The Brontes

The Brontes

Their Lives

Charlotte (1816-55), Emily (1818-48), and Anne (1820-49) were the daughters of an Irish clergyman, Patrick Bronte, who held a living in Yorkshire. Financial difficulties compelled Charlotte to became a school-teacher (1835-1838) and then a governess. Along with Emily she visited Brussels in 1842, and then returned home, where family cares kept her closely tied. Later her books had much success, and she was released from many of her financial worries. She was married in 1854, but died in the next year. Her two younger sisters had predeceased her.

Their Works

Charlotte Bronte's first novel; The Professor failed to find a publisher and only appeared in 1857 after her death. Following the experiences of her own life in an uninspired manner, the story lacks interest, and the characters are not created with the passionate insight which distinguishes her later portraits.

Jane Eyre (1847) is her greatest novel. Similarities between Jane Eyre and fairy-tale have often been noted and on a very simple plot level the influence is obvious. We should thus not be too worried by the magical coincidences which allow the heroine to gain her ends so spectacularly. An element of wish-fulfilment in the story appealed to Victorian readers and still appeals, helping this to become one of the most universally popular novels in English. The fairy tales elements do not end with the plot however, and are exploited throughout the novel. Jane, whose surname is Eyre, is compared by critics (Rochester) to an "elf". It is clear that in Charlotte Bronte's terms the feminine "spiritual" element is civilizing the unprepossessing masculine one, guiding and taming him until he is fit for union with her.

Jane, however, is no conventionally pretty young woman. Her creator linked Jane with herself and according to Elisabeth Gaskell told her sisters: " I will show you a heroine as plain and small as myself, who shall be as interesting as any of yours".

A psychoanalytic view of the both might see the masculine psyche split between the immoral but good-hearted Rochester and the rule-bound pair Mr. Brocklehurst and St. John Rivers. The latter presents himself to Jane's sense of duty, and she is seriously inclined to marry him, until an incorporeal voice (that of Rochester communicating through telepathy) challenges her choice and recalls her to her deeper emotional commitment.

The fiery aspects of the feminine are locked by Rochester in the attic at Thornfield in the shape of his mad wife Bertha, who makes several efforts to reveal herself and is finally disclosed on the occasion of Jane's would-be marriage to her legal husband. It is no only duty which demands that Jane should leave the house. The author clearly intends us to notice that Rochester has failed to trust Jane as a fellow human; her refusal to stay should not be seen purely as an acceptance of Victorian convention.

The obvious Gothic elements in "Jane Eyre" are used symbolically. Symbolism has also been detected in the names of the localities through which the heroine passes: Gateshead, Thornfield, etc. In connection with this, we may recall the Brontes' early attachment to The Pilgrim's Progress. Jane also shows some complex pictures to Rochester, which she has drawn herself and which evoke insoluble problems of her being. These deeply revealing sketches seem to echo actual pictures drawn by Charlotte Bronte, her brother and sisters.

The search for originals in "Jane Eyre" became an industry soon after its publication. Thus Lowood was quickly discovered to represent Cowan Bridge school, where the author's two younger sisters had caught diseases from which they subsequently died. But Rochester has no original, though he may take some traits from Mr. Constantin Heger, the Belgian schoolmaster she met in 1832. His descent from the Byronic hero imaginations is clear. Though the Rivers sisters mirror to some extent in an idealized fashion the home personas of the Bronte sisters, they are not to be confused with the real Emily and Ann.

There are many elements of visual description in "Jane Eyre", some showing acute observation, like the landscape of the road to Hay on the January day when Jane first meets Rochester. Bewick's woodcuts are not far from this scene. Bewick is also present in the very first scene when Jane is hiding from her cruel cousins. The author's short-sightedness meant that she studied landscape partly through Bewick and other engravers. The coldness of the winter scenes in Bewick emphasises the loneliness of some humans, and this chimes with the Bronte's interest in orphans and the tyranny of the adult world over the world of childhood. The scenes involving Mr. Brocklehurst, including those at Lowood, explore the nature of childhood resentment.

Ch. Bronte was able to use Jane Eyre as a critique of evangelical religion, which exerted some attraction for her own personality but which she rejected here as heartless and mechanical, though the sense of duty exhibited by St. John Rivers is not disparaged. He is approved as a conscientious person, but his inconclusive relationship with Rosamund is presented critically. The empty ritual of Bible reading at Lowood while Miss Scatcherd torment her victim provides a black image.

