Emily Brontë

Biography

Fifth child of a family of six, Emily Brontë passed almost all his short life in a presbytery to Haworth, in the Yorkshire, where his/her father, Patrick Brontë, was Pasteur. It is there that its literary talent developed.

During its childhood, after the death of his/her mother and her two oldest sisters in a boarding school, his/her father and his maternal aunt, Elizabeth Branwell, decide to leave to the children a great freedom. Emily creates then with Charlotte, Anne and their brother Branwell an imaginary world: Angria, which they put in scene in stories. Then Emily and Anne make secession and create the countries of Gondal and Gaaldine, more austere and more realistic seems it.

Emily, talented and rêveuse, will have always evil to compose with the outside world. One second attempt at schooling, then a first post of teacher will show failures. In 1842, it goes to Brussels with his/her Charlotte sister, where it studies French and German and becomes an excellent pianist, with a predilection in particular for Beethoven. But, that achieved, it turns over to Haworth, where it becomes the housekeeper of the presbytery and division the remainder of its days between the pieces of housework, the long walks on the moor and the writing.

She writes many poems putting in scene characters of the imaginary country of Gondal which she created with her Anne sister, or relating to its personal experience of nature or its philosophical standpoint. Some of them report experiments of the mystical type.

It is the discovery of the talent of poetess of Emily by its family which leads it and her sisters to publish in account of author a collection of their poetries in 1846. Because of the prejudices of this time towards the women authors, all the three use male pseudonyms, Emily becoming " Ellis Bell".

Always on account of author and always under his pseudonym, it then publishes in 1847 its single novel the Tops of Hurlevent ( Wuthering Heights ) which gains a certain success, even if it is not comparable with that of Jane Eyre published the same year by his/her sister Charlotte (1816-1855). Remarkable for the density of its writing, the rigor of its construction and for a very personal romanticism influenced by the German romanticism, it was often compared with a Greek tragedy or shakespearienne for its intensity. But the innovating construction of the novel made perplexed criticisms and the true recognition will be late. The genius of Emily Brontë will appear clearly only starting from the end of the XIXe century.

Of return in its hearth after a disappointment in love, Branwell sinks in alcoholism. It is on Emily, most solid of the family physically, which most of the burden puts back. With the burial of her brother, it takes cold, then systematically refuses to be looked after. She dies of the Tuberculose the December 19th 1848 and is buried in the family vault of the Church of St Michael and All Angels, with Haworth, Yorkshire of the West.

See too

References

Dictionary of the characters, collection directed by Guy Schoeller, Books, editions Robert Laffont
Gerin, Winifred, Emily Brontë , Oxford University Near, 1972
Barker, Juliet, The Brontës , Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994
Davies, Stevie, Emily Brontë: Heretic , The Women' S Near, 1994

Wikisource

Poems of Emily Brontë

Internal bonds

External bonds

downloadable works of Emily Brontë on the Project Gutenberg.
works of Emily Brontë (HTML).
a card on Biblioweb
Short selected biography and poêmes
Bronte Sisters Links
a French-speaking newsgroup on the family Brontë

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