Jane Eyre; The Gothic House and Norton Conyer

A real house represented in literature that embodies the dreary, gothic atmosphere of the Brontë sisters’ discography is the Norton Conyers manor house. Located in Wensleydale, England, this house has a deep, storied history, as the first mention of it goes back to the year 1086, though the date the house was built is not known. Norton Conyers stands as a late Tudor house, with a base of Dutch-style gables having gone through additions and renovations scattered throughout its long history, in the Georgian and Stuart ages, as well as up to the year twenty-twenty-three. The manor house is important, not only in the sense that it stands as one of the great beauties of Wensleydale but because it has boasted many prestigious visitors in its time, among them Charles the I and James the II. The long-term owners of Norton Conyers, the Grahams, held important ties with the royal house of Stuart.

With its stunning architecture, dark and sophisticated interior, and the romantic notions of all the historical visitors to its name, it is unsurprising that this house could potentially have been the inspiration behind Charlotte Brontë’s most iconic and beloved work, Jane Eyre. The oldest of the three Brontë sisters paid a visitor to Norton Conyers in 1839, as a young governess with a penchant for writing. The house is thought to have served as the foundation of Brontë’s Thornfield Hall, the house of Mr. Rochester and Jane’s own place of work as a governess in the novel. Norton Conyers manor house, whose banisters, beautiful gardens, and hidden staircases must have been awe-inspiring for a working-class governess who came from a humble parsonage in Haworth.

An essential part of Norton Conyers, perhaps especially striking to Charlotte’s imaginative nature, was the “Mad Mary” room in the attic of the house. This room was hidden behind a staircase that led to the attic and was cramped and sickly looking, even without the context of the rumors and legends that surrounded this room. The talk of the Yorkshire natives in the time of the Brontës said that Mad Mary was a woman who was mentally unstable and locked in the attic bedroom of the manor house. Here is Norton Conyers's closest similarity to the fictional Thornfield Hall, even beyond the banisters and imposing stone fortress that makes it so regal looking; behind this regality, behind the power and family portraits, is a concealed, terrifying, cramped room in which one could hide their worst, most perverted, hopeless secrets.

Jane Eyre is a novel that while deeply Gothic in nature, is not altogether explicitly Gothic. It has none of the bloody, screaming ghosts like those of Wuthering Heights, or the creaky old floorboards. The only ghosts in Thornfield Hall are ghosts of the past, all neatly locked away in a sturdy feeling, sophisticated palace of lies. Mr. Rochester’s regal house in an anonymous corner of Southern Britain is not altogether terrifying or socially grotesque, like Heathcliff’s Wuthering Heights. The Hall is, instead, abundantly pleasant - with cozy fires in the library, a nursery for little Adele, and parties of posh, wealthy acquaintances coming to visit. The gothic in Jane Eyre works implicitly, not explicitly, as in a reverse of her sister Emily’s novel, Charlotte plays with secrets and doubts, or attics and locked doors, relying on the terror of concealment and unresolved pasts to haunt Thornfield Hall. The supernatural in the world of Jane Eyre is achieved through supposedly more human, realistic means, reminding the literary world for centuries that human error and the secrets of close companions are terrifying enough to be ghosts of their own kind.

Thornfield Hall functions both as a scene of gothic sensibility and as an indicator of Rochester and Jane’s relationship. The house holds all of Rochester’s family history, dark secrets, and regrets, while for Jane it embodies the promise of employment, and therefore of her future and autonomy. The two meet on the road to Thornfield Hall, live there together as governess and master, and eventually fall in love and promise themselves to each other in the house’s beautiful gardens. At every pivotal point in their relationship, Thornfield Hall set the backdrop, lurking and waiting for its final revenge, or perhaps, its final blessing.

The revelation of Bertha Mason, the secret wife in the attic bedroom who acts as the novel's own “Mad Mary”, drives Jane away from Mr. Rochester, and out from Thornfield Hall. Upon her return months later, the house is fallen, destroyed by the weight of its own dark untold truths; the fall of Thornfield Hall nearly destroys its master as well, with Rochester narrowly surviving being crushed in the fire, instead marred and temporarily blinded. The house falling is the pivotal moment of Jane and Rochester’s relationship - once all secrets are bared to each other, and Rochester reprimanded by his own brick and mortar, the couple is on equal footing. Nothing stands in the way of their relationship, because now neither of them have anything to turn to, and all the things left unsaid were pulled out, extracted from the attic of Thornfield Hall, and from the depths of Mr. Rochester’s secrecy. The house is critical in the story of the novel, and acts as its most intense and important character.