I always liked Scotland as an idea, but now, as a reality, I like it far better

Charlotte remained only a few days in Scotland, and those were principally spent in Edinburgh, with which she was delighted, calling London a "dreary place " in comparison.

Abbotsford

 

"My stay in Scotland" (she wrote some weeks later) "was short, and what I saw was chiefly comprised in Edinburgh and the neighbourhood, in Abbotsford and in Melrose, for I was obliged to relinquish my first intention of going from Glasgow to Oban, and thence through a portion of the Highlands; but though the time was brief, and the view of objects limited, I found such a charm of situation, association, and circumstance, that I think the enjoyment experienced in that little space equalled in degree, and excelled in kind, all which London yielded during a month's sojourn. Edinburgh, compared to London, is like a vivid page of history compared to a large dull treatise on political economy; and as to Melrose and Abbotsford, the very names possess music and magic."

melrose-abbey

 

Those were two very pleasant days. I always liked Scotland as an idea, but now, as a reality, I like it far better; it furnished me with some hours as happy almost as any I ever spent. Do not fear, however, that I am going to bore you with description; you will, before now, have received a pithy and pleasant report of all things, to which any addition of mine would be superfluous. My present endeavours are directed towards recalling my thoughts, cropping their wings, drilling them into correct discipline, and forcing them to settle to some useful work: they are idle, and keep taking the train down to London, or making a foray over the Border - especially are they prone to perpetrate that last excursion; and who, indeed, that has once seen Edinburgh, with its couchant crag-lion, but must see it again in dreams, waking or sleeping? My dear sir, do not think I blaspheme, when I tell you that your great London, as compared to Dun-Edin, 'mine own romantic town,' is as prose compared to poetry, or as a great rumbling, rambling, heavy epic compared to a lyric, brief, bright, clear and vital as a flash of lightning.

visitarthur Arthur's seat

 

You have nothing like Scott's monument, or, if you had that, and all the glories of architecture assembled together, you have nothing like Arthur's Seat, and, above all, you have not the Scotch national character; and it is that grand character after all which gives the land its true charm, its true greatness.

Abbotsford
The nucleus of the estate was a small farm of 100 acres (0.40 km²), called Cartleyhole, nicknamed Clarty (i.e., muddy) Hole, and was bought by Scott on the lapse of his lease (1811) of the neighbouring house of Ashestiel.^[1] He first built a small villa and named it Abbotsford, creating the name from a ford nearby where previously abbots of Melrose Abbey used to cross the river. Scott then built additions to the house and made it into a mansion, building into the walls many sculptured stones from ruined castles and abbeys of Scotland. In it he gathered a large library, a collection of ancient furniture, arms and armour, and other relics and curiosities, especially connected with Scottish history, notably the Celtic Torrs Pony-cap and Horns and the Woodwrae Stone, all now in the Museum of Scotland.^{[citation needed]}
Scott had only enjoyed his residence one year when (1825) he met with that reverse of fortune which involved the estate in debt. In 1830 the library and museum were presented to him as a free gift by the creditors. wiki/Abbotsford_House

Haworth

Soeursbronte

From bronteblog/window-to-yorkshire It seems that after the English Heritage warning that Haworth's heritage was in danger, some steps have been taken in the right direction according to The Telegraph & Argus:

Efforts to restore Haworth to its former glory could soon see it regain its rightful place as the “window to Yorkshire”.
A new tourist map has been released to highlight every aspect of the historic village – not just the buildings and sights associated with their most famous residents the Brontë Sisters.
It is one of several steps being taken by Bradford Council, English Heritage, Brontë Spirit and Haworth Parish Council to rebuild Haworth’s heritage.(...)
Since then the sets have been re-laid by Bradford Council, windows at the Brontë Schoolroom restored to what they would have looked like when the sisters taught there and buildings along Main Street restored.
The groups hope as Haworth returns to the idyllic Yorkshire village it was, more tourists will flow through the streets. And the new map will help them find its hidden gems.
Some of the sights included on the map are elaborate graves at St Michael’s Church and the Victorian Co-Operative stores.
Deborah Wall, of English Heritage, said: “We’ve come up with guidance and it shows how a lot of the buildings could and should look. That is why we’ve done some of the shop fronts, so people can get a sense of how much better things can be.”
Tammy Whitaker, also of English Heritage, said: “A lot of things can improve Haworth, like restoring the original style windows. A lot of buildings look too modern. They were damaging Haworth’s image.”

