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The popular Victorian image of the ideal wife/woman came to be "the Angel in the House"; she was expected to be devoted and submissive to her husband. The Angel was passive and powerless, meek, charming, graceful, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, pious, and above all--pure. The phrase "Angel in the House" comes from the title of an immensely popular poem by Coventry Patmore, in which he holds his angel-wife up as a model for all women.

Believing that his wife Emily was the perfect Victorian wife, he wrote "The Angel in the House" about her (originally published in 1854, revised through 1862). Though it did not receive much attention when it was first published in 1854, it became increasingly popular through the rest of the nineteenth century and continued to be influential into the twentieth century. For Virginia Woolf, the repressive ideal of women represented by the Angel in the House was still so potent that she wrote, in 1931, "Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer."

The following excerpt will give you a sense of the ideal woman and the male-female relationship presented by Patmore's poem:

Man must be pleased; but him to please
Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf
Of his condoled necessities
She casts her best, she flings herself.
How often flings for nought, and yokes
Her heart to an icicle or whim,
Whose each impatient word provokes
Another, not from her, but him;
While she, too gentle even to force
His penitence by kind replies,
Waits by, expecting his remorse,
With pardon in her pitying eyes;
And if he once, by shame oppress'd,
A comfortable word confers,
She leans and weeps against his breast,
And seems to think the sin was hers;
Or any eye to see her charms,
At any time, she's still his wife,
Dearly devoted to his arms;
She loves with love that cannot tire;
And when, ah woe, she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love springs higher,
As grass grows taller round a stone.

Initially this ideal primarily expressed the values of the middle classes. However, Queen Victoria's devoting herself to her husband Prince Albert and to a domestic life encouragead the ideal to spread throughout nineteenth century society.

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The popular Victorian image of the ideal wife/woman came to be "the Angel in the House"; she was expected to be devoted and submissive to her husband. The Angel was passive and powerless, meek, charming, graceful, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, pious, and above all--pure.

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Appendix - The Author's Autobiographical Reminiscences

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Victorian Web Home -> Political History -> Social History -> The Industrial Revolution -> Economics -> Victorian Work]

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The invention of the "housewife" and the previctorian role of women

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Women's work was not confined to farming. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, coal-mining women were part of the workforce; colliers in the east Lothian had to provide bearers to carry the coal to the surface, and generally they chose their wives and daughters.

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Chadwick's Report on Sanitary Conditions
Joshua Drake, called in; and Examined.
You say you would prefer moderate labour and lower wages; are you pretty comfortable upon your present wages? --I have no wages, but two days a week at present; but when I am working at some jobs we can make a little, and at others we do very poorly.
When a child gets 3s. a week, does that go much towards its subsistence? --No, it will not keep it as it should do.

When they got 6s. or 7s. when they were pieceners, if they reduced the hours of labor, would they not get less? - They would get a halfpenny a day less, but I would rather have less wages and less work.

Do you receive any parish assistance? - No.

Why do you allow your children to go to work at those places where they are ill-treated or over-worked? - Necessity compels a man that has children to let them work.

Then you would not allow your children to go to those factories under the present system, if it was not from necessity? - No.

Supposing there was a law passed to limit the hours of labour to eight hours a day, or something of that sort, of course you are aware that a manufacturer could not afford to pay them the same wages? - No, I do not suppose that they would, but at the same time I would rather have it, and I believe that it would bring me into employ; and if I lost 5d. a day from my children's work, and I got half-a-crown myself, it would be better.

How would it get you into employ? - By finding more employment at the machines, and work being more regularly spread abroad, and divided amongst the people at large. One man is now regularly turned off into the street, whilst another man is running day and night.

You mean to say, that if the manufacturers were to limit the hours of labour, they would employ more people? - Yes. [Parliamentary Papers, 1831-1832, XV, 44.]

Mr. Matthew Crabtree, called in; and Examined.
What age are you? - Twenty-two.
What is your occupation? - A blanket manufacturer.

Have you ever been employed in a factory? - Yes.

