Yorkshire Moors

On Tuesday, we ventured to the Bronte Parsonage at the Yorkshire Moors where the Bronte sisters based many of their novels and works. It was mere chance that we arrived later in the day, when the sun was beginning to peek behind the clouds, and there was an eerie air to the church grounds and the parsonage. This eeriness was supplemented by the crying of the crows, the lack of tours, the rain and the looming darkness.
The isolation of the area as a whole helped me to get a sense of how trying a journey the character of Jane Eyre might have endured from Lowood to Thornfield. The atmosphere of the moors when we were there closely paralleled Charlotte Bronte's descriptions of the area that surround both Lowood and Thornfield, and throughout the novel there is always a sense of darkness and looming mystery. In the beginning of the novel, the reader can sense a pending mystery, yet it is several chapters later before it is revealed. It is something you can't quite put your finger on what it is, but it is there nonetheless. This same feeling of a looming mystery or haunting was in the air as we explored the moors, and the man in the window of the church staring out at us as Melissa read her dramatic reading definitely contributed to this. The tone of the atmosphere parallels the mysterious personalities of some of the characters in the novel, including Mr. Rochester and Grace Poole.
The geography definitely played a major role on the rest of the way I read Jane Eyre. The geography definitely effected the tone and the mood of the novel, in addition to the characterization. It would definitely be interesting to see if the mood of the moors is different when the museum is open, if there were more tourists or if the weather were sunnier.