Old Haworth

Jack Hargreaves

Main St.

 

 

Debate the export ban on Jane Austen's ring.

For those who may have missed it, our Director Ann Sumner appeared on BBC 5 Live to debate the export ban on Jane Austen's ring. Also on the show was Mark Littlewood, director general of the Institute of Affairs.

Listen again to this very interesting discussion here: bbc.co.uk

Emily's Birthday Excursion

From the newsletter of the Bronte Parsonage:

Beautiful summer returned after the storms yesterday, just in time for Emily's Birthday Excursion, a very special new day of talks and tours in honour of the 195th anniversary of Emily Brontë's birth.

We're hoping July 30 will be a new, vital day in the Parsonage calendar, when the whole of Haworth village gets involved in the celebrations, and this year got the ball rolling in style with our first ever collaboration with the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.

The Brontës may not have travelled on this particular branch line - Haworth station didn't open until 1867, 19 years after Emily's death - but she certainly used the railways, and the new freedom they brought women travellers, who - enjoying the comfort and discretion of a railway carriage - were suddenly able to become more independent than ever before.

With Emily's railway journeying in mind, our Director, Professor Ann Sumner, together with railway historian David Pearson, boarded the 12.10pm steam train from Keighley to Haworth, with a carriage full of excursioners, who were treated to talks on the history of the railway and the Brontës all the way there.

With them travelled 'Emily' herself - costume historian Lyn Cunliffe, pictured - who was happy to pose for pictures with fellow excursioners, and talk about her genuine Victorian dress. Then, once in Haworth, everyone piled on to the vintage bus trip up Main Street, grabbed a quick lunch in a local cafe, then arrived at the Parsonage to begin an afternoon of special tours.

There was a chance to see close up genuine manuscripts by Emily and her sisters in our library - along with other remarkable Brontë treasures, and a talk by Collections Manager Ann Dinsdale.

There was a guided talk on the meadow and garden by our gardener Jenny Whitehead - who happily pointed out where the family once hung their washing to dry!

Finally, there was a guided walk up on to Penistone Hill with our Education Officer Sue Newby, who was able to point out the paths the Brontës walked, before the vintage bus picked up everyone to return them to Keighley via Brontë-walk landmarks en route.

In the evening the garden was the venue for a special Birthday Garden Party - and the first meeting of our new West Yorkshire branch of the Brontë Society. We were delighted to welcome among our guests Sir James and Lady Aykroyd - Sir James is the grandson of Sir James Roberts, who first gifted the Parsonage to the Society when he bought it from the Church of England in 1928 for the then princely sum of £3,000!

Jackie Kay, MBE, new writer-in-residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum

From the newsletter Parsonage Museum:

The Brontë Society is delighted to welcome award-winning poet Jackie Kay, MBE, as our new writer-in-residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Jackie will regularly be engaging with visitors and students as the Museum’s writer-in-residence over the next few months - and has already been talking to sixth formers about writing during her first two weeks in residence. Now she is busy at work on a series of new pieces exploring the lives and works of the Brontë sisters. A series of public events, including poetry workshops and readings, will showcase her work, culminating in an exhibition at the Museum in March 2014 as part of the Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing. Jackie will be opening the Festival and reading from her work.

‘Having grown up with the Brontës, on Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Villette, Emily’s poetry, and having returned to them again and again all my reading life, it’s a huge privilege to be at the Parsonage, to put the pieces of the Brontë jigsaw together – and to be freshly inspired by this inspirational family,’ she told us. ‘The Parsonage Museum is astonishing: the care that has been taken to bring the past to the present. I’m hoping to write a series of linked poems, and am delighted to have been chosen as writer-in-residence.’

Edinburgh-born Jackie Kay came to prominence in 1992 as winner of The Scottish First Book Award for her volume of poetry The Adoption Papers. Her third volume of poetry, Trumpet, won the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1998, and her memoir Red Dust Road – about her search for her natural parents, in Scotland and Nigeria – drew wide critical acclaim for the warmth of her storytelling and the beauty of the poetry with which she told it.  Now living in Manchester, Jackie was awarded the MBE in June 2006, and teaches creative writing at Newcastle University.

‘I so enjoyed meeting Jackie and hearing about the themes she will be exploring,’ commented Brontë Society Executive Director Ann Sumner. 'It was wonderful she was so inspired by her visit to Haworth during that period of beautiful warm weather.'

