On Thursday March 31 2005 a minute's silence will be held at the Brontë Parsonage Museum to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of one of its former inhabitants, Charlotte Brontë. © Brontë Parsonage Museum.
A minute's silence will be held at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of Charlotte Brontë
Author of Jane Eyre and a member of one of the world’s most famous literary families, Charlotte Brontë died on March 31 1855.
As well as the minute’s silence, which will begin at 12.00 noon, her life and work will also be commemorated with a wreath-laying ceremony at the Parish Church of St Michael and All Saints in Haworth where she is entombed in the family vault.
There will be an additional wreath-laying ceremony, organised by members of the Brontë Society, in Westminster Abbey’s Poets Corner on the same day.
"150 years ago on March 31, almost unnoticed by the wider world, English literature lost one of it’s most eminent powerful women, whose life and genius we in the Brontë Society are so proud to be able to acknowledge and celebrate, particularly on this poignant, historic anniversary" explained Lyn Glading, organiser and Honorary Council Secretary of the Brontë Society.
Charlotte Brontë lived from 1816 until 1855 when she died in the early stages of pregnancy. Portrait by JH Thompson, 1850s. © Brontë Parsonage Museum.
Born on April 21 1816, Charlotte Brontë was the third of Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell’s six children. The family moved to Haworth in 1820, but a year later Maria died, quickly followed to the grave by the two oldest children in 1825.
Of the remaining children, Charlotte was now the oldest and encouraged the literary leanings of her sisters Emily and Anne and brother Branwell. By 1846, the sisters had published a collection of poems under the androgynous pseudonyms of Currer Ellis and Acton Bell.
However, Charlotte’s best-known work was published a year later in the form of the novel Jane Eyre.
Combining semi-autobiographical elements with hints of the uncanny and supernatural, the book was an immediate success. Quickly followed by Shirley (1849) and Vilette (1853), it made her a celebrity in Victorian literary circles.
In 1854 Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father’s curate of eight years, but just a year later she died in the early stages of pregnancy.
Exactly 150 years later a series of commemorative events and exhibitions at the Brontë Parsonage Museum will culminate in the minute’s silence and ceremony at the local church, which is open to the public and begins at 2.30pm.
Deploying the museum’s collection in contemporary and artistic ways, Leaving Home has seen moorland images projected onto the Parsonage’s façade and installations featuring silhouetted projections of the Brontë children at play inside. Funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, it closes on March 31.
Also on show, Currer Bell is Dead uses manuscripts, letters and artefacts to chart the last year of Charlotte’s life and continues until December 31 2005.
