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Emily
Bronte lived from 1818 to 1848. Although she wrote only
Wuthering Heights and about a dozen poems she is
accepted as one of the most gifted writers ever. Perhaps
the intensity of her writing grew out of the extraordinary
pressures of her home life.
Emily’s
mother died when she was three and she lived with her four
sisters and one brother in a bleak, isolated Yorkshire village
- Haworth. Her father doted on his only son, Branwell, and
expected little from his daughters - they surprised him
while Branwell wasted his life and died an alcoholic and
drug addict. The girls suffered dreadfully at a cheap boarding
school, the oldest two dying of malnutrition. Emily, Charlotte
and Anne were brought home just in time but Emily never
lost her terrible fear of institutions and of being closed
in. The sisters later became governess to help support Branwell,
seen by their father as a future great artist. They also
began to publish their writing, under male pen-names as
there was much prejudice against women writers. Their first
book, a collection of poetry failed but Emily’s novel
Wuthering Heights, was highly acclaimed and is still
widely read today.
Emily
seldom left her home village yet produced one of the most
powerful novels of the inner self ever written. She caught
a cold at her brother’s funeral in 1848 and died a
few months later.
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