'I am already looking forward to reading Jackie's Brontë-inspired work,' added Brontë Society Chair Sally McDonald. 'All the Brontë family wrote poetry and found inspiration here at the Parsonage.

wiki/Jackie_Kay

"Emily and Her Sisters"July 18, 1928

The New Republic celebrates Emily Brontë's anniversary with the publication of a 1928 article by Robert Morrs Lovett about 'Emily and her sisters': bronteblog

Emily Brontë was born 195 years ago today. In her honor, we bring you New Republic associate editor Robert Morss Lovett's 1928 take on Emily, her sisters, and her legacy. 
As a biographer of Emily Brontë, Miss Wilson presents herself with certain indubitable credentials. A Yorkshire woman with memories of a childhood on the moors, she is prepared to enter into the environment of her heroine. As a novelist who has explored the obscure depths of the unconscious, she finds dues everywhere to the labyrinthine ways of personality. Her method is to reconstruct Emily’s experience by psychoanalysis from the themes and material of her poetry and fiction. Now it may be that Emily as a child was shut up in a room associated with death and, haunted by ghosts and phantoms, fell into a fit. This may be the origin of the recurring prison theme in her poetry; and Charlotte may have recalled the originating episode in Jane Eyre. Again, it may be that Emily suffered from jealousy of Branwell's high place in the family, and “solaced her jealousy with contemplation of the unrelieved blackness of her future, in contrast to the unrelieved brilliance of his”; that “in secret, in imagination she began to foster and love a dark soul in herself, a dark thing grew and grew upon her and ultimately possessed her, body and soul” and became Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Read more: robert-morss-lovett-emily-and-her-sisters-

wiki/Robert_Morss_Lovett

THE ROMANTIC NOVEL

 

Charterize the romantic novel:

• The dynamic antagonism or antithesis in the novel tends to subvert, if not to reject literary conventions; often a novel verges on turning into something else, like poetry or drama. In Wuthering Heights, realism in presenting Yorkshire landscape and life and the historical precision of season, dates, and hours co-exist with the dreamlike and the unhistorical; Brontë refuses to be confined by conventional classifications.
• The protagonists' wanderings are motivated by flight from previously-chosen goals, so that often there is a pattern of escape and pursuit. Consider Catherine's marriage for social position, stability, and wealth, her efforts to evade the consequences of her marriage, the demands of Heathcliff and Edgar, and her final mental wandering.  
• The protagonists are driven by irresistible passion–lust, curiosity, ambition, intellectual pride, envy. The emphasis is on their desire for transcendence, to overcome the limitations of the body, of society, of time rather than their moral transgressions. They yearn to escape the limitations inherent to life and may find that the only escape is death. The longings of a Heathcliff cannot be fulfilled in life.                
• Death is not only a literal happening or plot device, but also and primarily a psychological concern. For the protagonists, death originates in the imagination, becomes a "tendency of mind," and may develop into an obsession.
• As in Gothic fiction, buildings are central to meaning; the supernatural, wild nature, dream and madness, physical violence, and perverse sexuality are set off against social conventions and institutions. Initially, this may create the impression that the novel is two books in one, but finally Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights fuse.
• Endings are disquieting and unsatisfactory because the writer resists a definitive conclusion, one which accounts for all loose ends and explains away any ambiguities or uncertainties. The preference for open-endedness is, ultimately, an effort to resist the limits of time and of place That effort helps explain the importance of dreams and memories of other times and location, like Catherine's delirious memories of childhood at Wuthering Heights and rambles on the moors. academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu

There is a letter, printed by Mrs. Gaskell, from Charlotte Bronte to Ellen Nussey, in which Miss Bronte, when a girl of seventeen, discusses the best books to read, and expresses a particular devotion to Sir Walter Scott.

Scott gathered the disparate strands of contemporary novel-writing techniques into his own hands and harnessed them to his deep interest in Scottish history and his knowledge of antiquarian lore. The technique of the omniscient narrator and the use of regional speech, localized settings, sophisticated character delineation, and romantic themes treated in a realistic manner were all combined by him into virtually a new literary form, the historical novel. britannica

Walter Scott also had the creative and technical brilliance to reassert the place of romance at the heart of a literary culture, nationally and internationally. To read Scott is to be made aware of the strong shaping force of stories in a wider culture, and in literary history. It is fitting, then, that the period in which he was so prominent has been modeled along fictional lines of special interest to readers and historians of romance. blackwellreference

Walters Scott's study hall

a/gothicromantic.com

 

It was Byron, the story goes, who forced Sir Walter Scott to invent Romantic fiction

 

The difference between Waverly and a Gothic novel is that the setting is more than a spooky backdrop—the local people and history are crucial to the development of the story. In a sense, they are the story. This regional, folk-oriented writing, rich in quaint habits and dialect, was pioneered by Maria Edgeworth.

