The Dark Truth about Wuthering Heights

Summary

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After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

Episode: The Dark Truth about Wuthering Heights

Released: February 12, 2026

Hosts: Anthony Delaney & Maddie Pelling

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Overview

In this atmospheric on-location episode, Anthony and Maddie journey to the heart of Bronte country—Haworth, Yorkshire—to reveal the true, often harrowing story behind the Bronte siblings. Drawing on immersive interviews with scholars and curators, they explore the gothic reality woven into classics like Wuthering Heights, connecting the Brontes' tragic personal history, the wild moors, 19th-century superstition, and their raw literary output. The episode underscores how trauma, isolation, creativity, and the supernatural interlaced to shape works that still haunt us today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Scene: Haworth and the Parsonage

[01:25]

• The episode opens on location at the Bronte Parsonage Museum.
• The town was a rapidly industrializing place when the Brontes arrived in 1820—a mix of rural isolation and urban change.
• Patrick Bronte (father), an Irish clergyman, struggled to integrate his family into Haworth’s entrenched community.
  • “He calls himself a stranger in a strange land.” (Juliet Barker, [06:17])
• The house’s front faced the graveyard, its back the untamed moors—setting a gothic, foreboding stage for the children.

Early Death, Illness & Family Tragedy

[07:10]–[09:54]

• The Brontes were frequently touched by loss and illness, mirroring the high mortality rates of 19th-century England.
  • Their mother, Maria, died within a year of moving to Haworth.
  • Two eldest sisters died at the infamous Clergy Daughters’ School—real-life model for Jane Eyre’s Lowood Institute.
    • “Charlotte in particular never forgave the school... She really blamed the very rigorous school regime...” (Murray Tremolan, [08:48])
  • Charlotte transformed her grief and anger into art and protest.

The Conjuring of Imaginary Worlds

[10:05]–[11:53]

• Isolation and adversity planted seeds for formidable creativity.
• The siblings produced miniature books with complex, collaborative storyworlds: Glasstown, Angria (Charlotte, Branwell), Gondal and Gondrine (Emily, Anne).
  • “You’ve got misogynistic heroes, you’ve got adulterers and drunkards... all in the childhood writings from being very, very young.” (Juliet Barker, [11:53])
• These dark, outlandish stories were a means of escape from their confined, bleak surroundings.

The Influence of Place: Graveyard and Moors

[12:45]–[17:26]

• The environment was a living character—death in the graveyard, wildness of the moors, and relentless weather all shaped the Brontes.
  • Visual details: exposed parsonage, no tree shelter, wind so fierce only heavy stone could stay on the roof.
  • The siblings even narrowly survived the “Crow Hill bog burst,” a catastrophic natural event.
    • “They certainly had the chance to experience what nature can do...” (Murray Tremolan, [15:49])

Folklore and the Supernatural

[17:26]–[20:24]

• Haworth’s moors were imbued with folklore—ghosts, corpse candles, revenants, fairy caves.
  • “You had things like the wailing woman… corpse candles… revenants… fairy caves…” (Dr. Kerry Holbrook, [17:46])
  • Inspiration for Wuthering Heights' otherworldly terrors—e.g., Kathy’s fairy-haunted cave.
• Superstition and Christianity blended in everyday life.
  • “There was a very hazy line between religion and folklore. Sometimes they were in conflict, but most of the time people could believe in both quite happily.” (Dr. Kerry Holbrook, [19:46])
  • Folklore transmission likely came from women in the household, not their father.
    • “It’s so fascinating, isn’t it, that handing down of stories from woman to woman is slightly outside of that patriarchal system of Christianity?” (Maddie, [20:17])

Women at Work: The Brontes’ Professions and Frustrations

[20:34]–[22:14]

• The sisters worked as teachers and governesses—isolating and often soul-destroying.
  • “She was neither a member of the family nor yet a servant... unable to have any privacy again.” (Juliet Barker, [21:24])
• Their alienation from these roles further fed their creative drive.

