The Genteel Reading Circle For Ladies

Welcome Lydia... though I must admit I trembled a little at the sight of your name and the memory of your heinous deeds, as so thrillingly recounted by Mr Wilkie Collins.

That link is grim - no wonder none of the younger Brontes made old bones!

Welcome, welcome, Lydia!

After lurking on various threads for about three years have been compelled to join by this one! I live near Haworth and have visited many times. Not only did the graveyard feed into the water supply but there was a communal privy at the top of the main street " perched upon an eminence commanding the whole length of the street.in fully view of passers by" The quote is from the Babbage Report into sanitary conditions in Haworth , (which Patrick Bronte institgated) and you can read more here about just how bad the conditions in Haworth were: www.kdfhs.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=310:the-bavage-report&catid=43&Itemid=102

My family's from Howarth, I had an ancestor living at Top Withens (the farmhouse WH is supposed to be based on). The graveyard is an awful place, so full of graves you can't squeeze between them. I was taught the drinking water used to come from an underground stream which flowed through the graveyard (shudder)

I read WH in my teens but I was the least romantic teenager ever and it left me cold (and with a permanent loathing of novels with acres of phonetically rendered dialect).

I should probably try it again, but worry that it will be like the time I saw La Boheme and spent most of it muttering OH PLEASE MIMI JUST DIE NOW

Ah. Then I've possibly missed the boat. Whereas I loved Jane Eyre

The best age to read WH is in your teens. It's like a really intense, gothic love story. But then as you move into adulthood you realise it's not a love story at all, it's a tale of child abuse, obsession and revenge with a hint of the paranormal thrown in. It's an incredible book, and all the legalities and timelines have been researched to perfection (unlike say, Jane Eyre ).

I loved Haworth and the moors. I can never get into Wuthering Heights though. I've tried loads of times and give up

The BBC S&S is the version I always refer to as the Pug one. Both Willoughby and Marianne looked like small dogs. Elinor actress was just trying to be Emma Thompson. It was dreadful.

Not a Bronte fan, but I really enjoyed visiting Haworth.

Mark Gatiss plays John Dashwood

It's an on screen marriage.

Daisy Haggard! Of course. No wonder she was so good unlike the rest of it

She would have been a great Fanny Dashwood, what a missed opportunity.

That accent - the steele's accent - it's not Somerset/glos, it's Plymouth. Or Plimerrf. That's where they're from. It's pretty much spot on, too.

There's an idea stuck in the public imagination that the Brontës lived almost in isolation in this little village on the edge of the moors, rarely coming into contact with the outside world, due mainly in part to Mrs Gaskell's biography, but I don't think that's quite true.

If you're interested in reading more about them, Juliet Barker's biography is good although she has a bit of a girl crush on Charlotte, with a tendency to dismiss the other two.

I've never been to Haworth, but having taken more of an interest in the Brontës of late, I was surprised to find how close it was to Keighley and Bradford. These places, even in the mid-1800's would have been fairly heavily industrialised, I guess. It makes the Brontës' experience all the more interesting, even though I've never been particularly interested in their work.

The Brontës lived in a tiny village with a graveyard that was massively overcrowded though. If you've ever been to Haworth, it's almost unbelievable how many they packed into that cemetery. And they lived right next to it!

The difference with the Brontës I think, was the fact that they were around just as the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, which meant more people living in closer, unhygienic conditions. It was a massive public health issue at the time.

'Twas interesting to watch the programme "Being the Brontës" iplayer (still there). The scale of mortality, particularly from TB which the Brontës saw happening around them was staggering. People were either ill or dying from it all the time, including the sisters themselves, of course.

Although we see references to illness as plot devices in Austen, I can't remember any of her characters actually dying or even her family circle or friends being fatally affected by anything other than old age (apart from JA herself, of course). And even she was 41-hardly a youngster.

I didn't know about the scale of TB! Makes more sense now, everyone being on the brink of death all the time. Of course, the doctors probably made things worse...

Also, for the plebby farmers, it was a bit of a numbers game. Have a lot of children, and at least some would probably survive to look after you in old age.

And the plebby farmers would also have known people who died suddenly of catching "a cold". They would have had less choice about working out in the weather, though.

The Bennets were concerned about Jane's cold, and that may well have been irrational. But, how many of us, these days, don't let our children play out, because we have heard the odd story of children being abducted? It's not likely to happen, but it's a real fear for people, whether rational or not.

Surely the delicate ladies keeling over after a rainstorm was proof of how much protection they needed, which was only available from relatives or husbands. Hence the luck of Marianne catching Brandon on her way down.

Tbh a lot of people were chronically ill then as now. Any person with an income would have a wodge of dependants.

Dan Stevens from Downton played Edward in the BBC version!

Has anyone read the Trollope re write of S&S? It's absolutely terrible. She needed to be a bit cleverer than just taking the characters situation and dumping it in the 21st century because all I did was yell, 'get a fecking job!' before throwing my book across the room in disgust.

lumel YY to the plebby by farm workers out in the rain!

Loving reading your thoughts on the characters-has anyone else on here done the OU course (possibly now defunct) on 19th Century Literature? Twas my happiest year :-)