I don't *think* that was what I said...

After some serious consideration, weighing up how much work it will be and balancing that against making my CV shiny, and generally looking like I know what I'm talking about in the world of early modern literature, I agreed to take over writing the summary of the year's work in renaissance literature studies. Someone I know by association with Supervisor emailed me out of the blue saying he now has post doc funding and his project means he is too busy to do it now, but if I was interested he would suggest me as his successor. It is one of very few times that 'who you know' has actually worked for me. (I say this with some hesitation, knowing how much work I'll have to do in quite a short time, but it will be very shiny on my CV).

The guy who is handing over to me sent me an email saying he'd already sent for some of the books to review, and he would post them on to me, but he would like to keep two of them for his own research. So he suggested two options and asked which I would prefer:

a) He would keep the books, read them, write a short review paragraph for each of them and send that to me to be silently included in my own review

or

b) He will send the books to me, I can read and do my own review and then send those particular ones back.

As much as I was tempted to option a) - less work for me - I decided that I was uncomfortable passing his work off as mine both because I fundamentally object to plagiarism, and because if the comments are going to have my name to them, then I want to have read what 'I' am commenting on. (And you know that the one time anyone asks me about anything I've written, it will be about one of these books that I actually haven't read). So I sent him an email supporting option b), and promising to read those ones first and get them back to him ASAP. I told him I'd be on holiday for a couple of weeks, and asked him not to send anything until after I got back to make sure they don't get lost in being held at the post office. He said that was fine.

Today I got an email telling me he had put the books in the post, and could I let him know when they arrive. [Fine; yes; no problem]. But it also said 'I have kept a few as I mentioned earlier - shall I send you the reviews to add into your piece?'

Erm... I don't think that was what I said. And really, if you'd already decided what you were going to do, why did you even ask?

Re-reading and re-thinking

For the course I am teaching on Contemporary Women's Writing, I'm re-reading (and preparing a lecture on) Jackie Kay's Trumpet.

I have taught this novel before, a long time ago, to first year students at the university in the Beautiful Scottish City that I Miss. I remember thinking it was a useful text for teaching (identity/gender/sexuality/narrative structure), but that I didn't like or enjoy it very much. I chose to put it on the Women's Writing course because I thought it worked well with some of the other novels I'm teaching, because it's a gift if you want students to engage with theory, particularly Butler's arguments on performativity, and lastly because this course is a LOT of work for me, so I put on as many texts as I could that I had already read / taught. I know the last reason is not a good pedagogical reason, but when you are only being paid a TA contact-hourly rate to write a new lecture every week on a subject which is well outside your research area you need to give yourself a break sometimes! And I wouldn't have put it on the course if it did not work well with the other texts and provide excellent theoretical discussion possibilities etc etc.

I'm hoping that my third-year women's writing class will find it interesting, and engage with it on a level which my former first-year students could not, just by virtue of being first year students. I'm hoping that this group will not ask me how Millie and Joss had sex. I'm hoping that the essays will not include painfully embarrassing sentences which end with "but as my tutor pointed out, we don't want to know about that" ("Dear second-marker, I did indeed say this, but not in this context; I was making a salient point about difference, privacy and instrusion, rather than being totally prudish as this implies"). I'm hoping that these students will all have read the novel, and already have some opinions on how we might talk about it in a women's writing class.

But what has surprised me about re-reading the novel is how much better I like it this time round. And not just because I myself am now much more confident dealing with the ideas with which it engages, and the theories we might use in discussion. Or because I am now a much more experienced, confident tutor. More that I like the novel. I've actually found it so moving in places that I had to put it down so I didn't cry into my latte whilst reading it in a large coffee chain's comfy chairs.

I have realised that the last two novels that I have put on this course are not happy novels (the next one is The God of Small Things, which is not cheery, but is one of the most beautifully written novels I have ever read). I think I'll have to take them chocolate at the end of the course to raise the happy levels.

But I stand by my course text choices. And I'm glad I have the opportunity to look at Trumpet again with new eyes.