From Private Writings to Literary Fame—and Controversy

[22:14]–[27:47]

• Despite their competitive, sometimes fractious literary collaboration, the sisters eventually published poetry and then enduring novels.
• They adopted male pseudonyms (Currer, Ellis, Acton Bell) not because women couldn’t write, but because the novels were far too raw, dark, and transgressive for period gender norms.
  • “The Victorians did have quite strong views about what was, quote unquote, ‘proper’ for women to write. And I think the Bronte siblings realized that their works definitely would not be considered proper...” (Murray Tremolan, [25:20])
• Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights were seen as “dangerous”; critics were scandalized by their moral ambiguity and intensity.
  • “These books are seen as dangerous books... The earliest reviews of Jane Eyre, for example, accuse Currer Bell of fostering anti-Christian sentiment and encouraging rebellion.” (Dr. Claire O’Callaghan, [26:01])
  • Memorable moment: “One critic writes, ‘Read Jane Eyre, but please Heights.’ ... Another reviewer... simply said, ‘The writer of this book must have been eating cheese late at night.’” (Dr. Claire O’Callaghan, [26:55])

The Second Wave of Loss

[27:47]–[33:36]

• Great success collided with overwhelming tragedy. Within a year of their literary breakthroughs:
  • Branwell (addicted to drink/opium, tuberculosis) died in 1848.
  • Emily followed (tuberculosis) mere months later; Anne soon after, seeking a cure at the seaside.
    • “Charlotte decided to have her buried in Scarborough because she didn’t think their father would be able to face the trauma of going through another family funeral in such quick succession.” (Murray Tremolan, [29:43])
• Charlotte was left alone, haunted by her siblings’ absence, writing in solitude.
  • “She makes a comment that the dogs are clearly looking for their mistresses... Everyone’s haunted by that absence.” (Dr. Claire O’Callaghan, [30:52])
  • “It’s almost as if Emily has kind of become Kathy’s ghost, trying to get in at the parsonage door.” (Dr. Claire O’Callaghan, [31:35])

Charlotte’s Final Years and Enduring Legacy

[33:36]–[34:21]

• Charlotte turns to writing as a “cure for sorrow,” memorializing her sisters’ spirits in her fiction.
  • “The two titular Shirley of that book was a portrait of a sister, as she would have been in health and prosperity.” (Dr. Claire O’Callaghan, [32:19])
• She died in 1855, ending the Bronte lineage; their father outlived them all.

Enduring Impact

[34:21]–[35:00]

• The Bronte legacy is one of resilience, originality, and profound literary and emotional depth rooted in adversity and darkness.
  • “Their novels broke ground with raw emotional power, unflinching depictions of obsession, madness, longing, and grief. But they were also shaped by deep isolation, illness, and trauma.” (Maddie, [34:21])
  • “Their worlds were gothic because their lives so often were too.” (Maddie, [34:53])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “He calls himself a stranger in a strange land.” – Juliet Barker ([06:17])
• “Charlotte in particular never forgave the school... She really blamed the very rigorous school regime and the fairly difficult living conditions at the school, particularly the sort of cold dormitories and the poor food, for having weakened her sister’s immune systems.” – Murray Tremolan ([08:48])
• “You’ve got misogynistic heroes, you’ve got adulterers and drunkards... all in the childhood writings from being very, very young.” – Juliet Barker ([11:53])
• “There was a very hazy line between religion and folklore. Sometimes they were in conflict, but most of the time people could believe in both quite happily.” – Dr. Kerry Holbrook ([19:46])
• “One critic writes, ‘Read Jane Eyre, but please Heights.’ ... Another reviewer... simply said, ‘The writer of this book must have been eating cheese late at night.’” – Dr. Claire O’Callaghan ([26:55])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:25 – Arrival in Haworth; historical setting
• 03:19 – The Parsonage as home, church, and museum (Murray Tremolan)
• 04:36 – Integrating into Haworth; Patrick Bronte’s outsider status (Juliet Barker)
• 07:10 – Early tragedy, disease, and educational trauma
• 10:05 – The Bronte children’s early creative works
• 11:53 – Gothic themes in childhood writing (Juliet Barker)
• 13:00 – The influence of the graveyard and natural landscape (Dr. Claire O’Callaghan)
• 15:49 – The children’s exposure to wild nature, including disasters (Murray Tremolan)
• 17:46 – Yorkshire folklore and the supernatural (Dr. Kerry Holbrook)
• 20:34 – The Bronte sisters’ careers as governesses and teachers
• 23:49 – Branwell’s influence, male pseudonyms, and the path to publication (Juliet Barker)
• 26:01 – Victorian perceptions of Bronte novels; controversial reception (Dr. Claire O’Callaghan)
• 27:59 – The second wave of family deaths; Branwell, Emily, Anne (Murray Tremolan)
• 30:52 – Charlotte’s solitude; grief’s impact on writing (Dr. Claire O’Callaghan)
• 32:19 – Writing as “a cure for sorrow”; the composition of Shirley (Dr. Claire O’Callaghan)
• 34:21 – The lasting legacy and complexity of the Brontes’ literary influence

