Vulgar History - The Brontë Sisters： Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is

00:00:16.560 Anne Foster, and we are in our Regency era season. That is where we're talking about

00:00:20.940 people from what I define as the Regency era. Other people do too. It's like the late 1700s

00:00:26.820 into the early 1800s, right up until the Victorians, basically.

00:00:29.880 So we're really butting up to the end of what some people would consider the Regency era,

00:00:33.860 but we had to talk about the Brontes.

00:00:36.460 We're talking about Anne Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, some others will come up,

00:00:41.460 but those are the main ones.

00:00:42.540 And the reason we're talking about them this week is largely because there's a new movie

00:00:46.300 version of Wuthering Heights that is just coming out.

00:00:49.400 And Wuthering Heights was a book by Emily Bronte.

00:00:52.340 Probably the other most famous Bronte book is Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre.

00:00:55.840 and Bronte was also there bringing some little sister energy and we'll talk about that but they

00:01:00.400 all wrote actually no Emily only wrote one book but there's various Bronte books we're going to

00:01:04.380 talk about them all and I'm not a Bronte girly I'm a Bronte neutral person but I know there's

00:01:11.780 so many people are passionate about them and one person who's passionate about them is today's

00:01:15.660 guest Lana Wood Johnson who I think I've just unmuted have I? Lana try to say something

00:01:22.580 yeah you're still muted i don't know how to unmute you it's terrible i've unmuted myself

00:01:32.140 oh thank you lana you know what you just arrived like a ghost in the moors

00:01:36.720 if anybody can it'll be me i bring the correct energy just go through the mists of the moors

00:01:46.200 is it I have perfected my shut-in era and I will be here as your Bronte stand-in yeah so we're

00:01:54.720 talking about the Brontes um so specifically Anne Bronte Charlotte Bronte Emily Bronte those are

00:02:01.060 who people consider the Brontes and one thing I'll just mention right off the bat is that

00:02:04.680 they sort of like Mary Shelley like their lives are kind of equally famous as their most famous

00:02:10.540 books is part of what's up with the Brontes. And the reason that that happened is because their

00:02:16.480 books were successful in their lives. They all died quite young of tuberculosis, which we'll get

00:02:21.680 into. This is probably the most tuberculosis deaths per episode in vulgar history history.

00:02:27.960 Which is all the more reason to have me.

00:02:30.840 Lana does have a lot of knowledge about tuberculosis. Yes. If you listen to our

00:02:34.220 Vulgar Peace Theater on Patreon, the episode about Tombstone, we really get into tuberculosis

00:02:38.720 talk but anyway so after the last Bronte died I won't say which one that is because maybe you

00:02:44.600 don't know the order but after the last Bronte died their friend the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell

00:02:50.500 wrote a non-fiction book about the Brontes and then they became celebrities like they were all

00:02:55.880 dead but they became famous so it's like their books were popular and then this biography came

00:02:59.780 out and then they in death became popular and there's not a lot of other authors I'm sure there

00:03:06.420 are others but to this extent where it's like their lives are often as famous as their books

00:03:12.800 and it's because it's all the same like gothic spooky vibe would you agree lana i mean the only

00:03:19.360 other one that i get that i would compare them to is probably f scott fitzgerald and and he did it

00:03:25.320 because he was an asshole they did it because they were strange and i love this for them 0.56

00:03:30.480 i love just as i've been researching the brontes and i think it's because withering heights the 0.99

00:03:36.220 movie is coming out there's a lot more bronte content being fed to me on various algorithms

00:03:40.700 but there's so many there's like t-shirts that say like the brontes and it's all done up like 0.98

00:03:45.600 a heavy metal band you know like there's people and these weird weird weird women actually i want

00:03:54.940 to say something that the three of them and you and i all have in common as of the day that this

00:03:59.820 podcast comes out is we're all published authors so huzzah congratulations the long con has worked

00:04:07.200 yes yes just to to drop this into this episode because i'm going to have to my book rebel the

00:04:14.840 regency is available now from any store most places in the world frankly you can figure it

00:04:20.400 out go to rebel of the regency.com for your links i'll talk about the events coming up later

00:04:24.960 but i will say that lana and i are both older than any bronte ever became

00:04:30.640 except for the dad so they they had a live fast no it's not a live fast die young they did not

00:04:40.660 live fast survive as much as you can okay that was their mentality there's so much goth stuff

00:04:49.340 in this like it really brings me to mind of like mary shelley you know learning to write on her

00:04:53.920 dead mother's grave like it's that's the vibes sort of like it's really just kind of like these

00:04:59.620 girls growing up and everything i just feel like they i feel like the sun never came out

00:05:03.640 a day in their life having been a goth there's multiple kinds of goth and mary shelley is like

00:05:10.260 the extrovert goth that that like she was just dramatic all of the time and she did all of the 1.00

00:05:18.580 things and lived her whole life. The Brontes were my kind of goth, which is the traumatized goth

00:05:25.780 that sits in the corner and is just dark and spooky and you're kind of sure she might be a

00:05:30.220 witch. That was their goth energy that they brought to the table. Yes. Okay. So who were

00:05:38.300 these Brontes? Where did their name come from? So you'll see in the episode name, it's B-R-O-N-T-E

00:05:44.080 with umlauts that is a name that their father invented and I will tell you the story of who

00:05:49.660 they are and why their father chose that name so the Bronte parents so their mother was called

00:05:55.740 Mariah Branwell um Branwell becomes the name of their brother there is a boy Bronte who

00:06:02.320 unfortunately we're gonna have to talk about a lot but that's where the name Branwell comes from

00:06:06.640 unfortunately Branwell yeah you had said when I was reading this and just kind of messaging you

00:06:12.600 about my Bronte research land at they're sort of like the Brontes are sort of like Jane Austen's

00:06:17.000 family but but in like not sort of like a Star Trek mirror universe but it's sort of like

00:06:23.800 what if the Austens were all dying of tuberculosis constantly the Austens were sad

00:06:31.080 yeah what if the Austens never saw the sun I love a reputation of writing Jane Austen style

00:06:39.520 cutesy comedy of manners my heart and soul is a bronte sister and i don't know how i achieved it

00:06:47.180 but i like everything about me like deep inside is a bronte except for branwell i'm not branwell

00:06:54.720 branwell doesn't count branwell is just like i don't know every family has a branwell so

00:07:01.400 do you know the meme that's like it's that street i feel like it's in san francisco something where

00:07:07.240 There's like the really bright pink house.

00:07:08.820 And next to it is like the black house. 0.69

00:07:10.780 Do you know what I mean? 0.99

00:07:12.320 Yeah.

00:07:12.800 My friend Annika was just sharing that.

00:07:14.500 And somebody had defined it as like the black house.

00:07:16.700 It's like, that's Emily Bronte.

00:07:18.240 And then like the pink house, it's like, that's Charlotte Bronte.

00:07:20.560 I'm like, okay.

00:07:22.620 No, but next to it's a very practical house.

00:07:24.620 And it's like, and this is Anne Bronte.

00:07:25.980 And then I was like, Branwell would be like a lamppost on the street.

00:07:31.280 Like, if anything.

00:07:32.380 Kind of falling over and everybody calls me to fix it.

00:07:35.480 No one comes.

00:07:36.160 Yeah, Branwell is just kind of also there. Anyway, the mother is Mariah Branwell. She was the daughter of an affluent grocer and tea merchant from Cornwall. So she's bringing some money into this family. Their dad is Patrick Bronte. So he is from Ireland.

00:07:56.600 His name was originally Brunty, B-R-U-N-T-Y.

00:08:01.240 Is that a common surname in Ireland?

00:08:03.300 Don't know.

00:08:04.640 But that was what his name was at birth.

00:08:07.140 He was one of 10 children born to a poor Irish family

00:08:09.780 in the parish of Drumbally Rony in County Down. 1.00

00:08:15.320 So I'm always excited when an Irish person comes into one of these episodes

00:08:20.160 because I'm really interested in Irish history.

00:08:21.820 um and he's very much just kind of like in this era this era of um what's going on in ireland so

00:08:28.780 he's anglican i think mariah the mom was catholic but he becomes an anglican curate so i he left

00:08:35.500 ireland because things were shitty there because of colonization and he wanted opportunities and

00:08:40.540 people in ireland saw that like oh this guy's like he's smart like he want he wanted to be a writer

00:08:44.680 as well and so this is despite his his very poor upbringing i'm saying he wanted to be a writer

00:08:49.780 even though he only ever owned, the family only ever owned four books, two of which were the

00:08:55.140 Bible. Growing up, they ate what I would call the traditional diet of a poverty-circuit Irish 1.00

00:09:02.560 family, porridge, buttermilk, bread, and potatoes. And he had lifelong digestive issues, which that's

00:09:09.500 probably part of why. Anyway, so, but they're like this, like out of these 10 kids, they're like this

00:09:14.240 one, this one is, could maybe make something of himself. So he ended up getting educated. He was

00:09:19.760 educated in Latin and Greek by local clergymen before he got to St. John's College in Cambridge,

00:09:25.240 coming over to England. So at the time that he came over to England, I think he was,

00:09:30.960 there's a lot of anti-Irish xenophobia going on. So I think this is part of where he changed his

00:09:36.000 last name to try and, like so many people do, when you move to a new city, you go to college,

00:09:42.180 you're like, I'm going to go by my middle name. Like I'm just, you know, my name's not Elizabeth.

00:09:47.340 i'm not patrick brunty i'm patrick bronte with umlauts on it that makes me german really

00:09:56.560 yeah so he i know the umlauts are and i will say there's a memorial to the brontes not branwell

00:10:05.360 but the three the three main ones there's a memorial to them in westminster abbey and it

00:10:12.120 was recently the bronte like association or something like the memorial was done but they

00:10:16.340 didn't put the umlauts on and this association was like put on the umlauts and then they eventually

00:10:20.320 came in with a drill and they're like which has been grunting and grunting fan energy it's like

00:10:26.200 no the umlauts are important well and they are because it's like i was thinking about this it's

00:10:31.520 like yes so he invented this name and lots of people invent their names and like no no shade

00:10:37.100 no hate against people who invent their own names all names are invented so is money but just like

00:10:42.560 he invented this name and then the daughters were like that is our name and that is how they always

00:10:46.020 wrote their name they always put the umlauts on so it's like this is this change happened um it's

00:10:51.080 stuck and honestly it's if there wasn't you know rampant tuberculosis they needed to be able to

00:10:59.460 merge with english society they were smart enough for it but you know then tuberculosis ruined

00:11:05.780 everything there is i mean just like trigger warning tuberculosis i don't have like a gong

00:11:13.920 that I can play every time someone in this story dies of tuberculosis. But if I did,

00:11:18.080 I would. Or like a church bell, just like, guess what? Tuberculosis.

00:11:23.440 So anyway, Mariah and Patrick got married. He's an Anglican curate. And so he took a job in the

00:11:30.480 Yorkshire village of Thornton near Bradford, which is where their children were born. And

00:11:36.060 that place is still a museum that's called like the Bronte birthplace or something. Because they

00:11:40.980 were born there but then they moved somewhere else

00:11:42.700 which is also a museum

00:11:44.260 because that's where they lived for most of the rest of their lives

00:11:46.940 so they had

00:11:48.660 daughters

00:11:50.080 so many daughters 0.57

00:11:52.240 except and Branwell

00:11:54.560 so the oldest daughters so there was 0.62

00:11:56.700 Mariah, Elizabeth

00:11:58.800 Charlotte was the third

00:12:00.480 then Branwell, then Emily and then

00:12:02.780 Anne was the baby

00:12:03.920 so in 1820

00:12:06.460 which is the year that

00:12:09.020 um

00:12:09.780 um george the fourth became king of england to to all the fans of prinny out there keeping track

00:12:17.180 why are you here um yeah i welcome but also like

00:12:24.680 actually it's like anti-stan accounts

00:12:28.740 actually you know what i want to say trigger warning lana and i giggle a lot

00:12:35.160 sorry if you're listening to this um for a very serious discussion of the brontes you'll have

00:12:42.900 that but it will be in between a lot of jokes and giggles so like and it's you know what it

00:12:47.680 was the brontes it's the sort of story it's like you have like if you don't laugh then like

00:12:53.020 how do you survive if you don't have dark humor you're not meant for the brontes

00:12:59.840 yeah they're not for you no it's okay to walk away and wait for go back to the jane austen episode

00:13:08.400 go back to the jane austen episode and honestly lena having you here is so much the jane austen

00:13:12.320 episode like that's where i brought on my guests there because i was like i know they're a jane

00:13:16.440 austen there's such a fandom for that and i'm like i wanted to respect that and have somebody

00:13:21.020 on who brings that and like with the brontes like i need you here to just like to bring that bronte

00:13:27.060 energy because i'm just here with names and facts tuberculosis statistics but you're coming in as

00:13:32.780 like a passionate fan of one of the books but you know you'll find out which one of those books when

00:13:36.340 we get to them writing books i i'm a passionate fan of two of the books i'm just passionate in a

00:13:41.420 very different way than some people again we'll get to that later we will get to what the books

00:13:47.360 are so the thing about patrick the dad so he's like part of the whole bronte saga and so again

00:13:54.300 like their story was written by this woman Elizabeth Gaskell who I believe she's the author

00:13:59.000 of North and South the book that is like such a good like mini-series one of the best mini-series

00:14:06.280 of all time that is absolutely on the Mulgurvy's theater list oh it's so good um so Elizabeth

00:14:11.640 Gaskell so she wrote like here's who the Brontes were and that was based on her friendship with

00:14:15.520 Charlotte Bronte and how Charlotte Bronte related stories to her so you know like any history like

