now I would say the version that is my favorite is the 1992 with Ralph Fiennes. And um is is uh oh, what's her name? Uh come to me in a minute. Um oh. Google. >> Juliette Binoche. Oh, yeah. And the only thing is, the first time I saw it, I couldn't get over the fact that Juliette Binoche has a slightly French accent um rather than Yorkshire. But I think the rest of it is so wonderful, and I think Ralph Fiennes is is a brilliant I mean, okay, he is he is not a man of color, but um he plays it so well. And he he he can go from that sort of being sympathetic and endearing to absolutely monstrous like that. He's such a good actor. So, that's definitely my favorite. And if I were to cast my own, I don't really know, you know? I think I think he's so good for me. I can't see anybody else as Heathcliff. But I think it I would need to try to find somebody who you know, was a person of color, because I think it is very very important, and it's been ignored in a way in the latest film that Heathcliff was constantly described in Emily's book and in quite problematical ways now. At one point um Nelly Dean says to him you know, who knows if your father was the emperor of China and your mother an Indian queen. Um another but another time she says, "If only you were a regular black." So we know he's not what we would think of today as someone who is fully black. He either looks Indian or Asian. Then again, somebody else says he could be a Lascar from the docks or a runaway slave or Irish or because the Irish were um you know treated as being um not very welcome at that time especially in that part of the world. Um so you have all these different allusions. And so I think I would have to try to find somebody. And in fact, in the latest film, the I can't think of his name, but the actor who plays the part of Edgar Linton, who in the book is golden-haired and angelic and frail, is played by a really hunky tall Asian guy. Do you know his name? I can't I I don't know if anybody knows his name. He's he's He's famous actor. He's he's absolutely beautiful. I think he would make a much better adult Heathcliff. >> [laughter] >> He's also uh Heathcliff is also described as a gypsy. I mean, there's so many different ways in which he's described actually. It's really interesting. >> or Spanish. >> Yes, that's right. >> So we do know that he obviously is different and that's the important thing. It's so important about isolation and othering and racism is so important there. Yeah. >> Um so I would want to focus on those issues. Although they're difficult, but I think they are what makes him the monster he becomes. That's fair. Tara, what would do what film would you pick? >> answer that question at all because I I'm really terrible with adaptations. Um I'm I'm I'm I read books so closely as a literary scholar that I get really stuck on the language. So, it if if there's any scene where anything is a little bit different, it just bothers me so much. I can't enjoy the film anymore. So, like every time I every Well, most adaptations of Jane Eyre, for instance, you know, that scene where she's reading the history of British birds by this window in sconce between this cold window frame and a red curtain. Uh That scene, whenever it's represented, most most adaptations don't have that red and it bothers me so much >> Yeah. that I can't get beyond that moment. Cuz that red room is so important. >> Red is such an important color for that whole book and for Charlotte Brontë's work in general that I get really stuck on those kinds of things. So, I've just decided the adaptation has to be really different from the original for me to just sort of unmoor myself from the text and enjoy it. >> probably enjoy the new one. >> Yes, that's >> [laughter] >> Yeah, that's a fair point. Having said that, I think Andrea Arnold's adaptation of Wuthering Heights, I think it gets Yeah, it gets it gets the sense of the moor and the wind. Yes, the only thing about that adaptation which um which didn't work for me was was the house, Wuthering Heights, because in the novel Emily describes Wuthering Heights as being the second greatest house in the neighborhood with the first one being Thrushcross Grange. And I believe very strongly that although Top Withens, when you walk across the moors, is probably the location that Emily had in mind for Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights, the house, was probably more based on High Sunderland Hall, which is has been demolished, was demolished in the 1950s, which is But have a look, High Sunderland Hall, just find that on the internet. It's so gothic. It's this sort of sprawling gothic building, but it has the lattice windows cuz we're told about the lattices all the time. It has the griffins and the cherubs cavorting above the porchway. Um very Gothic and it was Jacobean. So, you know, Wuthering Heights was supposedly built in 1500. So, it's a time when it was written. I mean, Wuthering Heights was a historical novel when it was written because it's set begins in the late 1700s and it was being written in the 1800s. But also the house itself, Wuthering Heights, it's it's, you know, it's we're told at the beginning above this crumbling mossy porchway is is this sort of set in stone um Hareton Earnshaw 1500. >> Mhm. And then it all comes back round at the end because the Hareton Earnshaw in the book's present day ends up being the final character who actually survives and it's like a mirror, the mirror of the first part of the novel in the second and there's a redemption in it with him and Cathy's daughter. And I think all of that with that plaque above the door and those those griffins and those those cherubs is so important. Monsters and