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Conclusion

This episode weaves a haunting portrait of the Brontes—how an environment laced with industry, natural violence, folklore, and constant tragedy shaped extraordinary, subversive art. The podcast offers listeners not simply a study in literary history but an immersive journey into the emotional and supernatural reality behind some of English literature’s darkest masterpieces.

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Transcript

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[Anthony]

Well hello there listeners of After Dark. I'm Anthony.

[Maddie]

And I'm Maddie.

[Anthony]

And today we're welcoming you to a special episode of After Dark, something a little different than usual. Last summer we made a documentary for history hit called Death at the Parsonage, which explores the dark and gothic world that surrounded the famous Bronte family. Now, with a new Wuthering Heights film being released, we wanted to explore that world with you on the podcast. It's one of, you guessed it, relentless death and tragedy, but also wild creativity and supernatural belief, all against the backdrop of an industrial Victorian England.

[Maddie]

This episode was recorded on location in Haworth in Yorkshire, in the home of the Brontes themselves, where they lived, but also in its surrounding cobbled streets and on the windswept moors that feature so dramatically in their stories. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte wrote some of literature's darkest, most enduring novels, including, of course, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and the Tenant of Wildfell Hall. But where did this darkness come from? As we'll find out, death and a sense of foreboding were never far from their lives. Right in front of the house was the church graveyard, filled with the town's dead, including members of their own family. And to the back of the house were the wild Yorkshire moors, an untamed landscape steeped in its own eerie folklore, and that we were lucky enough to get to walk as part of the documentary. In the middle of all of this were the Brontes themselves. Now Today, the moors still whisper with their presence and the house they haunted in life is now haunted by their legacy, their brilliance and their tragedy. First, let's get a feeling for this place where the Brontes lived and worked. Here's Murray Tremolan, curator at the Parsonage Museum in Haworth.

[Murray Tremolan]

We're speaking now in what we now call the Bronte Parsonage Museum. But of course, when the Brontes lived here, this was a working parsonage. It was the parsonage of Haworth Church, which we can actually see just about from the window of the room where we're sitting now. Patrick Bronte, the father of the Bronte sisters, was the minister and at Haworth Church for more than 40 years. Patrick had previously served as perpetual curate at Thornton, which is about six miles from here. But the family moved here in 1820 when Anne, the youngest, was still only a few months old and they spent the rest of their lives here.

[Anthony]

Patrick and his wife, Maria, had five daughters, another Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and one son, Branwell. When they moved to the Parsonage, they lived right next to the church at Haworth. It had stood unchanged for centuries, but the town of Haworth itself was in flux. Here's Juliet Barker, who's written perhaps the definitive biography on the family, whom I spoke to on the cobble streets of the town. The Brontes grew up in.

[Juliet Barker]

The Haworth. That the Brontes themselves came to was at a changing point in time. It was beginning to get to be a really busy industrial township. Even when they first arrived in 1820, there were already 13 working mills in the township, which includes the outlying villages of Stanbury and oxenhobe. By the 1850s, there were three huge mills actually in the middle of Haworth itself, including one that was going to employ a.

[Dr. Claire O'Callaghan]

That.

[Juliet Barker]

So the contrast from when they first arrived to what was happening all the time that they were there, they were in the midst of an industrial revolution.