Sharing poetry

I heard this poem for the first time in a lecture yesterday, and found it so interesting that I thought I would share it with you. Enjoy!

La Figlia Che Piange
O quam te memorem virgo...

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair -
Lean on a garden urn -
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair -
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained suprise -
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and a shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight, and the noon's repose.

-- T. S. Eliot

Confession

OK. So here is my confession:

I am in love with one of my students.

Before you condemn me to an everlasting academic underworld torment of never finished book-reviews, undergrad essay mountains which grow taller the more you mark, and TA peanuts pay for evermore, I should probably explain.

He a mature-ish student (mid 20s), he’s tall, he’s slim, he’s quite attractive. He has small glasses and floppy hair. He wears shirts under tidy jumpers under neat jackets. He looks like he ought to be writing poetry in a garret room. He attends all of the lectures, and he usually has an exceptionally good (or politically interesting) reason if he misses seminars, and he has missed very few. He is informed, he is articulate, and he wants to learn. He has actively sought help from me with his analytical skills. And – and I’ve saved the best until last – he LOVES literature.

You might think this is a strange thing to say, when I earn my peanuts teaching literature students. But it seems to be becoming increasingly unusual to find an English Lit student who actually likes reading books.

The garret poet loves reading. He reads things that are not on the reading list, and he wants to talk about them. And he exudes an enthusiasm for literature and literary analysis, that sometimes leads him astray in his essays, but at least his essays are not in any way mechanical.

The tutor in me wants to nurture and train this enthusiasm into good academic criticism (hopefully without squashing the joy). My younger teenage self, who loved literature and was also fond of floppy-haired boys, is hopelessly in love with the garret poet.

So can I just say: if, after this confession and explanation, you still want to condemn me to the above mentioned academic purgatory of never-ending TA pay, please – pretty please – could it be teaching students like him.

Markers of folly.

From The French Lieutenant's Woman (chapter 34):

He did not like her when she was wilful; it contrasted too strongly with her elaborate clothes, all designed to show a total inadequacy outside the domestic interior. The thin end of the sensible clothes wedge had been inserted in society by the disgraceful Mrs Bloomer a decade and a half before the year of which I write; but that early attempt at the trouser suit had been comprehensively defeated by the crinoline - a small fact of considerable significance in our understanding of the Victorians. They were offered sense; and chose a six-foot folly unparalled in the most folly-ridden of minor arts.

Taming the Shrew

*** Spoiler warning if you intend to see the RSC Taming of the Shrew ***

Yesterday I went to see the RSC production of The Taming of the Shrew with a group of students. I had been told it was a controvertial Shrew (you can read reviews here and here) but didn't know much else about it.

It is a particularly brutal production. There is a lot of physical violence throughout, and Petruchio's 'taming' of Katherina is shown deliberately and overtly as acts of mental and physical cruelty.

The production was not without comedy, particularly in the scenes with Bianca and her suitors, with Tranio and Biondello, but the comedy was rarely with Petruchio and Katherina. I think this is what has caused such controversy. Petruchio's scenes of 'taming' have, in other productions, been played comically. And, I think, some audiences do not want their Shakespeare - particularly their Shakespearean comedy - to be so harsh / brutal / condemnatory of patriarchal values. But the RSC did not show anything in their Petruchio / Kate scenes that Shakespeare did not write. It was only their interpretation in performance that seemed to be shocking.

Despite his brutality on stage, Petruchio's speech in Act IV still provoked some laughter:

Thus have I politicly begun my reign,
And 'tis my hope to end successfully.
...
She ate no meat today, nor none shall eat;
Last night she slept not, nor tonight she shall not.
As with the meat, some undeserved fault
I'll find about the making of the bed,
And here I'll fling the pillow, there the bolster,
This way the coverlet, another way the sheets.
Ay, and amid this hurly, I intend
That all is done in reverend care of her.
And in conclusion she shall watch all night,
And if she chance to nod I'll rail and brawl,
And with the clamour keep her still awake.
This is a way to kill a wife with kindness,
And thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humour.
He that knows better how to tame a shrew,
Now let him speak: 'tis charity to show. (4.1.175-198)


