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Wuthering Heights Characters

blackriverrosi — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:58:53 CST

Heathlcliff grieves after Catherine's death (13)

He was an orphan who lived at Wuthering Heights that fell in love with Catherine. Catherine married another man so he decides to try to get revenge throughout the book. In the end, he becomes so rich that he buys Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.

The reason Heathcliff is so fascinating to readers is because he is so different from other people, readers strive to understand him. They also look for things that they want to see in him. For example, his antagonizing personality is often blamed on his love for Catherine which has no outlet. Also the idea that under his harsher exterior is a loving and kind heart is supported by the stereotype romance hero, who is often brutish and harsh, but sensitive underneath. No theory that says he has a kind heart explains why his sadism and cruelty is never unmasked, throughout the whole book, for even a glimpse at softness.

Catherine
Catherine is one of the main characters in Wuthering Heights. She falls very strongly in love with Heathcliff, an orphan her father brings home. However, she is driven by her ambition to be ranked higher socially. Because of this, she decides to marry into a rich family by marrying Edgar. She is often hostile towards these two men in her life. She is described as free-spirited and beautiful, but also very arrogant and throws tantrums if she doesn't get her way.

Hindley Earnshaw
Hindley is the brother of Catherine and heir to the estate of Wuthering Heights. He has a deep and permanent resentment and hatred of Heathcliff from the moment he meets him. Hindley is married to Frances and they soon conceive a child named Hareton. Frances dies shortly afterwards and Hindley takes no interest in his son and falls into an alcoholic and depressive state.

Lockwood vs Nelly
Lockwood and Nelly, the two narrators of the story, can be seen as opposites in many ways. Lockwood is a highly educated city man, while Nelly is an uneducated servant who has never traveled outside the area in which the book takes place. Lockwood may represent an outsider's view of WH, while Nelly represents the chaotic reality.

Hareton Earnshaw
Hareton Earnshaw is the son of Hindley Earnshaw. He's portrayed as a young Heathcliff, being rude, uncivilized, and tempermental. His bad behaivor may be an effect of the way his father acted while Hareton was young. One incident including the time Hindley dropped him over the banister and Healthcliff, walking underneath, caught the boy.

Edgar Linton
Edgar Linton is sister to Isabella Linton. He has had a very wealthy childhood . He grows up on Thrushcross Grange. He marries Catherine because of his looks and wealth, but eventually loses control of her to Heathcliff.

Isabella Linton
Isabella Linton, the sister of Edgar, loves and marries Heathcliff. She thinks that he is romantic. But Heathcliff doesn't return her love and is actually using her as revenge on the Edgar Linton for marrying Catherine, the woman of his heart.

Mr. Earnshaw - Catherine and Hindley’s father. Mr. Earnshaw adopts Heathcliff and brings him to live at Wuthering Heights. Mr. Earnshaw prefers Heathcliff to Hindley but nevertheless bequeaths Wuthering Heights to Hindley when he dies.

Mrs. Earnshaw - Catherine and Hindley’s mother, who neither likes nor trusts the orphan Heathcliff when he is brought to live at her house. She dies shortly after Heathcliff’s arrival at Wuthering Heights.

Linton Heathcliff- The son of Isabella and Heathcliff. Linton grew up in London and did not meet his father Healthcliff until he was 13 years old and after his mother's death. Linton is described as a weak, demanding individual who has been ill most of his life.

Joseph- Joseph is one of the older servants at Wuthering Heights. He speaks with a very thick Yorkshire accent that is hard to understand. He is rude, ill-tempered and just basically unkind. Joseph is also described in the beginning of the story as fanatically religious, and attending his religious ceremonies with him were long and grueling.

Nelly Dean - Nelly Dean (known formally as Ellen Dean) serves as the chief narrator of Wuthering Heights. A sensible, intelligent, and compassionate woman, she grew up essentially alongside Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw and is deeply involved in the story she tells. She has strong feelings for the characters in her story, and these feelings complicate her narration.

Young Catherine - her mother, Catherine begins her life as Catherine Earnshaw and ends it as Catherine Linton; where young Catherine begins her life as Catherine Linton, and assuming that she does marry Hareton after the story has ended, she becomes Catherine Earnshaw. Mother and daughter both share similar qualities. They both have headstrong behavior, impetuousness and occasional arrogance. However, Edgar, young Catherines father seemed to have raised her to be gentler and much more compassionate than her mother was.

Mr.Green- Edgar Linton's lawyer. Mr.Green plays an important role in the story, Edgar died before telling Mr.Green to change his will. If Mr.Green had arrived on time, Edgar would have instructed him to change his will so that Heathcliff would not obtain Thrushcross Grange.

Character Map

Emily Bronte
A List of Her Poems & Novels

Fiction
Wuthering Heights

Poetry
A Little While, A Little While
A Daydream
A Death-scene
Anticipation
Death
Encouragement
Faith And Despondency
Honour's Martyr
Hope
How Clear She Shines
Last Words
Loud Without The Wind Was Roaring
Love And Friendship
My Comforter
No Coward Soul Is Mine
Plead For Me
Remembrance
Self-Interrogation
Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee
Song
Stanzas
Stanzas To ----
Stanzas-
Stars
Sympathy
The Bluebell
The Elder's Rebuke
The Lady To Her Guitar
The Night-wind
The Old Stoic
The Philosopher
The Prisoner
The Two Children
The Visionary
The Wanderer From The Fold
To Imagination
Warning And Reply

More Quotes

blackriverrosi — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:45:50 CST

WH Quotes

" . . . he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire."

The quote above shows the relationship that Catherine and Heathcliff have compared to the relationship that Catherine and Linton have. Catherine and Heathcliff are more of a whole than Catherine and Linton. (1)

I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn’t have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. (page 86)

In this quote, Catherine admits that she loves Heathcliff, but can't think of marrying him because he has been degraded by Hindley. Heathcliff hears this and he leaves Wuthering Heights not returning for 3 years.

My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods; time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath--a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind--not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. (page 88)

The extent of love between Catherine and Heathcliff is shown here.

I'd as soon put that little canary into the park on a winter's day, as recommend you to bestow your heart on him!...He's not a rough diamond--a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man. (page 109)

Although, she loves Heathcliff, Catherine realizes the man he has become and strongly advises Isabella to not get involved with him. Isabella thinks she is only jealous and does not take her advise.
(2)

It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and [Edgar’s] is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.

This is a quote from when Catherine is talking to Nelly about her reply to Edgar's proposal and is a turning point of the plot. It is overhearing this conversation that Heathcliff hears Catherine say that it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff and then he leaves. When it is said "he's more myself than i am" it shows how they are unified and are so alike.(3)

"Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heaven."

This quote is from Paradise Lost, however Heathcliff says this explaining that he would rather be at Wuthering Heights, which is represented as hell, than be unwanted at Thrushcross Grange. Heathcliff makes this comment after the Lintons kick him out and take Catherine in. (4)

"This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small—Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton. In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the window, and continued spelling over Catherine Earnshaw—Heathcliff—Linton, till my eyes closed; but they had not rested five minutes when a glare of white letters started from the dark, as vivid as spectres—the air swarmed with Catherines..."

This quote was the first introduction of the name of the character Catherine to the readers. It is the first time Lockwood is finding secrets about Wuthering Heights, and attempting to understand them. Later, we learn about the history of Catherine and why she is given two names. It is not sure whether this vision described by Lockwood is actually supposed to be a dream or not. First he sees her name, but then it becomes more clear when he actually sees her. This name haunts him as he reads it over, and sees Catherine. We will find out soon that her name haunts more than just Lockwood. (5)

...Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you--haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe--I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul! (page 176)

Heathcliff passionately pleads for Catherine not to leave him after she has died. (6)

"You teach me how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why do you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry, and wring out my kisses and tears; they’ll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me--then what right had you to leave me? What right--answer me--for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart--you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine" (6)

This quote is made by Heathcliff. He is distraught and heartbroken over the death and rejection of Catherine. He feels guilty for his actions against her that may or may not have played a part in her death.

" . . . treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies." (7)

This quote discusses the use of "treachery and violence" in life, and how these negatives actions can affect those who are involved with them. The quote is saying that if you must resort to treachery and/or violence, they will only end up hurting you more than the person that you tried to use them against.

The Moors

blackriverrosi — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 19:26:41 CDT

Speak of the North! A lonely moor: Poem

by Charlotte Bronte

Speak of the North! A lonely moor
Silent and dark and tractless swells,
The waves of some wild streamlet pour
Hurriedly through its ferny dells.

Profoundly still the twilight air,
Lifeless the landscape; so we deem
Till like a phantom gliding near
A stag bends down to drink the stream.

And far away a mountain zone,
A cold, white waste of snow-drifts lies,
And one star, large and soft and lone,
.......................

Critters of the Moor

the birds....

Red Grouse
Hen Harrier, Merlin
Golden Plover
Curlew, Sky Lark
Meadow Pipit
Whinchat
Ring Ouzel,
Twite

Red Grouse

and lovers

SUNSETS

..

and heather

........

