When I was in high school I read Wuthering Heights, so I decided that before I wrote my paper I would read Emily Bronte: A Biography, by Winifred Garin. As soon as I started reading this biography I noticed many similarities between the Brontes" lives and their novels. Throughout this paper I will touch on many of these similarities.
Her Life.
Emily Bronte was born in 1818, on July 30th. She was the fifth child of the Reverend Patrick Bronte, an Evangelist, and his wife Maria. They lived in Haworth surrounded by the moors of Yorkshire. Emily's mother died of cancer when Emily was just three years old, and her Aunt Branwell moved in to help raise the children. When Emily was six years old she went to a boarding school called The Clergy Daughters" School at Cowan Bridge. The school was funded by charity and the conditions were bleak. Emily's older sisters, Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte were already enrolled.
The Clergy Daughters" School was run with the notion that if the teachers punished their students" bodies, then their solves might be saved. The students were kept hungry, cold and, in most cases, extremely ill. In 1825, Maria and Elizabeth both died of tuberculosis, the disease that would later claim Emily's own life, and that of her younger sister, Anne. After these deaths, Charlotte and Emily were taken back home. Since I had also read Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, I remembered the charity school, Lowood, which plays a huge role in the life of the heroine, Jane Eyre.
When Emily and Charlotte returned home their lives were much better. The siblings spent most of their time making up wild stories on the moors and developed their imaginations greatly. In 1826, their father fueled their imaginations by presenting each of them with a wooden soldier. Each child chose a soldier and gave him a name and a character. This was the basis for the creation of a fantastic fantasy world, which the Brontes worked on for sixteen years.