 

Walter Scott died in 1832. Most of his best fiction—Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, Ivanhoe—had been written in the decade immediately following Waverly, and his final years saw both Sir Walter’s talents and finances in decline. Yet Romantic fiction’s last flowering was still to come, close by on the barren Yorkshire heath. This is the setting for Wuthering Heights (1847), a novel about an isolated farming family with deep, inbred passions, and their struggle against the civilizing influences of the outside world. Emily Brontë could hardly have been more different from Sir Walter Scott. Solitary and obscure, she, like her character Catherine Earnshaw, spent most of her life in the isolation of rural Yorkshire, and was close only with her father, brother, and her two sisters Charlotte and Anne. And her book was a very different sort of book from Waverly. Gone is the history, the marching troops, the curious rustic customs and the Byronic hero waylaid by adventure. Wuthering Heights, with its setting of a few square miles of moors, is Romantic fiction distilled to a simple flame.

 

Wuthering Heights is a singular masterpiece, a wild and haunting novel that disturbs even modern readers desensitized by graphic images and cinematic blood. It represents an introspective farewell for the Romantic tradition that, even then, was fading. walter_scott

30 juli 1818 Birthday Emily bronte

 

Lord Byron Radio Documentary

Historic Haworth

Georges Renaux

HAWORTH MAIN STREET
The flag-stones with which the steep ascentis is paved are placed end-ways, in order to give a better hold to the horses' feet. (Mrs Gaskell, Life.)

Romanticism

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent! Lord Byron

Romanticism (also the Romantic era or the Romantic period) was an artistic, literary, and Industrial Revolution,^[1] it was also a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.^[2] It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography,^[3] education^[4] and the natural sciences.^[5] Its effect on politics was considerable and complex; while for much of the peak Romantic period it was associated with liberalism and radicalism, in the long term its effect on the growth of nationalism was probably more significant.
intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Partly a reaction to the
The movement validated strong emotion as an authentic source of
aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe—especially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities, both new aesthetic categories. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, made spontaneity a desirable characteristic (as in the musical impromptu), and argued for a "natural" epistemology of human activities as conditioned by nature in the form of language and customary usage. Romanticism reached beyond the rational and Classicist ideal models to elevate a revived medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be authentically medieval in an attempt to escape the confines of population growth, urban sprawl, and industrialism, and it also attempted to embrace the exotic, unfamiliar, and distant in modes more authentic than Rococo chinoiserie, harnessing the power of the imagination to envision and to escape.
Although the movement was rooted in the German Sturm und Drang movement, which prized intuition and emotion over Enlightenment rationalism, the ideologies and events of the French Revolution laid the background from which both Romanticism and the Counter-Enlightenment emerged. The confines of the Industrial Revolution also had their influence on Romanticism, which was in part an escape from modern realities; indeed, in the second half of the 19th century, "Realism" was offered as a polarized opposite to Romanticism.^[6] Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as heroic individualists and artists, whose pioneering examples would elevate society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority, which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. wiki/Romanticism

The Romantic Movement in European Literature was most popular in the period from 1800 to 1840. Since Emily Brontë lived from 1818 to 1848, the contemporary literature she read strongly represented this literary era and therefore influenced and contributed to forming her style of writing.

Brontë’s characterization of Heathcliff follows a different pattern and the reader’s expectations concerning the romantic hero are not met. This is because Heathcliff is in fact not a genuine romantic hero, but a variation of it, a Byronic hero.

George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, who lived from January 1788 to April 1824 and was most commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a highly regarded and influential British poet and a central figure in the Romantic literary movement. His most famous works include the extended poem Don Juan and the lyric She Walks In Beauty.