Seeking Emily

blackriverrosi — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 19:12:53 CDT

Let Me In

'Heathcliff had knelt on one knee to embrace her; he attempted to rise, but she seized his hair, and kept him down.
--"I wish I could hold you," she continued bitterly, "till we were both death! I shouldn't care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn't you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, 'That's the grave of Catherine Earnshaw. I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I've loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than she was; and at death, I shall not rejoice that I am going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them! Will you say so, Heatcliff?"
--"Don't torture me till I am as mad as yourself," cried he, wrenching his head free, and grinding his teeth."'
(from Wuthering Heights)

"The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in - let me in!' 'Who are you?' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. 'Catherine Linton,' it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of LINTON? I had read EARNSHAW twenty times for Linton) - 'I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!' As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window."

"Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes..."- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Seeking Emily

"Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. "

"Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it."

"I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of creation if I were entirely contained here?"

" ....may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you — haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe — I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!"

"I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

"No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:

......

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main…

Though earth and moon were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee."

"He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine..."

"If I could, I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results. "

"A wild, wick slip she was - but, she had the bonniest eye and sweetest smile, and lightest foot in the parish: and, after all, I believe she meant no harm; for when once she made you cry in good earnest, it seldom happened that she would not keep you company, and oblige you to be quiet that you might comfort her."

....................

BRONTEWORD Home

blackriverrosi — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 19:40:41 CDT

PAGE LINKS

THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH....AND THERE WAS LIGHT.......and THE BRONTES CAME AND CREATED THEIR PASSIONATE WORLD....

Patrick and his wife Maria and their children...Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily, Branwell and Anne....the Brontes of Yorkshire, live forever in the power of BRONTEWORD.

Nothing is more powerful than the words of Emily Bronte....... Wuthering Heights defies definition but here is an attempt.

The Double Soul of Emily Bronte

I lov'd her, and destroy'd her!" Byron

Wuthering Heights is no simple love story. It is the anguished expression of the fractured double soul of Emily Bronte, the double soul of humanity and of the tragedy of life; the splitting of that soul by existence in the world; a world of strife and of competition. Wuthering Heights is a masterpiece of double design; an expression of loss and desire; the desire to be whole, to be reunited with the original self that is always fractured by birth into the world. Wuthering Heights haunts its readers because it asks unanswerable questions; Who am I? Where do I belong? Where am I going? Whom do I love? How can I hold my love? What is now, the past, the future? Where is she? Where is he? How can I get in? How can I get out?

The soul of Wuthering Heights is universal and it yearns, it suffers, it seeks, it withholds mysteries, it is orphaned and crying. Emily herself was orphaned, her mother dead and her father, a representative of the Christian religion which Emily rejected, a religion that preached and oppressed, was aloof, leaving the orphaned children to themselves. Emily was orphaned again and again, by the death of her sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, the little mothers, and by the death of her Aunt and brother, Branwell. She clung to her Mother Earth, to the moors, the sky, the winds, the rocks, the heather, her animals, her kitchen, her home, to the path overgrown with weeds; and when torn from this great mother, she suffered, grieved and almost died.

In her great novel, orphans abound. Cathy is motherless and fatherless, being rejected by her father in life and deserted by her mother and father in death. Heathcliff is parent-less, almost origin-less and his adoptive father soon dies, leaving both Cathy and himself at the mercy of the vengeful, Hindley and to the persecution of the old hypocrite, Joseph.

Hindley, another suffering orphan has no mother and is rejected by his father in favour of Heathcliff, the stranger.

Hareton is orphaned at birth, his mother dead and his grieving father lost in drink. The younger Cathy enters the world as her mother leaves it. Young Cathy has a father but he is powerless to protect her from Heathcliff's revenge. As Edgar dies, Heathcliff, the avenger, walks his new daughter home. He is her jailer.

Young Linton, son of the dead Isabella, is sneered at by his father, Heathcliff. Linton is the most miserable of orphans, having no strength of his own.

Yet the need for love is great, the need for the boundless mother love. Cathy and Heathcliff protect their great love for each other, as two parts of a whole, as one being in two visible parts by hanging up their pinafores and making a sanctuary in the arch of the dresser, by sleeping together in the same bed, by scampering on the moors and by general rebellion.

From all of these safe places they are sundered and split apart. Joseph tears down their privacy pinafore screen, he drives them out from the bed and Cathy is laid alone for the first time, as she will be for the second time in death, and Hindley bars Heathcliff out from the home, debasing him in body and spirit. The Lintons accept Cathy and reject Heathcliff. Cathy realizes she is " Heathcliff" at the same moment that she betrays both herself and him by marrying, Edgar.

Hareton seeks a father in his abuser, Heathcliff, and loves him, as Heathcliff does him, though he won't let himself show it. Young Cathy loves her father, young Linton and Hareton, all in spite of strife and anger. The need for love and to find the right love drives the story.

But to err is to die. Emily Bronte, if she had any religion at all, paints a religion of the self in Wuthering Heights. Like The Byronic Hero, she must be true to herself and be united as a whole soul with her mirror image, Heathcliff. Cathy betrays the code, marries Edgar, suffers and dies but does not find rest. She is cloven in two. Heathcliff is forever faithful and cloven in two by Cathy's rejection and death. Yet he is always true to Cathy and to himself. He regrets nothing he has done, as it is true to his code. He must be with and for Cathy. He seeks, suffers and dies. He believes he will attain his goal. He will dissolve with his love; his Cathy.

Emily Bronte leaves us with the mystery. Do they walk? Do they sleep in the quiet earth? Where are they? Not here? Not there? Not perished?

Wuthering Heights is Emily Bronte's great agony of joy. It cries, I love you. Don't leave me. My heart's bliss is here, on this earth, on this moor, under this sky, with you who are more myself than I am. Wuthering Heights pulses with the passion for life, for food, for work, for family, for home, for childhood; an eternal childhood, and for an all encompassing and unending Mother-love.

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights has a double structure throughout, echoing the double opposites of the soul.

It has two narrators, Lockwood, the stranger who blunders into the mysteries and Nellie, the intimate, who relates the everyday details.

It has two families, the Earnshaws, earthy and wild working people and the Lintons, upper class and refined gentry.

It has two houses, the Heights, solid and of stone, windswept and embattled by the elements, and the Grange, in the valley, in a walled in and pleasant park.

It has two Cathy's, the first drawn away from home to destruction and the second, going toward home and fulfillment.
It has two rivals, Heathcliff, strong, passionate and true, cruel and defiant, and Edgar, civilized, gentle, weak and moderate.

It has two grieving widowers, Hindley lost in the mire of weakness and drink, and Heathcliff, grieving for his true love, Cathy, driven by the strength of his desire.

It has two degraded sons, Heathcliff, the foster son of Mr Earnshaw and Hareton, the foster son of Heathcliff.

It has two mis-marriages; Cathy and Edgar and Heathcliff and Isabella.

It has two mismatched sons . Heathcliff's son Linton is pure Linton, showing nothing of Heathcliff about him. Hareton, a fine fellow, is hardly a reflection of the cowardly Hindley. Hareton adopts Heathcliff as his true father.

In fact, it is as though Heathcliff has two sons, his own, Linton, who he says is not worth a farthing, and his foster son, Hareton, who is worthy of his love.

In the previous generation, Mr Earnshaw had the same; Hindley whom he said was nothing and would amount to nothing, and Heathcliff, the foster son, whom he valued and loved.

Throughout both generations there is a double dose of rejection, adoption, love and hate.

Wuthering Heights has two religions; the self righteous and punishing Christian Creed as hurled about by Joseph and the Earthy Creed of the integrated self, as sought and suffered by Cathy and Heathcliff.

It has two places; the inside and the outside; the inside of the family and the outside of the family; the inside of society and the outside of the society; the inside of the house and the outside on the moors; the inside of religion and the outside of personal code; the here of the earth and the there of the after-place; the double places of heaven and hell, depending on the viewer; the inside of love and the outside of hate; the inside of being together and the outside of being apart.

It has two generations, the first destroyed in woe and the second raised up in joy.

It has two endings; Heathcliff and Cathy walk the moors in death or sleep in the quiet earth. Hareton and the second Cathy return to the Grange to renew the Earnshaw family.

Two phrases could illustrate the whole novel. " Where is She?" and " Heathcliff, Come back." They express the double passion, the double loss, the double longing, the double search, the Double Soul of Emily Bronte.

Alice and Hugh

blackriverrosi — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:20:07 CDT

Alice and Hugh
The red rose paled before the blush
That mantled o’er thy dimpled cheek;
The Peach-bloom faded at the flush
That tinged thy beauty ripe and meek.

Thy milk-white brow outshone the snow,
Thy lustrous eyes outglanced the stars;
Thy cherry lips, with love aglow,
Burned ruddier than the blood-red Mars.

Thy sweet, low voice waked in my heart
Dead memories of my mother’s love;
My long-lost sister’s artless art
Lived in thy smiles, my gentle dove.

Dear Alice, how thy charm and grace
Kindled my dull and stagnat life!
From first I saw thy winning face
My whole heart claimed thee for my wife.

I thought you’d make me happy, dear,
I sought you for my very own;
You clung to me through storm and fear,
You loved me still, though poor and lone.

My love was centred all in self,
Thy love was centred all in me;
True wife above all pride and pelf,

My life’s deep current flows for thee.
The finest fibres of my soul
Entwine with thine in love’s strong fold,
Our tin cup is a golden bowl,
Love fills our cot with wealth untold.

