Brontë country

WHEN I WAS A CHILD, my parents would walk me out into the wilds of England’s moorlands in a bright-coloured anorak, wellies that squelched. I didn’t like walking then; I was a sickly child with constant migraines, preferring to read books curled on the sofa. And so, dragged across the barrens with a blinding stick of pain through my eye, I would feel the white cloud of sky press down on my head like a fist, or in summer, a grinding, punishing heat, willing the walk to be over, unable to focus, the heavy beat of my own ill blood the only guide. But as time passed in this windswept place, one foot in front of the other, the scoured beauty of the empty land flooded in, gradual, quiet, and then, all at once and loud.

I’d first had an idea of the history of the North on our walk along Hadrian’s Wall. I imagined the soldiers in their beautiful metal and leather, guarding the border. On our trip to York, I imagined the Vikings strewn through the taverns and brothels, pillaging and roaring. But for some strange reason, when I look back on learning the history of England, I did not imagine the women.

It was a bitterly cold day, and my sister had been screaming in the car. We arrived at Haworth village through the South Pennine Moors on foot, trudging through the bright purple heather, the low wings of red kites circling, our breath like smoke in smudged fog. I had a headache, of course. This is Brontë country, Haworth Moor the setting of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Haworth itself, at least when I was a child, was a tiny village: shops, a mossed graveyard, a church. I based the village in my novel, Land of Hope, on the heavenly misanthropic Brontëan Haworth. Today, Haworth has more shops, touristy things. But this landscape isn’t susceptible to homogenous nostalgia – the damp, shivering mystery still slithers through.

I had read Jane Eyre when I was nine years old. It had given me the impression that all that girls have to do is stand still, grow into women, and a suitable man will rear up on a steed from the trees. Instead of thinking Mr Rochester, Jane’s lover and later husband in the book, cruel and manipulative as I did as an adult, I saw him then as desirable, a fine figure of a man, to be cared for selflessly despite it all. Something to aim for without even trying, I thought, looking at my mother. The Brontës always wrote perpetually abusive men, endlessly submissive women. But I didn’t know better when I was a girl.

I stared at the black of the stove, imagining these three sickly girls Anne, Emily and Charlotte, huddling there for warmth, their housekeeper nagging, darning their threadbare skirts…”

The solid, grey stone building, characteristic of the Yorkshire style – sturdy and practical to withstand the harsh moorland climate – was built in 1779 as a parsonage, and became home to the Brontës in 1820, when their father Patrick was appointed vicar there. Backing onto the parish graveyard, the siblings must have constantly stared out at death. Losing their mother and other siblings to consumption at a young age left them feral, precocious, and incredibly alone, face up against all that severe nature, a vast empty of wind and sky you can almost touch, thick on the tongue, a raw slap in the face, a heavy reminder we are insignificant in this world, only fleeting, out of place and yet trapped in the bleak.

The moment I realised exactly how women had lived before me was when I entered the kitchen of the Brontë house. A supposed refuge from the elements, there was no running water or sanitation. It was gloomy and cold, a low ceiling that felt like the heavy sky when I had a migraine.

The guide told us Emily Brontë used to beat her dog. This fact made me ill. I stared at the black of the stove, imagining these three sickly girls Anne, Emily and Charlotte, huddling there for warmth, their housekeeper nagging, darning their threadbare skirts. They were poor, the guide told us, they could not go to school. Instead, they would write stories with their brother Branwell, an alcoholic mess of a boy, an entirely made-up fantasy world of wars and heroism they talked about for years as if it were real. When I found out they all died young, I suddenly sensed how trapped they had been there. The guide told us they were strange, plain, small girls that nobody wanted to marry, and that scared me because I was also strange and plain and small, and I worried that it was possible no Rochester would come galloping out of the trees to save me from monotony, that I would have to drag these wilds with my parents in perpetuity, unloved, alone, maybe slightly unhinged, making up stories to escape the land.

I thought about the Romans, and the Vikings, why was it I had never considered the women in these times? Invisible in history, maybe painted as mothers or wives but in the background, almost blurred out, the scenery to men’s gallant deeds throughout time. I realised then, in that gloomy kitchen, women must write stories to survive history. I vowed then to become a writer.

—

Cate Baum was born in Cambridge to a magician and a big-band singer and grew up in the East Anglian countryside, spending summers roaming the wilds of the UK. She attended UCLA to study Screenwriting, and then City University, London, gaining a Masters with Distinction in Creative Writing, where she was mentored by Claire Fuller, Clare Allan and Jonathan Myerson. She now lives in Spain. Her debut novel Land of Hope mixes history and the myths of the English moors in a compelling modern English fable of serial killers at the end of the world, and is published by The Indigo Press.
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Author photo by Frederick Henle