‘ Aunt Branwell’

My blip for today’s Mono Monday challenge ‘ Woman’.

After reading “ The Mother of the Brontës”, which was a fascinating and very enjoyable book, I find myself wanting to know more about the people who influenced the Brontë sisters. Their relatives and friends. Probably because of the Cornwall connection and also the fact that all their friends lived only a few miles from us in Spen Valley.

This is a portrait of their mother’s sister, Elizabeth Branwell.
She left behind a life of ease and sunshine in Penzance, Cornwall when in 1821 she travelled over 400 miles to Haworth to nurse her dying sister Maria.
After Maria’s death she didn’t return to her beloved Cornwall, but stayed on to raise a nephew and five nieces as best she could.

In her will she left substantial amounts of money to Charlotte, Emily and Anne, which allowed them to pay for the publication of their poems and also the publication of ‘ Wuthering Heights’ and Agnes Grey’.
Without this money they could not have afforded to publish their work and the Brontë story we know today would have remained untold.

So today’s Blip is dedicated to Aunt Branwell.