A new side of Charlotte Brontë, showing the author of Jane Eyre’s unexpected penchant for colourful, fashionable, even “sensual” clothing, is revealed in a new exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
Displaying everything from Charlotte’s bright pink wrapper, which she would have worn around the house, to the extraordinary item known as an “ugly bonnet” which was the height of fashion at the time and which she sported to protect herself from the Yorkshire weather, the exhibition opened this week at the Brontës’ home in Haworth, West Yorkshire.
“My personal favourite is her pink wrapper, which is a really, really strange garment,” said Dr Eleanor Houghton, a historian, writer and illustrator who has co-curated the exhibition. “It was a sort of house coat with a matching cape. It’s hideous, pink, with little flowers on it, very bold, very bright and huge – very voluminous. It’s absolutely the opposite of anything you would ever associate with Charlotte Brontë.”
This item of clothing would have been part of Charlotte’s wedding trousseau when she married Arthur Bell Nicholls in 1854. “It’s a sensual garment, it’s something that she would have been seen in in the house, and with Nicholls. So while it’s not exactly a negligee, it’s sort of a Victorian equivalent. It’s an intimate garment,” said Houghton.
Dresses of red and orange, and paisley patterned materials, are also shown in the Defying Expectations exhibition – along with the ugly bonnet, a fashion item Charlotte would have bought on a trip to London, and was likely to be the first person in Haworth to own.
“It’s a really fascinating item: it was a sort of hands-free parasol,” said Houghton. “It was worn around the front of the bonnet rim to help protect the wearer’s face from the sun. It pulls down, a bit like a pram hood. I have to say I can’t imagine it catching on again, but it’s great seeing her within the context of these slightly mad innovations – we just don’t associate Charlotte with that at all.”
The exhibition also features a striped evening dress, which was found hidden away during previous renovations of the Brontë Parsonage Museum and which Houghton’s research has confirmed for the first time as being owned by Charlotte. And it includes a pair of beaded moccasins believed to have been a gift from her publishers in New York.
“Those moccasins may well have influenced her writing of Shirley – there’s lots of references to Mohawks, and that is exactly where her moccasins come from,” said Houghton. The academic has also done experiments on the fabric of the striped dress, working with the University of Southampton to discover that it is partly made from alpaca fibres – a cutting-edge material at the time, likely to have been manufactured nearby.
“All these things really connect her to the place in which she was living but also to this much more globalised world. It helps to release her from the myth that she was holed up in Haworth separate from everyone else, because it’s simply not true. There were many more forces at play, and I think that it shows a much more vital and relevant person,” said Houghton. “The items that have been placed on display wonderfully and tangibly demonstrate that the prevailing preconception that Brontë remained entirely unaffected by the fast-changing world of which she was part is untrue. Moreover, these garments prove that Charlotte and her most famous protagonist were not, in sartorial terms at least, interchangeable.”
The exhibition is the first time Brontë has been “celebrated through her clothes”, said the museum, which will run the display of more than 20 pieces of her clothing and accessories until 1 January 2023.
“When I first started working here, we couldn’t display some of the items included in this exhibition as people simply wouldn’t have believed that they belonged to the family – they were so outlandish,” said principal curator Ann Dinsdale. “Seeing the personal items these young women wore brings out an emotional response from audiences; it reminds us that these globally significant writers were also human. I think this exhibition, showing Charlotte’s sense of style and her interest in contemporary patterns and materials, will surprise visitors.”
The author was around 4ft 10in, and the museum said visitors were always surprised by her size.
