Charlotte Brontë
(1816-55)
Emily Brontë
(1818-48)
Rev. Patrick Brontë, Charlotte and Emily’s father
Bronte, Family Tree
Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë, by their brother
Emily Brontë (1818-48), by her brother Branwell
“Emily Brontë had by this time acquired a lithesome,
graceful figure. She was the tallest person in the
house, except her father. Her hair, which was
naturally as beautiful as Charlotte's, was in the same
unbecoming tight curl and frizz, and there was the
same want of complexion. She had very beautiful
eyes – kind, kindling, liquid eyes; but she did not
often look at you; she was too reserved. Their colour
might be said to be dark grey, at other times dark
blue, they varied so. She talked very little. She and
Anne were like twins – inseparable companions, and
in the very closest sympathy, which never had any
interruption.”
In 1871, Ellen Nussey’s first impressions of the fifteen-year-old Emily in
Reminiscences of Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë (1850), by George Richmond
Photograph of Charlotte Brontë (1854)
Parsonage at Haworth (c. 1850)
The Parsonage at Haworth today
Yorkshire
Wuthering Heights, Yard View
Wuthering Heights, Ground Plan (based on book details)
Top Withers (in the 1920s)
Thrushcross Grange Layout
Title Page, First Edition of Wuthering Heights (1847)
Title Page, first edition of Jane Eyre (1847)
Charlotte Bronte, on why she and
her sisters adopted pseudonyms
"Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names
under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell [when they
published a book of poems in 1846]; the ambiguous choice
being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at
assuming Christian names, positively masculine, while we
did not like to declare ourselves women, because--without
at the time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking
was not what is called "feminine,"--we had a vague
impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with
prejudice. . . .” (Bell, "Biographical Notice" 16)
Charlotte Bronte on her sister’s
novel Wuthering Heights
• “It is moorish, and wild, and knotty as a
root of heath. Nor was it natural that it
should be otherwise; the author being
herself a native and nursling of the
moors. Doubtless had her lot been cast
in a town, her writings, if she had written
at all, would have possessed another
character.”
• “Five years ago, my two sisters and
myself … found ourselves reunited, and
at home. Resident in a remote district
where education had made little
progress, and where, consequently,
there was no inducement to seek social
intercourse beyond our own domestic
circle, we were wholly dependent on
ourselves and each other, on books and
study, for the enjoyments and
occupations of life”
Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell (1850)
He struggled long to keep up an equality with
Catherine in her studies and yielded with poignant
though silent regret: but, he yielded completely; and
there was no prevailing on him to take a step in the
way of moving upward, when he found he must
necessarily, sink beneath his former level. Then
personal appearance sympathized with mental
deterioration; he acquired a slouching gait, and
ignoble look; his naturally reserved disposition was
exaggerated into an almost idiotic excess of social
moroseness; and he took a grim pleasure,
apparently, in exciting the aversion rather than the
esteem of his few acquaintances (60).
Genealogy of Wuthering Heights
“I [Lockwood] lingered round them,
under than benign sky; watched the
moths fluttering among the heath, and
hare-bells; listened to the soft wind
breathing through the grass; and
wondered how any one could ever
imagine unquiet slumbers for the
sleepers in the quiet earth” (300).
From the preface to Jane Eyre
“Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who
have aided and approved me, I turn to another class; a
small one, so far as I know, but not, therefore, to be
overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt
the tendency of such books as "Jane Eyre:" in whose eyes
whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each
protest against bigotry -- that parent of crime -- an insult to
piety, that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such
doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them
of certain simple truths.
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is
not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To
pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift
an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.”
Cormorant, from Bewick’s British Birds
From Charlotte Brontë to William
Smith Williams, 15 June 1848
“. . . Should your daughter, however, go out as a
governess, she should first take a firm resolution not
to be too soon daunted by difficulties, too soon
disgusted by disagreeables; and if she has a high
spirit, sensitive feelings, she should tutor the one to
submit the other to endure for the sake of those at
home [CB’s underlining]. That is the governesses’
best talisman of patience -- it is the best balm for
wounded susceptibility -- When tried hard she must
say ‘I will be patient not out of servility -- but because
I love my parents -- and wish through my
perseverance, diligence, and success, to repay their
anxieties and tenderness for me.’
From Charlotte Brontë to William
Smith Williams, 15 June 1848
“With this aid the least deserved insult may often be
swallowed quite calmly, like a bitter pill with a draught
of fair water.
I think you speak excellent sense when you say
that girls without fortune should be brought up and
accustomed to support themselves; and that if they
marry poor men, it should be with a prospect of being
able to help their partners. If all parents thought so,
girls would not be reared on speculation with a view
to their making mercenary marriages -- and
consequently women would not be so piteously
degraded as they now too often are.”