[Anthony]

You talked about this kind of tumultuous, restless place in 1820 when they arrive and afterwards as well, what did they make of Haworth? How did they feel when they arrived here? And, you know, to us now, to visitors, it's beautiful, beautiful and it's a lovely place to be, but I'm imagining it was slightly different for them coming here, landing their young family in the middle of this.

[Juliet Barker]

I think it was, and it was very difficult because they didn't have any friends there. They were having to start from scratch. And this is a man who's already an elderly clergyman with a Family of six very small children, including a babe in arms. So the difficulty of becoming part of a community, which was very much a rooted community here, had been here for generations. Yes, they were getting involved in the Industrial Revolution, but it was still the same families. So for Patrick and the family, it was really hard to break into that area. And I think they felt that particularly Patrick himself, he calls himself a stranger in a strange land.

[Anthony]

You really get this sense of isolation from the outset, I think, particularly for the father of the family, Patrick, who arrived as an Irishman at a time when that came with a lot of stigma.

[Juliet Barker]

Patrick had a very strong Irish accent. It's interesting that his son Bramwell, he was described as also being Irish and they, the local people mocked him as an Irishman in one of the political campaigns that they had. But the girls, they don't talk about that at all. And I do think that Aunt Branwell, Mrs. Bronte's sister, who came to look after the children when their mother died and stayed with them for her entire life, which was some sacrifice, she actually, I think, would have encouraged the girls to lose that Irish accent because it indicated poverty, because it indicated that you'd come from elsewhere and she wanted the girls to fit in.

[Maddie]

Their lives were met with darkness very soon after moving there, when tragedy stopped struck. Here's Murray Tremelin.

[Murray Tremolan]

The Brontes experience of death was tragic, but certainly not unique. In the 19th century, this was a time when diseases like tuberculosis and cholera were rife. There were regular epidemics not just here in Haworth, but all over the country really. And unfortunately, once a virus gets into a household, it's very difficult to stop it spreading. But yes, there was a lot of death in the family, so the family moved here in the early months of 1820. Maria Bronte, the mother of the family, died only the following year. There's some uncertainty about her exact cause of death, but it's generally thought most likely to have been a form of cancer. That left Patrick with a problem because he was then left with six children, all of whom would need to be educated. Of course, in those days there were no state schools and school fees were expensive. So, you know, this was a real problem for him with the income he had.

[Maddie]

In 1825, the two eldest daughters, Maria and Elizabeth, were sent away to the clergy daughters school where later Charlotte and Emily would join them, which must have seemed like the answer to a prayer for Patrick. Tragedy would soon hit the family again, though.

[Murray Tremolan]

Only a few months after they went to the school, Maria and Elizabeth both caught tuberculosis. They were brought home to Haworth, but very sadly, they died within a few weeks of each other. Understandably, Patrick then decided to withdraw Charlotte and Emily from that school. Charlotte in particular never forgave the school for what happened to her sisters. She really blamed the very rigorous school regime and the fairly difficult living conditions at the school, particularly the sort of cold dormitories and the poor food, for having weakened her sister's immune systems. And of course, Charlotte then in her later life, channelled her anger at the school into the writing of Jane Eyre, where it became the inspiration for the notorious Lowood Institute. And the death of Helen Burns in the novel is directly inspired by the death of Maria, the eldest sister.

[Maddie]

It was against this backdrop of tragedy and isolation that Charlotte, Emily, Anne and and their brother Bramwell's creativity began to flourish.

[Murray Tremolan]

They started writing almost as soon as they were able to, really. They produced their famous series of little books, so called because they genuinely were little. They were absolutely tiny, not much bigger than a postage stamp really. And they wrote on them in an absolutely minuscule hand, which we've had volunteers working on transcribing these books lately. And I can attest that even when you have the text blown up on a computer screen on a high resolution digital image, it's still really difficult to read. How they wrote it in the first place just defies imagination, really. But as you can imagine, these juvenile writings, the stories started out fairly basic, but they quickly evolved as the children. Children grew and became more and more sophisticated and they, for their part, became ever more immersed in the imaginary world they were creating.

