Born in 1818, Emily Jane Brontë was the fifth of six children brought up in the small town of Haworth, Yorkshire, where their father was an Anglican parson. Motherless from infancy, Emily was sent to Cowan Bridge School with her sisters Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte, but was taken out of school after her two eldest sisters became ill with tuberculosis and died. The rest of Emily’s early education took place mostly at home.
HIGHLY SENSITIVE
Painfully shy, Emily was often completely unable to speak if addressed in public. After she completed her schooling, she tried teaching in another town, but the job proved such a strain and she was so homesick that she became ill. She spent the rest of her life at home, looking after the house, writing poetry and doing what she loved best: walking or rambling on the moors near Haworth.
In spite of her difficulties with people, Emily loved animals and had a huge mastiff called Keeper that only she could control. According to her biographer, Elizabeth Gaskell, she was once bitten by a rabid dog. Not wanting to worry her family, she cauterised the wound by burning her own flesh with a red hot poker from the fire.
BELGIUM
To keep the family together at home, Emily’s sister Charlotte planned to open a girls’ school in Haworth and, in 1842, the two sisters went to Brussels to perfect their language skills and learn school management at the Pension Héger. Although Emily was again homesick for her beloved moors, their teacher, Monsieur Héger, wrote appreciatively of her “powerful reason” and “strong imperious will.” Emily was also an excellent piano player, so good in fact that Madame Héger offered her the position of music teacher at the school. However, after the death of her aunt, who was also her father’s housekeeper, Emily returned to Haworth.
TRAGIC END
Wuthering Heights is the only novel Emily wrote, although at the time of her death she was almost certainly writing another book. A letter from her publisher, Thomas Newby, from 1848 mentions the work and advises her not to rush its completion. Emily died of tuberculosis on 19 December 1848. Some accounts suggest that before her death Emily burned her second book, knowing she would not live long enough to complete it. Others suggest that Charlotte destroyed it to save her sister’s reputation.