"Jane Eyre" was on the whole well-received by the early critics, who noted its passion and warmth. The first person narrative enabled them to come close to the life experience of the underprivileged heroine and sympathy was quickly established. It is possible to see the book as a feminist text, both in the sense that the female first person is the emotional centre of the story, and also since Rochester and the other made characters are shown as inadequate. He learns through suffering, but it is not clear whether St. John Rivers is capable of learning, and Broklehurst is a stereotype. Subsidiary female characters, "good" or "bad" are generally more credible than male, though Bertha Mason is seemed externally: deviant, outraged and menacing . Jane Eyre successfully raises the "woman question" high on the agenda, but it was perhaps more important still to the author to portray Jane as a champion of the human race, irrespective of gender. She clearly stands for the individual against a deforming society, a child rather than a girl only against harsh education, a servant than rather merely a governess against the bland superiority of the gentry, represented by Blanche Ingram, and sincerity against the blandishments of wealth which considers it can buy anything.

However, the traditional plot, in which an oppressed orphan magically but deservedly overcomes loneliness and finds a strong partner who is finally fit to be her equal is clearly a major reason for the success of the book. It stands, among other things, as the archetypal romance, by which many subsequent novels have been influenced. The character of Jane is imbued with so much life that generations of readers have believed in her as the real author of the book.

The genuinely popular nature of the novel at one time led critics to underestimate its artistry, but in recent years its importance has been readily acknowledged.

Emily Bronte (1818-48)

Though she wrote less than Charlotte, she is some ways the greatest of the three sisters. Her one novel Wuthering Heights (1847) is unique in English literature. It breathes the very spirit of the wild, desolate moors. Its chief characters are conceived in gigantic proportions, and their passions have an elemental force, which carries them to the realm of poetry. In a series of climaxes, the sustained intensity of the novel is carried to almost unbelievable peaks of passion, described with a stark, unflinching realism.

Analiza: Tesuturile - tesutul epitelial, tesutul conjunctiv, tesutul nervos Eseu: Structura genomului la procariote

Analysis of Wuthering Heights

It will be helpful in our study of "Wuthering Heights" to know the vital statistics of the characters. Emily Bronte gives us this information throughout a work which deals with the lives of people in three generations. It is summarized by Mark Schorer in his Introduction to the Rinehart edition of "Wuthering Heights" (1950).

The story at "Wuthering Heights" begins with Mr. And Mrs. Earnshaw. They have two children, Hindley and Catherine. Mr. Earnshaw adopts a waif, Heathcliff, whom he picked up on a visit to Liverpool. Mrs. Earnshaw dies in the spring of 1773 and Mr. Earnshaw dies in October 1777, leaving Heathcliff to the tender mercies of Hindley, who hates him and mistreats him. At this time Hindley, who was born in the summer of 1757, is twenty years old. Heathcliff is thirteen, and Catherine, with whom Heathcliff is inseparable, is twelve. In 1777 Hindley marries Frances, and a Year later they have a son, Hareton. Frances dies the following year.

Catherine, believing she is in love with Edgar Linton of Thrushcross Grange and thinking through this marriage to be able to help Heathcliff, marries Edgar in April, 1783. Heathcliff had left, and she did not know whether he would return. At this time Edgar is twenty-one and Catherine is eighteen.

Heathcliff, who left Wuthering Heights when he overheard Catherine tell Nelly Dean that she was planning to marry Edgar, returns three years later to find Catherine ill. In January of 1784 Heathcliff, bent on revenge, marries Isabella Linton, who is nineteen. Unable to bear Heathcliff's cruelty, Isabella leaves him soon after his marriage and goes off to London, where, in September, her son, Linton, is born. Meanwhile, in March 1784, Catherine has died after giving birth to a girl, also named Catherine.

Hindley, weakened by drink, dies in September 1784, six months after the death of his sister Catherine and the same month in which his nephew, Linton Heathcliff, is born. Hindley's son, Hareton, is now in the care of Heathcliff, who treats him as a servant. Isabella dies in June 1797 at the age of thirty-two, at which time her son is thirteen.

To further his revenge, Heathcliff plans to own Thrushcross Grange by arranging a marriage between his son Linton, a sickly boy, and his niece Catherine. He manages this by forcing Linton to come home to Wuthering Heights, by arranging meetings between Catherine and her cousin, and finally by locking up Catherine, away from her ailing father. The two young people are married in August 1801. Both are seventeen years old. In September of that year Edgar dies at the age of 39, and the following month young Linton dies. Heathcliff is now the owner of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Young Cathy is forced to live with him.

Life at Wuthering Heights is a dismal existence. Cathy and Hareton quarrel, but a feeling of concern for one another begins to grow in them. Heathcliff's fury is spent. He realizes that in death he can rejoin his beloved Catherine. He neglects his health and dies in May 1802, at the age of thirty-eight. Love between Cathy and Hareton grows, and they are married in January 1803. Hareton is twenty-five and Catherine is nineteen. Calm is restored to Wuthering Heights.

