Emily Jane Bronte remains a mystery. Very little is known about her. There is little information, and much of what we have is contradictory. She is the author of only one novel and a few bits of poetry. This gives people little to build on. The majority of what we know about her comes from her sister, Charlotte, who is another well known author. From what is known, it would appear that Emily led an ordinary life of a nineteenth century female. She attended boarding school and learned domestic skills at home.
In other ways her life was unusual and even eccentric, contributing to the originality of her great novel. Emily Jane Bront was born on July 30, 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire. She was the fifth child and fourth daughter of Reverend Patrick Bront and Maria Branwell Bront . When she was two years old, the family moved to Haworth. This remained her home until she passed away in December of 1848 at the age of thirty. Both of Emily’s parents influenced her literary education. Her mother ublished one essay, and her father published four books and a little poetry. In 1821, Maria died of cancer, leaving Emily and her four siblings motherless.
Her sister, Elizabeth, came to live as a housekeeper and was responsible for training the girls in the household arts. While at home doing housework, Emily secretly worked on poetry. In 1845, Charlotte discovered some of Emily’s poems and confessed that she, too, had written some poetry. As it turned out, so had Anne. After much persuading, the oems were published in a small book entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Pseudonyms were used because the girls wanted their poetry to be taken seriously. Only two copies were sold. The failure led all three to begin work on novels: Emily on Wuthering Heights, Charlotte on Jane Eyre, and Anne on Agnes Grey. All three novels were successful and published in 1847 and 1848. During this time, their brother, Branwell, had become addicted to alcohol and drugs, and was dying.
Emily, the one closest to him, was the only one tried to help, not judge him. She beat out the flames with her bare hands when he wrapped himself in a blanket and set it on fire while he was drunk. Despite all of Emily’s efforts, Branwell died in September of 1848. He was only thirty years of age. Emily caught a cold at his funeral and never left home again. She died on December 19, 1848 at the age of thirty. She never knew of the great success of her one and only novel, Wuthering Heights.