00:14:21.700 that's as close to first person as you can get really but also so we'll take this with the the

00:14:27.540 grain of salt that we take any sort of person describing something but through Charlotte and

00:14:32.480 what she told Elizabeth Gaskell Patrick was a pretty horrid like terrifying father he had like

00:14:38.480 mood swings he had like rageous he had a lot of strong passions which you know what so does Emily

00:14:48.160 so like the genetically that seems true anyway so what happens is the dad becomes the

00:14:55.700 curate of this place they have all these children and then they move to the village of haworth on

00:15:01.640 the edge of the yorkshire moors so he became the curate of saint michael and all angels church

00:15:06.740 and so in terms of this position his salary was quote modest but the job came with like a house

00:15:14.420 for his like huge family of weird daughters and branwell and so they got to live there and it was

00:15:20.280 in this house overlooking the churchyard and the moors we're going to talk about what that means

00:15:26.300 for the water supply shortly lana so don't worry they will hold off on the water supply

00:15:31.740 but what i will say is so patrick so uh mariah branwell the mom she died very soon after they

00:15:39.440 arrived in haworth probably some sort of cancer um she died and then he tried to find another

00:15:47.020 woman to marry him but no one would so like that might say something about what he's like as a

00:15:52.300 person this is a lot considering most people were down to remarry yeah no he like tried to remarry

00:15:59.900 and everyone's just kind of like no thanks so he's just got these like six very young children

00:16:04.220 especially as a curate like he had a guaranteed salary yeah it's like how unpleasant was this man

00:16:11.320 well i mean probably branwell tells us what was going on with him yeah so if he's kind of like

00:16:19.340 branwell but older so he um there was some part of probably why he struggled to find a wife as well

00:16:25.900 was because the whole he was irish thing and people like were xenophobic against irish people

00:16:31.460 and so initially his children all because the mother died and he was raising them and they

00:16:37.700 didn't really see anybody else they all spoke with irish accents which i think is interesting

00:16:42.080 because the only people they saw were each other and him so they all just spoke like him i think

00:16:46.480 later in life they entered the world and met other people and their accents kind of shifted

00:16:50.960 but i do think it's interesting some of them some of the brontes entered the world

00:16:57.740 emily did not anyway so he's he's the sort of dad that we've it's kind of like a bit like

00:17:07.200 mary wallstonecraft's dad like he's just got such a chip on his shoulder and like understandably

00:17:11.400 for like how society sucks and he feels like he deserves better and like yeah but not everyone

00:17:19.420 turns out into like violent rages sir you have children yeah like like i get that you feel like

00:17:26.580 unjustly treated by the world but like also you know you have six very young children anyway and

00:17:33.960 also so they're living in haworth living conditions were poor high levels of early mortality

00:17:39.980 potentially this is related to the water supply contaminated by runoff from the graveyard

00:17:47.160 which is the most goth thing including anything emily does so they're just drinking cemetery water

00:17:56.380 this family they're almost their whole lives because they live there like non-spoiler like

00:18:03.460 even though some of them leave they always return like to this to what's now called the bronte

00:18:07.620 parsonage like so they're just drinking this graveyard water their whole lives historians

00:18:12.660 have speculated that these factors may have contributed to their deaths of tuberculosis

00:18:17.540 um you know tuberculosis caused the deaths of like everyone in this story except for the mom

00:18:24.140 that was cancer. But that's because she only just moved there. She hadn't drunk in the cemetery

00:18:27.640 water that much yet. But I feel like the cemetery water would just kind of like deplete your immune

00:18:32.900 system to some extent, right? That's the working theory. Actually, I want to say in terms of where

00:18:40.260 am I getting this information from, I perused various books about the Brontes. There's also a

00:18:45.640 very hearty Wikipedia entry about them. The Bronte Parsonage website has lots of information.

00:18:50.960 but if you want to read up on the Brontes I would say the Brontes by Juliet Barker is kind of like

00:18:56.400 the book there's also a book called the Bronte cabinet three lives in nine objects by Deborah

00:19:03.800 Lutz which showed some pictures of things which I will describe to you later anyway so there are

00:19:08.900 these kids growing up with this kind of angry dad drinking cemetery juice in the Yorkshire moors

00:19:16.020 that they don't feel like they belong because they're irish yeah exactly and so six children

00:19:24.360 and then eventually and maybe this is part of why patrick stops trying to find a wife it's like

00:19:29.320 their aunt so elizabeth branwell their mother's sister comes to help out so it's kind of like

00:19:35.300 well she can raise the children so he's like great i don't need a wife then sweet like okay

00:19:39.380 so she was there throughout their lives basically but also the sudden death of their mother like

00:19:44.860 that's distressing to people of very, any age. Um, but I would say like at this point, Charlotte

00:19:50.240 was five years old. I feel like Emily and Anne were younger. So it's like a very young

00:19:56.760 loss that they're dealing with, but get used to it. Cause guess what?

00:20:03.080 Nothing but more family death to come. So three years later, three years after the death of the

00:20:10.020 mom. Patrick sent the three, no, the four oldest sisters, all the children except for Branwell

00:20:16.120 and Anne, who's the baby. So Mariah, Elizabeth, Charlotte, and Emily, the girls were all sent to

00:20:22.200 the clergy daughter's school at Cohen Bridge in Lancashire. So at this point, Mariah was 10,

00:20:28.300 Elizabeth was nine, Charlotte was eight, Emily was five. They'd previously had no formal education,

00:20:34.080 which is not odd. Like we've talked a bunch this series about kind of what kind of schooling did

00:20:39.200 girls get. So that's not strange. So I do have some quotes here. Charlotte's school report 0.97

00:20:46.340 mentions that Charlotte writes indifferently and knows nothing of grammar, geography, history,

00:20:51.040 or accomplishments, although she is altogether clever of her age. So it was the same sort of

00:20:56.780 family, kind of like the Austins were initially, where I think the dad was focusing all the

00:21:01.420 educational stuff on Branwell, because like, that's the son, like, let's give him a good

00:21:04.620 education. These girls, like, they just have to learn the skills to like be wives or whatever. 1.00

00:21:09.200 he'll clearly use it i mean branwell is just i'm trying to think if there's been someone as

00:21:18.720 useless there's been so many people in so many episodes listeners let me know but branwell is

00:21:26.460 just oh branwell so i don't think any teacher would have said that branwell was altogether

00:21:34.720 of his age what brenwell is giving me in these early years of just like a bunch of children

00:21:40.880 growing up in the moors even though like they're siblings but it's a bit like in little women how

00:21:46.140 the girls play with laurie when they're little kids it's kind of like here's about girls and

00:21:49.600 here's a boy who they let play with them and he's into it like he as children they all got along

00:21:55.240 with each other really well i i get the feeling that like he wasn't particularly clever and all

00:22:01.200 the girls kind of were too clever and he's like the auntie henry he just didn't have that i he

00:22:09.180 that spark to support them in any way so he just he but but he likes going along with their fun

00:22:15.820 he liked having a good time but that looks like as an adult again later on so this so this school

00:22:24.720 this school which is called um lana you call it the trauma bonding the trauma boarding school

00:22:30.760 if if you have read Jane Eyre you know at school this is yeah so here's the thing like and as we

00:22:38.780 come across different parts of different stories like we you or I may mention the the Bronte

00:22:44.260 sisters books are all um fictional novels but they're highly derived from their personal

00:22:51.220 experiences of things to the to the extent that like when these novels are published like some

00:22:56.060 they didn't know a lot of people in the world right so when the book was published it's like

00:23:01.480 wait is this me it's like kind of has to be because you're the only person she's ever met

00:23:05.620 who is from brussels so yeah sir they they really did originate um writing people you hate into a

00:23:13.160 story to kill them off like they really brought that energy to the publishing world yeah the

00:23:21.080 whole like that advice of like write what you know it's like they're like okay done 0.96

00:23:26.600 a book full of shitty people who die um anyway so the school was horrible so uh there's 0.81

00:23:35.720 unsanitary conditions they were not fed well frequent outbreaks of disease um and after an 0.98

00:23:41.440 outbreak of typhus the two oldest bronte sisters mariah and elizabeth both fell ill and died

00:23:48.220 tightness is a disease that comes from unsanitary conditions it's not an infection or a water

00:23:55.600 disease it's a literally like bugs living on you disease so yeah that tells you a lot about the

00:24:03.920 school so it was horrific um and so to watch the two oldest sisters die so no charlotte is the

00:24:10.520 oldest one left and she does step into this big sister energy very hard um but she also said

00:24:18.060 she claimed and this is through like elizabeth gaskell's book about her but um that the conditions

00:24:22.620 at the school had permanently affected her own health sure did no and her development because

00:24:28.020 she was the oldest of the people at the school like the young emily we'll see how it affected

00:24:32.840 emily but health-wise charlotte like she was always very short um she didn't emily became

00:24:39.920 more tall like she had very poor eyesight like i think that this the older you were the more this 1.00

00:24:44.740 affected you but she was probably also severely malnourished yeah i mean obviously grew on 1.00

00:24:52.040 grave water and then went to a school that like didn't eat anything and didn't feed you and didn't

00:24:57.580 treat you like a person so much like um actually we should tell the listeners um we're going to

00:25:03.820 talk a bit about jane air in this episode but if you want to hear lana talk a lot about jane air

00:25:08.240 join the patreon because we're going to record that after just jane air this is the equivalent

00:25:13.220 of her letting me talk about the holy roman empire this is this is my other holy roman empire

00:25:18.200 so we're gonna like just so that we can like stick to this bronte episode the jane air

00:25:23.900 discussion will be on patreon later but just for people who haven't read jane air haven't read it

00:25:29.920 in a while like jane air goes to a shitty boarding school where her friend dies right

00:25:33.900 yes well everybody dies she gets sent home well no she doesn't get sent she she survives

00:25:43.040 Everyone dies except for Jane Eyre.

00:25:44.880 Driving, no.

00:25:46.000 Surviving, yes.

00:25:48.620 So after the deaths of the two oldest daughters, Mariah and Elizabeth, Patrick, I mean, to

00:25:55.380 his credit, was just like, wait a minute.

00:25:57.940 Maybe this school is terrible.

00:25:59.660 So he brought Charlotte and Emily back home and he arranged for them to be taught at home,

00:26:03.580 I guess, with tutors or something.

00:26:05.740 Let me just see.

00:26:06.420 So yeah, this is just, I have in my notes just a few examples of how the headmaster of

00:26:11.200 the school and jane air is like exactly like the headmaster of the school that they went to

00:26:15.320 to the extent that the real life guys threatened to sue her for libel

00:26:19.080 which was like a choice you made like why would you admit that yeah why would you be like oh how

00:26:26.980 clever and interesting that she is that she made up this horrible character that i've never

00:26:32.000 considered it remotely like myself exactly like just bring attention to it just like

00:26:37.000 Or did you run a school where all the children died?

00:26:39.580 Hmm, okay.

00:26:40.680 Like, it's a thing that you admit to that.

00:26:43.480 So they're back at the Parsonage,

00:26:45.400 which is now the Bronte Parsonage Museum.

00:26:47.880 So Charlotte, nine years old,

00:26:49.680 oldest sister, 0.98

00:26:50.520 and she takes over care of her younger siblings 0.80

00:26:54.900 under the supervision of their aunt, Elizabeth.

00:26:57.600 Although it did say Patrick arranged for schooling.

00:27:01.100 I think part of the schooling was like,

00:27:02.600 grandma went to school

00:27:03.440 and then they could like read his books after

00:27:04.980 or something like that.

00:27:06.040 or they could tell him what it means.

00:27:09.180 He went to school and then he asked questions

00:27:11.200 and they're like, oh, no, this is what they're talking about.

00:27:13.580 Just like, ah, yes, that makes sense.

00:27:15.520 And he would do all the homework for him.

00:27:17.760 They were all like intellectually curious sorts of people.

00:27:21.840 And Patrick, the dad, like remember he wanted to be a writer and stuff

00:27:24.820 and he went to college.

00:27:25.620 Like he encouraged his children to read widely,

00:27:28.660 to take an interest in current affairs,

00:27:30.500 to enjoy music, art and poetry.

00:27:32.660 He introduced them to the work of Lord Byron.