Hugh Brunty

To the Editor: Published: October 29, 1995
Both Juliet Barker's monumental book on the Brontes and Tony Tanner's delicately balanced review (Sept. 24) missed a crucial fact about Emily Bronte's masterpiece, "Wuthering Heights": its source in the Bronte family history. Heathcliff was based on Welsh Brunty, Patrick Bronte's adoptive grandfather.

Patrick Bronte's great-grandfather Hugh Brunty was an Irish cattle trader who often made trips to England. Returning from one of these voyages with his wife, he found a dark, ragged street urchin, whom the Bruntys took home and raised as their own son. Named Welsh because they believed him to be of Welsh origin, the boy proved talented at cattle trading and became closer to Hugh Brunty than his own two sons, making Welsh an object of great jealousy on the part of the Brunty brothers.

Welsh Brunty's history prefigures the story of Heathcliff in almost every respect. Driven out of the family home by his jealous brothers after Hugh Brunty's death, he eventually took over the Brunty homestead and married the youngest daughter. They adopted a son (young Hugh) of one of the alienated and penniless Brunty brothers.

Welsh's financial success turned sour, however, and he became mean and abusive. Young Hugh's only consolation was his dog Keeper (for whom Emily's dog Keeper was named). One day a confrontation caused young Hugh to walk away from the farm and never return. He found a job in a limekiln, met the beautiful Alice McClory and married her; Patrick Bronte was their firstborn child.

The elements of this story found in the Gondal saga represent Emily Bronte's early efforts to turn the Welsh Brunty story into literary form. In "Wuthering Heights" she transformed these basic elements into high art.

My ancestor was Patrick's brother William. They remained close even after Patrick moved to England; when Patrick stabilized the spelling of his last name around 1806, in honor of Lord Nelson's being made Duke of Bronte, William followed suit.

LYDIA BRONTE New York

The Story of Hugh Brunty

From "A Brontë Companion" by F B Pinion. This story relates to Emily's grandfather, Hugh Brunty, and may have been told to the Brontë children by their father.
Hugh's grandfather had a farm near the banks of the Boyne. He was a cattle-dealer and often crosses the Irish Sea from Drogheda to sell cattle in Liverpool. On one of his return voyages, a strange child was found in the hold. It proved to be a very young boy – dark, dirty and almost naked. There was no doctor on the vessel, and only one woman, Mrs Brunty. As nobody would take care of him, and there was no foundling hospital nearer than Dublin, she decided to adopt him. From his gypsyish complexion, the boy was thought to be Welsh, and called 'Welsh' by the Bruntys. He grew up to be sullen, envious, and cunning, and attached himself to Mr Brunty who took him, instead of his own sons, to fairs and markets to listen to farmers' conversations and gain the information needed to drive hard bargains. Welsh was taken to Liverpool for the same reason, and in time Mr Brunty became prosperous; the more attached he became to Welsh, however, the more his children disliked the interloper. Ultimately, Welsh gained almost complete management in business matters. When his master died suddenly on board ship after selling the largest consignment of cattle that ever crossed the Irish Sea, he professed to know nothing of the proceeds or the documents relating to the sale.

The Bruntys were well-educated, knew very little about farming or dealing, and were unable to support themselves. Welsh arranged a meeting at which he proposed to tell them how they could be rehabilitated. He appeared dressed as he had never been before, in black broadcloth and fine linen, white as his prominent teeth. He would continue dealing and supplying the family needs provided Mary, the youngest sister, married him. The proposal was indignantly rejected. As he left, Welsh shouted "Mary shall be my wife, and I'll scatter the rest of you like chaff from this house, which shall be my home!" The Bruntys had friends and three of the brothers obtained good positions, two in England. They were able to send home enough money to pay the rent of the farm and maintain their mother and sisters.

Welsh did not return to cattle-dealing; he became a sub-agent for an absentee landlord, with responsibility for collecting rents, including the Bruntys'. He could exploit his cunning to the satisfaction of his master and overlord but, as he could never get the better of the Bruntys, who continued to pay their rent regularly even when it had increased, he decided to change his tactics and employed an unprincipled woman to impress on Mary how much he had done and spent to save her family from eviction. Forged receipts were shown. Finally Mary was induced to meet Welsh one night in a plantation in company with the go-between in order that she might express her gratitude. Her fate was sealed. Marriage to Welsh was preferable to scandal. He had no difficulty in bribing his agent into making him the tenant of a farm.
Years later the agent was assassinated after a bout of heartless evictions and Welsh's house was burnt to the ground. He was so poor that he could no longer retain the favour of the new agent and soon lost his sub-agency. As he and Mary were childless, they offered to adopt one of his nephews. So it was that Hugh Brunty, whose father lived in the south of Ireland, was allowed to be taken by the pair from his comfortable home on the condition that his father should never visit or communicate with him, and that he should never be told where his parents lived. Hugh was five or six at the time. Four nights were spent on the road, partly to save the cost of lodgings, more particularly (so the story goes) that the boy should be unable to recall his way home. From the outset he was treated harshly, and even brutally. He received none of the education Welsh had promised his parents but had to work on the farm. Welsh's right-hand man was a tall, gaunt, rather primitive and hypocritical peasant (rather like Joseph in Wuthering Heights); he had a habit of invoking 'the Blessed Virgin and all the saints'. Hugh's best friend was the farm dog, Keeper (the name of Emily's favourite dog). Aunt Mary was sorry for him and told him the story of her husband's villainies. The discovery that his uncle was not a Brunty afforded Hugh great relief.

The story of his escape at the age of fifteen and how he swam naked down the Boyne to a rendezvous with an enemy of Welsh, a neighbouring farmer, who was waiting with a suit of clothes to assist him, is romantic. He settled in the north of Ireland, eventually becoming overseer of some lime kilns. One of his friends was a red-haired youth named McClory. During a Christmas holiday, he stayed at McClory's home and soon fell in love with his beautiful sister Alice. Their marriage was opposed by her family on religious grounds, and preparations were made for her wedding to a Catholic farmer. All was ready for the ceremony when it was discovered that the bride was missing. Soon it was heard that she had been seen galloping with a tall gentleman towards Banbridge; later a boy rode up on his horse to say that she had just been married to Hugh Brunty at the Protestant Church of Magherally (this was 1776). The clergyman who took the service thought the bride the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Their first home was the cottage at Emdale in the parish of Drumballyroney.

The Four Brontes: Myth vs. Reality

blackriverrosi — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:36:53 CDT

Charlotte Bronte's gloves, a pair of neatly stitched, lightly soiled, finely creased white gloves, lie alongside each other like precious ivories rescued from a vanished civilization. The gloves are remarkable for their minuteness -- they are less than half as broad as a modern female hand, and their fingers are scarcely thicker than a pencil -- but much more so for their association: these few inches of kid once covered the hand that held the pen that wrote "Jane Eyre." These gloves so vividly and so hauntingly summon the novelist that a visitor is inescapably drawn to examine them.

Charlotte Bronte's hands hold a special place in her psychology. They were the one physical feature the writer exempted from what she described as her "almost repulsive" plainness. It is usually assumed that they pleased Charlotte because of their size and their delicacy, but perhaps Charlotte was proud of her hands for another reason.

Charlotte's hands were the instrument, fed by her vigorous imagination, that produced the famous juvenilia that enlivened the unusual Yorkshire childhood Charlotte shared with her siblings Branwell, Emily and Anne. Her hands also fashioned the fiction that defined Charlotte in her maturity, and they were responsible for the correspondence that connected her to worlds beyond her father's parsonage at Haworth, where she lived her whole life. Charlotte's hands were her liberators; they lifted her to fame and a measure of happiness.

Branwell is remembered as the colossal failure...but in his works a different Branwell is seen. Branwell's early talent and leadership among the children is evident here. It was he who, upon receiving a gift of toy soldiers from his father, invented the kingdoms of Verdopolis and Angria, which occupied his and Charlotte's imaginations for so many years, and inspired Emily and Anne's parallel fantasy world, Gondal. In handwriting even stupefyingly smaller than Charlotte's, Branwell recounted one of Angria's many battles in a fragment from 1835. In another tiny manuscript, Branwell wages a different battle, this time with Charles Wellesley, one of Charlotte's early pseudonyms, whom he calls a "little reptile" and accuses of vomiting "forth a dose of scandal and self importance."
The Brontes' sibling rivalry enlivens the early stories. Far from mild herself, Charlotte takes on Branwell in one of her handmade Lilliputian books, which contains her play "The Poetaster." In it, Charlotte argues for methodical composition and careful revision against Branwell's predilection for poetry that is spontaneously inspired. Branwell and Charlotte stand off visually, too, in drawings of Alexander Percy, the hero of Branwell's juvenilia, and Arthur Wellesley, the hero of Charlotte's. In one of his many quests for a respectable career, Branwell once set up in Bradford as a portrait painter. When working in pen and ink, he sketched the prospect of his own imminent death. A skeleton, assuming the attitude of a boxer, comes to challenge the naked bedridden artist to a match. The Heathcliffian, death-seeking Branwell of legend in fact depicts himself resisting , his head straining away from the skeleton, his eyes resolutely shut. Death came for him anyway. Charlotte writes on Oct. 28, 1848, "I do not weep from a sense of bereavement -- there is no prop withdrawn, no consolation torn away, no dear companion lost -- but for the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely, dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and a shining light." "My poor father naturally thought more of his only son than of his daughters,"

The Girls

As much as it may have isolated them, Haworth remained a source of strength for the Bronte sisters. There is a telling image, conveyed first by Mrs. Gaskell, of Charlotte, Emily and Anne writing together at the dining table, then standing up and walking in circles around it. As they walked, they read and discussed their work, as well as their hopes for the future. From this circle, they evidently drew much courage.