angels. Mhm. I think I'd have Johnny Vegas playing Heathcliff. >> [laughter] >> Just to see what happens, really. A lot would happen. You know, no one's done a comedy Wuthering Heights, have they? Come on, now's our chance. You know, [laughter] you should you should get the script. Do we have any more questions to wrap up because I think we probably got a couple of few more minutes. One more last question. Who wants to be brave and give us the final question to end on? If not, we'll we'll figure one out together. Anyone? Yeah, go on then. Yeah, lovely. Thank you. >> [snorts] >> Thank you. Um I just wondered uh this is quite a hypothetical question, but if they'd lived like another 10, 20 years, what directions do you think their writing might have taken or based on kind of their own lives and literary trends that were happening? That one is just very quickly, that's they died in uh so what? 18 late 1840s, right? So, this is sort of peak Dickens, mid-century, Queen Victoria's young. So, just to sort of set the scene. Please now answer the question, but just giving people a kind of sense. Well, I I think I mean if Emily had been writing another novel, it would have been very interesting to know what it was about and and whether or not it would receive have to receive the same early reviews as Wuthering Heights. Um because I think that would have very much affected I mean she she she knew about those reviews. When she was dying, Charlotte read the reviews to her. So, she knew about these awful reviews. Apparently, it was said she laughed. She just laughed when Charlotte said to them. Um but I think it was rather cruel of Charlotte to read them to her as she was dying actually. And um she So, whatever she was writing next, I I don't think it would have been conventional. I don't think it would have been a Charlotte book. I think, you know, Emily wrote the book she wrote and goodness knows what it might have been. But I think it probably would have been something more supernatural again. But what would she have done if she'd not carried on writing? I could almost see Emily as a as a lady farmer. I could almost see her with a small holding. She loved animals. She loved being alone on the moors. It was precious to her. I mean in in her house there's this um this big column this metal column that belonged to her dog Keeper. And there are all these stories about her and Keeper and how he used to get he was up on the bed one day and he wasn't allowed up on the beds and Emily sort of but this is in Gaskell's book, isn't it? Gaskell describes her going upstairs and grabbing this great big dog. He was huge like a mastiff and dragging him downstairs and the dog then going for her and when Emily saw the dog going for her, Emily going bang on his nose. So, I think she was quite um but we don't know if that really happened. I mean it it's questionable whether Mrs. Gaskell made that up in retrospect or whether it really cuz she cuz when it's looked into it, she describes it as if she's there, but she wasn't there at the time. So, Charlotte probably told her something. But I do think that despite her strong will with her strong-willed dog, um there was There's scenes when there were dogs fighting in the village and she would go out and break them up by throwing pepper over their noses and things like that. But I think she liked animals and she understood animals and I could see her with a small holding. >> Lovely. Sarah? If I had to speculate about Anne and Charlotte, I would say Anne would write another social problem novel. I think you know, there was there's one novel about what it's like to be a governess, another one about alcoholism and domestic abuse and there'll be a third novel. I don't know what about, but some some kind of social problem novel that she'll go at really carefully and methodically because she seems to be a much more methodical writer in that kind of way. And if it were Charlotte, just based on Shirley and Villette, I would say that her third novel would be even more experimental. I do think that she experiments quite in very very interesting ways with form and what she's really interested in doing is thinking about how do you represent a female protagonist who does not want to be seen, right? So how do you give literary representation? How do you give space on the page to a protagonist who does not want to be seen in in a world where women's worth is just judged by their appearance. So increasingly her uh heroines, I think, become less and less interested in exteriority and more and more interested in interiority and we see that happening all the way from the it happens with Jane Eyre. She constantly talks about how she's not beautiful though she probably is and wants to talk only about her interiority. But by the time we come to um Villette and Lucy Snow, we don't even have a backstory to Lucy Snow to make her palatable. There's nothing about Lucy Snow that makes her palatable. So I think her next novel would have been even more experimental in terms of a female protagonist who doesn't give anything away, but somehow is still compelling. Mhm. Marvelous. Someone wants to write that novel, get going. Um I think we've run out of time now, so I think we have to bring it to a close. Thank you for all your questions and of course a massive thank you to Essi Evans for well, a wonderful contribution. And also, your book is available. So, if people want to get a signed book. And of course, to Dr. Tara Puri. I mean, you've not got a book out, but I'm sure you're happy to chat. Yes, I'm very happy to chat. >> I'm volunteering you though, aren't I? Sorry. >> [laughter] >> And I'll I'll be lurking as well. But yeah, thank you so much. And yeah, >> [applause]