I can hardly believe my research summer has come to a close! It has been a wonderfully illuminating summer; I learnt more than I could have ever anticipated, and it has only made me all the more excited for my future studies. It is really quite exciting, but also so overwhelming to think how much more I would like to explore. Studying Anne Brontë's context and influences has made me want to read even more of what she was reading. One of my absolute favourite tasks during my research project was reading the contemporary reviews of her novel. It entirely transforms your awareness of a text. It's prismatic, a book, an artefact across time with traces of each day it touches. Even with my research, I can take nearly any aspect and think back to where my interest initially sparked. I have been interested in feminist literature since my mother read me Jane Eyre as a child; in high school, I wrote articles on feminism for my local newspaper, talking to people throughout my community. All of my own modern experiences naturally infused my research interests and my analysis. Yet, Anne lived generations before me, and her text speaks far beyond me. It's truly remarkable to think about. Her words, her ideas─it's not just that she was thinking years ahead of her time. She wrote with unwavering courage and determination in a voice so unmistakably her own. She's truly someone I hope I may someday be like. I love telling people this─Anne's last words to her sister Charlotte were, 'take courage, Charlotte, take courage'. I could talk forever about how literature changes the world. Every revolution, every shocking, unforgettable ripple across the world comes back to the written word. But it's also people, people sending words out into the world, the human voice speaking. Virginia Woolf writes in her unfinished memoir, 'A Sketch of the Past', 'I feel that by writing I am doing what is far more necessary than anything else.' This quote is constantly running through my head. It always makes me think of 'Ars Poetica' by Elizabeth Alexander.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?

In the Brontë Parsonage Museum: the table where the Brontë sisters wrote, discussed, and debated their novels together, late into the night.