It was here my heroine, Charlotte, wrote her wonderful books. If you have not read Jane Eyre you have missed the greatest novel of all time in my opinion. I have wept over the pages of this book so many times. She breaks my heart anew with each reading. Every time I pick it up I still find something I missed on previous occasions, such is the depth and detail of this wonderful story. Charlotte's own life experiences shine out from her novels and I can feel and identify with so many of them.
The whole area is perfection. To wander out on the moors, to explore Top Withins, to watch the Brontë Waterfall cascade down is the greatest freedom and frees the heart and spirit. It is a glimpse of heaven on a sunny day and gives a strange feeling of comfort even on misty days. To explore Top Withins on an overcast, winter's day in torrential rain is to feel Emily's Wuthering Heights in all its oppression.
The Parsonage itself is a place of history and pilgrimage. Within its walls is the settee upon which Emily breathed her last breath as tuberculosis took its dreadful toll on another of the Brontë girls. The painting Branwell painted of his sisters is haunting, yet filled with love. You may find you pause on the stairs to gaze at this for a long time.
In the upper room, stop to view Charlotte's dress and you will be amazed that such a tiny, delicate woman could have lived through and coped with the experiences she had and still be a strong-minded, independent businesswoman. Charlotte is my absolute heroine. When the world becomes too much for me and I feel that I cannot go on, I look at all she withstood and came through and she gives me strength to continue and to try to be a far, far better woman than I am!
And, as for the hero of the piece? Well .....Reader, I married him.
If I lived in England I, too, would visit the Bronte Parsonage every year. As it is, I have visited only once, but remember it well. Jane Eyre is my all-time favorite novel, first read when I was seven. I read it aloud to my mother every day of summer as she worked in the kitchen. She made me sound out words I didn't know and look them up in our giant 6-inch-thick unabridged dictionary. When school started in September, the teacher asked us what our favorite book we'd read over summer vacation was. My answer of "Jane Eyre" convinced her she had a liar on her hands!
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