[Maddie]

As they got older and the children collaborated, their work became more outlandish and you could say it spoke of a deep desire to escape their own circumstances.

[Murray Tremolan]

In their adolescence, the Bronte children developed a series of imaginary worlds. Charlotte and Branwell worked together to create the kingdoms of Glasstown and Angria, which were nominally set on the west coast of Africa, albeit a highly fictionalised version of Africa. Emily and Anne initially worked with Charlotte and Branwell, but they broke away and formed their own worlds of Gondor and Gordine.

[Juliet Barker]

They created these imaginary worlds that really sustained them and nothing outside the parsonage could ever be as exciting as the worlds that they created for themselves and the fact that they lived together, but also the fact that they wrote together and imagined these worlds together. You've got partnerships, you've got Bramwell and Charlotte writing together, you've got Emily and Anne writing together, and you can't recreate that anywhere else. And okay, you're talking about, you know, you've got misogynistic heroes, you've got heroes who are adulterers and all the sorts of drunkards and everything, drug addicts and everything are all in the childhood writings from being very, very young. You can't sort of ignore that because that was so much more exciting to write about than it was to think about what was going on in boring old Haworth.

[Anthony]

But one thing boring old Haworth did have was its surroundings. Firstly, those close by the parsonage, the neighbouring church graveyard. Here's Dr. Claire O', Callaghan, a literary scholar who has written extensively on the Brontes.

[Dr. Claire O'Callaghan]

It must have been a huge influence because in the time that they've lived in the parsonage, they've seen that graveyard out the front grow and expand rapidly. And it's really interesting. There's a line in Wuthering Heights when Kathy's unwell and she's in her delirium and she had a visit from Heathcliff and she talks about recalling when they were children and they would play out on the graves and try to summon the ghosts from the graves.

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[Anthony]

Beyond the graveyard was of course the wild moors, which were every bit a character in the Bronte stories as anything in human form. Back to Murray Tremolan, the Bronte children.

[Murray Tremolan]

All spent quite a lot of time at home during their childhood. We know that the children did go out walking on the moors quite regularly. They also had a chance, I think, to really see the raw power of nature living in a place like Haworth. As we look out of the window now, the setting looks quite idyllic, but it would have looked quite different in the Bronte's time. Most of the trees that we can now see were planted after the deaths of the Bronte family, so the parsonage building would have been much more exposed in those days, much more open to the moors. They would certainly have felt the full force of the wind being up here on the top of a hill. In fact, if you look closely at the roof of the parsonage, you'll see that we don't have slates on the roof, we have stone flags because slates would be too light, they would blow away when the storms hit. There was also a famous incident when the children were quite young called the Crow Hill bog burst. This was quite a rare natural phenomenon when after heavy rainfall, the bogs up on the moors became so saturated that they literally burst and caused a mudslide. The children were out walking at the time and they were almost caught in it. According to legend, they managed to take shelter in the doorway of a nearby farm. So yes, they certainly had the chance to experience what nature can do in this way.

[Maddie]

The moors had a life of their own and they had a dark energy to them that made them all the more fearsome and intriguing, especially given the local folkloric tales and the Supernatural beliefs that existed in this area. Here's Dr. Kerry Holbrook, expert in British folklore, who I spoke to. At the very edge of the moors.

[Tara Davis Woodhull]

In Haworth, this landscape was littered with folklore. So many folkloric creatures wandering around. So you had things like the wailing woman, female apparitions, usually having died a tragic death wandering the moors, wailing. You had corpse candles, so lights that would appear on the moors. Again, a bad omen. You didn't want to see them revenants. So the returned dead were a big thing. You have to remember that the bronties live very close to the graveyard, so death was, was very visible. And the idea of kind of the dead returning comes out very, very clearly in Wuthering Heights. And then you have things like fairy caves, so places like this where it kind of passages down into the earth, down into the fairy otherworld. And again, we see this in Wuthering Heights with Kathy's fairy haunted cave. And it is believed that Ponden Kirk, which is a rock structure nearby here, may have been the inspiration behind the fairy cave belief that if you travel down far enough, you end up in fairyland. So, yeah, lots and lots of folklore.

