|
 Perhaps
the greatest writer of the three Brontė sisters - Charlotte, Emily
and Anne. Emily Brontė published only one novel, WUTHERING HEIGHTS
(1847), a story of doomed love. The sisters also published jointly
a volume of verse, POEMS BY CURRER, ELLIS AND ACTON BELL, but only
two copies of the book were sold.
'Heatcliff had knelt on one knee to embrace her; he attempted
to rise, but she seized his hair, and kept him down.
"I wish I could hold you," she continued bitterly, "till we were
both death! I shouldn't care what you suffered. I care nothing
for your sufferings. Why shouldn't you suffer? I do! Will you
forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you
say twenty years hence, 'That's the grave of Catherine Earnshaw.
I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is
past. I've loved many others since: my children are dearer to
me than she was; and at death, I shall not rejoice that I am going
to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them! Will you say
so, Heathcliff?"
"Don't torture me till I am as mad as yourself," cried he, wrenching
his head free, and grinding his teeth."'
(from Wuthering Heights)
Emily Brontė was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, in the north of England.
Her father was the rector of Hawort from 1820. After their mother
died in 1821, the children spent most of their time reading and
composing. To escape their unhappy childhood, Anne, Emily, Charlotte
and their brother Branwell created imaginary worlds - perhaps inspired
by Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726). Emily and
Anne created their own Gondal saga, and Bramwell and Charlotte recorded
their stories about the kingdom of Angria in minute notebooks. Between
the years 1824 and 1825 Emily attended the school at Cowan Bridge
with Charlotte, and then was largely educated at home. Her father's
bookshelf offered a variety of reading: the Bible, Homer, Virgil,
Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Scott and many others. The children
also read articles on current affairs and intellectual disputes
in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Fraser's Magazine,
and Edinburgh Review.
"No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere!
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear."
(January 2, 1946)
 In
1835 Emily Brontė was at Roe Head, but suffered from homesickness,
and returned, after only a few months, to the moorland scenery of
home. In 1837 she became a governess at Law Hill, near Halifax,
where she spent six months. In order to facilitate their plan of
running a school for girls, Emily and Charlotte travelled, in 1842,
to Brussels to learn foreign languages and school management. Emily
returned the same year to Haworth, where she stayed for the rest
of her brief life.
"In secret pleasure, secret tears,
This changeful life has slipped away,
As friendless after eighteen years,
As lone as on my natal day."
(17th May 1837)
Unlike Charlotte, Emily had no close friends. She wrote a few letters
and was interested in mysticism. Her first novel, Wuthering Heights
(1847), did not gain the immediate success of Charlotte's Jane
Eyre, but it has subsequently been acclaimed as one of the finest
novels written in the English language. In contrast to Charlotte
and Anne, whose novels take the form of autobiographies written
by authoritative and reliable narrators, Emily introduces an unreliable
narrator, Lockwood. He constantly misinterprets the reactions and
interactions of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights. More reliable
is Nelly Dean, his housekeeper, who has lived for two generations
with the novel's two principal families, the Earnshaws and the Lintons.
"Sleep not, dream not; this bright day
Will not, cannot last for aye;
Bliss like thine is bought by years
Dark with torment and with tears."
(from Sleep not, 1846)
Emily Brontė died of tuberculosis in late 1848. She had caught
a cold at her brother Branwell's funeral in September. After the
publication of Wuthering Heighs, some sceptics maintained
that the book was written by Branwell, on the grounds that no woman
from such a circumscribed life, could have written such a passionate
story. In 1848 Charlotte and Anne visited George Smith to reveal
their identity and to help quell rumors that a single author lay
behind the pseudonyms. After her sisters' deaths, Charlotte edited
a second edition of their novels, with prefatory commentary aimed
at correcting what she saw as the reviewers' misunderstanding of
Wuthering Heights. The complex time scheme of the novel had
been taken as evidence by the critics, that Emily had not achieved
full formal control over her narrative materials. However, her model
in layering narrative within narrative may have been Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein (1818). Emily's refusal to reduce ambiguity to simplistic
clarity did not have any immediate influence on the novel form until
Wilkie Collins experimented with multi-voiced first-person narratives
in such works as The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone
(1868).
 Wuthering
Heights (1847) - the story is narrated by Lockwood, a gentleman
visiting the Yorkshire moors in which the novel is set, and Mrs
Dean, housekeeper to the Earnshaw family, who had been witness
to the interlocked destinies of the original owners of the Heights.
In a series of flashbacks and time shifts, Brontė draws a powerful
picture of the enigmatic Heathcliff, who is brought to Heights
from the streets of Liverpool by Mr Earnshaw. Heathcliff is treated
in the same fashion as Earnshaw's own children, Cathrine and Hindley.
After his death Heathcliff is bullied by Hindley, who loves Catherine,
but she marries Edgar Linton. Heathcliff 's destructive force
is unleashed, and his first victim is Catherine, who dies giving
birth to a girl, another Catherine. Isabella Linton, Edgar's sister,
whom he had married, flees to the south. Their son Linton and
Catherine are married, but the always sickly Linton dies. Hareton,
Hindley's son, and the young widow became close. Increasingly
isolated and alienated from daily life, Heathcliff experiences
visions, and he longs for the death that will reunite him with
Catherine.
For further reading: The Brontė's Web of Childhood by
Fannie Ratchford (1941); The Genesis of Wuthering Heights by Mary
Visick (1965); Their Proper Sphere by Inga-Stina Ewbank (1966);
The Artist as Free Woman by S. Davies; The Brontės and Their Background
by Tom Winnifrith (1973); Myths of Power by Terry Eagleton (1975);
The Art of Emily Brontė, ed. by A. Smith (1976); Emily Brontė
by Stevie Davies (1988); Emily Brontė: Wuthering Heights by U.C.
Knoepflmacher (1989); The Brontės by Juliet Barker (1994), Wuthering
Heights by Maggie Berg (1996); Critical Essays on Emily Brontė,
ed. by Tom Winnifrith (1997); The Birth of Wuthering Heights by
E. Chitman (1998); Emily Brontė by S. Vine (1998) - see also biographies
by Lyn Pykett (1990) and W. Gérin (1971).
Museums and places to visit: Brontė Society and Brontė
Parsonage Museum, Haworth, Keighley; Brontė Way - a forty mile
walk in four section to sites associated with the Brontės; Oakwell
Hall County Park, Nutter Lane, Birstall - house features as "Fieldhead"
in Charlotte's Shirley; The Red House Museum, Oxford Rd, Gomersal,
Cleckheaton - House appears as "Briarmains in Charlotte's Shirley;
Wuthering Heights Walk, a six mile walk to Top Withins, the setting
for Wuthering Heights.
Patrick Branwell Brontė (1817-1848) - collaborated with
Charlotte in creating the imaginary world of Angria. After failing
as a painter and writer, he took to drink and opium, worked then
as a tutor and assistant clerk to a railway company. In 1842 he
was dismissed and joined his sister Anne at Thorp Green Hall as
a tutor. His affair with his employer's wife ended disastrously.
Patrick Brontė returned to Haworth in 1845, where he rapidly declined
and died three years later.
|