These children of nature were in truth savy, hard-working and highly disciplined writers, but the truth has not often mattered to their admirers. Readers often want their writers to embody their fiction, and Bronte fans have demanded a large portion of romance from their heroines, preferring to see them as untamed spirits who wandered the blustery Haworth moors, spilling over with uncontrollable passion in their works.

The Bronte craze began just after Charlotte's death, with some pilgrims visiting the parsonage while her father and widower still lived there and others asking for mementos of the lost ladies of genius.

But how can it be helped....I TOO HAVE VISITED BRONTE COUNTRY AND FELT THE SPIRIT OF THE PLACE GO THROUGH AND THROUGH ME AND JUST OUT OF SIGHT, THOUGH ALL PRESENT, THE BRONTE SISTERS.....CHARLOTTE WITH HER TINY HANDS AND HUGE IMAGINATIVE WILL....EMILY WITH HER MANLY STRIDE AND WILD ELUSIVE AND SCORNFUL LAUGHTER......ANNE WITH HER ARDENT AND FAITHFUL SOUL....AND LITTLE, PLUCKY< DARING< FLAMBOYANT AND TRAGIC BRANWELL.......

PAGE LINKS

blackriverrosi — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:31:58 CDT

News

BRONTEWORD Home......Featuring essay on Double Soul of Emily Bronte

Emily Emily and her passions

BYRONIC HERO

Father of Bronte Genius Patrick Bronte

Bronte Family Ireland Bronte Family Bronte Family Life Aunt Elizabeth Branwell Brontes Remembered

Bronte Treasures

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

Wuthering Heights... Analysis Wuthering Heights Mystery Wuthering Heights Art Wuthering Images

Bronte Image Collections Jane Eyre Illustrations Bronte Illustrations

Haworth The Spirit of the Moors

The Siblings

Anne Bronte Emily Bronte Charlotte in Love

Branwell In Love

	Branwell's Art

Branwell's and the weary are at rest Branwell Bronte....the Tragedy

Charlotte in Love

blackriverrosi — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:45:01 CDT

Her Loves

Constantin Heger

Charlotte's " Dear Boy" and husband, Arthur Nicholls.
CHARLOTTE"S WEDDING as remembered by a Haworth Resident, Mr Robinson, former pupil of Arthur Nicholls.

ALSO MEMORIES OF CHARLOTTE THE WOMAN AND BRANWELL's HIGH SPIRITS

Charlotte's ring

Elizabeth Gaskell writes of the wedding....

" It was fixed that the marriage was to take place on the 29th of June. Her two friends arrived at Haworth Parsonage the day before; and the long summer afternoon and evening were spent by Charlotte in thoughtful arrangements for the morrow, and for her father's comfort during her absence from home. When all was finished - the trunk packed, the morning's breakfast arranged, the wedding-dress laid out, - just at bedtime, Mr. Bronte announced his intention of stopping at home while the others went to church. What was to be done? Who was to give the bride away? There were only to be the officiating clergyman, the bride and bridegroom, the bridesmaid, and Miss Wooler present. The Prayer-book was referred to; and there it was seen that the Rubric enjoins that the Minister shall receive "the woman from her father's or friend's hands," and that nothing is specified as to the sex of the "friend." So Miss Wooler, ever kind in emergency, volunteered to give her old pupil away. The news of the wedding had slipt abroad before the little party came out of church, and many old and humble friends were there, seeing her look "like a snow-drop," as they say. Her dress was white embroidered muslin, with a lace mantle, and white bonnet trimmed with green leaves, which perhaps might suggest the resemblance to the pale wintry flower.

Arthur was a fine man and Charlotte and he were happy. He loved her and she grew to love him.

.

News

blackriverrosi — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:01:44 CDT

£1.3m price for Thornton house which features in Jane Eyre (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

By Hannah Baker »

7:34pm Monday 12th April 2010

An historic manor house in a village with links to the Brontes has gone on the market for more than £1.3 million. Thornton Hall is located next to St James’s Church in Thornton, Bradford, where Patrick Bronte, father of the three literary sisters, was perpetual curate between 1815 and 1820. Charlotte, Emily and Anne, along with their brother Branwell, were born in the village, before the family moved to the parsonage at Haworth.
Barry Whitaker, who has owned the Grade II-listed property since 1980, said: “The Lord of the Manor would have had access to the church from the grounds and would have known Patrick Bronte.
“There’s a presumption that the young Bronte sisters played in the garden at the manor before the family moved to Haworth.
“There’s also a school of thought that the description of Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre bears architectural resemblance to Thornton Hall.”
Thornton Hall dates back to the 11th century, when the original wooden structure of the property, owned by Gemill of Thornton, was named in the Doomsday Book of 1086. The property was rebuilt in 1598 and was renovated extensively in the late 19th century, by John Foster, owner Black **** Mills in Queensbury.
Mr Whitaker said: “The mills can be seen from the master bedroom of the manor so Mr Foster would have been able to look out and see the smoke from the chimneys and make sure everyone was working hard.
“He would have been taken across the valley by his coachman to the mills. All our children have grown up now and are living in America and France so we are going to downsize and spend time visiting them.
“We are giving someone else the chance to be Lord of the Manor in Thornton.”

Charlotte Bronte may have used many models for THORNFIELD in Jane Eyre, such as NORTON CONYERS.....

And then...THORNFIELD has a life of its own, inspiring many today....

Bronte Treasures

blackriverrosi — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:07:05 CDT

Bronte Treasures...Their Own Belongings |

It is intriging to look at objects the Bronte Family used and wore. It is a process almost like Heathcliff's own...tring to push away the veil of time and space to get a glimpse of the living souls of the Brontes.

Charlotte's desk and Emily's art box and geometry set.

Charlotte's work basket and Branwell's chair

Emily

blackriverrosi — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:48:29 CDT

Emily by Rosi

Description

Emily had an unusual character, extremely unsocial and reserved, with few friends outside her family. She preferred the company of animals to people and rarely travelled, forever yearning for the freedom of Haworth and the moors. She had a will of iron – a well known story about her is that she was bitten by a (possibly) rabid dog which resulted in her walking calmly into the kitchen and cauterising the wound herself with a hot iron.
She had unconventional religious beliefs, rarely attending church services and, unlike the other children, never teaching in the Sunday School.
In appearance, she was lithesome and graceful, the tallest of the Brontë children (her coffin measured five feet seven inches – 1.7 meters) but ate sparingly and would starve herself when unhappy or unable to get her own way. As her literary works suggest, she was highly intelligent, teaching herself German while working in the kitchen (her favourite place outside of the moors) and playing the piano well enough to teach it in Brussels. Her stubbornness lasted to the end where she refused to see a doctor or rest while she was dying of tuberculosis.
In 1871, Ellen Nussey, a lifelong friend of the Brontës, wrote of her first impressions of the fifteen-year-old Emily in Reminiscences of Charlotte Brontë:

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.

The Brontë sisters (Anne, Emily and Charlotte, aged about 15, 17 and 19 respectively) painted by Branwell in 1834

Emily only wrote the one novel, Wuthering Heights, although she was working on a second when she died. However, no trace of this book remains. We only know she was writing it because her publisher, T C Newby, sent her a letter dated 15 February 1848 which said: I am much obliged by your kind note and shall have great pleasure in making arrangements for your next novel. I would not hurry its completion, for I think you are quite right not to let it go before the world until well satisfied with it, for much depends on your new work. If it be an improvement on your first, you will have established yourself as a first rate novelist, but if it fall short the Critics will be too apt to say that you have expended your talent in your first novel. I shall therefore have pleasure in accepting it upon the understanding that its completion be in your own time.

Emily Bronte...Author

Emily Jane Brontë was the most solitary member of a unique, tightly-knit, English provincial family. Born in 1818, she shared the parsonage of the town of Haworth, Yorkshire, with her older sister, Charlotte, her brother, Branwell, her younger sister, Anne, and her father, The Reverend Patrick Brontë. All five were poets and writers; all but Branwell would publish at least one book.

Fantasy was the Brontë children’s one relief from the rigors of religion and the bleakness of life in an impoverished region. They invented a series of imaginary kingdoms and constructed a whole library of journals, stories, poems, and plays around their inhabitants. Emily’s special province was a kingdom she called Gondal, whose romantic heroes and exiles owed much to the poems of Byron.

Brief stays at several boarding schools were the sum of her experiences outside Haworth until 1842, when she entered a school in Brussels with her sister Charlotte. After a year of study and teaching there, they felt qualified to announce the opening of a school in their own home, but could not attract a single pupil.

In 1845 Charlotte Brontë came across a manuscript volume of her sister’s poems. She knew at once, she later wrote, that they were “not at all like poetry women generally write…they had a peculiar music–wild, melancholy, and elevating.” At her sister’s urging, Emily’s poems, along with Anne’s and Charlotte’s, were published pseudonymously in 1846. An almost complete silence greeted this volume, but the three sisters, buoyed by the fact of publication, immediately began to write novels. Emily’s effort was Wuthering Heights; appearing in 1847 it was treated at first as a lesser work by Charlotte, whose Jane Eyre had already been published to great acclaim. Emily Brontë’s name did not emerge from behind her pseudonym of Ellis Bell until the second edition of her novel appeared in 1850.

