Now for something different as part of my exploration of women’s history. This is a documentary on the Bronte Sisters part of Tony Robinson’s Walking Through History Series. I am going to go through this series over the summer, but since it is Women’s History Month a Tony exploring the life of the Bronte sisters would make an excellent addition to the blogs for March. The run time for this episode is 47:03 and is called Bronte Country.
Tony Robinson does a four-day tour of the West Yorkshire Moors. It is there that he will be exploring the lives of the Bronte sisters. This is a place known as Bronte Country and provided the legendary Bronte Sisters with inspiration for their writing. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte were born on these moors amongst the mills. It was here they would produce literary classics such as “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights.” Their lives and their early deaths left an impact on West Yorkshire. Tony kicks off this episode with an exploration of the Bronte Sisters and tours the old wool exchange. It is currently a bookshop and Tony picks up a copy of Jane Eyre. He talks about the writing style of the Bronte Sisters, although he finds the writing style of the sisters a bit challenging. Both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are known worldwide and have been translated into every known language and have been made into movies. Tony will tour the country and explore the inspiration behind these novels. The first stop on Tony’s journey is the Bronte Home. Thornton kicks off the tour, where a curate was making a home with his wife. Mr. Bronte had brought his wife and two daughters to Thornton to take over the parish. The house where the Bronte sisters were born is now a coffee shop. Mr. Bronte complained that it was poorly built and not very convenient, but it would be a happy home for the Brontës. After taking in the ambiance of the coffee shop, Tony moves on to Haworth House. Patrick Bronte, the Bronte family patriarch took on a larger parish. A larger parish meant a larger house and the family moved to Haworth House. It is here that Tony gets his first taste of the Moors. Today, like yesteryear the moors are still a tough place to live. Tony tours the church and the parish home. The new Bronte home would have overlooked the graveyard. He tours the graveyard with the current curate of the church. Although beautiful now, when Bronte took over the parish the church was in rough shape. Life would have been tough for the Bronte Family. Haworth was one of the unhealthiest places to live. Forty percent of the kids never reached their fifth birthday. The previous curate performed 1,000 baptisms per year but never saw an increase in the parish population. The average life expectancy was twenty-five years. A year after the Brontës’ move, Mrs. Bronte passed away and then two daughters passed away after contracting tuberculous. Patrick would then raise the other children at home which forged a bond between the survivors. Tony explores the lives of the Bronte siblings growing up in this house. The Brontës were highly imaginative. They created their own fantasy world and they would chronicle their world through tiny magazines. Tony is allowed to handle the tiny magazines and this was a very nice touch in this episode. They wrote parodies and poetry. Charlotte and Bramwell were in charge of their world and chronicled the Glass Town very carefully. The Bronte children had extraordinary imaginations and loved storytelling and writing. Tony then looks forward to his walk across the moors a place that would have continued to fuel the imaginations of the Bronte family. How did their storytelling evolve? Would they manage to break through with their writing? Tune into the rest of this episode to find out more about the Brilliant Bronte Family. This would be a very appropriate episode for an English literature class because of the emphasis on the Bronte family. Tony is a delight when it comes to his narration of the Bronte family and I would hope that he would do something beyond Walking Through History about the Bronte Family. I highly recommend teachers you add this documentary to your watch list.
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The purpose of this blog is to share information on what can be used in a classroom, private school, or home school setting as well as serve as a portfolio of my personal and professional work. The reviews are my opinions and should be treated as such. I just want to provide a tool for teachers to select documentaries for their classrooms. |