00:27:36.040 who we've talked about on this podcast before and this becomes very significant to them and

00:27:43.060 their writing in terms of the byronic hero figure because the the bronte sisters really like uh

00:27:50.740 a byronic lana can you explain a byronic hero they they like broody people who think they're

00:27:57.120 very important they like toxic men so much so much they don't have any but they like them

00:28:06.180 they like the concept of it so lord byron his work really um and we've talked about lord byron

00:28:14.460 as a person there's a whole episode about it if you want to hear how much i hate him but this is

00:28:19.140 when you read jane air when you read weathering heights it's just like oh okay what is a byronic

00:28:23.860 hero oh these guys in these books okay like they they really are the og uh dark romance girlies

00:28:31.960 like they they know that they're toxic men they would never actually like you know spend time

00:28:38.820 with one but that doesn't mean that they don't love them and so what's really interesting is

00:28:44.080 like they did read very widely like they read the newspapers and stuff they knew what was going on

00:28:48.000 in the world and so the dad shared newspapers with them her mother had subscribed to something

00:28:54.860 called the ladies magazine and charlotte got you like they were still left behind as she read them

00:28:58.940 although patrick later burnt these magazines because they contained foolish love stories

00:29:04.760 so like okay patrick too late for that yeah anyway so the children this is such an interesting part

00:29:13.060 of the whole saga so this is like them as a gang like this is where i just really picture them

00:29:16.420 it's like to me just because like i know the little women movies quite well um the scenes

00:29:22.620 where they're like playing together and they put on plays and they're just and lorries it's like

00:29:25.940 that is the vibe like the brontes weren't interacting with anyone else in the world um

00:29:31.520 just there with their dad and their irish accent and their mom's sister and so they um created

00:29:38.520 plays together using their toys um and they created i don't know how much you know about

00:29:44.180 this lineup but this whole like ongoing i don't know what we would call it now like shared role

00:29:50.360 playing universe they had their whole shared world yeah they were just they were basically

00:29:58.100 writing their own fanfic from the beginning which is really like telling of what they ended up

00:30:03.160 writing is like it gives that overly dramatic soap opera vibe so what it's called is the glass town

00:30:12.880 it's a shared fantasy world charlotte and branwell initiated it um emily and ann joined

00:30:20.240 and then later there was a schism and emily and ann set off and did their own world called gondol

00:30:26.700 which again very fanfic vibes it's extremely that's branwell bronte here's what he's giving

00:30:36.060 us he's giving us a very famous portrait of his sisters later on he drew a map of the glass town

00:30:41.140 federation prayer post schism post so you can see which which area each of the siblings oversee

00:30:50.660 so the main characters of the glass town confederacy were two initially again like

00:30:56.560 they're keeping up to date with news and events and stuff so it was like two great leaders and

00:31:00.820 they're basically napoleon and wellington but with um fake made-up names and then as it went on

00:31:08.040 so it's it became more and more their own original ip the fandom drift is real okay so

00:31:16.620 what it is so the main characters are zamorna the duke of wellington's son and alexander percy

00:31:21.440 known as northangerland who are guess what byronic heroes so they very britty much staring at things

00:31:32.880 what i love what i love like i mentioned they like the dad brought the newspapers and stuff

00:31:37.900 and so they have these little if you go to the bronte personage museum i saw pictures of

00:31:41.460 these and some of the biographies they wrote stories about their fan fiction world but like

00:31:49.340 to make books like they didn't have paper but they would just tear off like the sides of a pamphlet

00:31:53.880 or the sides of a piece of newspaper and write in the tie and they're using like ink pens like you

00:32:00.960 know with like loose ink like the teeniest tiniest little handwriting these doll-sized books um and

00:32:07.560 a lot of these still exist at the museum but this is what they were doing so they're just like

00:32:11.080 these are creative creative little kids that make do with with what little they have

00:32:18.000 yeah and the books are and then they wrote like fake magazines for themselves with stories in

00:32:24.200 them that are like takedown of each other's ideas so that happens when you only have like

00:32:31.660 three friends and they're your siblings yeah when that is your whole world it's just like

00:32:37.640 but also like you mentioned the trauma bonding school like especially charlotte and emily

00:32:42.940 having gone through that and witnessing the deaths of their sisters like they were so close

00:32:47.080 in this trauma bond type way like very codependent yeah they they realize that they can't trust

00:32:54.560 anyone else and that no one is safe anywhere like everybody dies they're just they're little

00:33:01.720 goth kids living their little sad goth lives in the moors um so branwell made a fake magazine

00:33:10.680 a homemade magazine called Branwell's Magazine.

00:33:15.060 He named it after himself a strange.

00:33:19.100 Anyway, so as this goes, like Charlotte,

00:33:22.360 and again, we know the most about Charlotte

00:33:23.700 because that's, she was friends with Elizabeth Gaskell

00:33:26.200 and Elizabeth Gaskell wrote the biography of the Brontes.

00:33:29.000 But we know that Charlotte continued,

00:33:31.520 she was interested in writing, you know, like myself,

00:33:34.580 like a little kid, you like write books for fun.

00:33:36.420 And then when you get older, you're like,

00:33:37.680 no, I like writing, I'm going to try.

00:33:38.820 So she got into writing poetry, which Branwell published in Branwell's magazine, a magazine with circulation of one, which was their house address.

00:33:51.920 Anyway, so her first, she started writing novellas, which were sort of like set in the world of their like Baironic heroes.

00:33:59.420 but then she started to shift towards um writing about more realistic things and not about their

00:34:06.800 um fake thing realistic with like air quotes around it well just kind of like less

00:34:14.260 realistic like the soap opera realistic not realism yeah not there's not we're not going

00:34:21.940 you can try to make a case for it you will fail so charlotte was when she was 15 she was sent away

00:34:31.340 to another boarding school in merfield here's the thing um on this podcast i have learned that when

00:34:39.200 i include the names of what are to me random obscure place names in any of these stories

00:34:45.460 someone inevitably sends me a message being like oh my god i can't believe you mentioned merfield

00:34:49.020 that's where my grandmother was so i'm just like i'm throwing some place names out here just for

00:34:54.080 like the girlies so she went out to rowhead boarding school and she became friends i'm i'm

00:35:01.980 just i'm just startled because she um made friends with people who were not her sisters

00:35:06.920 good for her um two girls of her own age ellen nussy and mary taylor ellen huh is there someone

00:35:15.440 called ellen in one of no there's a book there's someone called ellen and there are theories about

00:35:20.440 helen helen okay well we know that she's really good at cloaking people's real identities in her

00:35:26.320 book correct and it's her best friend in the letter writing best friend style we've talked a

00:35:35.320 lot this series about women and girls writing very passionate pen pal letters to each other

00:35:41.360 and what does that mean and so she's like this just comes right in line with all with

00:35:47.440 Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley um with Georgina Duchess of Devonshire with the those

00:35:55.020 women from Edinburgh who ran the girls school so just like more girls gals being pals gal pals

00:35:59.940 very very good friends passionate women friendships so oh so both Mary and Ellen I think when Elizabeth

00:36:07.500 Gaskell wrote the book she like spoke to people who knew Charlotte and both Mary and Ellen recalled

00:36:12.180 Charlotte had old-fashioned clothing and an Irish accent so all the way up to this point which is

00:36:17.020 again like of course she still has the accent because she's still not engaging with the world

00:36:20.620 other than her father and her siblings but even into her teens she still had this accent but the

00:36:25.620 old-fashioned clothing is interesting well they're poor like they're not they're not from a wealthy

00:36:32.140 parsonage or anything like that no he's the parson and he has five or i guess at this point three

00:36:38.880 but like daughters like how yeah there's going to be hand-me-downs like they're probably wearing

00:36:43.800 their mom's old dresses like where are they going to get clothes from and it's not like he's going

00:36:48.340 to go out of his way to get them more things he's got to get that for branwell branwell i'm sure gets

00:36:54.400 the clothes so it's yet again how many times in this podcast where it's just like you have a family

00:37:00.300 and the girls are great, but it's like, oh, but the son is how we have to focus. Like how many

00:37:05.380 times like there's somebody, you know, like Fredegund and her sons or anything, or Agrippina

00:37:09.240 and Nero, where it's just like these useless sons and they get all schooling and all the

00:37:14.160 attention. It's like, well, cause they're the boy. It's like, there's so many women around you who 0.96

00:37:17.180 would have benefited so much more. Anyway. So Ellen and Mary, her lifelong friends, very good

00:37:24.540 friends um ellen commented on charlotte has a lack of appetite and a reluctance to eat meat 1.00

00:37:30.420 which is probably i'm gonna guess to do with her overall health issues yeah i mean she probably 0.98

00:37:39.220 survived typhus she probably survived some really awful things at that school she's probably never

00:37:45.200 had a lot of meat so it's it's really hard to start eating meat when you haven't had a lot of

00:37:49.520 it yeah well because when i said like her dad's diet growing up was like porridge and potatoes

00:37:54.080 like I feel like that's all he knew so I don't know if he was offering them anything different

00:37:58.360 from that so he probably would have if he had a lot of money but meat's expensive yeah yeah exactly

00:38:05.440 and they're not growing up on a farm like there's not animals around so yeah also had very poor

00:38:11.440 eyesight so she was unable to join in ball games or learn to play from sheet music 0.65

00:38:16.180 which makes me sad that no one got her glasses but she's poor anyway so she went off to she's

00:38:23.560 15 years old she went off to row basically she was sent to this boarding school to learn how to be

00:38:27.520 a teacher so she spent a year at this school and then after that year she went back to be a teacher

00:38:32.840 to her siblings so that is why she was sent there but she made friends so it's good that she was

00:38:39.400 sent there and it did show her and her family that at least one of them can survive with human

00:38:45.640 society yeah yeah they don't it's okay sometimes to leave the house sometimes so she she went back

00:38:54.580 to be the teacher to emily and to ann and then she in 1835 so she's just kind of like okay we've 0.97

00:39:03.380 talked on the podcast before about in this era the what jobs are there for women to do like if 1.00

00:39:11.000 you're not going to marry a husband and that gives you like a house and a place to live, 1.00

00:39:15.460 like you need to make money for yourself. So it's like, well, you can be a governess

00:39:18.640 or you can be a domestic servant or you can be like a seamstress. And so she's just like teaching

00:39:24.540 is the career I will turn to because it doesn't look like these, these girls are going to find 1.00

00:39:31.640 wealthy husbands, nor do they seem to be interested in that. So she's just becoming a teacher. So she 1.00

00:39:37.100 teaches her sisters. And I guess when they've learned enough, she goes back to rowhead school

00:39:41.000 as a teacher so let me just see she's 15 she's 19 years old she returns to rowhead

00:39:46.080 school to be a teacher although i want to mention as well she hates teaching

00:39:51.560 this is not her life's passion there's quotes from her just being like teaching the classes

00:40:00.140 always gets in the way of me doing my writing i want to do these kids are all annoying i hate

00:40:05.220 this is not she doesn't like it but it's just kind of like what other job is there

00:40:09.960 Emily okay so let's talk about Emily Bronte when I first started researching them I messaged Lana

00:40:16.780 and I was like Lana how what how do you tell the Brontes apart which is which but as I researched

00:40:21.840 them I was just like okay Charlotte is like big sister Bronte like she has that sort of responsible

00:40:27.120 kind of energy she's gonna keep them all alive if she possibly can Anne is the youngest she didn't 0.78

00:40:34.240 go to trauma boarding school. She was a little infant when her mother died. Like she's the least

00:40:39.140 traumatized by life events just by virtue of her age. So she's a bit more, I'm going to say boring

00:40:45.420 in the sense of she's like the most capable to function in society. And Emily, the word that I 0.98

00:40:52.600 keep thinking is just like feral. She's just like a feral cat, but person. She is, Emily is like,

00:41:02.160 i don't i don't know she's like a spirit of the moors zero interest in immigrating with human

00:41:11.380 society she loves dogs there's some really cute pictures that she drew of her very cute dogs who

00:41:19.180 she loved very much um she yeah so if charlotte sort of took on the trauma and it became sort of

00:41:27.680 maybe like she had health concerns maybe that are exacerbated maybe by like psychological stuff

00:41:32.400 and she sort of turned inward with it emily just through the trauma just became like a wild beast

00:41:39.420 the word that they like to use is like free spirit too she doesn't care about humans free spirit

00:41:47.620 sounds a lot more chill than yeah no she like if if anybody can turn into a wild animal and

00:41:57.620 and roam the the the moors for the rest of life it would be emily like emily didn't want to be a

00:42:03.440 person anymore and so she just didn't and the thing about emily that i want to point out this

00:42:10.060 week of the movie of withering heights coming out is emily's the one who wrote withering heights

00:42:14.640 so anyone who's like what the fuck is this story it was written by her it was written by her and 0.60

00:42:21.420 she didn't when we get to the part where they start publishing books emily is like no i write 0.97

00:42:26.000 things for myself. No one else is meant to read them. And they're like, Emily, like, girl, we

00:42:30.020 need money. You have to publish your book. So she wrote this book for herself and it's fucking

00:42:36.220 bananas. And this is who she is. Like when it's like, Oh, it's like, I picture her just kind of 1.00

00:42:43.120 like hair, like matted. It's just like, where's Emily? Oh, I don't know. She's just been like

00:42:46.860 living in a burrow for six months. Like she's just like gnawing on tree bark. Like Emily is

00:42:52.420 just that's emily that's yeah she she wants to be a wild thing that lives in the forest 0.99

00:42:58.080 and she can't so she just makes them up so how would she need society everything i just said 0.99

00:43:07.060 so imagine charlotte um returns to rowhead school to be a teacher accompanied by emily

00:43:11.460 who is a pupil at this boarding school emily's tuition is being financed by charlotte's teaching

00:43:17.100 picture everything we just said Emily attending school classes with probably reasonably well-bred 0.99

00:43:27.660 young women and she's just comes in and she's just like did she bite any of them that's all I want to

00:43:36.760 know is did she bit any Emily is speaking in crow language today at least in the back explaining

00:43:44.760 about about like random children her father brought home one day it's like dad never brought

00:43:52.840 any children home it's like and then she's like oh in the glass world confederacy but i have my

00:43:59.480 chism and this is my new like starts picking a fight with charlotte about an imaginary place

00:44:05.580 like all of this i'm gonna read a very politely phrased sentence emily was unable to adapt to 0.97

00:44:12.240 life at school weird she seems so up for it so she left and then Anne took her place there

00:44:22.700 and I just mentioned Anne so my name is Anne her name is Anne we're both the youngest siblings

00:44:28.720 Anne Bronte's books are not as famous as Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights and they're well regarded

00:44:35.740 but they don't really have that weird spark that Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights have

00:44:40.860 they don't take as many risks because she liked to be part of society yeah this is because ann

00:44:47.960 was capable of functioning in the world and that meant that the books she wrote were less deranged

00:44:54.480 so ann is like if if we've got like feral like creature emily and we've got kind of charlotte

00:45:02.280 with her like big anxiety and big sister energy ann is fine and it's just like

00:45:07.680 functioning person in the world she's creative like she she didn't write a terrible book

00:45:14.580 she just didn't have that weird genius part that her sisters had because they took risks 0.97

00:45:22.220 and her sisters took risks because they had lived through a lot of shit and just kind of gave no 0.98

00:45:29.680 fucks but and gave fucks and somebody had to because branwell wasn't gonna do it exactly so 0.98

00:45:37.280 Anne, so here's a nice description. Anne was hardworking and determined to acquire the 1.00

00:45:42.480 education she would need to support herself. So Emily is just kind of like not really thinking

00:45:49.080 about anything other than living in the moment. But Anne was just kind of like, okay, like she

00:45:53.540 could look at the family and be like, our dad's not going to live forever. Like Branwell obviously

00:45:56.680 isn't going to take care of us. Like we're going to, I need education so we can get a job so we can

00:46:01.380 have money because we're like three unmarried. Like she understood how things work.