In the meantime, tragedy had struck the Brontë family. In September of 1848 Branwell had succumbed to a life of dissipation. By December, after a brief illness, Emily too was dead; her sister Anne would die the next year. Wuthering Heights, Emily’s only novel, was just beginning to be understood as the wild and singular work of genius that it is. “Stronger than a man,” wrote Charlotte, “Simpler than a child, her nature stood alone.”

All the Bronte Children produced Art.....

Emily Bronte

blackriverrosi — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 18:31:49 CDT

Emily Brontë Biography

(July 30, 1818 – December 19, 1848)

Emily Brontë was born on July 30, 1818 in Thornton, England- the fifth of Patrick and Maria Branwell Brontë's six children. In 1820 the family moved to Haworth where, shortly after, Maria Branwell died of ovarian cancer, leaving Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and Branwell motherless. Emily, Charlotte, Maria and Elizabeth were sent to Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughter's School, where the bad conditions caused Maria and Elizabeth to be sent home with the tuberculosis that led to their deaths and the complete removal from the school of Charlotte and Emily. In 1837 Emily spent some time teaching in Halifax, and in 1842 she and Charlotte went to Brussels to improve on their accomplishments, especially French, and to teach a little. However, in October of that year the girls were called home at the death of their Aunt Branwell, and Emily decided to stay home when Charlotte returned the next year. Emily spent much of her life at Haworth and was never happier anywhere else. The moors seemed to be apart of her, and whenever away she would languish over the separation. Because of her rather withdrawn and reclusive life, not much is known about her. A few years later, Charlotte alighted upon a book of Emily's poems and read through them. This enraged Emily, but the poems were so magnificent that Charlotte was determined to have them published. After much coaxing and persuading, Charlotte was able to convince Emily to allow her poems, with some of Anne's and Charlotte's, to be sent off to a publisher. Secrecy was very important to the girls, especially Emily; so that , and the fear of prejudice against female writers, cause them to publish the poems under male pseudonyms. Emily was Ellis Bell, Charlotte was Currer Bell, and Anne was Acton Bell. Emily cared not for literary fame, but the publishment of this work only added fuel to the fire for Charlotte's desire to become a successful writer, for her and her sisters. So in 1847 they all decided to write novels. Emily called her novel 'Wuthering Heights'. Although receiving harsh reviews from critics, her novel still sold relatively well, though not quite so well as Jane Eyre. Though through this single work and through her poetry, Emily is today considered by the majority to be the most talented of the family. In 1848, the year after the sister's novels were published, Branwell fell ill, and Emily diligently cared over him. Unfortunately he died on 24th September of 1848. Emily attended the rain drenching funeral, to everyone's ultimate regret. She fell ill from a cold she caught at his funeral, and on 19th December 1848, she followed her brother's footsteps as she was laid to rest in the family vault under the Church of St. Michael and All Angels, where the entire family, save Anne, is laid till this day.

Emily Bronte's fold-up writing desk and contents; desk is rose-wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl round the key-hole in a simple design and has a purple velvet lining; pen compartment; two ink bottle compartments; incomplete; fair condition; 453mm l x 303mm [desk laid open] desk contents: three pieces white/cream sealing wax,
metal writing pen with broken handle, small piece pink/white card, metal pen handle , metal pen nib with embossed letter T, green sealing wax, cracked, fragment dirty woven material, triangular fragment white/cream plaster, piece of cream waxed paper, piece folded black paper, faded, white/blue round box containing blue, green and yellow circular and rectangular wafers, card- box contains lumps of sealing wax; quill pen nib , multi-colour card box containing 4 sealing wax circles and a sticker; metal seal with criss-cross pattern & ivory handle, two red wax seals on cream paper, metal pen nib, piece red sealing wax, newspaper review Wuthering Heights , newspaper review Wuthering Heights from Britannia, card box contains wax circles, puzzle wafers, sealing wax, two small pieces crochet lace.

Emily's desk.

Emily Jane Bronte, Christening mug.

Emily's cash box.

Brass collar for Emily's dog, Keeper. Emily's piano.

Chemise worn by Emily Dog Collar....Keeper or Grasper. Emily's hair.

Hope

by Emily Jane Bronte

Hope Was but a timid friend;
She sat without the grated den,
Watching how my fate would tend,
Even as selfish-hearted men.

She was cruel in her fear;
Through the bars one dreary day,
I looked out to see her there,
And she turned her face away!

Like a false guard, false watch keeping,
Still, in strife, she whispered peace;
She would sing while I was weeping;
If I listened, she would cease.

False she was, and unrelenting;
When my last joys strewed the ground,
Even Sorrow saw, repenting,
Those sad relics scattered round;

Hope, whose whisper would have given
Balm to all my frenzied pain,
Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven,
Went, and ne'er returned again!

A copy of Emily's couch.

This photo is on Ebay for sale.

Details of a Past Exibit
The table that witnessed the creation of Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre - two of the finest novels in the English language - will be seen in public for the first time in a major exhibition. The Brontë table, owned privately, is one of the highlights of the British Library’s forthcoming Chapter & Verse exhibition in its Pearson Gallery.

Sisters Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their brother Branwell used the table from childhood and Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall were amongst the works produced on it. In a literary coup manuscripts from all four siblings will be reunited with - and displayed on - the table for probably the first time in over 150 years.

Made from Cuban mahogany on an oak base, the table is a real writer's work-place, stained with ink spills and scarred in the centre with a large candle burn. At one end a bold letter E is carved into the surface, almost certainly the work of young Emily, whose initial can also be seen in the notebook of her poems that will be displayed on the table. Other items on the table will include a manuscript of Anne's long poem Self-Communion and one of the imaginary histories the four children produced together which features a map by Branwell - as well as the handwritten manuscript of Charlotte's Jane Eyre, open to show Rochester's proposal.

Each night after their father retired to bed, the sisters would walk around the table and discuss their writing. After the early deaths of her brother and sisters, Charlotte was unable to break the habit and sadly continued the nightly routine on her own.The table is in private ownership; it was purchased at the sale of the household effects of the parsonage after the death of Reverend Brontë in 1861 and was sold soon afterwards to the family in whose possession it has since remained. It has only once been seen outside the family when it was lent to the Brontë museum at Haworth for a short period. It has been lent anonymously to the British Library for the purposes of this special Millennium exhibition.

Brontë table

Chris Fletcher, curator of Chapter & Verse, who arranged the loan of the table, said, "This table played an important and moving part in the extraordinary imaginative world of the Brontës. It clearly became a focus for their creative efforts, whether individual or collaborative. To be able to reunite the manuscripts with the table upon which they were created - and which seemed to play such an essential part in their creation - is a remarkable and powerful thing."
The table will be one of the three hundred or so exhibits that form Chapter & Verse in the Pearson Gallery at the British Library, which opens
on March 10.

Title: Haworth Churchyard
Author: Matthew Arnold ....written on Charlotte Bronte's death but is true for Emily, Ann and Branwell.

--How shall we honour the young,
The ardent, the gifted? how mourn?
Console we cannot, her ear
Is deaf. Far northward from here,
In a churchyard high 'mid the moors
Of Yorkshire, a little earth
Stops it for ever to praise.

Where, behind Keighley, the road
Up to the heart of the moors
Between heath-clad showery hills
Runs, and colliers' carts
Poach the deep ways coming down,
And a rough, grimed race have their homes--
There on its slope is built
The moorland town. But the church
Stands on the crest of the hill,
Lonely and bleak;--at its side
The parsonage-house and the graves.

Strew with laurel the grave
Of the early-dying! Alas,
Early she goes on the path
To the silent country, and leaves
Half her laurels unwon,
Dying too soon!--yet green
Laurels she had, and a course
Short, but redoubled by fame.

And not friendless, and not
Only with strangers to meet,
Faces ungreeting and cold,
Thou, O mourn'd one, to-day
Enterest the house of the grave!
Those of thy blood, whom thou lov'dst,
Have preceded thee--young,
Loving, a sisterly band;
Some in art, some in gift
Inferior--all in fame.
They, like friends, shall receive
This comer, greet her with joy;
Welcome the sister, the friend;
Hear with delight of thy fame!

Round thee they lie--the grass
Blows from their graves to thy own!
She, whose genius, though not
Puissant like thine, was yet
Sweet and graceful;--and she
(How shall I sing her?) whose soul
Knew no fellow for might,
Passion, vehemence, grief,
Daring, since Byron died,
That world-famed son of fire--she, who sank
Baffled, unknown, self-consumed;
Whose too bold dying song[2]
Stirr'd, like a clarion-blast, my soul.

Of one, too, I have heard,
A brother--sleeps he here?
Of all that gifted race
Not the least gifted; young,
Unhappy, eloquent--the child
Of many hopes, of many tears.
O boy, if here thou sleep'st, sleep well!
On thee too did the Muse
Bright in thy cradle smile;
But some dark shadow came
(I know not what) and interposed.

Sleep, O cluster of friends,
Sleep!--or only when May,
Brought by the west-wind, returns
Back to your native heaths,
And the plover is heard on the moors,
Yearly awake to behold
The opening summer, the sky,
The shining moorland--to hear
The drowsy bee, as of old,
Hum o'er the thyme, the grouse
Call from the heather in bloom!
Sleep, or only for this
Break your united repose!

