Wuthering Heights movie prompts a new wave of Brontemania in sisters’ village

The hit new movie adaptation of Wuthering Heights has prompted a new wave of “Brontemania” in the West Yorkshire village where the famous literary sisters lived and created their works.

The Bronte Parsonage Museum, in Haworth, is the focus for Bronte fans from across the world, and staff say the reaction to Emerald Fennell’s new film, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and with its Charlie XCX soundtrack, has been “mind-blowing”.

But digital engagement officer at the museum Mia Ferullo said this is just the latest wave of interest in the world of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte.

And, with talk swirling this week of a new international TV adaptation of Jane Eyre, starring Aimee Lou Wood, Ms Ferullo said there is little sign of any slowing down of the mania.

Ms Ferullo said: “I’ve never seen so many people talk about Emily Bronte and Wuthering Heights.

“It’s been quite mind-blowing – really, very surreal.

“We talk about the Brontes every day and everyone else is kind of joining in on this conversation, and it is everywhere.

“So many people are picking up the book for the first time and discovering the Brontes for the first time.

“It does feel like a very big, special, special moment.”

Ms Ferullo has been giving talks over the last two weeks at the museum on Brontemania, the literary pilgrimages to the sisters’ home in Haworth which began in the late 19th century even when the sisters’ father, the Reverend Patrick Bronte, who outlived them, was still living in the building.

She said: “People from as far as America were coming to Haworth to try and see the place where Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre and lived.

“So it kind of started really early on, before the museum was actually at the parsonage.”

She said: “Even when Patrick was still living there, people would come, and he would take out Charlotte’s signature from letters and stuff to give to people as souvenirs.

“People would go into the church to look at the marriage register book where Charlotte had written in.

“So, there was a lot of interest.

“And, I think that’s partly why the church decided to sell the parsonage, because people were getting bothered too much by by tourists.”

Fellow literary great Virginia Woolf visited the house in 1904 and remarked on how understanding where the books were written added to readers’ appreciation of the works.

Ms Ferullo said the influx of new visitors is partly down to this long-standing phenomenon of people wanting to see where literary and movie works are created – and few writers are as rooted to a specific place as the Brontes are with Haworth and its surrounding moors.

She said: “People come to the house because they want to learn about the Brontes’ lives but, actually, it’s the moors surrounding them that make people feel as if they’re stepping into the novels themselves.

“I don’t think they would have written things like Wuthering Heights without living in this area.”

Ms Ferullo said: “With the film, it’s obviously prompted a lot of people to buy the book, and we’ve sold a lot of copies of Wuthering Heights in the shop.

“But I think, as well, people want to feel like they’re getting a bit closer.

“And, it’s more of an authentic experience of visiting the actual place where everything started, where this novel was written.”

She said: “There’s definitely a lot of people who love the books, and that is what’s motivated them to visit.

“A lot of people read them when they’re teenagers, and kind of grow up with them.

“But we do have people who are just visiting Haworth for a day out, and the museum’s here, and they visit and, hopefully, learn more.”

She said: “What we quite like is that it starts the conversation, allows us to talk to people and then, hopefully, they’ll learn more.

“It’s kind of like an entry point into the Brontes.”

The recently released Wuthering Heights movie is just the latest in a long line of adaptations of the 1847 novel and one of the current exhibitions at the parsonage charts many of these, from the first film in 1920 through to interpretations from Mexico and Japan.