00:46:08.720 And as a little sister, I, I liked that little sister energy.

00:46:14.120 Anyway, so Anne, so whereas Emily was quote, unable to adapt to life at school,

00:46:20.600 um, and was so committed to life at school. She stayed for two years, returned home only during

00:46:27.980 christmas and summer holidays like she no other bronte was ever away for so long i don't think 0.83

00:46:35.740 she didn't have the same trauma so it was easy for her not to want to go back because she probably

00:46:41.180 didn't like it there very much exactly exactly like the bronte parsonage which is like the house

00:46:47.460 where they live in which is now this museum um it was really it was so much the safe space for

00:46:52.820 Emily and for Charlotte like they kept returning um and in a way like I think can be relatable to

00:47:00.220 a lot of people who have various things like when you're just you're stressed you're like I just

00:47:05.480 want to go home and just like curl up in my bed like that's an understandable reflex um and

00:47:11.100 to them I was like I want to never leave this house or talk to anyone in the world ever like

00:47:16.720 it was that was where they went with it but Anne was like I can leave and function because she

00:47:22.140 didn't have this trauma as the resident shut in um it's it's like you don't have to like your

00:47:31.180 house to know that your house is the safest place to be sometimes yeah like it doesn't have to be

00:47:37.100 the best place but it's it's a known quantity and when you have a lot of anxiety and trauma like

00:47:42.420 like emily didn't want to be in the house she wanted to be in a burrow adjacent to the house

00:47:49.940 Charlotte wanted to be at the house with the doors and the walls the windows and everything

00:47:57.040 surrounding her keeping her safe I really wanted to be in the yard that she knew

00:48:02.240 Anne was like I would like to be a person in society exactly so it's like three really

00:48:08.960 different flavors of Bronte is what we're looking at here so Anne is the one who although I will say

00:48:16.160 and became seriously ill with gastritis while she was at school.

00:48:20.660 And this is interesting.

00:48:22.780 Probably eating meat.

00:48:24.760 Probably, honestly.

00:48:26.040 It's just like something other than potatoes.

00:48:28.300 Anyway, but the school that she was at was Calvinist.

00:48:32.780 So a minister was called to see her during her illness,

00:48:36.780 which suggests that it might have been like a faith.

00:48:39.800 Like she might have been distressed for the Calvinism of the school.

00:48:44.100 I mean, obviously, obviously it was anxiety.

00:48:47.400 Like, whatever was wrong with her, she wasn't actually sick.

00:48:49.740 It must have been anxiety.

00:48:51.760 She prayed it away.

00:48:54.340 So she was not thriving.

00:48:55.800 And Charlotte, like, based on the death of her two sisters at a school,

00:49:02.000 Charlotte was concerned.

00:49:03.220 And so she wrote to the father.

00:49:04.600 Like, she's like, we need Anne to be sent home.

00:49:07.480 Like, I can't have another dead sister.

00:49:09.080 And so Anne was sent home.

00:49:11.780 She got home.

00:49:13.320 Charlotte A. McHaley jumps through school tales, people.

00:49:18.460 I will not have another educational-based death on my hands.

00:49:22.980 You know, it's interesting.

00:49:23.860 Like, she has so much trauma about school.

00:49:26.000 And then she's just like, well, I guess I'll just go to a school to train to be a teacher and then teach at a school.

00:49:30.820 It's like the one place.

00:49:33.540 Like, I don't like it, but I'm going to do it for my family.

00:49:37.320 Because it's the only job she can think of.

00:49:39.040 I have, I think it's on, I posted on Instagram and it's on Patreon.

00:49:42.820 I have a bingo card for this series for the Regency era, which I did early on.

00:49:48.960 And if I were to redo it, I would have another square that was like, that would be like, 0.79

00:49:54.180 women try to open a school because that seems to keep happening. 0.99

00:49:58.080 Women become teachers, even though they don't like it. 0.90

00:50:00.340 Like, cause this is happening in so many stories.

00:50:03.960 Anyway, so the Brontes, it's like, it's like the house has a magnetic pull and the Brontes

00:50:09.700 just keep coming back to the house.

00:50:10.960 like they can never go too far away for too long house is safe house is good now i don't know how

00:50:18.400 this hack came to be but somehow in 1838 emily got a job as a teacher somebody probably came

00:50:26.580 across her in the moors and thought she was a wise hermit because this is the era of the ornamental

00:50:32.320 hermits i don't know they just saw her oh they're just like digging in the ground and they're like

00:50:37.200 She must know things.

00:50:39.320 So she got to become a teacher at Law Hill School in the Yorkshire town of Halifax.

00:50:46.200 Okay.

00:50:47.460 She, how did it say, like, she did not thrive.

00:50:52.740 Okay, so she suffered under the stress of the 17-hour workday.

00:50:59.040 I mean, yes, that is also part of why I am now a shut-in, so I understand that.

00:51:04.020 no i think a 17 hour workday would take it out of even you know what aunt bronte i think would 0.98

00:51:09.240 struggle under that emily also hated the pupils she thought they're all assholes 0.95

00:51:13.940 well they were human they kept coming up and asking her questions 0.97

00:51:18.480 why do you want to know things

00:51:21.420 bothering me she preferred the company of the dog i mean who doesn't yeah she's just like why do you

00:51:29.880 keep disturbing i just want to hang out with the dog it's like emily you're the teacher

00:51:33.160 like they're paying you to be anyway so she um she became a teacher in 38 in april 1839 um she

00:51:45.600 came back to bronte personage so less than a year she tried she you know she did the best she could

00:51:55.000 but like emily's gonna emily and do i feel like this woman wrote a romance

00:51:59.620 i'm sorry it's not that kind of romance people we will talk about this later when we're doing

00:52:09.920 our jane air discussion on patreon but i like books movies tv shows i like things where lots

00:52:18.240 of weird shit is happening that's and core and when i read withering heights i was just like

00:52:25.160 this book is amazing i love lettering heights i just know what it is yeah no it's just like 0.92

00:52:34.060 it's just like this is a soap opera none of these people like each other everyone is terrible 0.54

00:52:40.560 like fucked up things keep happening so the fact that it's being weathering heights like this week 0.73

00:52:46.300 that you're listening to this podcast people um that it's like the movie it's like the great love 1.00

00:52:51.200 story of our time it's like bitch what do you need therapy is a fucked up book like one eighth 0.98

00:53:00.520 of it is like two people quasi in a love story sort of and then death happened 50 of it is a 1.00

00:53:08.800 random guy laying in a bed listening to an old lady talk at him yeah like this is if you it's

00:53:15.280 like anyway so the fact that anyone thinks that it's a love story is bananas and also it's just 0.99

00:53:21.380 like this is who wrote it of course it's this fucked up like all she does is live in her head 0.98

00:53:26.320 burrow in the ground like she's not she does not have experience with romance she has experience 1.00

00:53:34.260 with the byronic ideal of romance and as we all know that is not romance either that is sucks at 0.95

00:53:42.780 best but that is where like myself as like person like i like books and things where fucked up stuff

00:53:49.160 happens i also like murder mysteries i don't tend to read a romance novel that's not my vibe 0.55

00:53:54.560 i read weathering heights and i was like this book fucks i like this book so like i like it

00:53:59.840 and that's how you know it's not a romance i am a romance girly i am a dark romance girly 0.73

00:54:05.760 and thus Jane Eyre yeah several of the Bronte sisters books including Anne's books have people 0.55

00:54:13.060 who go off to be governesses and fucked up things happen so like we're just seeing the 1.00

00:54:17.520 life experience occur to give them that experience also religious people are a pain in the ass like 0.99

00:54:23.780 that that is time to provide okay so now we're in 1839 so remember Charlotte has her friends 0.99

00:54:31.620 there's ellen not to be confused with helen from jane eyre ellen's brother proposed marriage to her

00:54:40.900 and she declined so they're not i feel like she declined because she's like would that mean i

00:54:47.260 would have to leave my house in which case no i i do wonder if she wanted a great romance

00:54:52.760 and just never got one like she liked the idea of romance but she had a very firm idea in her 0.73

00:55:00.020 head of what that would be like and a practical marriage is not going to be it exactly this would

00:55:06.500 be like a transactional thing but yeah so i could see like this would be a way like oh maybe this

00:55:10.760 way like i could have we've seen like other people in history who are like okay like this will be a

00:55:15.160 way that i can get money and help my family like sometimes people do these transactional marriages

00:55:19.040 because those reasons but that's not her vibe that's not what she's into although i will say

00:55:24.380 potentially this is part of why she declined um later that same year she wrote a piece called

00:55:29.640 farewell to angria so angria was her part of the schism of the confederacy of

00:55:34.520 she grew out of her fandom she did so she wrote this piece that was about her growing dependency

00:55:43.480 on the fantasy world fearing for her sanity with the sense she was losing grip on reality

00:55:48.320 she made the decision to set aside um her fantasy world so so instead she wrote jr

00:55:54.980 oh um we'll get into the circumstances of that in a bit

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00:58:32.120 So she's like, okay, I need to, I can't live in this fantasy world anymore.

00:58:36.380 Or like, I'm going to, like the difference between Charlotte and Anne is, Anne is kind of like, again, like without the same experience of trauma, like Anne is just kind of like, I'm going to get an education.

00:58:47.240 I'm going to get a job.

00:58:48.420 And Charlotte's like, I'm going to get an education and a job, but she's just like, can't make it work because she like has so much trauma. 0.98

00:58:56.640 Anyway, so she gets a job, but also Charlotte, importantly, hates teaching, hates children, hate. 0.99

00:59:04.860 and so she gets a job as a governess and guess what she hates it 1.00

00:59:08.220 because she hates children she hates being away from home

00:59:16.140 she's having to work yeah what the quote well just what this says here is that she

00:59:24.740 she felt like the her employees treated her like a servant it's like she was yeah but i feel like

00:59:33.420 that's a bit isn't Jane Eyre kind of uh she's hired to take care of the little French girl

00:59:38.660 right she's yeah she's hired she is hired as a governess yeah doesn't stay that way but

00:59:45.560 I mean she does but very very little time in the story is spent on her actually engaging with the

00:59:53.000 child she is meant to be all but raising okay so then she she got she just kind of bounced from

00:59:58.840 job to job just being governess for various different places um she's working for this

01:00:02.320 family called the Sidgwick family as a governess to their son John who once threw a bible at her

01:00:08.400 an incident that may have inspired the section of Jane Eyre in which a person called John

01:00:12.840 throws a book at Jane Eyre that's her cousin but you know whatever you you write what you got

01:00:22.060 it's like one time someone threw a book at me so I'm just I know what it's like to have a book

01:00:26.300 thrown at you so I'm gonna put that in my book as well I'm gonna write a spoiled child and it's

01:00:30.280 going to be you john and when you read it you'll know so charlotte like again um i think this was

01:00:39.480 elizabeth gaskell later was going on and talking to people like what was charlotte like so the

01:00:43.060 sidrick family were like charlotte the worst governess we ever had um it often went to bed 0.63

01:00:49.780 all day um leaving the heavily pregnant to look after children where it's like charlotte you had 0.93

01:00:56.420 one job which was to look after the children and you are in bed all day because you have like 1.00

01:01:01.940 illness anyway she was not suited for this job obviously anyway she got another job as another 0.99

01:01:08.940 governess another family she hated it charlotte if only she had another skill that she could 0.99

01:01:16.280 eventually fall back on yeah no exactly so so charlotte is like out there trying to get like 0.99

01:01:23.060 she's trying to get work to support the family which is like what needs to happen she knows she 0.63

01:01:28.960 has to do it she doesn't have to like it though yeah well she doesn't like it but also to the

01:01:34.380 extent that she just like can't make herself do something she doesn't like whereas ann um i don't

01:01:40.520 know i think my bias is coming out but i do like a youngest sister called ann ann is just like

01:01:45.740 again like she didn't she doesn't she's not carrying the same trauma with her but ann like

01:01:50.240 can actually function in the world. So like, thank God through someone like this in this family,

01:01:53.800 because she needs, she gets that like, they need income, like quite a bit. So she knew she had to

01:02:01.440 earn a living. The father had no private income. When he died, the parsonage would revert to the

01:02:06.560 church. So like, they wouldn't even still be able to live there. And so she, like she, I think they

01:02:13.720 all knew this, but Anne was the one who's able to actually function in the world. So she was just,

01:02:18.960 I think she probably looked at Charlotte and Emily and she's like, it's up to me.

01:02:24.060 Sorry, Branwell is still there.

01:02:26.340 By this point, I think he's just a drunken ne'er-do-well.

01:02:31.700 And there he stays.

01:02:34.140 He was a nice brother friend for them in the glass confederacy era.

01:02:40.480 And then he became an adult and just, he's bringing nothing to the table.

