Happy Birthday Anne Bronte 17 January 1820 – 28 May 1849

A sketch of Anne Bronte by her sister Charlotte Bronte, 1845

Anne Bronte was born the youngest member of the Bronte family on 17 January 1820 in Yorkshire, England in the village of Thornton, Bradford. Her father was the parish priest there. Though, in April 1820, the Bronte family moved seven miles away to a remote small town of Haworth. It was in the Haworth Parsonage where the Bronte family remained for the rest of their lives. It was Anne, Charlotte and Emily who would later make their parsonage infamous amongst generations throughout the world.

Anne was barely a year old when her mother, Maria Branwell, contracted what is now known as uterine cancer. She died 21 months later on 15 September 1821. When their father Patrick’s marriage attempt was unsuccessful, Maria’s sister, Elizabeth Branwell moved into the parsonage where she spent the rest of her life raising the Bronte children. Anne Bronte was educated at home where she studied mainly music and drawing. However, it would be the moors of Haworth that would be the inspiration for the Bronte children.

Between 1838/9 Anne Bronte was eighteen and nineteen years old. Teaching or being a governess in a private family were the few options available to educated women. So, in April 1839 governess Anne Bronte went to live with the Ingham family at Blake Hall near Mirfield. Apparently, the Ingham children disobeyed and tormented their governess. Anne had great difficulty attempting to keep them in line and trying to teach them their lessons. The Ingham’s criticized Anne for not disciplining them enough. Dissatisfied with her performance they let her go. When Anne returned home to Haworth she wrote Agnes Grey and the events at Blake Hall were written in perfect detail!

Anne Bronte continued working as a teacher and governess during this time through 1848. Her novel Agnes Grey was published in December 1847 and one year later her second novel, ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’ was published. It was sold out within six weeks and became a phenomenal success.

‘The Tenant of Wildefell Hall’ challenged existing social and legal structures. Anne’s heroine eventually leaves her husband to protect their young son. She supports herself and her son by painting, while living in hiding, fearful of discovery. This violates not only social conventions but also English law. A married woman in Victorian England had no independent legal existence separate from her husband. She could not own property, sue for divorce or maintain custody of her children. If she tried any of these things, her husband had the right to reclaim her. Even if she was able to live off her own earnings, she could be accused of stealing her husband’s property, since any income she made was legally his.

‘The Tenant of Wildefell Hall’ is perhaps the most shocking of the Brontes’ novels. Anne Bronte’s depiction of alcoholism and debauchery was disturbing to the social mores of nineteenth century readers and Victorian England. Heaven forbid a female writer dares to present the truth in literature!

In the second edition of ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’, which appeared in August 1848, Anne clearly stated her intentions in writing it. Saying to critics who considered her portrayal of Huntingdon overly graphic and disturbing:

When we have to do with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear. To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light, is doubtless the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers? O Reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts–this whispering 'Peace, peace', when there is no peace, there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience.


Anne also criticized reviewers who speculated on the sex of the authors, and the appropriateness of their writing to their sex, in words that do little to reinforce the stereotype of Anne as being meek and gentle.

I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.


Anne Bronte lost two siblings, her brother Branwell and her sister Emily, in 1848. The Bronte siblings were in their twenties during this time. Greatly affected by their deaths’ and her grief Anne’s health quickly deteriorated. She caught influenza. In January 1849 she was diagnosed with consumption but wrote one final poem about the realization of being terminally ill. She wrote, ‘A dreadful darkness closes in’.

On Sunday, 27 May 1849, Anne asked Charlotte whether it would be easier for her if she return home to die instead of remaining at Scarborough. A doctor, consulted the next day, indicated that death was already close. Anne received the news quietly. She expressed her love and concern for Ellen and Charlotte, and seeing Charlotte's distress, whispered to her to "take courage". Conscious and calm, Anne died at about two o'clock in the afternoon, Monday, 28 May 1849. Anne Bronte was twenty nine years old.

Over the following few days, Charlotte made the decision to "lay the flower where it had fallen". Anne was buried not in Haworth with the rest of her family, but in Scarborough.