I wonder whether it is an audience's need to find comedy here that provoked the laughter, or whether it is related to a modern, western understanding that the idea of an husbandly 'reign' or 'shrew taming' should be absurd. But there was nothing comic in the delivery of this speech, or in the scene that preceded it. And the emphasis put on killing his wife with kindness, even metaphorically, was deeply disturbing. The most painful scene, for me, was one in which Katherina was shown to offer sexual favours to Petruchio's downtrodden servant Grumio - who himself had been shown, up to this point, to be the very lowest of the characters in the play - if he would give her food. He both humiliates her and denies her the food he has shown to her. Although Katherina delivers her final speech of wifely obedience with dignity, her subsequent on stage almost lifeless submission to Petruchio's sexual appetite leaves no doubt in this production that Kate is a defeated woman, however much scope for ambiguity the play itself might allow. It is a very dark production.

But that said, I thought it was an extremely good and thought provoking production. And I wish my class of Shakespeare students from last year had seen it. It might have made one or two of them think more critically about their uncritical, 'un-scare-quoted' use of the word 'taming' in their essays. Their unquestioning acceptance of it as a term was slightly concerning to me, and my suggestions in seminars that this was not necessarily presented as a good thing in the play went unheard in several cases.

They would not have been able to dismiss this production's interpretation quite so readily.

In the dark

Because I liked it, today I'm sharing with you a short passage from Jo Baker's novel The Telling that I'm reading - and thoroughly enjoying - at the moment. (No spoilers in the comments, please. I haven't finished it yet...):

"Sally and I made our bed up on the rug, and lay down. She fell instantly and deeply asleep, and began to snore.

A light continued on upstairs; it filtered down between the floorboards. I lay awake, looking up at it, my eyes gritty with fatigue. Dad knew, and Mam knew, and Sally knew, and Thomas knew, and everybody knew what was going on, everybody but me. It was not a pleasant feeling, to be alone in the dark."

The Winter's Tale

Well, it should have been a summer's tale. A group of early modernists from the English Department went to watch the play outdoors in the middle of June at the Large Public Park here, the name of which is curiously appropriate, although not exactly right, for watching Shakespeare. The weather had been fine all day - not hot and sunny, but dry and not not too overcast. Colleague who Worries Too Much was convinced it would be a glorious evening, and we wouldn't need to go home for our raincoats. I was much more doubtful. I did go home for mine, and was very glad I did. It waited until the performance was about to start and then the rain came. The theatre company carried on regardless, and I passed my picnic-carrying plastic bag to colleague who Worries Too Much so that she could at least cover part of herself with something waterproof.

The acting company worked very hard. Each of them took more than one part - something I suppose is essential if a travelling company wants to keep costs down - and they acted well enough that it was easy to forget they were really the same person. For the most part, the doubling up of parts seemed purely practical, but I thought one of the choices of pairing was particularly interesting. The man who played the shepherd's son, adoptive brother of Perdita, also played Paulina, wife of Antigonus, who speaks plainly and abruptly to King Leontes, pointing out his faults to him. Again, this was probably in part due to practical considerations - none of the actresses could play her because they would have to be on stage playing two parts at once at the end of the play. Of course in Shakespeare's day all female parts would have been played by boys, but if only one in this production is not played by a woman, it is, I think, critically interesting that it should have been the outspoken Paulina. She does not behave like an early modern woman should - she is not quiet, she does not keep herself and her thoughts private, she is not obedient to her husband (or to her king). She is, in fact, a "manly" political character - indeed, she is more outspoken than the courtiers. So, does having a man play her serve to emphasise her difference from courtly ladies? Does it attempt to trouble ideas of what being a courtly lady actually is? Or does it serve to emphasise the lack of action, the lack of questioning of the king, by the male courtiers? And, can all of these questions be asked of the play anyway, if Paulina was originally played by a boy actor?

