Emily Brontë (1818 - 1848) was a 19th century English novelist and poet. She is considered one of the most relevant authors in the romantic genre during the Victorian era for her work Wuthering Heights (1847), which came to be considered one of the British classics.
Not much is known about her life, as Emily was an extremely reserved person, in fact, very few elements of interest could be extracted from her correspondence to reconstruct her character and personality..
She was one of the three Brontë sisters (Charlotte, Emily and Anne), who became famous for their literary works. Although each of her excelled in their respective styles, many literary critics have claimed that Emily was the most talented of the trio..
Emily used the literary pseudonym "Ellis Bell" to sign her works, something that was customary among women of her time. Some saw his style as something strange and out of place, especially after receiving texts such as Jane eyre.
Wuthering Heights It has a passionate narrative loaded with almost wild elements that contrasts with the works of the other Brontës. That is why it has been said that Emily Brontë's works created even more unknowns regarding her life than those they managed to clarify..
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Emily Brontë was born on July 30, 1818, in Thornton, Bradford, England. His parents were Patrick Brontë of Irish origin and Maria Branwell, who by that time had had four more children, including Charlotte and the only boy named Branwell..
Two years after Emily's birth, the last of the famous Brontë sisters, Anne, came into the world. That same year the family moved to Haworth because of his father's work..
Emily lost her mother when she was three years old, at that time the oldest of the Brontë siblings was just eight years old. The premature death of Mary Branwell, in September 1825, was the result of breast cancer.
Due to the death of the children's mother, Elizabeth Branwell, a maternal aunt of the boys, came to the care of her nephews. The older sisters were sent to girls' schools for a proper education.
In fact, Emily also briefly studied with her sisters at the Cowan Bridge School, beginning in 1824, where the older ones were victims of a typhoid epidemic. Maria and Elizabeth died in 1825, the same year the Brontë sisters were withdrawn from school..
After Emily Brontë's brief experience in a school, the rest of her instruction was conducted from home and was left to her father, who served as a clergyman of the Anglican religion..
Children used to read the most relevant authors of the time, such as Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott. They also began to venture into the world of writing early on, making stories that took place in an imaginary place created by them (Angria).
Around 1833 Emily and Anne Brontë decided to create their own world in which they located the stories they wrote and called it Gondal, so they stopped collaborating on the one that had been created by Charlotte and Branwell.
Emily attended Roe Head School in 1835, where Charlotte had gotten a teaching job. In any case, that institution did not fit with Emily's personality either and she decided to return home a few months later..
She could not bear to undergo a routine, in addition, she was uncomfortable with constant socialization, since she was used to loneliness and the life of freedom that she had been able to lead up to that moment in her father's house..
Emily Brontë got a job as a teacher at Law Hill School in Halifax in September 1838. The position was strenuous for her, because the workday was over 12 hours and it was a shock to her lifestyle.
After that, Emily did not want to look for another job outside the home, but took care of the housework and helping her father with the cleaning of the Haworth parish. His spare time was spent learning languages (he mastered German) and practicing music.
In the 1840s, Charlotte Brontë had the idea of establishing a college in Haworth to ensure that she and her sisters would have a stable source of income and stay together. So Emily accompanied her to Belgium to practice her German and perfect her French..
At that time Emily made an excellent impression on the Héger couple, the owners of the academy where the Brontës had gone to study and it was suggested that she remain there as a teacher. But due to the death of their aunt, both young women returned to England.
The idea of founding his own school did not materialize, since few people were interested in going to an area as remote as Haworth to receive their education..
Charlotte learned that her sisters had been secretly writing poetry and thus the idea arose of bringing together the works of the three in a single volume which they christened Poems (1846) and signed it as Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.
At the time, it was not strange that the authors took male literary pseudonyms, so that their work could be seen in a neutral way by critics and the public..
Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell She only sold two copies, which was a financial loss for the trio, but it did not discourage them in their goal of being writers..
A year later Anne and Emily Brontë got a deal to jointly publish their novels: Agnes Gray Y Wuthering Heights, respectively. The edition was published in December 1847 in London by J. Cautley Newby.
At first the critics were not favorable, Emily's work was described as wild, primitive and clumsy..