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A Review Of The Life of Charlotte Bronte By Elizabeth Gaskell

“As to the Mrs--, who, you say, is like me. I somehow feel no leaning to her at all. I never do to people who are said to be like me, because I have always a notion that they are only like me in the disagreeable, outside, first-acquaintance part of my character; in those points which are obvious to the ordinary run of people, and which I know are not pleasing. You say she is “clever” – “a clever person.” How I dislike the term! It means rather a shrewd, very ugly, meddling, talking woman…Charlotte Bronte, April 2, 1845

Charlotte Brontë died on March 31, 1855, and when Elizabeth Gaskell learned of her death, she resolved to write a memoir of her friend and fellow-novelist. On May 31, 1855, she wrote to Bronte's publisher, George Smith of Smith, Elder: ''if I live long enough, and no one is living whom such a publication would hurt, I will publish what I know of her, and make the world (if I am but strong enough in expression,) honour the woman as much as they have admired the writer''. The opportunity came sooner than Gaskell expected. On June 16, 1855, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, Charlotte's father, addressed a letter to Gaskell, with a request for her ''to write a brief account of her life and to make some remarks on her works''; he added: ''You seem to me to be the best qualified for doing what I wish should be done.'' When Gaskell agreed to write a biography of Brontë, the models for a woman author's life were few, and none distinguished. At this time Elizabeth Gaskell had already published ‘Cranford (1853) and North and South (1854) and was a well established authoress in her own right!

The Life of Charlotte Brontë is written as much by Charlotte as it is by Gaskell. Much of her life is told in her own words through her letters to friends. It actually relies quite heavily on letters. I had to take breaks periodically since I found it was difficult to read letter after letter. Still, reading Charlotte Bronte’s own words, descriptions of ‘her’ Yorkshire, and various thoughts is one aspect of the biography that I shall always cherish. For it brought Ms. Bronte to life: the woman and the authoress. As a writer, that feeling is incomprehensible!
Gaskell had plenty of source material to work from for the biography. To Ellen Nussey alone, Charlotte wrote over 500 letters. Gaskell could pick and choose what to or what not to include. While I found she covered much of her life, I couldn't help feeling that much was left out. For example, her marriage to Arthur Nicholls mystifies me. She turned down three marriage proposals and says many times that she is content to be single. Yet, in her late 30's she agrees to marry her father's curate. None of her letters about him are glowing with love. She's very quiet about the whole thing. Gaskell herself is the one who says they were happy. I felt there was much missing from this part of her life.

When it comes to the downfall of Charlotte’s brother, Branwell, Gaskell gets carried away and writes his sections of the biography with too much editorializing for my taste! You see, Branwell, was an opium addict who nearly ruined the family with his debts before he died. Gaskell lays much of the blame at the feet of his married lover. She demonizes the woman when it's obvious that he was no angel to begin with.

Gaskell paints such a vivid picture of Charlotte; highlighting her strong points: she's fiercely loyal to her family and friends. Even after the deaths of her two elder sisters as children, she takes the place of eldest sister to her motherless siblings. Perhaps a bit too overprotective of them, though. Still, she never separates from them for long until their passings. The most difficult letters to read were the ones during and after the deaths of her sisters, Emily and Anne. What heartbreaking letters. Within a year, Charlotte lost all her remaining 3 siblings.

After their deaths, Charlotte took on the responsibility of caring for her father alone. This presented quite a challenge due to his gruff exterior and failing eyesight. Even success as a writer didn't free her from this task, as Gaskell points out, “a woman's principle work in life is hardly left to her own choice; nor can she drop the domestic charges devolving on her as an individual, for the exercise of the most splendid talents ever bestowed”.

In June 1854, Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate. Perhaps he was the model for several of her literary characters such as Jane Eyre's Rochester and St. John. She became pregnant soon after the marriage. Her health declined rapidly during this time, and according to Gaskell, she was attacked by "sensations of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness." Charlotte died, along with her unborn child, on 31 March 1855, at the young age of 38.

Although Elizabeth Gaskell has written a loving and realistic portrait of her friend Charlotte Bronte, there are still ever present tinges of sadness echoed throughout the pages for the loss of a true friend one whom she admired as a writer.

SOURCE
The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell, Penguin Books, London, England, 1975

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Remembering Emily Bronte & Wuthering Heights

Emily Bronte painted by her brother

I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind~ Emily Brontë

July 30, 1818 was Emily Bronte's birthday. Although, I am a day late, I wanted to remember her through the one novel she ever wrote, Wuthering Heights! I wonder, if there is any girl out there who hasn't read this beautiful novel. Well, I implore you, regardless of age, read it immediately. Clear your schedule, make a pot of tea, a snack, curl up on the sofa, or get tucked up in bed and meet Cathy and Heathcliff on the moors in Yorkshire...