I don't want to answer these questions here. I merely want to pose them as questions interesting to me, and I hope to you, raised by this production. I am very fond of the The Winter's Tale as a play. It raises issues of power and authority, truth and fiction, religion, gender, genre and representation. As I think all good productions should, this one just added one further facet to a complex and fascinating play.

Milk messages

A bottle of milk has appeared in the staff room (for want of a better name for it) fridge. On it, a post it note reads "Drink Me". Well, given that we are an English Literature Department, I'd have thought we all would know what happens when we drink liquids marked in such a fashion...

"Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head though the doorway; `and even if my head would go through,' thought poor Alice, `it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only know how to begin.' For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible. There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle on it, `which certainly was not here before,' said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words `DRINK ME' beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well
to say `Drink me,' but the wise little Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry. `No, I'll look first,' she said, `and see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if your hold it too long; and that if you cut your
finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
However, this bottle was NOT marked `poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding
it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.

`What a curious feeling!' said Alice; `I must be shutting up like a telescope.' And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going though the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; `for it might end, you know,' said Alice to herself, `in my going out altogether, like a
candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing. "

(Text taken from here)


So perhaps I, like 'wise little Alice', may not be doing THAT in a hurry. (Well, unless someone also leaves very small cakes marked 'EAT ME' too...)

Sonnets

I love sonnets. Intricately constructed, carefully argued, neatly written. There's something very pleasing in the form of a sonnet.

I like teaching sonnets too. In my first-year classes at the university at the Beautiful Scottish City that I Miss, I asked students to find a sonnet and bring it with them to the tutorial. I told them Shakespeare wasn't allowed though - that's too easy to find. We could then talk about the sonnet form in relation to poems that they chose ("See, it doesn't just work with sonnets I pick; we can talk about the use of the sonnet structure in all sonnets..."). It's surprising how few times two students brought the same one, and I now know of some beautiful sonnets that I wouldn't otherwise have read.

This week I'm teaching Shakespeare's sonnets. I'd forgotten how much I like them. Here is one of my favourites. Enjoy!


Sonnet 138

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not t'have years told:
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

Power of Pens

Yesterday, I had the most terrifying experience of my academic life thus far.

No, it was not my VIVA. I think that even that may seem like a stroll in the park in comparison with yesterday's experience.

I was teaching Deconstruction with Derrida's "Differance".

The essay itself is very difficult to read. Although the ideas in it are interesting, and potentially mind-blowingly radical / useful for literary criticism, the argument meanders from philosopher to philosopher assuming a knowledge of much philosophy / theory that I just do not have (and nor do my students, although - and here's the thing - they expect me to know).

The lecture, immediately before the class, was very interesting on deconstruction, but ran out of time before we got to 'differance'. So, It's all on me when we get to the seminar. And, to be honest, I'm not sure I know.

The seminar went OK, although it could have gone much better. I think we all (students and tutor) left the room dejected. That moment where you see the light go on in a student's face never happened, and I feel I failed.

Determined for this not to happen again, today I take a board marker to the seminar. If I draw pictures, use arrows, do diagrams, it has to be clearer. We're dealing with some very abstract stuff, maybe if I pin it down in ink on a board it will make all clear (impossible by the implications of 'differance', and I take some comfort in this).

By magic, with pen in hand, I suddenly feel that I know what I'm talking about. And the seminar goes well. Lights go on. Students take over the discussion themselves, arguing, making points and counterpoints and debating the relevance of all this to English literary criticism, to English literature. I leave today's classes not only feeling not dejected, and not a failure, but confident (which 'is', Derrida would argue, automatically inclusive of 'not a failure').

What a difference a pen makes.

What do we do when we do literary criticism?

This is a question I pose (borrowed from the lecture) to my class of second year Theory students. It is their first tutorial on the course, and with me. 'Look for meanings in texts' said one student; 'see what the author was trying to say' says another.