01:02:45.220 anyway so she and was like okay i'm gonna go be a governess again near murfield like shout out to 0.98

01:02:55.160 murfield so she she tried being a governess the children were assholes but the parents were like 1.00

01:03:02.600 no we're raising them free range so you can never punish them and eventually she's just like fuck 1.00

01:03:06.860 this and so she it didn't work out she returned like a magnet she returns back to home with the 0.99

01:03:12.640 family. Um, but her unhappy time with this family is believed to be the inspiration between behind

01:03:18.060 her novel, Agnes Gray, for anyone who knows her novel, Agnes Gray. And then Anne returns to

01:03:24.440 Haworth. She forms a friendship with, so her father has a new curate who's like a hot young

01:03:29.400 hunk whose name is William Waitman. He was 25. I think she's like a bit younger than that. Like

01:03:37.240 probably like 19 or so by now he was handsome he was friendly um he had a flirtatious personality

01:03:43.420 i love this detail upon learning that none of the bronte sisters had ever received a valentine's

01:03:47.640 card he wrote cards and poems to each of them so he's this could have turned into something nice

01:03:53.200 until he died of cholera i mean when in doubt just killed them from something yeah you know

01:04:01.240 i'm surprised like the tuberculosis hasn't it's gonna show up but like there's we had typhus we've

01:04:06.060 cancer, not cholera. Anyway, so Anne takes another governess position. She is determined to make a

01:04:12.940 success of this, to become well-liked. And actually the girls who she was watching over became her 0.99

01:04:18.200 lifelong friends. And I do like this as a little detail about Anne. She developed an interest in

01:04:23.280 geology. She liked to collect semi-precious stones. She's in common with Georgiana, Duchess of

01:04:28.780 adventure um and in her novel she includes discussion of semi-precious stones because

01:04:37.280 that is perfect fiction she's just like this is a nice hobby anyone could do men or women

01:04:42.940 collecting stone okay so i'll tell you what happens and you can probably guess how it's

01:04:51.160 gonna go so 1842 charlotte traveled with emily to brussels to a boarding school run by constantine

01:04:59.860 hijay and his wife claire so both siblings were student teachers so charlotte taught english and

01:05:05.540 emily eventually taught music in return for board and lodging i picture emily teaching sort of like

01:05:11.880 interpretive dance like teaching music just playing music and she just dances to it and 0.82

01:05:18.480 she just picks up an instrument and starts making noises with it and just kind of like scream

01:05:23.800 singing sort of like yoko ono very old captain my captain anyway so one of the reasons why they

01:05:29.980 went there to do this was they wanted to attain some skills so that they could open a school of

01:05:35.140 their own at the house yes solving all their problems so i mean like if this wasn't your 1.00

01:05:43.200 bingo card you'd mark off like oh okay women decide to open a school like yep that happens 1.00

01:05:48.460 in every episode this season so they're like learning skills about how to run a school um 1.00

01:05:54.080 charlotte enjoyed her time there um partially because she had a close relationship with

01:05:59.600 constantine hege some people suspect she might have been in love with him but it's the same

01:06:05.720 sort of thing where like the letters that everyone writes to everyone are always so passionate it's

01:06:09.080 like how like people who are in love from just people who just really like a person anyway so

01:06:14.340 they're just like things seem to be i'm shocked that emily is in brussels a foreign country

01:06:19.880 i guess she found places to like run around and climb trees so she's doing fine i guess

01:06:24.700 but then they were called back to the parsonage it's like the hell mouth like you can never

01:06:33.100 escape what part of glass town was hers because she might like belgium because of the whole 1.00

01:06:38.500 napoleon thing like she might she might be able to sand sick her way out of that one

01:06:43.520 oh that's true just like imagine that she's living in glasstown yeah anyway so their aunt

01:06:48.060 elizabeth the one who had like helped raise them died and so they were brought back now i don't

01:06:52.900 have how she died of but i'm gonna guess tuberculosis because this disease starts spreading

01:06:58.020 around this house that they all live in so elizabeth is dead charlotte like this like she

01:07:05.500 was so traumatized by her mother dying her sisters dying like this just like really triggers her

01:07:10.660 um and then also this was around the same time that the hunk William Waitman died of cholera

01:07:17.640 and then also Charlotte's friend Mary Taylor's sister Martha died of cholera it's just like

01:07:23.840 it's a lot of death for one person to handle who's like already only sort of barely hanging on in

01:07:31.540 general yeah so they went back Emily stayed but Charlotte returned to Brussels to take up a

01:07:38.200 teaching post at the school this was the first time she'd ever traveled alone um she found the

01:07:42.640 experience quote alarming her novel valette i guess has a similar situation like her

01:07:50.400 so i don't know i think like she did okay in brussels and maybe emily did too because they

01:07:56.060 were together but now that she's by herself um she's struggling a bit more she's feeling homesick

01:08:01.380 her attachment to Constantine

01:08:04.140 it's

01:08:05.880 anyway so she like became jealous 1.00

01:08:08.580 of Constantine's wife like things 1.00

01:08:10.540 are just getting intense and so she

01:08:12.480 inevitably returns to

01:08:14.540 the Bronte personage

01:08:15.620 but her time there with those people

01:08:18.540 inspired as I mentioned her novel Valette

01:08:20.340 but also she has a novel called The Professor

01:08:21.940 and I think Constantine is the model for the

01:08:24.380 character in The Professor

01:08:25.720 and then she's like okay 1.00

01:08:28.300 okay girls okay Brontes

01:08:30.020 like let's open our boarding school it was advertised as the mrs bronte's establishment 0.97

01:08:36.640 for the board and education of a limited younger number of young ladies but no one really wanted

01:08:44.820 to go because it was in the middle of the yorkshire moors and they didn't have any connections

01:08:51.100 because everywhere that they taught they made enemies yeah so uh they did not attract any

01:09:01.300 pupils and the project was abandoned so ann is just like okay i will single-handedly keep this

01:09:09.040 family afloat i'm the only person capable of functioning in the world i will do this i'm ann

01:09:15.200 so she uh went to back to where she'd been a governess um and she got she pulled her strings

01:09:22.460 um because you know she got along with a girl she got along with that family and she got a

01:09:25.680 position for branwell to tutor the son of the family because that's what you want branwell

01:09:32.020 around children oh what you don't is branwell around the wife of the household who he started

01:09:37.460 having an affair with. 0.90

01:09:41.080 Very normal Bronte behavior.

01:09:43.800 Yeah, so Branwell was,

01:09:45.640 guess what?

01:09:46.280 Fired.

01:09:48.980 And just due to kind of all...

01:09:51.260 Because he didn't even do it well.

01:09:52.860 He got caught.

01:09:54.720 No, he had an affair with a wife.

01:09:56.740 It became apparent.

01:09:57.860 He was fired. 0.90

01:09:58.720 And then Anne just resigned 0.86

01:09:59.900 because she's like,

01:10:00.580 I can't.

01:10:02.560 I didn't want it to be normal.

01:10:04.560 We just didn't want it to be normal.

01:10:07.460 so i love i love this like this story so um so they're just like at the personage the dad is

01:10:15.500 still there by the way like being the curate and whatever but like getting older and they know that

01:10:20.000 like none of them have any money or jobs or anyway so um emily so 1844 emily likes writing like they

01:10:31.720 all do um and so she started she went through all the poems she'd written and she was just like is

01:10:36.860 a like little project for herself she was just copying them into a new notebooks they were all

01:10:40.660 in like one book together and then charlotte discovered these notebooks and she was just

01:10:46.180 like oh my god you write poems i write poems let's publish them and make money um emily was

01:10:54.360 understandably furious at this invasion of her privacy um it's like because it's her private

01:11:00.720 thoughts and whatever but um I understand that and she's like no I only write for myself like

01:11:07.880 I don't want to publish these but then Anne came out and she's like oh my god what I also write

01:11:12.380 poems they secretly had all been writing poems and not telling each other

01:11:17.800 I mean after the schism I can understand why they were keeping it apart

01:11:23.680 yeah exactly so now like together again so they're like oh we can 0.54

01:11:27.820 like wait a minute we all write poems and so Emily was like they're like okay well what if we write

01:11:32.080 poems and Emily's like no I don't want people to know about me I'm a private hermit weirdo and

01:11:38.800 they're like okay well we what if we publish them but we won't use our names and so that's where

01:11:43.320 they each came up with a sort of gender neutral pseudonym but the same first letter is their

01:11:50.220 names so Charlotte became Kerrer Bell and Emily became Ellis Bell and Anne became Acton Bell so

01:11:57.140 they published this book it's called poems by currer ellis and acton bell so it's like we're

01:12:01.000 three men who write poems and we're siblings emily and anne were insistent that they that

01:12:06.280 they didn't want people to know it was them charlotte is more was less worried about that

01:12:10.460 anyway but the thing is they're like yeah let's publish our poems but this is

01:12:14.220 how this worked it's just like we're three random weird hermits sisters in the moors

01:12:19.800 no publisher was like great we'll pay you to do this so they themselves had to pay to have it 0.97

01:12:25.480 published because they had no platform yeah much like authors today struggle to get books sold

01:12:32.860 so they did you know so not really self-publish they paid a company to publish it for them

01:12:39.520 they couldn't start a podcast to start a long con to get a book published like and did not everybody

01:12:46.740 can has that option i would have paid so much money to listen to their podcast i think i'm

01:12:53.000 gonna say ann bronte could probably have figured it out ann bronte would have been the producer 1.00

01:12:58.120 emily she just sort of clipped a love layer on emily and just recorded her like mad ravings and 1.00

01:13:04.480 then and then she'd ask charlotte questions and charlotte would have just given her like one word 0.89

01:13:08.380 responses but then gotten really mad and explained like a whole podcast worth of things and it would

01:13:13.500 have been it would have been chaos and i love it i like i like the concept of just putting a

01:13:17.980 microphone on emily and just just like her talking out loud to herself as she wanders the moors or

01:13:23.300 emily could be like let's go walk with emily like where if you go to the bronte parsonage you can

01:13:28.900 see there's like the walking it's like here's where emily like to walk like you can see where

01:13:32.020 she went so i could see doing like a vlog it would have to be and secretly filming emily

01:13:36.780 exactly where she goes and stuff anyway so they published this book of poetry um two copies were

01:13:45.280 old um that because no one knew who they were it's like oh here's a book of poems by three

01:13:51.260 random men which is why you don't write a memoir when no one knows who you are yeah so you know

01:13:59.960 this plan to like make money for their family not not doing well so far anyway their father

01:14:06.240 had various health as i mentioned but one of them as a lot of older people have he got cataracts

01:14:11.260 um which is like an eye thing um everybody gets cataracts eventually that's what my eye doctor is

01:14:17.680 telling me yeah yeah no my mother my mother has had cataract surgery and like every single person

01:14:24.620 she knows it's like oh when I had my cataract surgery when I like it's just this happens if

01:14:28.460 you live long enough seemingly yeah eventually your your um your lens gets cloudy so but in

01:14:37.540 regency era there was not they just did the same as when they did cataract surgery in like ancient

01:14:42.920 egypt basically is just kind of like okay we're just gonna like put these pokey things in your

01:14:47.480 eyeballs and then they couldn't like do stitches or anything so the way that you recovered from 0.84

01:14:52.260 cataract surgery was you just had to be in a dark room for like a month and just not see light while

01:14:57.660 your eye slowly healed and that was when charlotte was like i'm gonna write jane eyre

01:15:03.220 it is time well while her father was recuperating in a dark room and she was like helping take care

01:15:10.200 of him she was like i'm gonna pivot to fiction and the book i'm gonna write is gonna involve

01:15:14.300 a blind man i mean he eventually becomes blind and and it's not because you know natural aging

01:15:23.640 no he became blind on the patreon podcast we'll talk about that but i i do like that charlotte

01:15:32.000 But, you know, we've seen her like she's struggling to like make these jobs work, to do stuff. 0.82

01:15:36.040 But when she's just kind of forced for one month to just care for her father and she just kind of has to like her regular routines have been disrupted.

01:15:43.800 She's like, well, this is I will take this.

01:15:45.360 It's like, I don't know, like me, like when I was over the Christmas holiday, I was like, huh, like I'm done my book.

01:15:53.280 It hasn't come out like I'm caught up in the podcast.

01:15:55.280 What am I going to do?

01:15:55.760 I'm like, oh, I'm going to take up knitting.