Father of Bronte Genius

blackriverrosi — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 21:04:16 CDT

Patrick Brontë Biography

(1777-1861)

Patrick Brontë was born at Emdale, Drumballyroney, County Down, Ireland, the eldest of 10 children. He was apprenticed to a blacksmith and then to a linen weaver, but by sixteen, he was Master of the village school. At first self-educated, he was later helped by local clergymen, Revs. Andrew Harshaw and Thomas Tighe. In October 1802 Patrick Brontë, aged 25, registered as a student at St John's College Cambridge. He corrected the spelling of his name from Brunty to Brontë. It is not known for certain why he did this, he may have wished to hide his humble origins. Why Brontë? He would have been familiar with classical Greek and may have chosen the name after the Greek mythological god "Bronte" which translates as "thunder". Another theory is that in 1799 King Ferdinand of Naples bestowed the honour of Duke of Bronte in Sicily to Lord Nelson for fighting off the French Navy. Patrick may have taken the name as respect of Lord Nelson. His time at college, although financially difficult , was successful, and as a scholar he was always in the top group academically. He graduated in April 1806 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and then paid a visit to his family in Northern Ireland. He returned to England and never visited Ireland again.

He was ordained into the Church of England in 1807 and tookup a number of curacies. On 29th December 1812 Patrick Bronte
married Maria Branwell at Guiseley Church. In 1814, their first daughter, Maria, was born and then in 1815 their second daughter Elizabeth was born. In 1815 he was appointed curate at Thornton in Bradford. His three Daughters; Charlotte (1816), Emily (1818), Anne (1820) and his only son Branwell (1817) were all born there. In 1820 Patrick was appointed perpetual curate of Haworth, shortly after in January 1821 his wife Maria died of cancer. Maria's sister Elizabeth moved from Penzance to help Patrick out.

Patrick found the strain of bringing up a family difficult and decided to send Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily to the recently opened Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge. The harsh regime, cold and poor food took their toll on the children who were eventually taken away, however Maria and Elizabeth died soon after returning to Haworth.

Over the next years Mr. Brontë stayed mainly in his study reading up on the latest politics, studying for his Sunday sermons, and teaching his children.

In 1847 Patrick campaigned strongly for improved education in the district and in 1849 for improvements in the water supply. A change in education and bad sanitation for local people was seen in his lifetime.

He saw his children grow up, and all at one point in time left him to pursue work or higher education. Then in late 1848 through May of 1849 hew saw three of his children placed in the vault beneath the church. Fourtanately before his last child, Charlotte, took her final reating place, she married a faithful and kind man, Arthur Bell Nicholls, who took care of Mr Brontë until his death in 1961.

On 30 October 1859 Patrick Bronte preached his last sermon from the pulpit of Haworth Church. On the 7th June 1861 he died aged 84. On the 12th June he was laid to rest in the family vault at Haworth church. He had lived and preached in the parish of Haworth for 41 years, outliving all his children.

0 comments:

Bronte Image Collections

blackriverrosi — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 20:57:41 CDT

The Bronte Image Collection by Rosi

Brontes Remembered

blackriverrosi — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 20:50:10 CDT

Memories of People who knew the Brontes

At home with the Brontes

George Sowden was the younger brother of Sutcliffe Sowden, who officiated at the wedding of Charlotte Bronte and Arthur Bell Nicholls, and also at Charlotte's funeral at the same Haworth Church less than a year later. After the death of his brother, who drowned, George took his place as vicar of Hebden Bridge in 1861. Here are some of his recollections of the Bronte family:

On Charlotte Bronte at the time he went to stay with her and her husband

"I should describe Mrs Nicholls, as she now was, as a thoroughly lady-like woman and very self-possessed...there was not a word of high-flown conversation. As I came down stairs one morning, she was ascending the steps from the cellar which opened on the passage, with a tea-cake in her hand; and she took it in the kitchen to toast for our breakfast, perfectly unconcerned and natural, never dreaming of an apology for being caught in a domestic employment. It is this simplicity which I chiefly remember as lending a charm to our visit...I believe her short and most happy marriage was a period of intense restfulness to her."

On Charlotte's father, who outlived his wife and all his six children –
"I am glad of the opportunity of contradicting some absurd assertions about his earlier life, to which Mrs Gaskell gave publicity, having picked up stories in the village. He was, no doubt, a little eccentric; but he was credited by foolish old people with what would have been outrageous."

On Arthur Bell Nichols, Charlotte's husband, with whom George Sowden was ordained –
"He was a genuine Irishman with much Irish humour when you came to know him: tho' with strangers he was reserved.

On Charlotte's fame as Currer Bell –
"I remember the precise spot on which my brother said to me, 'Do you know who is the author of Jane Eyre?' and the unbounded astonishment with which I heard him say that 'Currer Bell' meant 'Charlotte Bronte'."

On Branwell Bronte –
"He was a good-looking fellow, and struck one as decidedly clever, and not in the least reticent as his sisters were. His remarks about the solemnizing effects of going to stay in Manchester Cathedral while, on one's way from the Station to the City, are all that remain in my memory."

The Last Sketch by Thackery

The Last Sketch.

Not many days since I went to visit a house where in former years I had received many a friendly welcome. We went into the owner’s—an artist’s—studio. Prints, pictures, and sketches hung on the walls as I had last seen and remembered them. The implements of the painter’s art were there. The light which had shone upon so many, many hours of patient and cheerful toil, poured through the northern window upon print and bust, lay figure and sketch, and upon the easel before which the good, the gentle, the beloved Leslie labored. In this room the busy brain had devised, and the skilful hand executed, I know not how many of the noble works which have delighted the world with their beauty and charming humor. Here the poet called up into pictorial presence, and informed with life, grace, beauty, infinite friendly mirth and wondrous naturalness of expression, the people of whom his dear books told him the stories,—his Shakspeare, his Cervantes, his Moliere, his Le Sage. There was his last work on the easel—a beautiful fresh smiling shape of Titania, such as his sweet guileless fancy imagined the Midsummer Night’s queen to be. Gracious, and pure, and bright, the sweet smiling image glimmers on the canvas. Fairy elves, no doubt, were to have been grouped around their mistress in laughing clusters. Honest Bottom’s grotesque head and form are indicated as reposing by the side of the consummate beauty. The darkling forest would have grown around them, with the stars glittering from the midsummer sky: the flowers at the queen’s feet, and the boughs and foliage about her, would have been peopled with gambolling sprites and fays. They were dwelling in the artist’s mind no doubt, and would have been developed by that patient, faithful, admirable genius: but the busy brain stopped working, the skilful hand fell lifeless, the loving, honest heart ceased to beat. What was she to have been—that fair Titania—when perfected by the patient skill of the poet, who in imagination saw the sweet innocent figure, and with tender courtesy and caresses, as it were, posed and shaped and traced the fair form? Is there record kept anywhere of fancies conceived, beautiful, unborn? Some day will they assume form in some yet undeveloped light? If our bad unspoken thoughts are registered against us, and are written in the awful account, will not the good thoughts unspoken, the love and tenderness, the pity, beauty, charity, which pass through the breast, and cause the heart to throb with silent good, find a remembrance too? A few weeks more, and this lovely offspring of the poet’s conception would have been complete—to charm the world with its beautiful mirth. May there not be some sphere unknown to us where it may have an existence? They say our words, once out of our lips, go travelling in omne oevum, reverberating for ever and ever. If our words, why not our thoughts? If the Has Been, why not the Might Have Been? Some day our spirits may be permitted to walk in galleries of fancies more wondrous and beautiful than any achieved works which at present we see, and our minds to behold and delight in masterpieces which poets’ and artists’ minds have fathered and conceived only. With a feeling much akin to that with which I looked upon the friend’s—the admirable artist’s—unfinished work, I can fancy many readers turning to the last pages which were traced by Charlotte Bronte’s hand. Of the multitude that have read her books, who has not known and deplored the tragedy of her family, her own most sad and untimely fate? Which of her readers has not become her friend? Who that has known her books has not admired the artist’s noble English, the burning love of truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the indignation at wrong, the eager sympathy, the pious love and reverence, the passionate honor, so to speak, of the woman? What a story is that of that family of poets in their solitude yonder on the gloomy northern moors! At nine o’clock at night, Mrs. Gaskell tells, after evening prayers, when their guardian and relative had gone to bed, the three poetesses—the three maidens, Charlotte, and Emily, and Anne—Charlotte being the “motherly friend and guardian to the other two”—“began, like restless wild animals, to pace up and down their parlor, ‘making out’ their wonderful stories, talking over plans and projects, and thoughts of what was to be their future life.” One evening, at the close of 1854, as Charlotte Nicholls sat with her husband by the fire, listening to the howling of the wind about the house, she suddenly said to her husband, “If you had not been with me, I must have been writing now.” She then ran up stairs, and brought down, and read aloud, the beginning of a new tale. When she had finished, her husband remarked, “The critics will accuse you of repetition.” She replied, “Oh! I shall alter that. I always begin two or three times before I can please myself.” But it was not to be. The trembling little hand was to write no more. The heart newly awakened to love and happiness, and throbbing with maternal hope, was soon to cease to beat; that intrepid outspeaker and champion of truth, that eager, impetuous redresser of wrong, was to be called out of the world’s fight and struggle, to lay down the shining arms, and to be removed to a sphere where even a noble indignation cor ulterius nequit lacerare, and where truth complete, and right triumphant, no longer need to wage war. I can only say of this lady, vidi tantum. I saw her first just as I rose out of an illness from which I had never thought to recover. I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the great honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to me to characterize the woman. Twice I recollect she took me to task for what she held to be errors in doctrine. Once about Fielding we had a disputation. She spoke her mind out. She jumped too rapidly to conclusions. (I have smiled at one or two passages in the “Biography,” in which my own disposition or behavior forms the subject of talk.) She formed conclusions that might be wrong, and built up whole theories of character upon them. New to the London world, she entered it with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own; and judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance or affectation, with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her favorites if their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal. Often she seemed to me to be judging the London folk prematurely: but perhaps the city is rather angry at being judged. I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure, and lofty, and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always. Such, in our brief interview, she appeared to me. As one thinks of that life so noble, so lonely—of that passion for truth—of those nights and nights of eager study, swarming fancies, invention, depression, elation, prayer; as one reads the necessarily incomplete, though most touching and admirable history of the heart that throbbed in this one little frame—of this one amongst the myriads of souls that have lived and died on this great earth—this great earth?—this little speck in the infinite universe of God,—with what wonder do we think of today, with what awe await tomorrow, when that which is now but darkly seen shall be clear! As I read this little fragmentary sketch, I think of the rest. Is it? And where is it? Will not the leaf be turned some day, and the story be told? Shall the deviser of the tale somewhere perfect the history of little EMMA’S griefs and troubles? Shall TITANIA come forth complete with her sportive court, with the flowers at her feet, the forest around her, and all the stars of summer glittering overhead? How well I remember the delight, and wonder, and pleasure with which I read “Jane Eyre,” sent to me by an author whose name and sex were then alike unknown to me; the strange fascinations of the book; and how with my own work pressing upon me, I could not, having taken the volumes up, lay them down until they were read through! Hundreds of those who, like myself, recognized and admired that master-work of a great genius, will look with a mournful interest and regard and curiosity upon the last fragmentary sketch from the noble hand which wrote “Jane Eyre.”