'Is there any point to what we do?' my next question. In effect, I am asking my students whether there is any value to my career choice. I know this is dangerous territory. I also know, I say confidently, that they must think there is some value to what we do, or they wouldn't be taking a module in English Studies. I say this to them too. They all look like rabbits caught in headlights. And we haven't even started on the heavy Theory part yet.

I say to them, 'One morning having breakfast at the B&B, I started chatting to a lady who, when she found out that I lecture / tutor on literature at university, said she doesn't like literary criticism, it spoils the book. Does she have a point?' Again, dangerous territory. But I find, with relief, most of my students disagree with her. We 'get more out of texts by studying them' says one. 'How?' I ask, and they come up with a variety of options, including one which allows me to expound the virtues of such a course as this which offers a variety of 'ways in' to thinking about texts. Good. It saves me trying to make this seem like a natural, spontaneous announcement. They've given me a 'way in' rather than me just telling them that this is good for them (which I do actually believe, despite my own avoidance of Theory with a capital T in my own writing and research).

Those who agree with the Breakfast Lady say 'you spend too much time thinking about a book, and you can't follow or enjoy the story'. This seems strange to me. I'm not sure I distinguish any longer between reading and 'Reading'. Possibly for undergraduate students, though, the two actions are very different. Yes, sometimes I work harder at it -in my own research / writing, and when I'm reading texts for teaching, but can we actually switch off our critical approaches when we read 'for fun'? Do we not notice repeated images, patriarchal discourse or colonial language, for example, unless we're actively looking? I'm not sure it's possible to turn these awarenesses off, anymore.

So, are my students and the Breakfast Lady right? Is this a disadvantage? I don't think the pleasure of reading, of being told a story, has left me because I accidentally do lit. crit. as I read. Do you?

Stage directions

I'm falling way behind with revising the drafts of my thesis chapters - hence I am still awake and at my laptop at 3am.

The stage direction on the page of the play I have open next to me reads 'Exeunt omnes Rustici'.

Perhaps it's because it's late/early that this appeals to me. But anything that can make you smile while you're still working at this time in the morning has to be worth sharing!

Much Ado about Something

On Friday my Aspiring Author friend and I went to an outdoor performance of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. It had been rainy weather all week (although nowhere near as bad as it's raining Down South) but it didn't rain on Friday and we made it through the performance without getting wet. The actors were pleased about that too - they'd been on tour for a number of weeks and this was only their seventh 'dry show'. Aspiring Author and I laid out my burst airbed (useless for sleeping on, but brilliant as a large waterproof outdoor rug) on the mud - despite it being a dry day, the grass was still boggy from the week's rain - and settled down in front of the loch, amongst the fold away chairs and picnic tables of other audience members to watch the performance. (A moment of panic coming back from a trip to the ladies before the performance started when I had lost Aspiring Author in the forest of such chairs and tables that had grown up in the brief time I was away.)

Illyria (the acting company) are very good. We've seen them before and were expecting great things. We weren't let down - although I think I preferred their performance of Comedy of Errors two years ago, maybe because I know Much Ado better and had a clearer idea of what I thought it should be. Occasionally the actor playing Benedick was a little too much Branagh-esque for me, but those moments were few and far between. There was an arresting moment when Don Pedro proposed to Beatrice and she turned him down. I've never thought about this as anything other than comic; Branagh's film version laughs it off immediately. Illyria chose to present it with all the awkwardness turning down a proposal from such an important man would have carried way back when... Leonato's anger when he heard Hero was unchaste was also extremely well done - the actor was very controlled, but gave out all the venom of Renaissance misogyny in the mouth of a let down and publicly embarrassed father.

All of the actors work very hard - there were only five of them playing all the parts, and playing different characters convincingly too. They even worked out ways to have two characters played by the same actor on stage at the same time. Very impressive. With only one woman in the cast taking the role of Beatrice (amongst others - the rest were male parts) the other female roles had to be taken by men, which is authentic for Shakespeare's time, but not often seen these days. They had a very clever matching up of characters whereby the actress playing Beatrice also played Claudio, and the actor playing Benedick also played Hero. I think that brought a new dimension to the play that I hadn't considered before. No one in the cast played fewer than three parts, and some took more than that. The cast also sell their own performance programmes and souvenirs, and mix with the audience at the end of the interval (they're quite fond of sharing your picnic - if you go to one of their performances, and I would recommend them, do take some spare strawberries!).