01:15:57.700 like it's just sort of like when you have a finite period of time it's like i'll try something

01:16:02.300 different actually so she but her first novel that she finished was the professor and so

01:16:11.220 charlotte was like okay maybe we'll make more money publishing fiction than publishing a random

01:16:16.980 book of poetry set in our random fantasy realm when fantasy wasn't really a thing yet yeah

01:16:25.860 so her novel the professor so she was like okay well let's each submit it's funny that they're

01:16:32.140 like let's publish a book of poetry that all of us did then she's like i'm writing fiction now

01:16:36.580 you two write novels also then we'll submit all three like the family is so just like codependent

01:16:42.360 we're doing this together here's what's happening we're all novelists now

01:16:48.720 i've decided to be a novelist which means you're writing a book which means we are all now novelists

01:16:55.060 and Branwell's like me too like really no not you Branwell are you still in this story he is

01:17:02.300 um and he honestly drank something but as much as like Anne Bronte's books don't have like that

01:17:09.620 spark of Charlotte and Emily like Branwell's writing is just like good job nice try here's

01:17:16.340 a gold star Branwell you put sentences together you you know what words are anyway so in this kind

01:17:24.160 of like codependent style so the three of them wrote their novels so charlotte wrote the professor

01:17:28.520 anne wrote agnes gray and emily wrote withering heights straight off the bat just if i have to

01:17:35.860 write one book it's gonna be this one it's gonna piss people off for the rest of history

01:17:41.740 unlike the format of it is gonna be like oh is this the main character of the book yes until

01:17:47.160 she dies very early on then well it's also a frame story somehow and like she went she went deep

01:17:57.280 into like all of the devices she if you're gonna write one book like she put everything in it that

01:18:07.260 you could put into one book so they all wrote their books um and then charlotte submitted them

01:18:11.980 all together to the london publisher henry colbert be like dear sir here are three

01:18:16.580 like and that's how big these are they didn't have typewriters like withering heights hadn't

01:18:24.060 written like here's three gigantic stacks of paper so she was like these tales this is the

01:18:31.960 letter she wrote with them because henry colbert was like what is this giant parcel um so she was

01:18:37.860 like three tales each occupying a volume and capable of being published together or separately

01:18:41.780 is thought most advisable and she's like and just so you know we've previously been published

01:18:46.520 and we paid for that two people bought anyway and so these were sent like as like

01:18:59.460 currer ellis and acton bell like hello we are three men and here are our novels

01:19:04.240 and here's the kicker so charlotte is behind all of this she's the one who wrote the professor

01:19:09.760 and the publisher was like you know what i like i like wuthering heights i like agnes gray

01:19:14.880 don't like the professor so i would she's like fine i'll write the greatest novel ever written

01:19:21.340 so she's like okay fine i'll write jane eyre and i think this is when the cataract surgery was 0.97

01:19:26.300 happening anyway so actually i like this fuck you energy because this publisher was like okay i like 0.98

01:19:32.340 these two but not this one and Charlotte's like really okay I'll write the greatest novel ever 0.99

01:19:36.060 written and I'll send it to your rival publisher which she did which is the correct way of

01:19:41.480 publishing yeah so she sent Jane Eyre to Smith Elder and Company and it was published six weeks

01:19:48.280 later those six weeks were just spent typing apparently put it on the press so Jane Eyre

01:19:56.240 comes out and what's we'll talk about this again listeners join my Patreon if you want to hear us

01:20:01.700 go deep on a discussion of Jane Eyre but one of the things is that it's first person and that's

01:20:06.260 that was really unusual for books so many books right now are written like you know I Jane Eyre

01:20:12.040 walked down the street whatever like but usually it's like a young woman called Jane walked down

01:20:16.460 the street like that's how most books were but hers was like I'm Jane Eyre and here's my story

01:20:20.220 like that was shocking. Bothering Heights was like told a person telling a random person

01:20:28.500 the story of people that he doesn't even know and then Jane Eyre comes along it's like this is my

01:20:34.500 trauma yeah you must listen to all of it and I think it's interesting because the Brontes myself

01:20:41.120 until recently I couldn't remember which Bronte wrote which thing but I think it's a common thing

01:20:46.100 for people to like Jane Eyre or to like Wuthering Heights and be like oh what else did this author

01:20:49.800 write and you go to the other books to read them you're like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre like

01:20:53.900 the same person if you're expecting the same thing in both you're not gonna get it like you

01:20:59.160 like you respect these books in different ways but like if someone expects it to be similar like

01:21:03.920 they are not because they hear bronte it must be the same it's like no but very different energy

01:21:10.640 but this is part of their branding because it's like it's interesting that it's three siblings

01:21:15.260 who are all well-known authors now but it's like yeah that's because they did everything together

01:21:20.720 like they wrote novels at the same time they submitted them at the same time like they've

01:21:24.100 never been it's not like one of them wrote a book and so it's like hillary duff was a

01:21:28.540 on disney channel and hayley duff showed up it's it's like one of them paved the way it's like the

01:21:32.920 three of them are like we are three we are all novelists i'm writing a book you're writing a

01:21:38.320 book this is how it works but that's what people think of them like even this podcast episode it's

01:21:42.960 like the brontes like because they're a collective i could never do an episode just about one of them

01:21:47.960 because they're that they're not distinct people you know like they're so codependent well and

01:21:54.420 they're basically shut-ins like there's not a and once again you brought me on to an episode where

01:21:59.880 the scores are going to be low but the story is going to be high quality

01:22:03.960 yeah when we get to the scandal i i haven't thought it through but like i do think they

01:22:08.980 have significance well yeah but how much scandal can you get up to when you are a shut-in

01:22:15.740 i mean the wolves have very very firm opinions on emily so jane eyre love this i love the energy 0.97

01:22:25.280 of this like so she wrote jane eyre as a fuck you to the first publisher partially she sent it to 0.86

01:22:30.520 the new publisher who's like oh my god this is amazing you're gonna publish it six weeks from 0.98

01:22:33.560 now and it was an immediate success like the guy read it and he was just like fuck yes this book

01:22:37.340 is great and it received favorable reviews um and then when this came out by the other publisher 0.98

01:22:42.760 was like, oh shit, what? A Bronte book came out? Well, I have these other two. So then he published 0.90

01:22:46.180 the other two. And the publisher of Wuthering Heights and Tenet of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

01:22:51.860 put on them like, this is like saying like, oh, these authors are related to Kerber Bell,

01:22:57.280 the author of Jane Eyre, this bestseller. So Jane Eyre sold the best of all. Wuthering Heights

01:23:04.700 did very well because it's so dramatic. Agnes Grey is currently the least famous of these books,

01:23:10.660 but also it's sold okay but withering heights and jane air were the ones that everyone's like

01:23:15.220 holy shit read these books and that's in their lifetimes yeah after their lifetimes it's hard

01:23:20.820 to tell who's the most famous but there's like they they rise and fall based on trends but they're 0.99

01:23:27.960 they don't go away yeah jane air and withering heights came out and they were bestsell it's

01:23:33.240 kind of like frankenstein it's like it comes out and it's never out of print and it's never not

01:23:37.220 popular like people have always heard of it like it's just like oh hi i just read this book and

01:23:41.300 it's a classic and it will always be and i mean even now tiktok is having massive fights about

01:23:49.080 what wuthering heights is really about and what kind of story it's telling and that says so much

01:23:55.080 about the kind of stories that that we're dealing with here like people have firm opinions in a year

01:24:01.680 where a lot is going on and they have to take the time out to go no you're wrong about weathering

01:24:07.480 ice i am one of those people that can do that and that is why you're on this podcast because i

01:24:14.400 i needed someone with this with this bronte knowledge but like these books were so popular

01:24:20.740 when they first came out i wanted to just clarify so um agnes gray was the first book that ann wrote

01:24:27.180 and the books did well and so the brontes were like amazing let's write more novels and make

01:24:31.140 more money so then ann wrote a second novel and never teach another child again thank god like

01:24:37.800 you know good for them and good for the children who don't have to be traumatized by them as

01:24:42.900 teachers it's the real service to humanity so these books are coming out like they're coming

01:24:48.260 up um like the bell brothers books like you know because the tent of wildfell hall comes out

01:24:53.880 and there's just being rumors they're like these this is all one person like there's not three

01:24:57.720 bell brothers is just one person um and so at one point ann and charlotte went to london emily

01:25:05.340 obviously didn't go because she doesn't um you know emily was running in the field somewhere

01:25:11.660 and couldn't be found because they needed to talk to their publisher and their publisher needed to

01:25:16.780 respect them as people yeah emily didn't come because like that's just better for the situation

01:25:23.120 but they went to the publisher to like be like it's not one person like the bell brothers are

01:25:27.780 various people and the increasing popularity of these books by the bell brothers led to new

01:25:34.080 interest in poems by kerber ellis and acton bell so that publisher was like oh i have these poems

01:25:42.020 i'm going to republish them but guess what it's still sold poorly like their poems you know

01:25:46.440 broad day stands love their poems they love their like childhood stories about the like

01:25:50.680 fantastical realm with fake Napoleon in it and stuff. But what people really love about their

01:25:58.220 work are their novels. So Charlotte, she wrote Jane Eyre. Oh no, she already wrote The Professor.

01:26:05.060 So that comes, and then she starts her third novel. The Professor has not been published yet.

01:26:09.860 Jane Eyre has been published. The Professor was refused by that other publisher. And now

01:26:13.800 She's writing a new novel called Shirley.

01:26:16.580 But the writing process is a couple of things happen.

01:26:22.880 Tuberculosis related.

01:26:24.760 So the tuberculosis begins.

01:26:28.660 So in September, since 1848, Branwell died, probably of tuberculosis, following a long descent into alcoholism and drug addiction.

01:26:36.880 I mean, it could be syphilis. We don't know.

01:26:38.640 yeah well i think ultimately he died of tuberculosis and he probably also had other

01:26:43.420 things going on uh at his funeral uh so he died and then the funeral was a week later and at the

01:26:50.360 funeral emily caught a severe cold that developed into an inflammation of the lungs um and accelerated

01:26:57.880 her pre-existing tuberculosis because as we know from watching vulgar beast theater tuberculosis

01:27:05.520 doesn't kill you on the initial infection it just slowly eats your lungs over over the years

01:27:11.380 actually can we just have like a tuberculosis moment to so if we could just explain so for

01:27:18.480 instance tuberculosis when i think of tuberculosis which aka consumption i think of like in the movie

01:27:23.900 moulin rouge nicole kidman's character every now and then like she coughs blood into a handkerchief

01:27:28.800 but she seems fine and then she suddenly has like you have to you can have tuberculosis for years

01:27:34.160 and it just kind of like flares it like goes up and down okay tuberculosis is a single infection

01:27:40.060 okay it's a single infection that scars your lungs so horribly that they slowly

01:27:45.280 wither away and die without lungs you cannot live so basically um the scar tissue just starts to eat

01:27:54.260 up all your lungs so your your lungs are are inflatable obviously that's the whole point of

01:27:59.120 them and they have these little tiny lobes these little tiny bubbles in them that in the bubbles

01:28:06.040 are where the oxygen goes into your bloodstream so the two ways that your lungs withering away

01:28:13.300 kills you is that uh it's hard for the lungs to expand and close and those little lobules just

01:28:21.140 get cut off to the point where you no longer have lobules that that uh convert the oxygen

01:28:27.520 to your bloodstream it's like you have tuberculosis but people can have it for a really

01:28:31.840 long time because it's just like a slow wasting disease no tuberculosis like you get to bring so

01:28:37.280 tuberculosis is like a cult you get it and then it dies and then you're no longer sick but you

01:28:45.220 have already hurt your lungs and because of the scar tissue on your lungs that scar tissue like

01:28:51.740 it it's the scarification slowly over time expands so it's not that you have a disease anymore

01:29:00.560 it's that your lungs are broken and like it starts taking on water it starts doing all of

01:29:05.780 these things where your lungs no longer work well so when they say consumption they mean

01:29:10.360 like it's literally consuming your lungs over time and it's not the disease it's it's the

01:29:16.700 after effects of the disease what about tuberculosis yeah so so it's no longer like a virus

01:29:24.140 or a bacterial infection now it's just your lungs are slowly dying so people with tuberculosis like

01:29:31.380 in the movie tombstone um where doc holiday goes to like a hot dry place because that's good for

01:29:37.900 tuberculosis or people in like england wouldn't go to i don't know spain or greece or something

01:29:42.160 it's like go to a hot dry place that's good for your tuberculosis that's just because it's easier

01:29:45.820 to breathe it's good for your lungs it's good for for what remains of your lungs so that they're

01:29:51.540 supported they're not it's not too wet it's not you're not likely to get another infection because

01:29:56.660 like a chest cold is terrible when your lungs are slowly dying that's the thing so emily got a cold

01:30:02.340 at the funeral which exacerbated her tuberculosis yeah so yeah a worse place to be with tuberculosis

01:30:11.820 than in the Yorkshire moors drinking cemetery water yeah there aren't a whole lot there aren't

01:30:18.420 a whole lot of worse places than anywhere in England tuberculosis and then you add Yorkshire

01:30:24.680 moors with the cemetery water and probably not enough protein probably not enough anything

01:30:32.040 well if knowing that like you know hot dry climates are good for the lungs and sort of like

01:30:35.960 this damp cold where they live and where they're like compelled to always return to is just gonna

01:30:42.280 that's not great for people what was good for her was the amount of exercise she was getting

01:30:47.740 like the wandering of the moors that's great that's like live live as long as she did emily

01:30:52.720 yeah so emily um her condition was worsening and charlotte was like please let me call you a doctor

01:30:58.940 you know all of charlotte's like sister dying trauma is popping up because brian will decide

01:31:03.080 too. But Emily's just like, no, I don't have any doctors. I don't believe in pharmaceuticals.

01:31:12.340 Anyway, but as she got closer to death, her final words to Charlotte were,

01:31:16.340 if you send for a doctor, I will see him now. But she died. 0.86

01:31:20.600 Yeah. There's not a lot you could do at that point.

01:31:23.260 Yeah. So Emily had been so weak and like she'd been staying on a sofa in the living room of

01:31:27.700 the parsonage and her dog, I mentioned like Emily loved her dogs. There's these beautiful

01:31:32.560 like pencil drawing she drew of her dog her dog was called keeper keeper was lying with her as she

01:31:38.580 died and so emily's so branwell died and then emily gets sick and emily dies um and this ann who up

01:31:46.900 until now has avoided she avoided those early childhood traumas um this deeply affects ann

01:31:52.820 this is it deeply affects charlotte but this is the first time ann has like faced

01:31:58.280 and finally gets it yeah um anyway so the grief really affected her physical health um she well 0.78

01:32:07.620 so does just like everything she fell into like depression um it affected her health and then she

01:32:15.300 got influenza which led to tuberculosis yeah people underestimate the flow because like we

01:32:24.720 live with it a lot now but when you don't have mucinex and you don't have you know indoor heating

01:32:31.620 or just anything to keep your fluids up or anything like so she just like she falls ill

01:32:36.840 and then tuberculosis also so actually can i ask you again tuberculosis corner how is it transmitted

01:32:44.000 is that just like being like spit from a person with tuberculosis it who's in the like um contagious

01:32:50.560 base it's it's highly contagious one of the biggest things about it is that um it can also

01:32:57.480 be it can be like covert like you don't know that you have it and you can still be transmitting it

01:33:04.880 well just the fact that like all these people in this household all got tuberculosis one after

01:33:09.820 another i feel like they might have given it to each other yeah coughs and sneezes like it's it's

01:33:16.160 it's a lot like covid yeah so if you're like nursing your loved one who is sick and they

01:33:22.340 have tuberculosis and you could chance because there's no face masks and whatever they there's

01:33:28.840 not even the germ theory of disease they don't know how they're getting sick they just know that

01:33:33.380 they are oh no bring up the leeches etc so ann is she's you know she's grieving she's sick a doctor

01:33:42.860 told her she had little hope of recovery, but she was just like, screw that. I'm Anne Bronte.

