Brontë (Polly Teale)

This section explores the play Brontë by Polly Teale, focusing on: the structure, setting, staging, characters, themes and the historical and cultural context of the play. Brontë is a 2005 play by Polly Teale, which explores the lives of the Brontë sisters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—famous for their literary works. The play blends historical fact with imaginative fiction, offering a dynamic exploration of the personal and professional struggles faced by the Brontë sisters as they navigated 19th-century society’s constraints. The narrative is not just about their achievements as writers, but also delves into their relationships, their isolation, and the emotional challenges they faced as women in a male-dominated world. The structure of Brontë combines biographical elements with moments of fantastical imagination, where the sisters’ literary creations come to life on stage, reflecting both the external world and their inner lives.

Structure

• The play's structure is non-linear and complex, shifting between various timelines and worlds. It integrates biographical moments with fictional elements inspired by the Brontë sisters' works, particularly their novels and their internal emotional landscapes.
• Scene transitions are fluid, often moving between the real and the imagined worlds, where the characters and scenes from the Brontë novels appear and interact with the sisters. This gives the play a dreamlike quality, emphasising the tension between reality and imagination.
• The narrative moves back and forth in time, moving between the Brontë sisters’ childhoods, their time at Haworth, and later, their adult lives and careers as writers. The play juxtaposes their private lives with the public personas they projected as authors.
• Imagery from their novels (such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre) is woven into the narrative, with characters from these novels appearing to interact with the Brontë sisters themselves, reflecting the influence of the sisters' writing on their personal experiences.

Setting

• Haworth Parsonage: The primary physical setting is the Brontë family home in Haworth, Yorkshire, which also served as the backdrop to much of their writing. This setting represents both the physical and emotional confinement the sisters faced.
• The Yorkshire Moors: The rugged, wild landscape of the Yorkshire moors is a prominent symbolic presence in the play, mirroring the isolation, freedom, and intense emotions found in the Brontë sisters’ lives and works, especially in the novels Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
• The Drawing Room: The drawing room of the parsonage is a key location where many of the scenes between the sisters take place. It also symbolises the place where the sisters read and wrote, their creative space. The room often becomes a point of tension, as it underscores the limitations of their lives as women in the 19th century.
• Fantasy Sequences: These represent the imagined worlds of the Brontë novels, where elements of their fictional characters and storylines emerge. The shift into these fantasy worlds allows the audience to experience the sisters’ inner lives and creative process.

Staging

• Minimalist Set Design: The play often uses a minimalist set to represent the various settings. The focus is on suggesting rather than directly recreating places, and the set often shifts to evoke different locations (the Brontë home, the moors, fantasy worlds).
• Fluid Scene Transitions: The staging is fluid, with transitions between scenes sometimes achieved through lighting, movement, or changes in the use of space, as the boundaries between reality and imagination blur.
• Costume Design: The costumes reflect the time period (Victorian England) but are also used to signify different roles, both in the real world and the imagined worlds. For example, when characters from the Brontë novels appear, their costumes visually distinguish them from the characters' real-world counterparts.
• Theatrical Techniques: Teale uses movement, lighting, and sound creatively to differentiate between the real world and the worlds of the Brontë sisters’ imagination. The actors portraying the fictional characters often move between the two realms, interacting with the sisters in scenes that mix reality and fantasy.

Historical and Cultural Context

• Victorian England: The Brontë sisters lived and wrote in the early to mid-19th century, a time when the role of women in society was very restricted. The play explores the challenges the Brontës faced as women who aspired to write in a male-dominated literary world.
• Isolation and Gender Roles: As the daughters of a clergyman in rural Yorkshire, the Brontës experienced relative isolation. The social expectations of women in their time were strict, and they faced significant obstacles in pursuing their literary ambitions. Their decision to publish under male pseudonyms (Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell) was a response to the cultural prejudices of their time.
• Romanticism and Gothic Fiction: The Brontë sisters were deeply influenced by the Romantic movement, which emphasised emotion, individualism, and nature. Their works also incorporated elements of Gothic fiction, marked by strong emotions, supernatural events, and brooding landscapes. This is reflected in the play, where themes from their novels are brought to life on stage.
• The Death of the Brontë Sisters: The play also addresses the tragic early deaths of the Brontë siblings. The early deaths of Emily, Anne, and their brother Branwell, followed by Charlotte’s own early death, are woven into the narrative, reflecting both the personal losses the Brontë family endured and the theme of mortality and legacy in their works.

Characters

• Charlotte Brontë (played by an actor who also portrays several characters in the Brontë novels): Charlotte is the central character in the play. As the most commercially successful of the Brontë sisters, Charlotte’s character is portrayed as both ambitious and conflicted. She struggles with the burden of being the eldest sister, her desire for literary success, and the emotional cost of writing about intense personal experiences.
• Emily Brontë: Emily, the author of Wuthering Heights, is portrayed as wild, passionate, and deeply connected to the natural world. She is more reclusive than Charlotte and is often depicted as grappling with her internal emotional world and the constraints placed on her by society. Her character embodies the theme of rebellion against convention.
• Anne Brontë: Anne, the youngest sister, is portrayed as more reserved but also deeply intelligent and compassionate. Her novels often engage with social issues such as class and gender, and Anne’s character in the play reflects her concerns with moral integrity and the plight of women in society.
• Branwell Brontë: Branwell, the Brontë siblings’ only brother, is portrayed as a tragic and complex figure. His struggles with addiction, his failed ambitions, and his complex relationship with his sisters are central to his character. Branwell’s inability to achieve his artistic dreams serves as a foil to his sisters’ success.
• Fictional Characters (from the Brontë novels): Throughout the play, characters from the Brontë sisters' novels—such as Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights and Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre—appear as projections of the sisters' thoughts, emotions, and desires. These characters speak directly to the sisters, offering insight into their inner lives and creative process.

Themes

• Gender and Society: A central theme of Brontë is the restrictive nature of 19th-century gender roles and how they impacted the lives of the Brontë sisters. The play explores the social limitations placed on women, particularly in terms of their independence and professional aspirations. The sisters’ decision to publish under male pseudonyms is a direct response to these constraints.
• Isolation and Identity: The theme of isolation is pervasive in the play, reflecting both the physical isolation of the Brontës in rural Yorkshire and the emotional isolation they felt as women in a patriarchal society. The sisters’ imaginative worlds offer them a form of escape and self-expression, yet this also mirrors their sense of alienation from the world around them.
• Imagination and Creativity: The play explores how the Brontës’ creativity and imagination acted as both a means of personal expression and a form of resistance to their oppressive circumstances. The fantasies and characters from their novels are not just products of their literary genius, but also projections of their emotional and psychological struggles.
• Death and Legacy: The early deaths of the Brontë siblings and the tragic loss of their brother Branwell are a key theme in the play. The play reflects on the idea of mortality and the legacy left behind by these remarkable women, who died young but whose works continue to resonate around the world.
• Love and Passion: The Brontë sisters’ novels are marked by intense themes of love, passion, and longing, often expressing the power dynamics of gendered relationships. The play brings these themes to life by showing the sisters’ own emotional experiences alongside the fictional characters they created.

Summary

Brontë by Polly Teale is a deeply imaginative and poignant exploration of the lives and works of the Brontë sisters. The play uses a combination of realism and fantasy to examine the personal and creative struggles of these iconic women, while also addressing broader issues of gender, identity, and the power of imagination. The use of fantasy and real-world elements, alongside complex character portrayals, makes Brontë a rich and layered piece that invites reflection on both the personal lives of the sisters and their enduring literary legacy.