[Maddie]

I'm fascinated by the way that the Brontes mined the landscape and its stories in terms of their own literary creations. But I wonder, does folklore, for them mean more than just a literary device? How do you think they're engaging with it in terms of their own beliefs and their own domestic life?

[Tara Davis Woodhull]

I think it was a huge part of their everyday lives. I don't think they were necessarily aware of it. It was just kind of part of their subconscious. They will have been told stories. They grew up telling stories. It was a huge part of their early writing when they were children and then teenagers. Ghosts, apparitions, elements of folklore creeping in from a very, very early age. And they also apparently had kind of supernatural experiences growing up. So I think it was very much a part of their everyday lives and probably very much a part of their communities everyday lives.

[Maddie]

How should we understand this belief in folklore then, alongside their religious belief? Because we mustn't forget they grew up in a parsonage. Their father was a religious man. How does the Christian faith sit alongside folklore? Are they compatible or is there a sort of tension going on there?

[Tara Davis Woodhull]

I mean, there was a very hazy line between religion and folklore. Sometimes they were in conflict, but most of the time people could believe in both quite happily. They didn't contradict each other. There was just an awareness of there being more to this world. I think for The Brontes. It's interesting though that the stories that they were told probably came from either their aunt or Tabby Ackroyd of the family servant and their friends. I think it's interesting that it's likely they got these stories of the landscape from a woman rather than from their father, Patrick Bronte.

[Maddie]

Yeah, it's so fascinating, isn't it, that handing down of stories from woman to woman is slightly outside of that patriarchal system of Christianity?

[Tara Davis Woodhull]

Absolutely. I think that's a really interesting element when you're thinking about the Brontes and how they grew up and the different influences that people had on them.

[Maddie]

All the while, the three Bronte sisters worked as governesses or teachers, often unhappily struggling to find their way in the world. Juliet Barker Again, the girls all knew.

[Juliet Barker]

That they would have to have some form of career to fund their lives because they knew as soon as their father died then they would be expelled from the parsonage and they had no income at all. He had no money to leave them, so they had to be self sufficient. So Charlotte's first attempts were to go back to the school where she herself had been taught. She was invited back to go back as a teacher and then she wasn't happy there. She didn't like being confined in dormitories and having to give these rote lessons, learning names and places and lists of things. And so she found it deeply frustrating intellectually as well. There's that wonderful story about having the window open and she hears the bells of the church and she drifts off into a reverie about the imaginary world of Angria that she created. And then she says at that moment, adult came up with a lesson. I thought I should have vomited, which isn't quite the way to have a relationship with a teacher. So she then went off and tried being a good governess in private houses. But that was even more soul destroying, I think that is the word really for somebody like Charlotte, because she was neither a member of the family nor yet a servant. She was in that in between, so was mistrusted by both, unable to have any privacy again. And so that she found that extremely difficult and again went through several posts and was not happy in any office.

[Anthony]

Often none of the sisters, Charlotte, Anne or Emily were finding fulfillment through their work as teachers or governesses. And by the mid-1840s their written output was becoming something they wanted to share with the world. Dr. Claire O' Callaghan Their writing process.

[Dr. Claire O'Callaghan]

Clearly goes through different stages of evolution. When they're children, they're definitely creating together they bring out these imaginary worlds that the Glasstown Federation, Angria Gondal. But they get quite competitive with one another. And as much as they build themselves into their writings, they're these little godlike figures. Tensions come in in terms of who owns the world, where are the stories going? So we get some fracture in terms of writing relationships as they get older, into their late teens. It's really interesting that even when they're away from home, they're still co creating. So we know that they often wrote poetry in isolation. And we know that because Charlotte basically breaks into Emily's private writing materials to read what she has been writing and describes what she sees as a peculiar music. And it's from there that she manages to persuade her to, after a long of arguments, I should add, to publish a first volume of poetry.

[Anthony]

The first volume, which includes poems from Charlotte, Emily and Anne under male pseudonyms and sells just a few copies initially. But it sparks the hope, along with Branwell's influence, who wants to be an artist in his own right, that there's money to be made from writing. Here's Juliet Barker.