01:33:48.300 I survive. I, like my sisters, have now experienced trauma and I will see through it.

01:33:55.300 So unlike Emily, Anne took all of the recommended medicines and followed the advice she was given

01:33:59.760 because that's the Anne Bronte way. Because other people are maybe trustworthy.

01:34:06.840 Yeah, no. So she takes other people's advice. She's not just like, oh, the crows in the woods

01:34:11.820 told me to run with the wolves and she's like medicine great thank you expert people anyway

01:34:20.260 so she got a bit better and decided to visit scarborough to see if the fresh sea air might be

01:34:26.420 helpful but she went there and like her all her symptoms came back like it was it became clear

01:34:32.920 that she was also going to die um and then in a very pragmatic bronte way she asked charlotte like

01:34:38.640 should I do you want me to come home and die or would it be okay if I die here in Scarborough

01:34:43.000 and the doctor was like you're gonna die pretty much right away so probably you should stay here

01:34:48.160 anyway so as she was told she's gonna die so she expressed her love and concern

01:34:53.500 for for Charlotte um and whispered for Charlotte to take courage and then she died so in terms of

01:35:00.160 the Brontes like and their deaths like they're all in they're like she's 29 and she's the youngest 1.00

01:35:08.060 one the other ones are barely they're all like under age 35 all these dying brontes like a lot

01:35:14.000 has happened but they're all quite young still so ann died age 29 um charlotte is the the only

01:35:21.020 brontes left are charlotte and the dad dad still around patrick so charlotte turned to her writing

01:35:29.380 as a way to deal with her grief and so her she finished remember she was writing her third book

01:35:33.440 surely and then all these deaths happened i don't know have you read surely i imagine i haven't

01:35:38.060 i i read i read the two big ones at in seventh grade and then i just didn't stop rereading

01:35:46.820 jane eyre i found my personality i i embedded upon it and then i just kept it there

01:35:55.100 no fair enough so surely i think it's interesting she was writing it and then like everyone in her

01:36:00.600 family died and then she finished writing it so i wonder what that book is like um the novel's

01:36:05.100 reception was not as enthusiastic as that of Jane Eyre. So in terms of my, this reminds me a bit of

01:36:10.940 my personal fandom is Agatha Christie's Murder Mysteries. And so Agatha Christie somewhat

01:36:17.640 famously had a complete mental breakdown collapse. She like ran off under a fake name and no one knew

01:36:24.480 where she was. And then she came back and she like worked really hard to like rebuild her life

01:36:28.620 and stuff. But her publisher was like, but you have a book due. So she wrote this book called

01:36:33.060 The Mystery of the Blue Train, I think. And she always, Agatha Christie always said,

01:36:37.020 this was my least favorite book I ever wrote. I hated that I had to write it. It's such a bad

01:36:41.200 book. Like it reminds me of this terrible time in my life. And from then on, she always wrote

01:36:45.420 one book ahead. So in case something happened, she had a book she could turn in. But I wonder

01:36:48.940 if Shirley is like that first Charlotte where it's just like, she was going through so much in her

01:36:52.960 life. Like the book just, she couldn't put her attention and intensity into that book because

01:36:57.220 she was dealing with so much. So, and that book has never been as well. It was at that time,

01:37:02.160 it was not as enthusiastically received and it doesn't have the longevity of villette or jane

01:37:08.580 air yeah she only has one other book really that people look back on so charlotte was her sister's

01:37:18.520 executor and this is where the like myth of the brontes kind of starts to develop like at first

01:37:23.860 it's like the three you know at this point no one knew that it was them like it was like these bell

01:37:27.960 brothers but various ways it becomes apparent that like it was these people apart partially

01:37:35.840 because the characters were so clearly based on people from around the Bronte parsonage

01:37:41.400 people like wait a minute if one of these books is written by one of the Brontes and they're all

01:37:47.640 siblings and the letters of the names wait a minute did the Bronte anyway so eventually they

01:37:53.720 figure that charlotte was the author of these books um and then she wrote an explanatory

01:37:58.660 introduction to withering heights like the new release of it to try to make it less shocking

01:38:03.860 to the public um she uh she suppressed the republication of the tenant of wildfell hall

01:38:12.500 um because she thought it was shocking i'm not sure but the fact that this wasn't republished

01:38:19.120 had a negative effect on ann's popularity as a novelist because her books kind of weren't as

01:38:22.800 available as the other ones. This is a controversial decision that she made. I think she's just trying

01:38:27.660 to sort of control the narrative of themselves and their lives and their work. And it's kind of like

01:38:31.600 they were the three girls and now there's just her. She's like, well, I don't want to be a novelist

01:38:36.060 if they're not also novelists. She discreetly revealed herself to her publisher and her

01:38:41.640 friends as the author of Jane Eyre. And so she started to visit London and she started to meet

01:38:46.480 some other like lady writers. This is where she meets Elizabeth Gaskell, another author called

01:38:51.360 harriet martineau um and i will mention that charlotte and harriet martineau they shared an

01:38:59.580 interest in racial relations and the abolitionist movement so just so you know charlotte is on that

01:39:06.300 side of that issue the good side and then um yeah so villette was her her last novel to be published

01:39:15.800 in her lifetime which returns to the first person perspective and that one was was popular in like

01:39:22.740 that one it not it's not jane air popular but it's like that one is still talked about and it was

01:39:29.420 yeah i think it's just surely is the one kind of like that was kind of a miss but villette it's

01:39:36.200 like oh she's back to form and shortly before the publication of villette charlotte um who i think

01:39:42.440 at this point is like in her mid late thirties, she received a proposal of marriage from the

01:39:47.540 Reverend Arthur Bell Nichols, an Irishman from County Antrim and her father's native Ulster.

01:39:54.700 He had been her father's curate. Remember there's another guy, the hunk who was the curate. So the

01:39:58.920 father just keeps hiring these like hunk curates. Anyway, he had been in love with Charlotte for a

01:40:03.100 long time. She initially refused to marry him. Her father objected to the marriage partially

01:40:08.900 because of his poor financial status but i'd be like patrick like what financial status is charlotte

01:40:14.000 gonna have but there would be no way to take care of him i guess is this man is fundamentally

01:40:20.940 selfish patrick bronte um anyway so her friend elizabeth gaskell thought that like this might 0.79

01:40:31.840 be good for charlotte to like have the structure in her life that a marriage would bring so she 0.94

01:40:35.920 got like friend of a friend to try to help out this guy with his finances anyway eventually 0.99

01:40:42.200 charlotte um accepted his proposal and they got married now in a real sort of narcissistic parent

01:40:48.440 move which makes me think of victoria beckham patrick bronte had intended to give charlotte

01:40:54.260 away but the last minute decided he could not could have been branwell this is a real branwell

01:41:01.700 type move from patrick so charlotte had to go to the church without him because her father was not

01:41:07.320 there it was her lifelong friend and former teacher from rowhead school miss wooler who

01:41:13.500 gave her away they went for honeymoon um in ireland and they you mentioned like well who's

01:41:22.580 going to take care of the father if she gets married it's like don't worry they live in the

01:41:25.700 in the house charlotte found a way to to get married but not have to leave the only house

01:41:33.320 she could ever live in so it's her her husband and her dad all in that house 1.00

01:41:38.220 and so she became pregnant soon after her wedding but i will just mention like we know charlotte is

01:41:43.220 like she's small like she's had all these health problems like it would be and she's also in her 0.94

01:41:47.420 late 30s. Nowadays,

01:41:49.620 this would be a high-risk pregnancy. 0.86

01:41:52.060 And in

01:41:53.160 the

01:41:54.420 cemetery water...

01:41:56.680 In the moors.

01:41:58.760 This is not...

01:42:01.360 You know, things are not going to go well. Spoilers.

01:42:04.100 So she became pregnant soon after 1.00

01:42:05.380 her wedding. Her health declined rapidly.

01:42:08.360 And then she

01:42:09.580 and the unborn child

01:42:11.280 both died March 31st,

01:42:13.360 1855, three weeks before her

01:42:15.320 39th birthday.

01:42:17.420 So it's possible that like one theory, like, I think she had all these health problems anyway, but her, her death might have been caused from complications from severe morning sickness, like just sort of the, like that.

01:42:30.440 The dehydration?

01:42:31.820 Yeah, just the absolute dehydration. It's like, oh, quick, drink more cemetery water. Like, that's not going to help.

01:42:37.780 Anyway, so her first novel, The Professor, the one that was, that the first publisher didn't want, was published posthumously.

01:42:45.100 and then two years after she died is when elizabeth gaskell wrote this biography that's

01:42:50.000 called like the story the life of charlotte bronte and that's where the bronte myth really took off

01:42:55.420 so like their books are popular in their lifetime then this book came out about how interesting they

01:42:58.980 are and then the books became even more popular and then they've stayed popular and just a bit

01:43:05.500 about the legacy so the bronte society so she died in 1857 or sorry 1855 the biography came

01:43:15.020 at 1857 and then 40 years later the bronte society was founded like that's how early on there was

01:43:22.140 enough fans of them that like they started a society so they wanted to promote interest in

01:43:28.200 the bronte family and their works also a deeply victorian thing is the the society of whatever

01:43:35.400 thing you you mildly are interested in well that's the thing with the brontes is that too like in

01:43:41.100 terms of this and like the regency era and stuff like in terms of like the the eras themselves i

01:43:46.680 saw somebody was describing there's kind of the regency era and then like 1830 to 1840 is kind of

01:43:53.040 like when the brontes were the books are coming out and then queen victoria then the victorians

01:43:57.980 take over so the brontes were kind of in this like in-between phase where it's like end of

01:44:01.520 regency but just pre-victorian so it's kind of like an era without a name there's sort of this

01:44:08.640 this decade is where they fit in so yeah so once the victorians were there they're just

01:44:13.720 one of course the victorians would love them the victorians love goth like overwrought like all the

01:44:20.420 drama yeah like absolute chaos well the victorians were the ones who got really obsessed with like 0.99

01:44:27.240 mary queen of scots and the murder of rizzio and stuff like they love this shit but not in their 0.98

01:44:32.900 society just in like people that in history and and in like oh well they're dead now so it's fine 0.98

01:44:40.060 now we can celebrate if it had been happening while during the victorian era no no obviously

01:44:46.260 not exactly so the the parsonage the haworth parsonage where the brontes this is where the

01:44:54.480 brontes grew up but i would say like where the brontes only ever lived um was bought um by sir

01:45:01.520 James Roberts and gifted to the Bronte Society in 1928. And it opened as the Bronte Parsonage

01:45:06.340 Museum. So now you can go there, you can see so many things. You can see all these drawings that

01:45:10.200 they did, like the little books that they made off of pieces of pamphlets. And I do want to

01:45:15.340 mention, so the one famous portrait of the three Bronte sisters, which I'll put a link to it in

01:45:23.760 the show notes, but it's just, it's a very, it's kind of the only portrait of them anyone ever

01:45:27.880 really uses and they're just kind of all looking really intensely out but so I didn't realize that

01:45:33.500 painting is by Branwell and originally it had been the three of them and him but then for some sort of

01:45:40.980 I don't know but like you know we're laughing about Branwell but I think he knew he was like

01:45:47.160 the bonus Bronte he painted over himself with a pillar so it's like the three of them and a pillar

01:45:52.840 in the middle and that's where Branwell used to be so it's known as like the pillar portrait

01:45:57.880 so branwell got it and i'm glad that he's not in the picture because i wouldn't want a picture

01:46:04.620 with branwell not pictured branwell thankfully yeah but he was the one who painted it so it's

01:46:10.860 like that is his one contribution to this whole saga is he made and because it's him and he painted

01:46:15.080 them it's like well he knew what they look like and it's like a fairly representative painting so

01:46:20.200 we can kind of imagine what they look like he's not going to like sugarcoat what they look like

01:46:26.100 because they're his sisters and no one knew them better than him so i think you can also when you

01:46:31.360 have a painting by someone who knows them it's not just like well this is what their hair color

01:46:34.860 and their eye color were but it's like this is what they're like and i think he captures that

01:46:38.420 so brian well good one good thing in your life making that painting thank you brian well um

01:46:44.840 so what we do at the end of our biographical episodes is we well actually first i don't

01:46:51.160 think there's any we do have a special award we can give to people for outstanding supporting

01:46:54.940 performance, but they were just each other's

01:46:56.900 outstanding supporting.

01:46:59.060 The only other person we have is

01:47:00.680 Branwell, and he did not.

01:47:02.940 No. Branwell and the dad?

01:47:05.420 No. Charlotte's husband? Who cares?

01:47:06.740 I don't think

01:47:07.520 there are no outsiders in this story.

01:47:10.960 Charlotte's husband is a cameo at best.

01:47:14.320 Okay, so

01:47:14.940 there's four categories,

01:47:16.580 and each is a scale from 0 to 10.