Setting for Wuthering Heights, The Yorkshire Moors

The Moors in Haworth where The Brontes grew up

What I loved about Wuthering Heights are its Gothic qualities, and the lack of moral comment from its author. The presence of ghosts and visions, the prevalence of storms and darkness (echoing the characters' turbulent emotions) and at the core Heathcliff's diabolical nature, combine with the melodramatic plot to create a violent nightmare into which the reader is sucked. The wild, stormy landscape, and Wuthering Heights itself, with its air of faded grandeur and atmosphere of spiritual gloom owe much to the Gothic novels of the late eighteenth century. What is exceptional for the period is the absence of condemnation by Emily of Heathcliff's conduct, or any suggestion that evil might bring its own punishment. The novel is morally ambiguous, the author leaving us to draw our own conclusions. This led to criticism by many early readers, but is an important aspect of its contemporary appeal.

When Wuthering Heights was first published, it was rejected. Publishers didn’t understand the book, or the author. They didn’t understand the complexities and messages in the story or the true strength of character its author possessed.

Emily Bronte was not a typical Victorian woman. She was very reclusive and didn’t have much interest in the outside world. She had pastimes that weren’t proper for women during those times and her views on religion were not what you would expect from a clergyman’s daughter. And, she was in possession of a wonderful imagination that wouldn’t quit.

Because of her lack of contact with the outside world, people know very little about her. What they do know is a striking picture. Emily enjoyed whistling like a man and even practiced pistol shooting with her father, an unheard of pastime for a woman in that era. She dressed oddly for that time and was nicknamed “the Mayor”.

Her love of nature is very apparent in her writing. She enjoyed walking on the moors and loved animals of all kinds. She drew pleasure from watching the seasons change. A neighbor of the Bronte’s claimed that after Emily returned one night from a walk, her face was lit “with the divine light of happiness”. She appreciated courage and showed immense courage herself.

Emily also was a very loyal and caring person. When an old family servant, Tabby, broke her leg, Emily left home to care for her until she healed. And when Emily’s terrible Aunt Elizabeth died, she brought Tabby to her own home to live with her until the end of her days. Branwell Bronte, Emily's brother, was another example of Emily’s extreme loyalty. Although Branwell died very early as a result of excessive drinking, Emily never stopped caring about him. It is widely believed that Emily waited up for him every night and carried him up to his room when he was too drunk to get there himself.

Heathcliff and Catherine
When Catherine took ill with a brain fever, Heathcliff was heartbroken. And the part of him that died when she died was the capacity to love. After Catherine was gone, he became ruthless, calculating and conquering to have revenge on Edgar and Hindley. He set out to acquire all the property of both families, by kidnapping and plotting. He became a very dark and evil person, with no real redeeming qualities, except you never really hate him. Other critics have said that the character of Heathcliff evokes pity in readers, but I never really pitied him. I more sympathized with his character, because he lost his love. It was not good that he took the path of evil and cruel temperament, but it can be understood when you understand that he lost his love when Catherine died. After she was gone, he really had nothing but his revenge to live for, and so he lived for his revenge. He threw himself into revenge and made it his life. And when he was finished with his revenge, and had acquired all of the property, his life was done. Heathcliff gave up living and welcomed death, so that he could once again be with Catherine.

Catherine’s death was a very emotional point for Heathcliff and the story. It is the time when Heathcliff loses all love he has in the physical world and inside himself. In that scene, Heathcliff displays more emotions than in the rest of the book.


“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 dead! 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 Heathcliff?’

‘Don’t torture me till I am as mad as yourself,’ cried he, wrenching his head free and grinding his teeth.


‘Are you possessed with a devil,’ he pursued savagely, ‘to talk in that manner to me when you are dying? Do you reflect that all those words will be branded on my memory, and eating deeper eternally after you have left me? You know you lie to say I have killed you: and, Catherine, you know that I could soon forget you as my existence! Is it not sufficient for your infernal selfishness, that while you are at peace I shall writhe in the torments of hell?’

‘I shall not be at peace,’ moaned Catherine, recalled to a sense of physical weakness by the violent, unequal throbbing of her heart, which beat visibly and audibly under this excess of agitation. She said nothing further till the paroxysm was over; then she continued more kindly -

‘I’m not wishing you greater torment than I have, Heathcliff. I only wish us never to be parted: and should a word of mine distress you hereafter, think I feel the same distress underground, and for my own sake, forgive me! Come here and kneel down again! You never harmed me in your life. Nay, if you nurse anger, that will be worse to remember than my harsh words! Won’t you come here again? Do!’

‘Oh, you see, Ellen, he would not relent a moment to keep me out of the grave. That is how I’m loved! Well, never mind. That is not my Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me: he’s in my soul. And’, added she musingly, ‘the thing that irks me most in this shattered prison, after all. I’m, tired, tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it, and in it. Ellen, you think you are better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength: you are sorry for me - very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for you. I shall be incomparably beyond and above you all. I wonder he won’t be near me!’ She went on to herself. ‘I thought he wished it. Heathcliff, dear! you should not be sullen now. Do come to me, Heathcliff.’

