How did three women—who lived in almost total isolation from others and sought with every means at their disposal to avoid human contact—except with one another—manage to write some of the greatest fiction in the English language, and some of the most insightful into the human heart? This program goes far towards finding the explanation, as it shows how their writings were woven out of the relationships between the sisters, out of the scenes and people, the contemporary social and religious upheavals, and the unmet yearnings that underlie the works of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë. The characters of their time walk through the still-unchanged scenes of death, desolation, industrial pollution, and haunting loveliness, while the voices of the sisters and of Mrs. Gaskell (their contemporary and Charlotte’s biographer) lay bare the problems of the soul that beset these young women so desperate to express themselves in an age of enforced domesticity for women. (52 minutes)