[Juliet Barker]

After that failure, they'd got the bit between their teeth and they'd realized that this was potential for making money. And the way to do it was actually to do novels. But from all throughout their lives, it had always been Bramwell who had been the initiator in their childhood games, who was always first to do that. Different types of things, like writing poetry, like writing plays, leading and being the inspiration of a lot of their childhood games. He was the one who first got poetry published in the papers while he was working in Halifax. He was the one who suggested writing novels because he thought that would be a way of earning. His tragedy was that instead of writing a novel, he just took to drink and never achieved anything more. But without his impetus, even at that late stage in his life, I do wonder whether or not the girls would have actually embarked upon what was to become such a great literary career.

[Anthony]

Branwell's failed love affair with the wife of an employer and subsequent dismissal triggered a spiral into addiction. In 1846, his health rapidly deteriorated due to alcoholism and opium addictions, becoming increasingly unstable and reclusive. It's during this period, however, in 1847, that within three months, Charlotte publishes Jane Eyre, Emily publishes Wuthering Heights and Anne publishes Agnes Gray, all under male pseudonyms of the Bell brothers. Here's Murray Tremolan.

[Murray Tremolan]

It's not that women weren't allowed to Write in the 19th century. There were Plenty of women authors in that era, but the Victorians did have quite strong views about what was, quote unquote, proper for women to write. And I think the Bronte siblings realised that their works definitely would not be considered proper for women to write in that era.

[Anthony]

Publishing as they did, Anne as Acton Bell, Emily as Ellis Bell and Charlotte as Currer Bell, the sisters will have been curious to know how their writing was received by critics and readers alike. Here's Dr. Clare O'. Callaghan.

[Dr. Claire O'Callaghan]

When Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Gray all come out together at the same time, there is a kind of move in the kind of Victorian readership. People are wondering who these writers are, who are these Bell brothers and what is it that they're doing? These books are seen as dangerous books. So Victoria, Victorian critics very quickly label the Belles, the Brontes as coarse. They see these works as vulgar and they think that they're dangerous. And it's really interesting that very often gothic novels, despite all of the kind of the macabre, the supernatural, the things that go bump in the night, are often seen as having an incredibly moral agenda. But the Bronte's novels aren't seen in that spirit. The earliest reviews of Jane Eyre, for example, accuse Currer Bell of fostering anti Christian sentiment and encouraging rebellion, particularly with young women in mind. Young women are discouraged from reading that book. The fear is that they will all be seeking independence and liberation and wanting to fall in love with their employers. Wuthering Heights, on the other hand, is singled out for a lot of criticism. One critic writes, read Jane Eyre, but please Heights. Which tells you quite a lot about the kind of. The fear that book struck because readers couldn't find any moral purpose to it whatsoever, particularly with this character, Heathcliff, who is opening graves and removing coffin sides so that he can be together with his love for all eternity. So that really was a problem for Victorian readers. Another reviewer of Wuthering Heights simply said, the writer of this book must have been eating cheese late at night, which tells you that they're seeing it in this kind of delirious novel and they really can't make head nor tail of.

[Maddie]

Should have been a celebratory time. But less than a year after the publications of the sisters first novels, the family was struck by a second wave of deaths. Back to Murray Tremolin.

[Murray Tremolan]

It was when the surviving children reached their late 20s, early 30s, that we then have this second wave of deaths in the family, starting with Branwell, the only son in 1848. Now Branwell is quite a contentious character within the Bronte story. Different biographers have treated him in quite different ways, some of them sympathetic, some of them less so. I think it's pretty, pretty clear, though, that in the mid-1840s, after he had a failed love affair with the wife of his employer, he went irrevocably off the rails, really. He started drinking very heavily, he started taking drugs, and as can be imagined, unfortunately, that had a very serious effect on his immune system. So when he caught to tuberculosis in 1848, he didn't really stand a chance, to be honest. In fact, I think it's fair to say that by the time he did die, his death was almost regarded as a mercy by the rest of the family, because it had been clear for quite some time before that that his mental and physical health were degenerating to a point where he was unlikely to ever recover, just to make that loss then even harder for the family to bear. Only a few months later, Emily also became severely ill, again from tuberculosis, and she died at the end of that year. The tuberculosis then, unfortunately, had also infected Anne. She managed to survive until the spring of 1849. She begged Charlotte to take her away to the seaside. She was hopeful that taking the sea air might improve her condition, perhaps even cure her. Charlotte was quite reluctant to leave home, partly because she was worried that the journey to Scarborough would be difficult and might even finish Anne off before they got there. Also because of course, their father by this time was himself quite elderly and Charlotte was reluctant to leave him. Eventually, they did set out for Scarborough, towards the end of May, if I remember correctly. But unfortunately, Anne died only four days after they arrived, and Charlotte decided to have her buried in Scarborough because she didn't think that their father would be able to face the trauma of going through another family funeral in such quick succession.

