| Emily Jane Brontë | |||||
Read works of Emily Bronte at 小说之家 Read works of Emily Bronte at 诗海 | |||||
Emily Jane BrontëBiography
Emily was born in Thornton, near Bradford in Yorkshire to Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell. She was the younger sister of Charlotte Brontë and the fifth of six children. In 1824, the family moved to Haworth, where Emily's father was perpetual curate, and it was in these surroundings that their literary oddities flourished. In childhood, after the death of their mother, the three sisters and their brother Patrick Branwell Brontë created imaginary lands (Angria, Gondal, Gaaldine, Oceania), which were featured in stories they wrote. Little of Emily's work from this period survived, except for poems spoken by characters (The Brontës' Web of Childhood, Fannie Ratchford, 1941).
In 1842, Emily commenced work as a governess at Miss Patchett's Ladies Academy at Law Hill School, near Halifax, leaving after about six months due to homesickness. Later, with her sister Charlotte, she attended a private school in Brussels. They later tried to open up a school at their home, but had no pupils.
It was the discovery of Emily's poetic talent by Charlotte that led her and her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, to publish a joint collection of their poetry in 1846, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. To evade contemporary prejudice against female writers, the Brontë sisters adopted androgynous first names. All three retained the first letter of their first names: Charlotte became Currer Bell, Anne became Acton Bell, and Emily became Ellis Bell. In 1847, she published her only novel, Wuthering Heights, as two volumes of a three volume set (the last volume being Agnes Grey by her sister Anne). Its innovative structure somewhat puzzled critics. Although it received mixed reviews when it first came out, the book subsequently became an English literary classic. In 1850, Charlotte edited and published Wuthering Heights as a stand-alone novel and under Emily's real name.
Like her sisters, Emily's health had been weakened by the harsh local climate at home and at school. She caught a chill during the funeral of her brother in September, and consequently, having refused all medical help, died on December 19, 1848. She was interred in the Church of St. Michael and All Angels family capsule, Haworth, West Yorkshire, England.
Popular culture
Emily Brontë is popularly regarded as the epitome of the talented writer who died after a short blaze of genius, more so than either of her sisters. Allusions to her in popular works are infrequent. The Hollywood film Devotion, filmed in 1943 but not released until 1946, was a loosely historical biography of the sisters, with Emily portrayed by Ida Lupino and Charlotte by Olivia de Havilland.
In the 1967 film Week End by Jean-Luc Godard, Emily Brontë appears in a scene in which one of the main characters asks her for directions.
Kate Bush wrote a song named "Wuthering Heights", named for and based on Emily's novel.
In the video game Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, one of the levels is called "Weathering Heights", in a reference to the book Wuthering Heights.
Wuthering Heights is referenced and quoted by various characters throughout Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, particularly Eclipse.
One of the relevant places in the cartoon The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is an asylum named "Withering Heights", once more a pun on Wuthering Heights.
References
This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.
Further reading
Emily Brontë, Charles Simpson
In the Footsteps of the Brontës, Ellis Chadwick
The Oxford Reader's Companion to the Brontës, Christine Alexander & Margaret Smith
Literature and Evil, Georges Bataille
The Brontë Myth, Lucasta Miller
Emily, Daniel Wynne
Dark Quartet, Lynne Reid Banks
Emily Brontë, Winifred Gerin