At what age did you first go to work in one? - Eight.

How long did you continue in that occupation? - Four years.

Will you state the hours of labour at the period when you first went to the factory, in ordinary times? - From 6 in the morning to 8 at night.

Fourteen hours? - Yes.

With what intervals for refreshment and rest? - An hour at noon.

When trade was brisk what were your hours? - From 5 in the morning to 9 in the evening.

Sixteen hours? - Yes.

With what intervals at dinner? - An hour.

How far did you live from the mill? - About two miles.

Was there any time allowed for you to get your breakfast in the mill? - No.

Did you take it before you left your home? - Generally.

During those long hours of labour could you be punctual; how did you awake? - I seldom did awake spontaneously; I was most generally awoke or lifted out of bed, sometimes asleep, by my parents.

Were you always in time? - No.

What was the consequence if you had been too late? - I was most commonly beaten.

Severely? - Very severely, I thought.

In those mills is chastisement towards the latter part of the day going on perpetually? - Perpetually.

So that you can hardly be in a mill without hearing constant crying? - Never an hour, I believe.

Do you think that if the overlooker were naturally a humane person it would still be found necessary for him to beat the children, in order to keep up their attention and vigilance at the termination of those extraordinary days of labour? - Yes; the machine turns off a regular quantity of cardings, and of course, they must keep as regularly to their work the whole of the day; they must keep with the machine, and therefore however humane the slubber may be, as he must keep up with the machine or be found fault with, he spurs the children to keep up also by various means but that which he commonly resorts to is to strap them when they become drowsy.

At the time when you were beaten for not keeping up with your work, were you anxious to have done it if you possibly could? - Yes; the dread of being beaten if we could not keep up with our work was a sufficient impulse to keep us to it if we could.

When you got home at night after this labour, did you feel much fatigued? - Very much so.

Had you any time to be with your parents, and to receive instruction from them? - No.

What did you do? - All that we did when we got home was to get the little bit of supper that was provided for us and go to bed immediately. If the supper had not been ready directly, we should have gone to sleep while it was preparing.

Did you not, as a child, feel it a very grievous hardship to be roused so soon in the morning? - I did.

Were the rest of the children similarly circumstanced? - Yes, all of them; but they were not all of them so far from their work as I was.

And if you had been too late you were under the apprehension of being cruelly beaten? - I generally was beaten when I happened to be too late; and when I got up in the morning the apprehension of that was so great, that I used to run, and cry all the way as I went to the mill. [Parliamentary Papers, 1831-1832, XV, 95-97.]

Mr. John Hall, called in; and Examined.
Will you describe to the Committee the position in which the children stand to piece in a worsted mill, as it may serve to explain the number and severity of those cases of distortion which occur? - At the top to the spindle there is a fly goes across, and the child takes hold of the fly by the ball of his left hand, and he throws the left shoulder up and the right knee inward; he has the thread to get with the right hand, and he has to stoop his head down to see what he is doing; they throw the right knee inward in that way, and all the children I have seen, that bend in the right knee. I knew a family, the whole of whom were bent outwards as a family complaint, and one of those boys was sent to a worsted-mill, and first he became straight in his right knee, and then he became crooked in it the other way. [Parliamentary Papers, 1831-1832, XV, 115].
Elizabeth Bentley, called in; and Examined.
What age are you? - Twenty-three.
Where do you live? - At Leeds.

What time did you begin to work at a factory? - When I was six years old.

At whose factory did you work? - Mr. Busk's.

What kind of mill is it? - Flax-mill.

What was your business in that mill? - I was a little doffer.

What were your hours of labour in that mill? - From 5 in the morning till 9 at night, when they were thronged.

For how long a time together have you worked that excessive length of time? - For about half a year.

What were your usual hours when you were not so thronged? - From 6 in the morning till 7 at night.

What time was allowed for your meals? - Forty minutes at noon.

Had you any time to get your breakfast or drinking? - No, we got it as we could.

