Christmas week has arrived: how did that happen, it seems only the blink of an eye since Advent appeared over the horizon? It may be a busy week for you, but I hope you still find time to enjoy the four remaining posts in my 12 Days Of Brontë Christmas countdown!
In the original song we have arrived at ‘nine ladies dancing’, so did the Brontë sisters dance? The Brontës were a lower middle class family at a time when social position was more entrenched and more important than it is today. As daughters of a Church of England clergyman they were eminently respectable, but they didn’t have a lot of money compared to many clergy families. Many vicars and curates at this time, such as Patrick Brontë’s forerunner at Haworth Samuel Redhead, came from wealthy families, but Patrick came from a poor farming family which meant that he didn’t have the money to lavish on his children that he might have liked.
From an early age the Brontë sisters were being shaped for life as a governess: they would be expected to be able to teach sewing, literature and art, arithmetic and the humanities, but dancing was a skill that specialist teachers would be engaged for. Therefore, in short, I doubt whether the Brontës engaged in much dancing in their lives, other than perhaps with each other or their father or brother at Christmas.
We know Charlotte Brontë’s opinion of dancing thanks to a letter that she sent, aged 18, to her best friend Ellen Nussey. In the letter Charlotte names the sins of dancing as ‘shaking the shanks’, frivolity, and wasting time – but concludes that young people should still be permitted to engage in it from time to time.
There is much frivolity, and much shaking of the shanks, in a clip from the rather eccentric Hollywood Brontë biopic ‘Devotion’. In one notable scene Emily, Anne and Charlotte are seen dancing in a grand country house, and Charlotte is soon dancing with a rather posh Arthur Bell Nicholls. It’s all phooey, but enjoyable phooey. You can see the clip below, so now we can add to our song: On the ninth day of Christmas the Brontës gave to me nine sisters dancing, eight maids a loving, seven books a reading, six geese a straying, five Brontë rings, four coloured dogs, three French letters, two captive doves, and a merlin in a bare tree.”
I hope you can join me tomorrow as we reach double figures in our Brontë festive fun countdown, and if you are shaking your shanks over the next four days I hope you are the king or queen of your dancefloor.