[Maddie]

All of a sudden, Charlotte was alone in the parsonage without any of her siblings, and the sense of loss, of absence must have been so present for her.

[Dr. Claire O'Callaghan]

So when Charlotte returns from Scarborough, the first thing she encounters at the door are the surviving animals of her sister Anne's dog, Flossie, and Emily's dog, Keeper. And she makes a comment that the dogs are clearly looking for their mistresses and they're only greeted by her. So she's contending with their loss as well as her own. And they're kind of haunted. Everyone's haunted by that absence. She's writing alone. All of the things around the house are reminding her of her sisters. The wail of the sound that goes around the parsonage. The winds at night and Charlotte hearing them, it's almost as if Emily has kind of become Kathy's ghost, trying to get in at the parsonage door. I think she feels that sense of solitude acutely. And she's now the sole carer for her father as well, so it must have been such a difficult time. So she's got overwhelming grief that she's had to endure in such a short space of time. It changes her.

[Maddie]

Charlotte is now the last surviving Bronte sibling. She's living in the house with her father, but she's writing alone for the first time in her life, when before, of course, there was this incredibly creative, collaborative environment in which the Bronte siblings created their art. So how did this loss affect her creative process? And what did her novels look like now that she wrote them in solitude.

[Dr. Claire O'Callaghan]

Before she gets to the summer where she's writing on her own? Charlotte Bronte started writing her second novel, Shirley, in the wake of the blaze of Jane Eyre, and she'd begun writing that in early 1848. But when her brother and then her sister become unwell, she puts Shirley down at that point. She's written the first two volumes. After Anne's death in 1849, the first thing she picks up again is Shirley, and she writes the last volume, which begins with a really ominous chapter called the Valley of the Shadow of Death. What's interesting about that is not only is there a lot of sickness and a lot of ill health throughout that part of the book, but Charlotte saw work and writing at that point as a cure for sorrow. She actually says that. She writes to a publisher and she says labor is a cure for sorrow. But in that book, she also memorializes Emily, at least, and some say Anne as well. So the two titular Shirley of that book was a portrait of a sister, as she would have been in health and prosperity. She finishes Shirley late in that summer and it comes out later that year. So she does pick up writing, but she does it in a way that's memorialising her sisters. It's like they've never left her. They're now on the page.

[Anthony]

Charlotte continued to write, achieving further acclaim with Shirley and Villette, and eventually married her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. But in 1855, while it has been reported, pregnant with her first child, Charlotte died at just 38, likely from complications related to severe morning sickness. She was the last of the Bronte siblings, and so the parsonage fell quiet. The vibrant, collaborative, fiercely imaginative world the siblings had once conjured in whispers and scribbles, was gone. Patrick, who had watched each of his children die, was left alone until his death in 1861.

[Maddie]

The legacy the Brontes left behind is completely extraordinary and, as we've heard, complicated. Their novels broke ground with raw emotional power, unflinching depictions of obsession, madness, longing and grief. But they were also shaped by deep isolation, illness and trauma. Their worlds were gothic because their lives so often were too. And yet, through death, constraint, and in part obscurity, they created something enduring stories still read and still still felt today.

[Anthony]

If you'd like to see more of our explorations into the dark world of the Brontes, you can watch our documentary Death at the Parsonage the brontes on historyhit.com and we'd love to hear your ideas for future shows. So do get in [e-mail] until next time. Goodbye.

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