Watercolor

Interview with Ann Dinsdale, Collections Manager at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

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.

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. 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. JS: What’s your take on Emily’s poetry in relation to the novels?

Interview by Jane Steel

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.

26