Emily Brontë was born at Thornton in Bradford (in Yorkshire) in 1818. When she was two years of age her parents moved to Haworth, a small village where her father became the curate. Emily was one of five girls and had one brother, Branwell. Her two elder sisters died in a boarding school as a result of neglect. Her mother died when she was only three.

The children had very little parental guidance and were largely left to amuse themselves, living on the wild Yorkshire moors with little or no social contact. Their Aunt Branwell took over their care shortly after their mother’s death. The children will not hove derived much comfort and affection from her since she was an orderly woman whose main concern was simply to educate, feed and keep the children spiritually ‘clean’. They did not receive much warmth from their elders except from Tabby, a local woman who acted as servant. She appears to have been their only warm adult companion, giving them the affection all human beings desire, and caring for them till the last one died. In fact, if we knew more of Tabby it might be possible to draw a parallel between her and the Nelly Dean figure who is always so concerned with the welfare of her charges.

The children’s chief amusement was writing. Emily, Anne and Branwell kept well occupied in keeping account of the ‘doings’ of the inhabitants of an imaginary country called ‘Gondal’. Even in their mature years Anne and Emily continued to fantasize about Gon­doI.

When the children became older they were sent to boarding school. So shocking were the conditions there that Maria and Elizabeth (Emily’s elder sisters) died. This no doubt provided Charlotte with her ‘school’ material for Jane Eyre. After this tragedy the surviving girls returned home. Later, on two occasions, Emily found employment as a teacher, often rushing home to her ‘beloved’ Haworth after only short periods away. At one time Emily’s chief complaint against her working away seemed to be lack of time to herself (to write?) although she still managed to write a considerable amount whilst away.

Her attachment to Haworth was almost compulsive: on the moors she found joy and inspiration, and longed for them when away. Yet when there was the possibility of Emily and her sisters setting up a school away from home she appeared overjoyed at the prospect. She even went to Brussels with Charlotte to educate herself better for their school. Nevertheless, this was not a happy time for Emily. Her friends found her pale and sullen. M. Heger (whose school she attended) was not impressed with her. She duly returned home after only eight months. Charlotte became infatuated with M. Heger and returned to Brussels, only to find that her love was not reciprocated. (Mme Heger did not like herl) Charlotte and Emily’s grand idea of a school of their own never came to fruition, for they were unable to find pupils.

Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights over a period of about seven years. The novel was published in 1847 under the name of Ellis Bell but was over-shadowed by Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre which was published in the same year.

Although Emily Brontë wrote a great deal in her life, Wuthering Heights was her only novel. A small amount of her poetry is fairly well known but it is for Wuthering Heights that she is famous. One wonders whether Emily could ever have equalled the achievement of Wuthering Heights had she not died in 1848, a year after the novel’s appearance. It seems doubtful, for Wuthering Heights seems to be a part of her emotional nature. Her emotional energy seems to have been totally released in her one novel. By the same token most people would say that in her writing Charlotte never equalled Jane Eyre. Emily’s brother Branwell died in 1848 after a fairly hopeless, aimless and unsuccessful life. Emily followed him in December of the same year, dying from consumption at the age of thirty. She faced death in a very characteristic way without emotion, even in the face of suffering. Charlotte saw her as having superior inner strength in her last days and said of her, ‘I have never seen her paralleled in anything. Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone’. Anne died the next year, and Charlotte six years later, leaving Patrick Brontë the survivor of all his children. He died six years after Charlotte.

Emily Brontë has become a ‘larger than life figure’; yet in real life she was known as something of a recluse. Even among her sisters she was a very private person. Her Brussels master labelled her as ‘timid’ -— a description not easily identified with the author of Wuthering Heights. This reputation soon disappeared after the appearance of Wuthering Heights, which caused her to become a ‘legendary’ figure after her death.

Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights seems a very dark book. Of course, death was no stranger to Emily. Her mother died when she was three, and her two sisters when she was still young. She even had the graveyard as a close companion lust over the garden wall. (In fact, from the Brontë home a gateway leads into the graveyard.) It is therefore not surprising, if at times, she had dark thoughts.

There seems to have been no love affair in Emily’s life - and yet she was the creator of searing passion in Wuthering Heights (albeit selfish passion). Her portrayal of love as intense passion with few moments of quiet contentment seems to have been the results of a lack of experience and a lot of imagination - the way a young girl might see love. One wonders in fact if Emily was capable of mature love. She seemed to idealise love, yet reveal it as a sham. For her love suggests a form of mysticism  - for Catherine cries ‘I am Heathcliff’, suggesting how two souls yearn to be united in one. One senses, in Heathcliff, this urge towards oneness with the departed Catherine. She, too, will find no rest until this union beyond the grave has taken place:

Flowing from the pen of a woman who never experienced physical love, these are strong emotions. One feels, however, that Emily was less concerned with physical love than with a mystical, though earthly love that is ‘all consuming’, burning up both Catherine and Heathcljff. From what we know about Emily she seemed to display very little feeling. Yet she was able to produce a love story full of fierce and startling emotion. Could this mean that the book, for her, was an imaginative projection as well as an emotional release?

The fiery emotions of Catherine and Heathcliff certainly belong more to the moors where nature fights with nature than to the city. The moors, bleak and wild, the village grim and sombre, and the clutching hand of death, form the background that is an essential part of the novel.

Emily was reclusive and what emotions she enjoyed she rarely shared. Hers was a lonely existence by choice. What would be more natural for this recluse than to imagine ‘strange’ things while walking over the lonely moors which she so loved? Heathcliff seems almost evil to us, yet for Emily he may have been just a ‘part of nature’ — being no more cruel, no kinder, than the mindless forces of the wind and blizzard. Emily had never betrayed any signs of passion. This made her seem not always ‘quite human’; even in her last days she was averse to the expression of emotion and declined all help. As Charlotte observed: ‘. . . her nature stood alone’. Perhaps Emily did not know how to ‘humanize’ her characters since she was herself so incapable of emotional expression. (Heathcliff and Catherine, at any rate, seem incapable of normal human emotion, and appear more ‘demonic’ than human.) Even Emily’s friends found her ‘strange’ even rude at times. Yet, in her writing, there are times when Emily shows that she is capable of portraying normal and sensitive emotions, as when Cathy describes how she would spend her perfect summer day:

This shows Emily's ability to convey calm emotions and the tranquillity of nature. Perhaps she did not enjoy the 'darker' side of her nature. After all, Hareton finally wins Cathy and calm prevails over storm.

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