When Lord Byron died in 1824, Emily Brontë was only eight years old, too young to have been influenced by his writing. However, Harold Bloom submits that “the Brontës can be said to have invented a relatively new genre, a kind of northern romance, deeply influenced both by Byron’s poetry and by his myth and personality" (Bloom 1). This influence of Byron’s writing on Emily is due to the increase in popularity that Lord Byron’s writing experienced after his death, therefore "dominating [Emily’s] girlhood and (…) young womanhood" (Bloom 2).

The Byronic Hero was named after Lord Byron because it was primarily his writing that influenced and inspired other writers with the development of this character type.Nineteenth century historian and critic Lord Macaulay described the Byronic Hero as “a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection" (Christiansen, 201), which could be a perfect description of Heathcliff. Byron himself described the hero of his The Corsair (1814) as a “man of loneliness and mystery” (I, VII) who “wild and strange, [he] stood alike exempt from all affection and from all contempt” (I, XII). The Byronic Hero rejects the societies standards of moral and ethical values and “has emotional and intellectual capacities, which are superior to the average man. These heightened abilities force the Byronic hero to be arrogant, confident, abnormally sensitive, and extremely conscious of himself […] to the point of nihilism resulting in his rebellion against life itself” (Thorslev 197). Milk in the morning

A Byronic hero. That man of loneliness and mystery.

The Brontë children had a copy of Moore’s book, read it repeatedly, and offered it as reading to their friends. In a letter to Ellen Nussey, Charlotte writes, “for Biography, read Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Southey’s Life of Nelson, Lockhart’s Life of Burns, Moore’s Life of Sheridan, Moore’s Life of Byron [. . .]” (Barker 220). Moore’s biography was especially useful to the Brontës as they interpreted and presented their own versions of Byron.

 

There were primarily three different kinds of reactions to Byron during the middle of the nineteenth century, and each Brontë sister represents a different kind of response. Emily is considered the most Romantic of the three sisters, thus it is not too surprising to find that she consistently provides a full-scale adoption of Byron in both her poetry and her novel Wuthering Heights. 

In contrast, Anne seems the most stereotypically Victorian of the three, and therefore tends to exhibit large-scale rejection of Byron in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. And finally, while Charlotte’s poetry demonstrates imitation of Byron, Jane Eyre allows for co-option of him only after punishment and reform, making Charlotte somewhat ambivalent about Byron.

 
There are at least three significant conclusions that can be reached as a result of tracing Byron’s influence on female authors across the whole of the nineteenth-century. First, Byron is extremely relevant over the course of the hundred years. He is still interacting with the English, even after he’s been dead for two generations. This demonstrates how popular he really was, how varied and how lasting his image became.

His influence helped to shape many of the key literary characters in all of British

literature; his heroes become Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and Rochester in Jane Eyre.

etd.lsu.edu

 

A Byronic hero:

• A Byronic hero exhibits several characteristic traits, and in many ways he can be considered a rebel. The Byronic hero does not possess "heroic virtue" in the usual sense; instead, he has many dark qualities. With regard to his intellectual capacity, self-respect, and hypersensitivity, the Byronic hero is "larger than life," and "with the loss of his titanic passions, his pride, and his certainty of self-identity, he loses also his status as [a traditional] hero" (Thorslev 187). 
• He is usually isolated from society as a wanderer or is in exile of some kind. It does not matter whether this social separation is imposed upon him by some external force or is self-imposed. Byron's Manfred, a character who wandered desolate mountaintops, was physically isolated from society, whereas Childe Harold chose to "exile" himself and wander throughout Europe. Although Harold remained physically present in society and among people, he was not by any means "social."
• Often the Byronic hero is moody by nature or passionate about a particular issue. He also has emotional and intellectual capacities, which are superior to the average man. These heightened abilities force the Byronic hero to be arrogant, confident, abnormally sensitive, and extremely conscious of himself. Sometimes, this is to the point of nihilism resulting in his rebellion against life itself (Thorslev 197). In one form or another, he rejects the values and moral codes of society and because of this he is often unrepentant by society's standards. Often the Byronic hero is characterized by a guilty memory of some unnamed sexual crime. Due to these characteristics, the Byronic hero is often a figure of repulsion, as well as fascination.

Tom Winnifrith comments that a "study of the Brontes' juvenilia provides confirmatory evidence of the sisters' preoccupation with the aristocracy, their emancipation from Victorian prudery, and the attraction of the Byronic hero, beautiful but damned" .

ByronicHero

wiki/Byronic_hero

Gondal poems

A page from Emily's notebook, showing her Gondal poems