Sibling rivalry that fuelled literary legacy

The story of the Brontë sisters is far more heart wrenching than anything they conjured in their novels.

While the trials and tribulations of their characters in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights have enthralled generations of readers for more than a century, they pale into insignificance set against the suffering the Brontës endured.

Their brother Branwell died at the age of 31, while both Anne and Emily were struck down by tuberculosis and didn’t live beyond 30. The longest surviving sister, Charlotte, died while pregnant when she was just 38 years old.

But harrowing as their short lives were, they are remembered because of the literary legacy they bequeathed the world. It is this and the sibling rivalries that existed between them which forms the basis of Northern Broadsides production of Blake Morrison’s play We are Three Sisters, which premieres at the Viaduct Theatre, in Halifax, tonight.

The story is set during the 1840s in the famous parsonage in Haworth where they grew up and wrote some of the 19th century’s greatest works under the pen names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. It takes Chekhov’s play The Three Sisters and replaces the original Russian characters with Charlotte (Catherine Kinsella), Emily (Sophie Di Martino) and Anne (Rebecca Hutchinson).

Morrison’s play is well timed with the Brontës’ back in the limelight thanks to the BBC’s new film adaptation of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, but Kinsella feels their stage play offers a more realistic depiction of what life was like in the mid-19th century. “A lot of the film versions seem a bit glamorous, they’re very pristine. But Haworth would have been a pretty grim place and I think the play shows a grittier more realistic world,” she says. Hutchinson agrees. “The suffering, not only in their own family, but in the wider community must have been appalling, the death rate was terrible and the average age was about 25 years old, there were gravestones everywhere.”

“But they had to shut all that out and they deal with it in that typical Victorian way – you just carry on,” adds Di Martino.

The three actresses spent a lot of time researching the sisters, more so than if they were playing fictional characters. “We want to do them justice because they are great writers and characters from history so we have to make sure our portrait of them is accurate,” says Kinsella.

At the heart of the tale is the sibling rivalry that exists in all families which meant identifying each sister’s personality. “Emily didn’t have any friends, she was a loner who didn’t want people to know who she was,” says Di Martino. “Emily and Charlotte sparred more than any of the others,” says Kinsella.

“Charlotte could be a bit maternal and patronising, if I’m honest, but I don’t think she meant to be.” Anne, on the other hand, was the “romantic” one they all agree. “I’m the light relief in the play,” says Hutchinson, laughing.

The Brontës’ are often portrayed as being remote and cut off from real life, using their fervent imaginations to create imaginary worlds from the sanctuary of the parsonage. But that wasn’t strictly true. “They worked as governesses and teachers and travelled a lot to places like Belgium and London. They didn’t live isolated lives.”

But it was their upbringing, overseen by their father Reverend Patrick Brontë, that shaped their lives. “They were educated like men, they read poetry and Shakespeare and were taught Latin. They started writing when they were very young, writing ghost stories and creating imaginary worlds to entertain themselves which gave them a grounding for their later novels,” says Hutchinson. “But they knew if they wanted to write as women, they had to do it secretly. They were quietly radical, they knew before they were even published that if they wrote as women they would be expected to write about flowers and animals and being dutiful wives,” explains Kinsella. But despite their suffering, the play isn’t a tragedy, they insist. “Although their lives were tragic, there are funny moments in the play, it’s certainly not dreary. The Brontës are heroines, they wrote with a passion you rarely see these days.”

We are Three Sisters, Viaduct Theatre, Dean Clough Halifax, to Sept 17.

Keeping it in the family

The Brontës aren’t the only family members to have experienced a literary rivalry. The Brothers Grimm – German siblings Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. They made their name with their pioneering collections of folk tales, which they followed up with fairytales of their own. Kingsley Amis and Martin Amis – arguably literature’s most famous father-and-son team. Amis jnr moved out of the lengthy shadow cast by his father, who is best-remembered for his academic farce Lucky Jim, to become one of the pre-eminent figures in British writing in the late 20th century.