And when your work was bad, you had hardly any time to eat it at all? - No; we were obliged to leave it or take it home, and when we did not take it, the overlooker took it, and gave it to his pigs.

Do you consider doffing a laborious employment? - Yes.

Explain what it is you had to do? - When the frames are full, they have to stop the frames, and take the flyers off, and take the full bobbins off, and carry them to the roller; and then put empty ones on, and set the frame going again.

Does that keep you constantly on your feet? - Yes, there are so many frames, and they run so quick.

Your labour is very excessive? - Yes; you have not time for any thing.

Suppose you flagged a little, or were too late, what would they do? - Strap us.

Are they in the habit of strapping those who are last in doffing? - Yes.

Constantly? - Yes.

Girls as well as boys? - Yes.

Have you ever been strapped? - Yes.

Severely? - Yes.

Could you eat your food well in that factory? - No, indeed I had not much to eat, and the little I had I could not eat it, my appetite was so poor, and being covered with dust; and it was no use to take it home, I could not eat it, and the overlooker took it, and gave it to the pigs.

You are speaking of the breakfast? - Yes.

How far had you to go for dinner? - We could not go home to dinner.

Where did you dine? - In the mill.

Did you live far from the mill? - Yes, two miles.

Had you a clock? - No, we had not.

Supposing you had not been in time enough in the morning at these mills, what would have been the consequence? - We should have been quartered.

What do you mean by that? - If we were a quarter of an hour too late, they would take off half an hour; we only got a penny an hour, and they would take a halfpenny more.

The fine was much more considerable than the loss of time? - Yes.

Were you also beaten for being too late? - No, I was never beaten myself, I have seen the boys beaten for being too late.

Were you generally there in time? - Yes; my mother had been up at 4 o'clock in the morning, and at 2 o'clock in the morning; the colliers used to go to their work about 3 or 4 o'clock, and when she heard them stirring she has got up out of her warm bed, and gone out and asked them the time; and I have sometimes been at Hunslet Car at 2 o'clock in the morning, when it was streaming down with rain, and we have had to stay until the mill was opened. [Parliamentary Papers, 1831-1832, XV, 195.]

Peter Smart, called in; and Examined.

You say you were locked up night and day? - Yes.

Do the children ever attempt to run away? - Very often.

Were they pusued and brought back again? - Yes, the overseer pursued them, and brought them back.

Did you ever attempt to run away? - Yes, I ran away twice.

And you were brought back? - Yes; and I was sent up to the master's loft, and thrashed with a whip for running away.

Were you bound to this man? - Yes, for six years.

By whom were you bound? - My mother got 15s. for the six years.

Do you know whether the children were, in point of fact, compelled to stop during the whole time for which they were engaged? - Yes, they were.

By law? - I cannot say by law; but they were compelled by the master; I never saw any law used there but the law of their own hands.

To what mill did you next go? - To Mr. Webster's, at Battus Den, within eleven miles of Dundee.

In what situation did you act there? - I acted as overseer.

At 17 years of age? - Yes.

Did you inflict the same punishment that you yourself had experienced? - I went as an overseer; not as a slave, but as a slave-driver.

What were the hours of labour in that mill? - My master told me that I had to produce a certain quantity of yarn; the hours were at that time fourteen; I said that I was not able to produce the quantity of yarn that was required; I told him if he took the timepiece out of the mill I would produce that quantity, and after that time I found no difficulty in producing the quantity.

How long have you worked per day in order to produce the quantity your master required? - I have wrought nineteen hours.

Was this a water-mill? - Yes, water and steam both.

To what time have you worked? - I have seen the mill going till it was past 12 o'clock on the Saturday night.

So that the mill was still working on the Sabbath morning? - Yes.

Were the workmen paid by the piece, or by the day? - No, all had stated wages.

Did not that almost compel you to use great severity to the hands then under you? - Yes; I was compelled often to beat them, in order to get them to attend to their work, from their being over-wrought.

Were not the children exceedingly fatigued at that time? - Yes, exceedingly fatigued.

Were the children bound in the same way in that mill? - No; they were bound from one year's end to another, for twelve months.