This summary is useful for two reasons. First, it shows that Wuthering Heights is a carefully planned novel, not a wild, amorphous work. Second, it helps to visualize the characters and to see the story more clearly. This is a story about young people who live tortured and violent lives and who, except for young Catherine and Hareton, and except for Nelly Dean and Lockwood, who tell the story, die at a young age. The ones who die are subject either to the cruelties of the climate, the raging passions that burn within them and destroy them, or the fierce cruelty of the satanic Heathcliff.

The story has two settings - Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. Thrushcross Grange reflects the character of Edgar Linton. It is a quiet, civilized place were the amenities are observed and where the passions of its inhabitants have been disciplined to make possible a genteel existence. Wuthering Heights, on the other hand, reflects the characters of Hindley and Heathcliff. It is a wild, desolate place surrounded by howling nature that constantly threatens the people that dwell there and imbues them with some of its fierceness. Within Wuthering Heights there is an undisciplined energy and a stark malignity that infects its inhabitants and leads to violent and destructive actions. In a drunken stupor, Hindley Earnshaw drops his son Hareton over the bannister, and had Heathcliff not caught the child, Hareton would have been killed. It is a place of twilight and night and of a brooding and submerged anger that frequently bursts into fury.

When Catherine moves into Thrushcross Grange, she brings much of the unrest of Wuthering Heights into its peaceful interiors. When Isabella, as Heathcliff's wife, moves into Wuthering Heights, she is unnerved by the cruelty and ferocity of its atmosphere and must escape.

The novel and its centers reflect metaphorically the world of nature as Emily Bronte experienced it on the moors. There seems in nature a constant struggle between the forces of turbulence and the forces of serenity, the forces of destructiveness and the forces of regeneration. One does not react in revulsion against storm and tempest. One is fascinated by it. At the same time one yearns for the calmness and peace of nature's quiet moments. Wuthering Heights metaphorically transfers into its characters and laces the conflict between the satanic forces of violence and the beneficent forces of temperateness which one finds in nature. With a deranged Hindley and a demonic Heathcliff in control of Wuthering Heights, the world there is frenzied and insecure. When the people of this world invade Thrushcross Grange, the gentle, civilized life of the Linton is upset. There is a wild and passionate loyalty in the love of Heathcliff and Catherine, a subsurface turbulence in the marriage of Catherine and Edgar, a volcano of demonic tension when Heathcliff returns and upbraids the sick Catherine for betraying him, and fury, passion, and savage grief when Catherine dies.

There follow quiet years while the younger Catherine and young Linton grow up. Again the fury begins when Heathcliff schemes to take over Thrushcross Grange, and Cathy and Linton, like Hareton, are trapped by his malevolence. But Heathcliff's fury is spent. He at last joins his Catherine in death, and calm is finally restored in the marriage of Cathy and Hareton.

The reader finds fascinating the intense love between Catherine and Heathcliff, and feels deep sympathy for the mistreated Heathcliff, especially when he feels rejected by his beloved. The reader is repelled by Heathcliff's cruelties but is again won over by a Heathcliff exhausted by his furies of revenge and aching for the death that will enable him to rejoin Catherine. If Heathcliff and Catherine represent the demonic forces of nature, and Edgar, Isabella, and young Cathy the beneficent forces, then we can understand the skill of Emily Bronte in being able to involve the reader in the anguish of the lovers. The reader is frightened and fascinated by the power of their passion, as he/she would be frightened and fascinated by the power of tempestuous nature. The resolution is a peace that follows the tension of conflict.

The Narrators of Wuthering Heights

Emily Bronte creates two narrators to tell the story of "Wuthering Heights": Mr. Lockwood, a visitor from the city, comes to the moors to forget that his cold manner had frightened away a girl he had loved and hoped to marry; and Miss Nelly Dean, a serving girl in the Earnshaw household. Nelly is more than a servant. Because her mother, too, was a servant of the Earnshaws, she was brought up with the Earnshaw children, was probably their playmate, though she knew her place, and has, therefore, become confidante, too. Catherine confides many things to her, as does Heathcliff. She takes care of young Cathy, born just before death of her mother. As a servant so close to the family, she cannot help but interfere in their lives. She tries to encourage the child Heathcliff to run away from Wuthering Heights; she incites Catherine to violence in the presence of Edgar; she arranges for Heathcliff to visit the sick Catherine when Edgar goes to church; she gives little Cathy provisions for a ride to Wuthering Heights. She is, in part, the catalyst of some of the tragic events of the novel.