It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, despite it getting a little chilly and the midges coming out to see what was going on.

I hope Illyria get more dry shows for the rest of the tour. They shouldn't have to work that hard and fight the weather.

'A baggage for all gamesters'?

Here is a brief passage from Act V of John Ford's The Ladies Triall (1638), a play that I'm currently writing about in my thesis. Martino finds his niece Levidolche with Benatzi, a man that he does not know she has already married (Benatzi is actually her first husband in disguise whom she marries a second time - she has, since first marrying him, been seduced and abandoned by one man and rejected by another, and been staying with her uncle since). Martino lets loose this tirade against her:

Oh thou monster
Thou she-confusion! are you growne so rampant,
That from a privat wanton thou proclaimst thy selfe
A baggage for all gamesters, Lords or Gentlemen,
Strangers, or home-spun yeoman, foot-posts, pages,
Rorers or hangmen, hey day, set up shop,
And then cry a market open, toot, and welcome.


They don't write rants like that these days! Although sometimes, as a fellow Teaching Assistant just pointed out to me, undergraduate essays (critical and creative writing) come frighteningly close...

(Lest you think Ford is the misogynist this quotation might imply, I have to defend him by saying that the play actually attempts to knock down some of the contemporary cultural and social assumptions about gender and sexual misconduct upon which Martino's outburst is based.)

Indulgences

Indulgences. Interesting things. It's fascinating what different people count as an indulgence. To some it's a bottle of wine or a slice of chocolate cake; to others it's curling up on the sofa to watch a favourite film or read a new, or indeed an old, book. When you're a PhD student (and, I suspect, a fully fledged academic) it's doing anything that isn't research or teaching related. At the beginning of this month I allowed my self the ultimate indulgence for a PhD student in the writing up period: I went on holiday.

I took the holiday I always take at this time of year to indulge what someone in my academic field once described as my 'errant interest in the Brontes'. I went to Haworth for the Bronte Society AGM events. Now, I've been going to these since I was 15, and I always go alone. But I'm never alone for long. The Bronte Society has given me friends - good friends - all over the world, and every year brings new people from new places, all walks of life, and new friendships. We aren't all academics; this year I met a dancer/choreographer and a writer from the States, and old friends include a nurse, an academic, a musician and a joiner. And it's easy to make friends; you see, we always have something to talk about (this year conversation ranged from Bronte biography, through modern poetry, to our favourite TV shows / actors, to Internet dating) - we have a common interest to start things off. You don't have to know all there is to know about the Bronte family and their literature; you don't have to be an academic or an expert. All you need is to be interested and the Society offers you the opportunity to go to Bronte or other literature related places (not just day excursions, but holidays to Ireland, or Brussels, for example), talk about Bronte books / lives, or just plain meet people and chat. Yes, there are academics. Yes, the Society holds academic conferences. But those aren't the most important things; it's not primarily about that.

This is why it saddens me that, after my 13years of AGM events, I am still one of the youngest people there. It didn't surprise me when I was 15, 18, or even 20. But in my late 20s, it worries me. It doesn't matter, to an extent. I don't primarily notice the age of my friends there. But if new, younger members don't join, the Society will eventually be in trouble. And this is more serious than it may sound: The Bronte Society owns the Bronte Parsonage Museum, and if membership shrinks too drastically, we will have to pass it on to a different organisation, and I don't know about you, but I think that would be very sad indeed.

To the left, you'll see a link to the Bronte Parsonage Blog. It has some posts from a variety of members about the recent AGM events. It even has some photographs. If it looks like something you'd enjoy, the Bronte Parsonage Museum website has information on what we do and how to join. Check it out! Indulge your interest...