Mariella Frostrup, [...] presents Britain’s Novel Landscapes, a new More4 series about the influence of the physical and social environment on novels by great British female writers [....]

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This is just one of many examples of the extraordinary way in which our landscapes have shaped the writing of our most cherished novelists. Across four episodes, encompassing Jane Austen, the Brontës and Beatrix Potter, as well as du Maurier, Britain’s Novel Landscapes demonstrates the extent to which their surroundings have fired the imagination of so many classic authors. It shows how the contours of the British landscape have forged such timeless novels as the aforementioned The Birds, Rebecca, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility.

“We hope it gives viewers an appreciation of some of our incredible regions and landscapes and an insight into some of our most popular novels,” says Holt. “For me, these books weren’t just written by the authors; they were also very much written by the times and places they lived in. We wouldn’t have Wuthering Heights or Jamaica Inn or the tales of Beatrix Potter if it weren’t for those unique landscapes.

“If you view these novels from the perspective of their landscape, you really see these novels in a different way. You see them through the author’s eyes, but also through your ancestors’ eyes because our ancestors would have read these books from a very different viewpoint. They would have read Jane Eyre and thought, ‘I don’t know how to make a living either. That could be me’.”

The Moors have much more importance than we might imagine looking back at them today. For the Brontës, the Moors represented freedom. It was the only place they were free

These iconic landscapes are also immense characters in these books. Think of the pivotal role played by the Yorkshire Moors in Wuthering Heights, for example. Frostrup tells me there are many places in the world she’s never visited that still feel familiar to her as a result of reading books written there.

“India would be a really good example,” she says. “I’ve only been to Kerala, but the whole country feels familiar because of the multitude of Indian novelists that I’ve read. Seeing places through the eyes of the authors tells you so much more about the books, and what the writer was thinking.”

This process also helps because it puts these novels into context. We begin to understand that they are not preserved in aspic; rather, they are vivid, dynamic pictures, conditioned by the often harsh reality of the time and the place in which they were conceived.

“A lot of us today read these novels with our 21st-century mindset,” says Holt. “But these novels were very much products of the regions and the times in which they were written. The idea is to see these novels in context. For example, I didn't realise that at the time of the Brontës, half of all children were dying by the age of six and the average factory worker by the age of 24. Which is why child mortality features in their stories. When you start looking at these books through that prism and realising things were particularly bad in the area where the Brontës lived, you get a whole new take on these novels that you thought you knew.”

Grasping the brutality of an author’s surroundings only enhances our understanding of their work. When you discover the social conditions a character such as Jane Eyre grew up in, Holt says, “what you realise is that at that time just physically surviving was so difficult. It’s less than 200 years ago, but a lot of people were starving to death. They couldn't get work. There was no social security or any safety net and just the basic act of surviving was exceptionally hard. That makes you see this novel is actually something that’s much tougher than you thought it might be.”

Frostrup develops this theme. “When you walk through the Brontës’ hometown of Haworth, you see this gorgeous town with all its places named after characters from the novels – The Heathcliff Tea Rooms and so on. But then you hear about the effluent flowing down the tiny streets and you see the graveyard. That just blew my head off because it's the most crowded graveyard I’ve ever seen. Three-quarters of the graves are for children. It’s so awful, and it’s what the Brontës’ parsonage looked over. [...]

The Moors had an equally crucial effect on the Brontës’ work. Frostrup says. “Like the balls in Jane Austen, the Moors have much more importance than we might imagine looking back at them today. For the Brontës, the Moors represented freedom. It was the only place they were free. At that particular time in history, they were subjected to the same strictures as Austen’s heroines. The town was a filthy place that stank and was poisonous. I think all the sisters died eventually as a result of the unsanitary conditions.

“The minute you leave Haworth high street with its effluence and open drains, you step onto the Moors. They’re wild and wide, and stretch for miles, the wind is in your hair, you’re in your own world and you just think, ‘oh, gosh.’ I think I probably would have just pitched a little tent up there and never gone back to town!”

Frostrup, who presented Radio 4’s Open Book for 17 years and The Book Show on Sky Arts for seven years, adds: “you have to understand how awful the town’s poverty and injustice were to realise how incredibly liberating the Moors would have felt to them. All of the Brontë sisters tackled the social inequity of the time really brilliantly. But they also used the Moors as a metaphor for all of the passions that beat in their breasts that they weren’t able to express or act on in their own lives.”

There are other ways of interpreting the Moors in the Brontës’ work. In some readings, they are regarded as a sinister location fraught with peril. “The three sisters were all shaped by their environment,” says Holt, “and they wrote from their experiences. In Wuthering Heights, for instance, the Moors are a dangerous and difficult place. Emily had that view because she once witnessed a landslide there.

“Today we go to the Yorkshire Moors for a nice little stroll,” Holt continues, “whereas in the 19th century, people were trying to make a living from this land that wasn’t very suitable for farming, that wasn’t necessary the safest place and where you could easily get isolated in the snow. What we think of as a beautiful place, they saw as a place to survive in. It’s surprising how different life was back then. When you understand that and realise that a character like Jane Eyre could have starved to death, you get so much more out of the novels.” (James Rampton)