‘You teach me how cruel you’ve been - cruel and false. Why did 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 ring 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 of 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. So much the worse for me, that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?’

‘Let me alone. Let me alone,’ sobbed Catherine. ‘If I have done wrong, I’m dying for it. It is enough! You left me too: but I won’t upbraid you! I forgive you. Forgive me!

‘It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands,’ he answered. ‘Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer - but yours! How can I?’”

This excerpt illustrates many things about both the author’s style and the characters in it.
Toward the beginning of the passage, Catherine pulled Heathcliff in by the hair, but he broke free. Catherine still had some of his hair in her hands. In way, I think this is symbolic of the fact that they could never be parted. They were one mind, one soul and one love and whether they were mad at each other, or separated, they were always together. Along these same lines, Catherine said, “You have never harmed me.” Catherine was probably the only person Heathcliff had never harmed. He had been proven to be a very loveless character, quite capable of hurting people, and yet he had never harmed Catherine.

Midway through, Catherine talked about her prison and about how she wanted to break free and go to the glorious place. To me, prison has many meanings in this place. One meaning is Catherine’s room. She had been ill and cooped up in her room for a long time. She wanted to be able to walk on the moors again, like she used to. She wanted to be among people again and stop being an invalid who relied on others to do things for her. Another meaning, is the prison of her mortal body. She is close to death, and wanted to go to heaven. Again, she was tired of being sick and an invalid, and she just wanted it to be done. Catherine wanted to make a graceful exit from the physical world to the heavens. She was tired of living. The last meaning I see, is the prison of loving Heathcliff and not being able to be with him. She had lived many years and through them all, she has loved Heathcliff. Her own love for him has imprisoned her and made her miserable. She just wanted to break free and be able to love Heathcliff without the extra baggage of Edgar Linton.

At the very end, Heathcliff said, “I love my murderer, but yours? How can I?” This quote expresses Heathcliff’s sorrow perfectly. He refers to Catherine as breaking his heart and killing him, and he says that he loves her, even if she has killed a part of his soul. But, he can never forgive her murderer, which is himself. Throughout the rest of the book, it can be seen how much he longs for Catherine. He saw her in Catherine’s daughter and Hareton. He prayed for her to haunt him and he could sense her with him all the time. And he never forgave himself for “killing” her, until he dies.

Everyone had a hardship of love. Heathcliff loved Catherine and Catherine loved him, but they couldn’t be together because he was nothing but a beggar. Edgar loved Catherine and married her, but never really got love in return from her. Hindley loved his wife Frances, but she died at a young age. Isabella loved Heathcliff, and they were married, but she discovered that her husband was not the caring man she thought he was. Cathy loved Linton, but then discovered he was nothing but a sickly, spoiled brat. Linton loved Cathy but felt he was too weak to do anything about it. And Hareton loved Cathy, but at the beginning, he was too uneducated to be worthy of her. Everyone in the book loved someone, and was hurt by that love.

These two themes also occur in many of Emily Bronte’s poems, especially the hardships of love. In an untitled poem, she wrote:

If grief for grief can touch thee,
If answering woe for woe,
If any ruth can melt thee,
Come to me now!

I cannot be more lonely,
More drear I cannot be!
My worn heart throbs so wildly
‘Twill break for thee.

And when the world despises-
When heaven repels my prayer,
Will not mine angel comfort?
Mine idol hear?

Yes by the tears I’ve poured,
My all my hours of pain,
O I shall surely win thee
Beloved, again! (Wuthering Heights and Poems)

In this poem, the narrator is mourning the loss of a loved one. From the ending phrase, “I shall surely win thee/Beloved again!”, I think she was trying to convey that her love is alive and has left her, but that she will win him back. Again, it is the theme of “love hurts”.

Another reccurring theme in her poems is death. In a poem entitled merely “A.G.A”, she wrote:

Sleep brings no joy to me,
Remembrance never dies;
My soul is given to misery
And lives in sighs.

Sleep brings no rest to me;
The shadows of the dead
My waking eyes may never see
Surround my bed.

Sleep brings no hope to me;
In sounder sleep they come.
And with their doleful imagery
Deepen the gloom

Sleep brings no strength to me,
No power renewed to brave:
I only sail a wilder sea,
A darker wave.

Sleep brings no friend to me
To soothe and aid to bear;
They all gaze, oh, how scornfully,
And I despair.

Sleep brings no wish to knit
My harassed heart beneath:
My only wish is to forget
In the sleep of death. (Wuthering Heights and Poems)

This poem is all about life and how she had tired of it. She wanted to leave this life and go on to death. She was ready and wanted to move on.

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