Later, Wuthering Heights was recognized as a passionate story with an innovative structure, aspects that probably caused it to not be accepted at first.
Emily Brontë passed away on December 19, 1848, in Haworth, England. The cause of his death was tuberculosis, which developed in his lungs after he contracted the flu at the funeral of his brother Branwell.
The only male of the Brontë brothers died in September 1848. Although his death certificate states that it was bronchitis, many scholars have stated that the possible cause of Branwell's death was, as in Emily's case, tuberculosis.
The illness that Emily Brontë contracted after the death of her brother progressed rapidly and she refused to take the medicines that were prescribed for her. The author's remains were deposited in the San Miguel y Todos los Ángeles church..
Author Emily Brontë began writing from an early age. Together with her, her brothers also conceived some short fictions and created worlds that served as settings for their stories..
Of those texts that can be classified as his juvenilia (works written before reaching maturity), no significant piece survived. Biographers who dedicated themselves to rebuilding her life found the problem of how uncommunicative she was regarding personal issues.
It is believed that Emily's creative potential was superior to that of her sisters, but because of her short life and career, the Englishwoman did not have the opportunity to capture her genius enough.
At the time his novel was published, Wuthering Heights, the way in which he approached the narrative was considered inappropriate even for a male author; but time made the critics realize the talent of Brontë and his work became part of the English classics.
This collection of poems was printed in 1846 and was the first publication of the Brontë sisters. The three girls collaborated with their texts, which were united in a work of the Aylott and Jones printing company, which was located in London..
The sisters decided, as was usual in their time, to take male pseudonyms to develop in the world of literature. Each kept the initial letter of their names and became Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily) and Acton (Anne), the Bell brothers.
The eldest of the sisters, Charlotte, contributed 19 poems, while the younger ones, Emily and Anne, gave 21 poems each as a contribution to the joint work. The Brontë texts in verse did not attract public attention and only sold two copies of their first book..
At that time, criticism about the work was also scant but positive. Those who made an assessment on Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell agreed that Ellis (Emily Brontë) was the most talented feather among the three.
It is not known when Emily Brontë's novel was written., Wuthering Heights, but it is thought that he began to work on it at the end of 1845 and that it was probably completed the following year.
It was published in December 1846 and did not attract the attention of critics at the time..
In the first edition Brontë decided to continue with the masculine literary pseudonym that he took when publishing Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. So readers continued to assume that Brontë's work was done by a man..
"Wild" was one of the adjectives used by critics to define the content of Wuthering Heights. Victorian audiences were not used to such a display of violence and rawness in a narrative.
The story is told in retrospect, something that was not frequent in other contemporary texts, so it was considered messy and clumsy. Years later critics understood the genius of Brontë, who proposed a novel narrative scheme.
All the elements that Emily Brontë introduced in her novel, Wuthering Heights, made it over time become one of the most acclaimed texts in English literature.
This 19th-century author took romantic elements, but did not stick to expectations. Brontë overcame morality schemes, literary style consensuses and placed her female characters in positions that challenged the role of the woman of her time..
In 1941 the literary editor and expert on the Brontë sisters, C. W. Hatfield, managed to compile into a single work which he christened Complete Poetry by Emily Brontë almost two hundred poems written by the English.
The problem to access the work of Emily Brontë in a precise way was that Charlotte, her older sister, decided to edit her texts to make them more acceptable and digestible by the public of her time.
After Charlotte's death, the public had access to the Brontë sisters' manuscripts, since their widower put them up for sale..
- “He is more me than myself. Whatever our souls are made of, yours and mine are the same ".
- "A person who has not completed half of his daily work at 10 o'clock in the morning runs the risk of leaving the other half unfinished".
- “I have dreamed in my life dreams that stayed with me forever and changed my ideas; they have crossed and crossed me, like wine through water, and have altered the color of my mind ".
- "The tyrant crushes his slaves and they do not turn against him, they crush those below them".
- "If you ever look at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave".
- "It was not the thorn that bent towards the honeysuckle, but the honeysuckle that hugged the thorn".
- "Honest people don't hide their actions".
- “Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they hurt those who turn to them worse than their enemies ".
- "A sensible man should find sufficient company in himself.".
- "I hate him for himself, but I despise him for the memories he relives".
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