Did you keep the hands locked up in the same way in that mill? - Yes, we locked up the mill; but we did not lock the bothy.

Did you find that the children were unable to pursue their labour properly to that extent? - Yes; they have been brought to that condition, that I have gone and fetched up the doctor to them, to see what was the matter with them, and to know whether they were able to rise or not able to rise; they were not at all able to rise; we have had great difficulty in getting them up.

When that was the case, how long have they been in bed, generally speaking? - Perhaps not above four or five hours in their beds. [Parliamentary Papers, 1831-1832, XV, 197.]

Related material

Bibliography

Readings in European History Since 1814. Ed. Jonathan F. Scott and Alexander Baltzly. Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1930.

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Life of Ninteenth-Century Workers - Evidence Given Before the Sadler Committee (1831-1832)

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Chadwick's Report on Sanitary Conditions You say you would prefer moderate labour and lower wages; are you pretty comfortable upon your present wages? --I have no wages, but two days a week at present; but when I am working at some jobs we can make a little, and at others we do very poorly.

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mily Brontë was the daughter of a strict Evangelical minister, but the symbolism in her poetry frequently reflects the processes of doubt permeating Victorian society (Gilmour, p. 72). The alter ego she constructed in her poetry was a princess called A.G. Almeda (A.G.A.) who was brave and powerful, but who also possessed a degree of tyranny and selfishness (Chitham, p. 97) and who later became the Queen of Gondal, the Brontë sisters' fantastical and imaginary land. Gilbert and Gubar claim that A.G.A brought 'all men to her feet' and tragedy 'to all who loved her' hinting at darker aspects and deep desires within Brontë's psyche (Gilbert and Gubar, p. 256). Emily Brontë became a 'reclusive and anti-social character' who 'lived inside herself' and whose imagination was fed by her beloved Yorkshire moors (Chitham, p. 142). One of her early formative experiences involved a narrow escape from death on the moors which shaped her view of the moors as beautiful and compelling. The moors appeared to combine death and desire, and Emily incorporated this into the unusual religious and spiritual symbolism which is integral to her work.

Other Victorian f emale poets entered into a unique discourse with one another, but Emily Brontë clung to her distinctly male identity. Brontë's alter ego may have been a wealthy and commanding female, but her muse was a masculine one and Homans suggests Brontë had 'masculine visitants' creating a 'visionary experience' which was comparable to a 'masculine poet's muse' (Victorian Women Poets, p. 84). The personal tone in 'My Comforter' describes the thoughts she has 'concealed' within her soul in the 'light that lies hid from men' and its 'gentle ray' cannot be controlled by a patriarchal system or by a male God (Victorian Woman Poets, p. 209). She sees Christians as 'wretches', 'howling' empty praise in a 'Brotherhood of misery' and their 'madness daily maddening' her. Brontë claims she stood in the glow of heaven and the 'glare' of hell and forged her own path between 'scraph's song and demon's groan'. Only 'thy soul alone' can know the truth, and her appeal to 'My thoughtful Comforter' is not an appeal to God, but to her enigmatic male muse which governs her spiritual belief. He is epitomised by the life-giving 'soft air' and 'thawwind melting quietly' and lovingly around her. She is grateful that her 'visitants' allow her 'savage heart' to grow 'meek' and allow her to conform to the role she is forced to play within an ordered Christian and patriarchal system. Her poetry focuses on the betrayals of mind and body, as she seeks to find answers to questions that her society does not permit her to ask. Brontë's religious symbolism and unique spirituality show a form of pantheistic atheism, although she continued to attend a church 'whilst sitting as motionless as a statue' and it seems that this careful passivity is juxtaposed with uncontained anger and frustrated passions (Chitham, p. 156).