Ellen Nussey Remembers

ant bushes which Emily and Anne treasured as their own bit of fruit garden, is now a perfect Arcadia of floral culture and beauty. At first the alteration, despite its improvement, strikes one with heart-ache and regret: for it is quite impossible, even in imagination, to people those rooms with their former inhabitants. But after-thought shows one the folly of such regret,; for what the Brontes cared for and lived in most were the surroundings of nature; the free expanse of hill and mountain, the purple heather, the dells and glens, and brooks and the broad sky-view, the whistling winds, the snowy expanse, the starry heavens, and the charm of that solitude and seclusion that sees things from a distance without the disturbing atmosphere that lesser minds are apt to create. For it is not the seclusion of a solitary person, such as Charlotte endured in after days, which in time becomes awfully oppressive and injurious. It was solitude and seclusion enjoyed with intelligent companionship, and intense family affection.

Wuthering Heights Mystery

blackriverrosi — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 20:44:52 CDT

Why Did Emily Write Wuthering Heights

EMILY BRONTË: A THEORY

By Sarah Fermi

Keywords: Emily Brontë, Robert Clayton (of Haworth)

Why did Emily Jane Brontë write Wuthering Heights? And how was she able to do it? In

spite of the massive amount of material published about the Brontë sisters over the past

one hundred and fifty years, these two questions still remain unanswered. Yet given the

autobiographical nature of much of the material in the novels of Charlotte and Anne

Brontë, it is almost unthinkable that Emily would not also have used her own experience

in the creation of her great book. How could she write so vividly about love, grief, and

hatred without having known these emotions in her own life?

Many Brontë biographers have puzzled over these questions, and some have even

suggested as a possible answer that Emily had a serious romantic attachment at some

point in her life, but they have been daunted by the scarcity of facts about Emily’s life

and left the question open.1 In his A Life of Emily Brontë Edward Chitham has gone a

step further and proposed a possible relationship with an offspring of the Heaton family

— the child of Elizabeth Heaton and John Bakes. The suggestion that perhaps the object

of Emily’s affections was connected with the Heatons of Ponden, an old local family well

known to the Brontës, whose home, Ponden House, certainly appears to be connected

with Wuthering Heights, seemed to be very promising.

This was the starting point of a quest which brought me to the West Yorkshire

Archives in Bradford in the spring of 1989. One afternoon’s research there with the

Heaton Papers quickly dispelled this hope — the child in question was little Eliza

Matilda Bakes, who died in 1817 aged two, and is buried with her mother in Haworth

churchyard. Nevertheless, the idea of an early love interest in Emily’s life struck me as

worth pursuing. For the next few years I worked on learning more about the important

Haworth families, particularly the Heatons, and also the most significant local family,

the Greenwoods. In parallel with this study, I learned all I could about Emily, and

carefully examined the chronological development of her poetry.

There are quite a few aspects of her life which present interesting questions. Why did Emily change from a charming and outgoing child to a solitary and reserved young woman? Why was she sent away to Roe Head School in 1835 at the relatively advanced age of 17, for what

appears to be no good reason, and when Mr Brontë’s finances were likely to be stretched

by the plan to send Branwell to the Royal Academy Schools? Why did he write a warning

letter to his old friend, Mrs Franks, hinting at possible trouble ahead? What was the

real reason for Emily’s near-fatal illness at Roe Head? Why is there a striking change in

the tone of her poetry between 1836 and 1837? It occurred to me that all these questions

could be answered if one assumed the following theory:

1) When Charlotte goes away to Roe Head School in January 1831, Emily and Anne

begin to create their own private world of Gondal, which they act out on the moors.

2) They enlist the help of a local boy to play with them.

3) This boy is working-class and therefore an unsuitable playmate, and the meetings

are kept a secret from Mr Brontë and Aunt Branwell. A romance develops.

4) The secret is somehow discovered in the summer of 1835, and Emily is sent off to

Roe Head School to break up the relationship between her and the young man. The

collapse of Emily’s health, requiring her return home, is partly due to her despair at

this separation from the young man.

5) In the winter of 1836–37 the young man dies, leaving Emily deeply affected. Her

poetry strongly suggests that she experienced a traumatic event at this time: all the

poems of 1836 (the earliest that exist) are cheerful or thoughtful, or, in one case,

exuberant. There are no poems in January, 1837, and in February she begins, almost

obsessively, to write poetry about death, grief, and nightmare.

Using this rudimentary theory as a beginning, I then examined the Haworth Parish

Records to see if, in fact, there had been a working-class lad who died at the suggested

time. I found one candidate: Robert Clayton. He was the second son of a local weaver,

Nathan Clayton. Robert was born in July 1818, the same month and year as Emily, and

he died in December 1836.

I also learned that there once existed a group of letters

from Emily Brontë in the possession of a lady named Fanny Clayton, but which were

destroyed many years ago. Sadly, I was unable to learn any more about these letters.

However, I did discover many interesting bits of information relating to the Clayton

family. They were descendents of an important (and persecuted) Quaker family, stalwarts

of the Stanbury Quaker Meeting in the seventeenth century. At the time of the

Brontës, the Claytons were friendly with the Heatons of Ponden, a fact evidenced by

their inclusion in lists of friends invited to several Heaton family funerals. Robert and his

family lived for some time at Far Slack, an old house on the edge of the moors across the

valley of Ponden Beck from Ponden House. The family moved away from the area

shortly after Robert’s death, but returned to Haworth about 1842. One of the most

suggestive facts I uncovered was the death of Robert’s older brother, John, in May

1833. Emily wrote two poems, both of which concern two deaths: the first, written

19 December 1839, reads:

Heaven’s glory shone where he was laid

In life’s decline.

I turned me from that young saint’s bed

To gaze on thine.

It was a summer day that saw

His spirit’s flight;

Thine parted in a time of awe,

A winter-night.

The other poem is the strange and beautiful ‘Death that struck when I was most

confiding. . .’ written in April 1845, which also speaks, albeit metaphorically, of two

deaths — one which barely moved her (‘little mourned I. . .’), and a second which ruined

her life (‘Time for me must never blossom more. . .’). It is possible that both of these poems

refer to the deaths of John in late spring, 1833, and then Robert in mid-December, 1836.

Finally, there is one tiny piece of possible documentary evidence for the connection

between Emily and Robert: the Gondal poem ‘Heavy hangs the raindrop. . .’, written in

May 1845, about a ‘melancholy boy’, is accompanied by the initials A.E. and R.C.

The first set is very likely to stand for Alexander Elbë, an early character in the Gondal

stories (who is already dead before Emily and Anne begin to write these stories down

in about 1837), and the second set is, perhaps, for Robert Clayton, who, in my theory,

played the part of Alexander Elbë in the girls’ early Gondal games on the moors. Emily

wrote two of her sad early poems (March and August 1837) about the death of

Alexander Elbë and she returned to the subject again in December 1844. The initials

R.C. do not correspond to any known Gondal character.

