Growing Up With The Brontës

HAWORTH, THE YORKSHIRE TOWN WHERE THE BRONTË SISTERS LIVED AND WROTE, IS A BEAUTIFULLY PRESERVED WORLD OF BOOKSTORES AND TEA ROOMS

- Shreya Sen-Handley

The North Yorkshire moors are as much of a living, breathing entity now as they were when the passionate and brooding Brontës lived amidst them. The moors, like the Brontës, are primeval in the force and fluidity of their moods. When the sun shines and a gentle breeze blows through the heather, gorse and long grass, rippling green, gold and purple in the light, it’s all liquid air and luminous colours, as if the cares of the world can’t touch their ancient sweep. But these are rare interludes, and the moors at night or in inclement weather are forbidding.

Darkly opaque and oppressive, the moors can turn into a slavering beast, especially when a constant rain turns large tracts into treacherous swamps. And in strong wind and storm, they become the embodiment of elemental passion and its inevitable destruction, which defined the lives and works of the Brontës.

When Emily professed in Wuthering Heights, “My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary,” or when Charlotte declared in Jane Eyre, “I am not an angel… and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me—for you will not get it,” they were channelling the power of the landscape that gave them breath and inspiration.