Brontë's male muse is intrinsically linked to the moors and attached to the eastern wind blowing across them. The wind is tied to the spiritual essence of a god, and often involves a 'retelling of Milton's and Western culture's central tale of the fall of women' so integral to the Catholicism of Gerald Manley Hopkins and Coventry Patmore (Gilbert & Gubar, p. 255). Her sensual relationship with her muse appears to have been 'threatening as well as inspiring' and enveloped her poetry with deep longing and a desire for fulfilment (Victorian Women Poets, p. 89). Brontë's spiritual belief and secular spiritualism is symbolised by her love of nature and typified by 'shadows of the dead' which she sees around her. Gilbert and Gubar see Emily Brontë's poetry and beliefs as threatening the rigidly hierarchical state of heaven and hell, and Brontë believed that the dead remained on the earth and moved around her (Gilbert & Gubar, p. 255). She also saw dead friends and family watching her at night, and this dream-like sleepy other reality has some similarities with Christina Rossetti's 'soul-sleep' (Victorian Women Poets, p. 176). Brontë's religious symbolism shows no hope for everlasting life and her spirit languishes in 'dead despair'. Her poem 'I'll not weep' echoes Gerard Manley Hopkins sonnet 'No Worst' however, as she claims the 'summer's day' will end 'in gloom' and that life ends with the 'tomb' (Chitham, p. 141). Hopkins's and Brontë's diverse beliefs required different types of religious symbolism, but both experienced deep feelings of anguish and isolation. Brontë believes in the 'soul' which is 'sighing' but believes death releases to peaceful oblivion rather than everlasting life. She desires freedom and 'liberty' for an unconfined and 'chainless soul' (Chitham, p. 146).

The religious symbolism in 'The Philosopher' highlights the sounds of the soul as she chastises herself for 'dreaming/unlightened' (Chitham, p. 161). Outside the world is 'white' and there is room and light for 'space-sweeping soul'. The next stanza is italicised and articulates forbidden desires, while the italics simultaneously highlight and apologise for the defiance. She yearns to sleep 'without identity' with imagination and thought annulled as earthly woes disappear. Emily Brontë's derisive view of patriarchal heaven suggests that it cannot contain or even 'half-fulfil' the 'wild desires' she experiences. She does not fear 'threatened hell' or its 'quenchless fires' because her 'will' is stronger. The next stanza is written alliteratively in the first person and states her strength of purpose. She has 'three gods within' which are 'warring night and day', showing her frustration and secular spirituality, blended uniquely with Evangelist doctrine. The three gods symbolise the trinity, but form a unique triumvirate stronger than orthodox spirituality because they are all 'held' within her until death or re-birth. This unique form of individualised pantheistic ideology and spirituality is revealed through her religious symbolism in her work.

Brontë longs to 'rest' in oblivion rather than immortality. Her muse in the form of a male 'spirit' stands over her and channels her spiritual ideology. The 'golden stream' signifies the soul rather than wealth and the blood suggests flowing life (Chitham, p. 162). The 'sapphire' stream in the colour of the skies over the moors, suggesting virginal purity and innocence as well as cleansing water. The streams flow into the dark sea of eternity, offering an endless peaceful rest. The 'spirit' kindles 'all with sudden blaze' which is 'white as the sun', and signifies innocent and uncorrupted soul-fire. The poet states that she has searched and 'sought' her 'spirit' and 'seer' in 'Heaven, Hell, Earth and Air' but all prove inadequate. She yearns for a spiritual state which would prevent her seeking 'oblivion' or 'stretching eager hands to Death'. Her spirit muse embodies soul, spirituality and 'living breath' and she wishes to vanquish 'Power and Will and the 'cruel strife' on god's earth and be 'lost in one repose', and suggests that Christianity is a prime cause of her subjection.