My research into another local family, the Greenwoods of Bridgehouse, Springhead,

and Woodlands, has suggested an addition to the theory. It seemed to me highly likely

that when Emily was sent home from Roe Head after less than three months, Aunt

Branwell might well have considered it her duty to find a more respectable suitor for

Emily. A close friend of Patrick Brontë’s, Joseph Greenwood, Esq., of Springhead, had

three daughters exactly the same ages as Charlotte, Emily, and Anne (and there is

written evidence that the girls were friendly) and, as it happens, he also had two eligible

sons, William and James, several years older than the girls. This is all very speculative,

but the parallel between a Greenwood boy and Edgar Linton, Catherine Earnshaw’s

suitor in Wuthering Heights, seemed too good to ignore: Joseph Greenwood was, like

Mr Linton, the local magistrate; he was also the Lord of the Manor of Oxenhope. Like

the Lintons, the Greenwoods were at the top of the social tree in the area — marriage to

one of the boys would be a big step up the social ladder for the Brontës. In my theory,

Emily is courted by young James Greenwood, and for a few months she enjoys his

attentions. But when Robert Clayton learns of her betrayal, he is deeply hurt and in

his despair he dies in a careless accident on the moors in the winter of 1836. Robert’s

death puts paid to any ideas Emily might have had of ‘marrying up’; she feels partly

responsible for his death and is left with life-long feelings of guilt and isolation.

Because I am not able to prove this theory beyond the circumstantial evidence

outlined above, I have never tried to publish it as conventional ‘academic’ paper. But I

thought it would be interesting to see if the story could be told in another form, so

several years ago I suggested this theory to the BBC with the idea that it would make an

intriguing drama-***-documentary. The producers were enthusiastic, but decided it

would work best as straight drama. They obtained development funds for the idea, and

the services of a well-known screen writer to write the script — Sally Wainwright, whose

television drama ‘Sparkhouse’ was loosely based on Wuthering Heights. Sally has

written a dramatic and moving script, but unfortunately it was not commissioned for

production, though its time may yet come.

Since then I have written a fictionalized biography of Emily Brontë in the form of her

own private journal; this work includes not only the theory outlined above, which covers

the years 1831 to 1837, but also Emily’s life after Robert’s death right up to her own

death in 1848.

My theory is unlikely to be true in every detail, but I believe that something very like

it must have happened. I have found nothing to contradict the speculative sequence of

events outlined above, and the discovery of Robert and John Clayton, whose deaths ma

have been obliquely recorded in Emily Brontë’s poetry, seems to me to confirm the original

idea, and perhaps bring us a step closer to an answer to the questions of how and

why Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights.

BBC Radio has published the play

Cold in the Earth and Fifteen Wild Decembers

By Sally Wainwright, based on a theory by Sarah Fermi.

Why did Emily Jane Bronte write Wuthering Heights? And how was she able to do it? In spite of the massive amount of material published about the BrontÃ« sisters over the last 150 years, these two questions still remain unanswered. Yet given the large amount of autobiographical material in the novels of Charlotte and Anne Bronte, it is almost unthinkable that Emily would not have also used her own experience in the creation of her great book. How could she write so vividly about love, grief and hatred without having known these emotions in her own life?

This is a compelling drama about the story of Emily Bronte's socially transgressive love affair with a weaver's son.

Emily and her passions

blackriverrosi — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 20:42:40 CDT

Her Passions

"I am Heathcliff"

'Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!'

"What I love shall come like visitant of air,
Safe in secret power from lurking human snare;
Who loves me, no word of mine shall e'er betray,
Though for faith unstained my life must forfeit pay.
Burn, then, little lamp; glimmer straight and clear
Hush! a rustling wing stirs, methinks, the air:
He for whom I wait, thus ever comes to me;
Strange Power! I trust thy might; trust thou my constancy."

"I'll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the gray flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side
What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell."

"High waving heather, 'neath stormy blasts bending,
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars;
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,
Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,
Man's spirit away from its drear dongeon sending,
Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars. All down the mountain sides, wild forest lending
One mighty voice to the life-giving wind;
Rivers their banks in the jubilee rending,
Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending,
Wider and deeper their waters extending,
Leaving a desolate desert behind.
Shining and lowering and swelling and dying,
Changing for ever from midnight to noon;
Roaring like thunder, like soft music sighing,
Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,
Lightning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,
Coming as swiftly and fading as soon. "

"He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars;
Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire
And visions rise and change which kill me with desire
Desire for nothing known in my maturer years,
When joy grew mad with awe at counting future tears;

But first, a hush of peace, a soundless calm descends;
The struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends;
Mute music soothes my breast, unuttered harmony
That I could never dream till earth was lost to me
Then dawns the Invisible, the Unseen its truth reveals;
My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels
Its wings are almost free, its home, its harbor found;
Measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound!

O dreadful is the check, intense the agony
When the ear begins to hear and the eye begins to see
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again,
The soul to feel the flesh and the flesh to feel the chain!"

'I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.

"There is a spot 'mid barren hills
Where winter howls and driving rain,
But if the weary tempest chills
There is a light that warms again.

The house is old, the trees are bare,
And moonless bends the misty dome,
But what on earth is half so dear,
So longed for as the hearth of home?

The mute bird sitting on the stone,

The dank moss dripping from the wall,
The garden walk with weeds o'ergrown,
I love them--how I love them all! "

Cold in the earth - and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?

Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern leaves cover
Thy noble heart forever, ever more?
* * * * *

Wuthering Heights... Analysis

blackriverrosi — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 20:41:32 CDT

The Genealogy of Wuthering Heights:

The Genealogy of Wuthering Heights:

Analysis of Wuthering Heights

Some of the questions or items I would deal with in analysis of Wuthering Heights would be -

Setting- the place, Yorkshire moors, a remote and rugged northern rural area of sheep farming. A place removed from the mainstream and independent, a place alone.

Within that setting, everything is double-
2 houses-

the farm house at the Heights, strong, built of stone, buffeted by winds and storms, solid and alive with farm and family life with evidence of cooking, hunting, animal raising etc., with great fires in fireplace, articles of daily life on show, great hams hanging and copper pans etc. in dresser

- the manor house at the Grange, in the valley, protected from winds, enclosed in a park, with kitchens removed from the living rooms, gilded and decorated richly.

-2 atmospheres- the wild Heights and the civilized Grange - and these change with the inmates- the heights sparkles with family life and wallows in filth and hate - the Grange fosters in sunshine and joy a new marraige and becomes a stifling prison.

A discussion of the contrasts here between the Heights and the Grange would be useful. For example, How do the characters react to these two places? Heathcliff scorns the " soft civilized place" and Cathy, who admired the Grange and its luxuries, later finds it stifling. Cathy and Heathcliff both look upon the wild height as heaven. How does Nelly feel? Lockwood and Isabella?

Characters are also double

2 families- the Earnshaws who are of farming stock and the Lintons, gentry.

2 generations- Heathcliff, Cathy, Edgar and Hareton, Linton, Catherine.

How do they contrast with each other and interact.? The relationships are complex- Heathcliff becomes foster brother to the Earnshaw children and conflict results. Other relationships are formed, creating more havoc.

Cathy marries Edgar. Isabella becomes Cathy's sister-in law. Heathcliff marries Isabella and becomes Edgar's brother- in law. Linton marries young Catherine and becomes Heathcliff's daughter-in-law. Linton, and Hareton are young Catherine's cousins and husbands.

Heathcliff and Cathy's characters are very important to explore, in the first generation of conflict and death, and Hareton's and Catherine's character in the second generation of reconciliation and life.

The characters are complex and fully drawn. Even Heathcliff" the devil" can sit by a sick bed and hold an hours conversation about intelligent matters. Joeseph, believes in the religious trend of the day, predestination and the chosen elect who will go to heaven while everyone else goes to hell. Hear him pray in the thunderstorm to be set aside with the elect of god. Hareton, brought up in rudeness and dirt, has terrible table manners and a golden heart and noble spirit. And so.... all the other charters ........

Narration gives a double view with 2 narrators, female, Nellie, an insider and male, Lockwood, outsider. What does Nelly tell? How does she tell it? How does she affect the action? Lockwood stumbles into a mystery. How does this grab the reader's interest and hold it?

The plot centers on the insertion of into the family as a foster brother, and all of the disruptions of relationships that follow. Joseph is a fixed mover in the story, preaching hell and damnation throughout. The plot is driven by Heathcliff's and Cathy's need for each other, a need that defies death. Explore hate and love relationships and the seeking of revenge and of peace.

The language needs some examination. The dialect of Joseph and the very poetical language of Emily Bronte. She uses lots of alliteration.

Then, of course , the theme.. What is it? Is it a boy girl love story or something far greater like an agony of the human soul. ? Is there more than one theme? What about religion, and marriage with the husband having all of the rights, and behaviour, and prejudice against " the Gypsy and the out and outer"

Content is rich-The detail in the story is fascinating. Every part of daily life is exposed, down to the very chairs and beds and food and fires and sheep herding. Wills and weddings show Emily's knowledge of family law. The inside of the houses and the outside of the moors are described as well as the inside and the outside of all of the people.

Some content is missing on purpose. Emily Bronte leaves mysteries everywhere. Where was Heathcliff born? Who is he? Where does he run away to? How does he educate himself and get rich? Where did Hindley meet his wife, Frances? Who was she? Cathy wants to tell Ellen a dream but tells another. What was the first dream about? How does she catch and hold the readers attention, throughout the story and for ever in memory?

And what about Nellie? How does she drive the plot. Is she an observer or an activist? Does she good or harm?

To be continued Rosi

Haworth

blackriverrosi — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 20:37:38 CDT

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