JS:
They were all years ahead of their time. I think the Brontës
haewd what you could call a punk rock ethic. In the Seventies
you had your Led Zeppelins blown out of the water by bands
such as Siouxsie and the Banshees. Similarly, in the Brontës’ day
you had Robert Southey telling Charlotte Bronte not to write and
she does it anyway, even though Southey is one of her heroes.
AD: And of course the books were considered scandalous in their
time, which ties in with the punk thing. They were deemed
“coarse”, “unchristian”, “unchaste”. It’s hard to find any morality
in ‘Wuthering Heights’, for example.
JS: Agreed in relation to ‘Wuthering Heights”, but I find ‘Jane
Eyre’ to be an extremely moral book. The moral is “just be
yourself”.
AD: But it wasn’t a morality that was common currency at the time.
It was unique to her. Also, the religious people were not portrayed
in a very good light.
JS: Yes – there was St John Rivers, the cold clergyman who she
refuses to marry because she could not “endure all the forms
of love” with him. For a woman to say that explicitly then must
have been very shocking.
AD: There was also Brocklehurst, the headmaster of Lowood
school which Jane attends as a child, with his obsession with
infant mortality... The religious figures are often portrayed as very
sinister.
JS: You spoke earlier about the Brontës’ father
Patrick’s experience of coming to England from
Northern Ireland - the poverty, education as an
escape route and the children benefitting from
that struggle. That calls to mind the experience
of a lot of Asian families coming to Bradford.
What is your view on the Brontës as immigrant
Bradfordians?
AD:- It wasn’t as simple as that. They
were Celtic, their mother Maria was
Cornish, their father was Irish. They
were outsiders in Haworth, they were
always considered a bit odd. Then
Charlotte and Anne went away to be
governesses, where they lived in but
were looked down on because they had
no money, but they couldn’t relate to
the servants either because they were
middle class and educated.
JS: Though such experiences must have been
very unhappy on a lot of levels, as writers
it certainly gave them plenty of scope for
observing, for looking on.
AD: Jane Eyre is always observing, isn’t she? She’s in the window
seat, she’s watching what’s going on.
JS: I’m very interested in the African-Caribbean presence in the
Brontë novels. Bertha Mason, the woman imprisoned in the attic
in ‘Jane Eyre’, comes from the Caribbean and is depicted as
having “a quantity of dark, grizzled hair”. I think she was mixed
race – what are your thoughts?
AD: I think it’s quite clear. There’s also Heathcliff in ‘Wuthering
Heights’, who is described as a “Lascar”, which at the time meant
Indian. And then of course he was found on the streets of Liverpool,
with its connection to slavery.
JS: What’s your take on Emily’s poetry in relation to the novels?
AD:- Emily’s poetry was very powerful. It was of mixed quality, but
she was definitely the poet of the family. When the poems were
published in 1846 Emily’s were singled out for particular praise.
I think the poetry is of a piece with ‘Wuthering Heights’. I also
think Branwell was quite a talented poet. He was the first to get
his poetry published. The poetry had an impact on the novels,
especially ‘Wuthering Heights’. It has been likened to Shakespeare.
That style starts from Emily being a poet.
Interview by Jane Steel
Interview with Ann Dinsdale, Collections Manager at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
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