The moors and nature are intrinsically tied to her spiritual beliefs, but her adoration of nature differs from that of Hopkins. Hopkins's sees nature as an essential part of God's glory, while Brontë focuses on the mystical aspect of nature and the moods produced, rather than on precision and detail. Her poetry reflects changes in faith and belief within her society, as Victorians increasingly saw a separation of the 'moral sense from the religious institutions that had once expressed it' (Gilmour, p. 93). The religious symbolism in her poetry shows that Brontë believed that a god or celestial being resided in nature, but orthodox religion and its hierarchical structure had no meaning for her. Emily Brontë considered the imagination to be more important than the word of God, while the romantic aspects of her nature generated a powerful male muse, and the 'favourite characters' incorporated into romantic situations were manifestations of aspects of Brontë herself (Gilbert & Gubar, p. 254). Brontë's individual spiritual mysticism highlights her deep longing to create new forms in thought and writing, while her masculine muse encapsulates her deep yearnings and desires. She remains aware of the presence of the soul, but cannot accept the patriarchal and ordered concept of Christianity, reflecting some of the processes of doubt in Victorian Britain.

References

Armstrong, Isobel. Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics. London: Routledge, 1993.

Armstrong, Isobel. Victorian Scrutinies: Reviews of Poetry 1830-1870. London: The Athlone Press, 1972.

Bristow, Joseph, ed. Victorian Women Poets: Critical Contemporary Poets. London: MacMillan, 1995.

Chitham, Edward. A Life of Emily Brontë. Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.

Cunningham, Valentine. ed. The Victorians: An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.

Gilbert, Sandra, M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic, 2nd edn. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2000.

Gilmour, Robin. The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature 1830-1890. London: Longman, 1993.

Leighton, Angela and Margaret Reynolds. eds. Victorian Women Poets. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.

Maynard, John. Victorian Discourses on Sexuality and Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Richards, Bernard. English Verse 1830-1890. London: Longman, 1980.

Shorter, Clement. The Brontë's and Their Circle. London: Dent & Sons, 1914.

Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830-1980. London: Virago, 1987.

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mily Brontë was the daughter of a strict Evangelical minister, but the symbolism in her poetry frequently reflects the processes of doubt permeating Victorian society (Gilmour, p. 72). The alter ego she constructed in her poetry was a princess called A.G. Almeda (A.G.A.)

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The essentially hierarchical plan of English society . . . is the great and ever-present fact to the mind of a stranger: there is hardly a detail of life that does not in some degree betray it. It is really only in a country in which a good deal of democratic feeling prevails that people of "refinement," as we say in America, will be willing to sit at little round tables, on a pavement or a gravel-walk, at the door of a café. The better sort are too "genteel" and the inferior sort too base. One must hasten to add too, in justice, that the better sort. - Henry James, English Hours

lass is a complex term, in use since the late eighteenth century, and employed in many different ways. In our context classes are the more or less distinct social groupings which at any given historical period, taken as a whole, constituted British Society. Different social classes can be (and were by the classes themselves) distinguished by inequalities in such areas as power, authority, wealth, working and living conditions, life-styles, life-span, education, religion, and culture.

Early in the nineteenth century the labels "working classes" and " middle classes" were already coming into common usage. The old hereditary aristocracy, reinforced by the new gentry who owed their success to commerce, industry, and the professions, evolved into an "upper class" (its consciousness formed in large part by the Public Schools and Universities) which tenaciously maintained control over the political system, depriving not only the working classes but the middle classes of a voice in the political process. The increasingly powerful (and class conscious) middle classes, however, undertook organized agitation to remedy this situation: the passage of the Reform Act of 1832 and the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846 were intimations of the extent to which they would ultimately be successful.

The working classes, however, remained shut out from the political process, and became increasingly hostile not only to the aristocracy but to the middle classes as well. As the Industrial Revolution progressed there was further social stratification. Capitalists, for example, employed industrial workers who were one component of the working classes (each class included a wide range of occupations of varying status and income; there was a large gap, for example, between skilled and unskilled labor), but beneath the industrial workers was a submerged "under class" - contemporaries referred to them as the "sunken people" - -- which lived in poverty. In mid-century skilled workers had acquired enough power to enable them to establish Trade Unions (Socialism became an increasingly important political force) which they used to further improve their status, while unskilled workers and the underclass beneath them remained much more susceptible to exploitation, and were therefore exploited.

