Site Visits: Haworth

Haworth: Describe the museum, the gift shop, and the moors. Compare it with your imagination of the setting in the novels you read. Explain what museum emphasizes about the novel, what the gift shop interprets as important in the novels, and how being in the town and country affect your impression of the novel.

When we first went into Haworth, I didn't really know what to expect. At first we walked from the hostel down into a little town that didn't have much in it, besides the normal shops. The whole time I was wondering where the moors in the book could be. But the we hiked up a street with a pretty drastic pitch to it. There were the most adorable houses and stores all lining the street side. Every other store or bed and breakfasts name had something to do with the Bronte sisters. An example of this would be the Heathcliff Bed and Breakfast and the Bronte Hotel. This shows that the people in this town are all about the Bronte sisters and what they ended up bring to this little town. Now tourist and Bronte fans from all over come and see this little town. But when I was walking up the street I still could not understand where these moors were. Then after listening to the tour guide about the background of the Bronte family we went outside. At first we started at their house. Which in my mind, I pictured to be a lot bigger for some reason. Then we passed the school that Charlotte had taught at. But what caught my attention was this grave yard that was basically at the foot of the front steps of the house. The tour guide was giving us information about the history of the grave yard. Then she asked us to guess how many people we thought were buried there. I believe someone said 11,000. As soon as that was said the tour guide kinda laughed and told us they have on recorded 42,000 people buried in the grave yard. then she continued to tell us how they had to stop burying people there because the water was going right through the caskets and contaminating their water at the bottom of the hill. Gross. After that she continued to show us the beginning of the trail that the sisters used to hike. After we were done with our tour we all gathered in the gift shop. I was not surprised about the items in the gift shop, but surprised about how the story was portrayed. It seemed that on almost all of the Jane books, there was a picture of Jane on the cover. In my mind that makes perfect sense. But the covers on Wuthering Heights were all so different. The main cover that was used for that was a picture of the landscape. But others had pictures of a female on the cover, and most of the time I could not tell if it was Emily Bronte or Cathy Earnshaw (Linton). I feel like the cover that best describes the story would be the one with the landscape on it. Because in the story I feel like the landscape is almost a mirror image of the feelings. As the landscape changes so does the emotions, and vice verse. The next day we hiked the moors. Now this was an experience. Through the rain and the massive amounts of sheep poo I made it to the falls. While I was hiking up these moors I got a completely different view on their daily walk. Because it is not a walk in the park to say, it was a hike. A very long hike to make almost everyday. These girls needed some major motivation to walk these moors. At first it does not seem to bad to be walking through these beautiful hills with fields of Heather all around you. But then you pass 2 miles and it starts to get a little hard. I also have to take into consideration my gear to compared to the gear that they would be wearing. And I have to say I had it a lot better then they did. I had my umbrella, gym shoes and nice warm jacket on and when I reached the falls, it had felt like I did a marathon. With that in mind, I look back at Wuthering Heights and I have a completely different look at what the moors are now. And I give Heathcliff and Cathy a little more respect than I did before. (On the last picture turn your head to the right.)