But Nelly serves a more important purpose. She is a vigorous, healthy young woman, untroubled by any emotional or psychological drives beyond her control. She is governed by strong moral principles, but her morality is not a harsh, rigid piety. Hers is a wholesome personality. She can join with pleasure the entertainment and dances of the villages. She becomes the exemplar of morality, of equilibrium. The intense, troubled passion-ridden behaviour of Catherine and Heathcliff, of Hindley and Isabella, of Young Cathy and Hareton is measured against her normality. The reader is at first inclined to accept her views, but as the story progresses, he/she begins to recognize that Nelly is a poor judge of people whose lives are fashioned by overwrought minds and uncontrollable emotions. Nelly makes critical judgements, which the reader will not accept; the reader's judgements go beyond Nelly's, and, in objection to her comments, the reader moves more closely into the heart, the center, of the story.

Nelly is, in short, an important character in the story. She was created by the author to guide the reader to the point from which he/she is forced, because of the need to challenge Nelly's views, to share more deeply the pain of dwellers of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights, and by sharing their pain to understand them better, to be moved by their plights, and not to be shocked by their excesses. The catharsis of the reader is impelled by Nelly.

Lockwood performs a different function, and yet an important one. He provides the reader with the view of an outsider, the city dweller, unfamiliar with the mores of the people of the moors. He seeks solitude, he says, but it is a pose. Solitude is not what he wants. Even though he is poorly treated on his first visit to Wuthering Heights, he must return for a second visit; and he is not deterred by threatening weather. He is sentimental about relationships, though afraid to make a gesture that will involve his life with another's. He is sufficiently sensitive to suggestion to dream that the ghost of Catherine knocks on the window of his bedroom, when he spends the night at Wuthering Heights, and tries to enter. Later he thinks that he may be able to charm and to win as bride the winsome young Cathy.

He is, of course, fascinated by the story which Nelly tells him and which he records for the reader in Nelly's words. He is inclined to accept Nelly's judgements because he, too, represents a normal view, a little different from Nelly's, and because his is the view of an outsider, a male, and a romantic. He is perhaps more sympathetic to the supra-normal passions of the dwellers at Wuthering Heights, but his sympathies are those of a sentimental spectator rather than, as in Nelly's case, those of an active participant.

The story, therefore, filters through two different normal minds, one healthy, one troubled, and takes on added appeal as the reader responds part in agreement, part in protest, to their views.

There is in the novel a myriad of views. There are the views of the characters themselves, for example, Heathcliff's account of how Catherine, bitten by the Linton dogs, came to stay at Thrushcross Grange; Catherine's passionate avowal to Nelly of what Heathcliff means to her. In addition, there are Nelly's views and Lockwood's views. Finally, there are the reader's views, complex and varied, fashioned by the author through this intricate approach.

Another View of the Novel

Wuthering Heights is a romantic novel. It deals basically with two love stories in two generations, one tragic and one felicitous. Both are presented as existing on an ideal level. The love between Catherine and Heathcliff, fostered in childhood and nurtured on the wild moors, transcends the normal passions of reality. Despite its tragic consequences, it is a love that exists in a world of dreams. It is a love also that is so demanding that it devours its participants. It is a love that men and women yearn for and find unattainable. It is because of this that the ungovernable and tortured Catherine and the Byronic and suffering Heathcliff are appealing.

The love between young Cathy and Hareton is of another kind, and it, too, exists on an ideal level. It is a love that begins with disgust on Cathy's part and hatred on Hareton's part. But below the surface of the antagonism of the two lurks a physical attraction fostered by health and vigour. Alone together, and not troubled by Heathcliff's aggressions and Nelly's mortalizing's, the two become aware of the another as an individual beings, and they begin to try to please one another. It is a more normal life and it works out well because it is idealized in terms of a resolution of the inherited passions of the two lovers. Cathy, with her mother's stubborn, passionate nature, and Hareton, with the potential of his father's self-indulgent and violent nature, subdue the unrest and submit to the beauty of mutual respect and mutual help. They are on the way, the story suggests, to a good life on the wild and rough moor, ready to match their strengths as free spirits and as partners against anything the moor can offer. This is the ideal and romantic ending of "Wuthering Heights" and forms a companion fadeout to the phantom appearances on the moor of the ghosts of Catherine and Heathcliff.

Anne Bronte

She is, by far, the least important figure of the three. Her two novels, "Agnes Grey" (1847) and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" (1848) are much inferior to those of her sisters, for she lacks nearly all their power and intensity.

Their Importance in the History of the Novel

With the Brontes the forces which have transformed English poetry at the beginning of the century were first felt in the novel. They were the pioneers in fiction of that aspect of the romantic movement which concerned itself with the haring of the human soul. In place of the detached observation of a society or a group of people, such as we find in Jane Austen and the earlier novelists, the Brontes painted the sufferings of an individual personality, and presented a new conception of the heroine as a woman of vital strength and passionate feelings. Their works are as much the products of the imagination and emotions of the intellect, and in their more powerful passages they border on poetry.

In their concern with the human soul they were to be followed by George Eliot and Meredith.