01:47:18.640 The first one is Scandaliciousness.

01:47:20.680 How scandalous were the Brontes being in their life?

01:47:23.080 I would say

01:47:24.940 i would say one just because emily is so fucking weird and they even like they did a good job of 0.92

01:47:31.260 hiding how weird she was it's like oh emily can't be in society well guess we're not showing emily 0.95

01:47:37.960 anymore yeah like no one knew like how scandalous can you be if you're all housebound

01:47:45.000 there's no one to be scandalized by to be fair yeah like if you don't have the internet you've

01:47:52.360 given any of these people the internet different game yeah but the fact that all they can do is

01:47:58.900 hang out with each other um i'm just imagining the absolute chaos these three would wrap in ao3

01:48:08.920 well i think it's sort of like how one sees from like some you know like homeschool children and

01:48:15.260 stuff it's just like people who don't interact with the world in their life but on the internet

01:48:19.780 they can do so much stuff it's just yeah just the the energy that they would have like the stories

01:48:25.240 like they would have yeah homeschool pks who who have a lot of extra health trauma like yeah that's

01:48:34.220 that's what tiktok is made for in some ways yeah how would you agree with a one for scandalousness

01:48:41.180 absolutely just because of emily i know what my scores are gonna look like i am not new here

01:48:47.240 okay so the next category and this is like and we're we're like choosing these scores based on

01:48:55.020 them as a collective which is how they live their life like i'm not surprised like branwell died and

01:48:59.460 then emily died and then ann died it's like yeah because they can't it's like cutting off the limb

01:49:03.000 of a like they can't live without all of them like they're charlotte tried to have a husband

01:49:10.800 and that didn't work out no it's just like all it the vibes are a bit sort of like the virgin

01:49:17.140 suicides sisters yes kind of like one of them except not blonde it's like dark hair virgin

01:49:23.280 suicide sisters like well either they're all alive or they're all dead like there can't be 0.55

01:49:28.740 some of each that's not how it works okay the next category is the scheminess oh

01:49:35.560 um like emily zero um charlotte writing sure well like she has the schemiest writing 1.00

01:49:45.320 charlotte had the scheme to like let's publish books let's use mail suit like charlotte she 1.00

01:49:52.440 that's a thing she did like she that was that was literally a scheme which more power to her 1.00

01:49:59.820 yeah um like and also the scheme that she's just not just like hey let's have pseudonyms let's 1.00

01:50:06.640 publish books but she was like Anne was there trying to like get jobs but Charlotte was the 0.92

01:50:10.840 one who's just like we need a source of income oh my god you write books you write books let's

01:50:14.600 write books like Anne's scheme is let's be contributing members of society so the scheme

01:50:20.600 is you're all writing a novel right now you're writing a novel let's choose our pseudonyms they

01:50:25.320 all have to match um in terms of scheminess like i think just like being there's an inherent

01:50:31.340 scheminess in this era of like being a woman who's a writer because you have to trick your

01:50:35.720 way into it so i like knowing how these scores are going to i'm i'm i could give them as high

01:50:42.580 as a five for scheminess because it was it was a it was a scheme she did do it and i like the

01:50:48.380 pettiness of the one publisher said no so then she brought her other book to the other publisher

01:50:52.140 and made her yes that was that is that was high quality right there like how would you feel about

01:50:58.160 a five for scheminess i've i feel anything that makes their score better than charlotte

01:51:03.400 it makes me happy yeah queen charlotte yes charlotte has famously on this podcast a score

01:51:11.000 of i think one out of four but um yeah i feel like charlotte bronte like she didn't do a lot

01:51:18.400 schemes but when she did it was good and it worked um even though emily's vibes are like

01:51:23.300 bringing down the schemes because she's like so not scheming again most scheming story of all of

01:51:31.380 them withering heights withering heights like emily emily knows what a scheme is and that's why

01:51:38.380 her not doing any is is more notable yeah her scheme was to just keep it all in fiction so

01:51:46.660 the next category is the significance and i think this is will be a very high because i think both

01:51:52.520 they were um very well regarded even before people knew who they were their books were well regarded

01:51:59.260 and when people knew who they were then they were the fact that there was a society dedicated to

01:52:03.920 honoring them just like a couple decades after they died when they all lived very short lives

01:52:08.740 in this very obscure area like the and the significance the fact there's like constant

01:52:14.120 every couple years it's a new Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights adaptation like people can't

01:52:17.660 quit these stories well and that they were Irish Anglicans in England who still spoke Irish and

01:52:25.760 yet and yet to this very day TikTok users are going to war over them yeah well the fact that

01:52:35.000 they like that they were so sort of like in their like that their father faced so much xenophobia

01:52:41.700 and then they were the fact that they achieved like significance can only go so high but i think

01:52:46.940 the fact they're so significant when they like even when they wrote the poetry book like you

01:52:50.560 said like they didn't have any connections it's not like mary shelley's dad was this well-known

01:52:54.900 writer and her mom was this well-known writer so like there were people that are pulling for her

01:52:58.900 but like these they were nobody they were just like three extreme weirdo hermits and they tried

01:53:07.000 the self-pub and and didn't even do that right like but like this like their novels were so

01:53:13.520 good that people couldn't ignore it it's really um motivational i think a lot of people just

01:53:19.720 it's it's like it can feel like with netball babies and stuff it's like oh does anyone

01:53:24.060 have a chance like it's but it's like well these three did and look what they were doing they were

01:53:29.780 drinking cemetery water in the middle of the moors but their book was so good people found it

01:53:35.880 like you know it's publishing is hard do not compare yourself to the brontes

01:53:42.220 it takes work but yeah i know these three and their cemetery water

01:53:48.240 and their little microscopic fandom wars if you're looking for a role model i don't mean like

01:53:57.840 exactly what they did well thank god exactly what happened to them what they did hopefully

01:54:02.400 will not happen to anyone else but i think just the the fact that they could that their ideas

01:54:10.380 like the weird ass books did so well like they weren't writing to market you know like they

01:54:16.180 weren't being like oh what will sell they were just this is all we can write there i mean they

01:54:21.440 kind of was because emily is writing the most mrs radcliffe story out there the most sort of

01:54:29.540 like gothic like gothic um stuck in a house weird house weird people random kid appears tragic like

01:54:39.820 you don't know whether it's it's paranormal or like is there a ghost like all that stuff like

01:54:46.500 she's writing the most to market of the time but it's not like there's a big market out there

01:54:53.780 like there's there's not a lot of novels at all not a lot to compare them to it's still a very

01:55:01.120 young art form all of which well and that's true because we talked about in the mary shelley episode

01:55:07.060 like frankenstein was really quite different from what other novels like all novels were like in the

01:55:13.620 form of letters for a long time and then frankenstein came along and and that's part of

01:55:18.320 why that book also has longevity i think because it feels contemporary it feels new and interesting

01:55:23.080 i'm happy to give them a 10 for significance i think i can't in terms of like women writers

01:55:30.600 that the average person has heard of even if they haven't read the book it's like if someone hasn't

01:55:35.620 heard of the brontes taught in schools no but like you've heard like you've heard the words

01:55:41.960 withering heights you've heard the name jane air like it's i don't think it's like frankenstein

01:55:48.720 like everyone has heard and kind of knows what that is but like i think almost everybody and

01:55:54.380 that's the reason why i think there is a new wuthering heights movie why emerald finnell

01:55:57.720 didn't just say like hey i made up a story set in this time period it's called whatever it's like

01:56:02.720 no you have when you call it that then there's an inherent interest because people have heard

01:56:06.540 that phrase like people kind of is even if and again the movie comes out this week doesn't look

01:56:12.400 Like this is going to be much like the book.

01:56:16.360 But, you know, I'm happy.

01:56:18.260 Great gowns, beautiful gowns.

01:56:21.860 So the sexism bonus is how much did sexism hold them back?

01:56:25.500 Now, I will say one way that it did is that Branwell got to go to school and they didn't.

01:56:29.600 But they kind of found a way around that.

01:56:31.980 Yeah, they like they.

01:56:34.280 It slowed them down.

01:56:35.720 They were clearly the smart ones in the family.

01:56:38.840 And no one was going to let them be.

01:56:42.400 but they found a way anyway but i don't i don't think they let it slow them down 0.69

01:56:47.680 no and even the fact that like oh women can't publish books it's like okay we'll use men's

01:56:52.260 names like and then they did and then the books were successful like i think there was a lot

01:56:56.800 working against them like the anti-irishness the fact they lived in this where everyone was dying

01:57:02.720 always they were poor like i think even if the even if it was like the austins and the father's

01:57:09.340 like oh my god you're great like i'm gonna pay but it's like he couldn't have paid for them to

01:57:13.680 go off and write he couldn't have paid for them to go to college they were poor like that was more 0.62

01:57:17.180 of a factor their sex they were poor and irish i mean that there were women is just why no one

01:57:26.480 even tried even though they were clearly geniuses yeah like i just don't i think there was a lot 0.76

01:57:32.640 in their way but i don't think sexism was a big one i think other ones were bigger

01:57:37.600 contributing factor at most certainly i mean so i don't know like a three yeah like not it's it's

01:57:46.000 not much of a bonus no should it be no exactly and that's that's more for people who had really

01:57:52.460 low scores in everything generally they get a sexism bonus because they couldn't do anything

01:57:57.600 because the sexism was so bad but the brontes had enough going on so let me see so so the total

01:58:04.300 score lana is a 19 i mean i knew i i i know that when you invite me on this episode i am making

01:58:14.260 i am telling a story not getting a high score unless it's catherine medici and then that's

01:58:21.720 i know my role i am not allison well and that's the thing even allison doesn't get high scores

01:58:32.180 when she comes on because those episodes are often very scandalous but there's like very little

01:58:35.880 significance um i am significant she's scandalous yeah and then every now and then well that's why

01:58:44.520 on this podcast it's rare for someone to get a very high score like to get high in everything

01:58:48.420 is rare so just in terms of other people we've talked about on this podcast for like you and i

01:58:53.220 for instance um empress cc of austria is a 22 oh no 21 and then let me see maria theresa

01:59:03.720 is a 17 so the right in between empress cc and maria theresa and sort of the lenova johnson

01:59:11.120 honorary neighborhood and and the most important one of all carolina brunswick started out as a 21

01:59:21.220 but we corrected that in later episodes well that's because that was the very first episode

01:59:27.320 and i i hadn't calibrated the scale i didn't know i i didn't know what a number would mean like

01:59:33.380 unless you're comparing it to someone so she was originally the whole purpose of this podcast

01:59:38.400 the entire reason this exists is so that ann can write a book about carolina brunswick

01:59:45.900 and it worked and it worked with the scheminess of charlotte bronte

01:59:52.800 and i was like i would like to write a book about carolina but you can't write a book about

02:00:01.020 someone that no one's heard of if also no one's heard of you so then i started a podcast so that

02:00:07.480 people would have heard of me and now my book rebel of the regency the scandal sec of carolina

02:00:12.380 friends like britain's uncrown queen is available in bookstores everywhere get all the information at

02:00:16.620 rebel of the regency.com actually since we're talking about that i will just mention to

02:00:22.620 everybody as well that i have some events coming up for instance when you're listening to this

02:00:28.180 if you're not going to go see withering heights movie on friday night friday the 13th of february

02:00:32.360 um i am having a book launch that's it's going to be local to the city i live in which is

02:00:37.480 saskatoon saskatchewan but it's going to also be live streamed on youtube so you can join there

02:00:41.780 like join the chat ask your questions like i'll be interacting with everybody

02:00:44.980 so it's gonna be this friday at 8 p.m eastern on youtube i'll put the link in

02:00:50.040 the show notes and i'm also gonna be so there's this

02:00:52.560 event in saskatoon and then next week i'm gonna be

02:00:56.320 february the 19th i'll be in halifax nova scotia doing an event at the library

02:01:00.120 and then on february 27th i'm gonna be in vancouver bc at iron dog books and

02:01:05.760 all the information is on the events page at rebel of the

02:01:08.340 regency.com. And I'm really excited for people to read my book. There's no crossovers between

02:01:16.640 the Brontes and Caroline of Brunswick because they were little toddlers when she died. There

02:01:22.040 was no, no overlap. Although I guess if you're doing like a six degrees of separation, like the

02:01:27.440 Brontes were big fans of Lord Byron and Lord Byron was one of Caroline's friends. So there is a Jane 0.80

02:01:33.900 austin quote though there yes jane austin was around when carolina brunswick was was having

02:01:40.720 her scandalous time and jane austin it's a great quote it's in my book it's it's a great quote

02:01:46.060 it's like i will always support that man because i always support caroline because she is a woman

02:01:50.760 and because i hate her husband so it's like jane austin supports carolina brunswick and i think

02:01:57.240 everyone else should too um thank you lana for this amazing like thank you honestly i was like

02:02:03.620 i need to do the brontes because the withering heights movie is coming up and this is kind of

02:02:07.700 the time period and it connects so well with the other women authors i've talked about but i was

02:02:11.360 like i can't i need to have the appropriate level of like respect for the brontes and i don't

02:02:19.480 personally have that and i know so many people are into them so i'm happy that you're here to

02:02:23.280 represent all the bronte stance i'm always happy to represent real bronte fans well thank you so

02:02:29.340 much, Lana. And if people want to hear us talk about Jane Eyre at length, join my Patreon and

02:02:36.080 listen to that episode, which I think is going to come out today as well. Anyway, thank you so much,

02:02:39.960 Lana Wood Johnson. And to everybody else, keep your pants on and your tits out. 1.00

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Vulgar History - February 11, 2026

The Brontë Sisters： Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë

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Transcript