This basic hierarchical structure (presented here in highly oversimplified form), comprising the "upper classes," the "middle classes," the "Working Classes" (with skilled laborers at one extreme and unskilled at the other), and the impoverished "Under Class," remained relatively stable despite periodic (and frequently violent) upheavals, and despite the Marxist view of the inevitability of class conflict, at least until the outbreak of World War I. A modified class structure clearly remains in existence today.

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The essentially hierarchical plan of English society . . . is the great and ever-present fact to the mind of a stranger: there is hardly a detail of life that does not in some degree betray it.

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Sealed in her art-world, the moor strategically placed for escape above the house, no domesticating and limiting mother to weaken her capacity for identification with whatever sex she chose to impersonate at a particular moment, polite society at a safe distance, and a father who seems to have selected her as an honorary boy to be trusted with fire-arms in defence of the weak, Emily Brontë's life exemplifies a rough joy in itself, its war-games, its word games and its power to extend its own structuring vision out upon the given world. [Davies, 9]

Emily Brontë was born at Thornton, Bradford, Yorkshire, and just after the birth of her sister Anne (20 April 1820), she moved with her family to Haworth, near Keighley, Yorkshire, where she spent most of her life. Today remembered chiefly as the author of the eighteenth-century romance Wuthering Heights (1847), set in her native Yorkshire, Emily Brontë was the second surviving daughter and fifth child of Cornishwoman Maria Brontë and the Ulsterman Reverend Patrick Brontë (1777-1861), "perpetual curate" (rector) of the remote village of Haworth on the Yorkshire Moors from 1820 until his death in 1861. Maria died on 15 September 1821, survived by her husband, five daughters, and a son, Branwell (1817-48). Emily and her sisters (except Anne) attended Cowan Bridge School, a Church of England clergymen's daughters' boarding school (the original of Lowood in Charlotte's ). Emily spent a total of just six months there: 25 November 1824 to 1 June 1825. The eldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, became so ill that they had to be taken home, and died shortly after their return, the former on 6 May and the latter on 15 June 1825. From then until 1830 the surviving children remained at Haworth. From 29 July through October 1835 Emily taught at Miss Wooler's School at Roe Head, where Charlotte had taught in 1831-32.

The girls' real education, however, was at the Haworth parsonage, where they had the run of their father's books, and were thus nurtured on the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Sir Walter Scott and many others. They enthusiastically read articles on current affairs, lengthy reviews and intellectual disputes in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and The Edinburgh Review. They also ranged freely in Aesop and in the colourfully bizarre world of The Arabian Nights' Entertainments. . . . [Cambridge Guide, 118

After service as a governess in Halifax, Yorkshire (the second half of the year 1838), in 1842 Emily accompanied her surviving sisters, Anne and Charlotte, to Brussels, where from mid-February through the beginning of November they attended the Pensionnat Héger with the goal of improving their proficiency in French in order to start their own school. Their 1844 plans for their own school, however, foundered, and the sisters were reunited at Haworth in August 1845. When in the autumn of 1845 Charlotte accidentally discovered the manuscript of Emily's Gondal verses, she initiated the publication of a volume of poems by all three sisters, who as a clergyman's daughters thought it advisable to adopt the noms des plumes Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily), and Acton (Anne) Bell (probably with a pun on "Belle"). In the preface to the 1850 edition of the poems, Charlotte herself recalls the moment of discovery:

Of course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse: I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me, - a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, not at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear, they had also a peculiar music - wild, melancholy, and elevating. [cited by Ian Jack, p. 359]
A year after the publication by Thomas Cautley Newby, London, of Wuthering Heights (December 1847), Emily died of tuberculosis. On 19 December 1848, she suddenly expired as she stood with one hand on the mantlepiece of the living room in the Haworth parsonage. She was just 30 years old but had already produced a romantic tragedy in novel form, written over the course of 1845-46, yet to be surpassed in the English language. As Paul Lieder points out,

Emily Brontë wrote so little in her short life that it is difficult to appraise her work with any surety. One point is generally agreed upon: that in both her prose and poetry there is, in spite of minor faults, a rare power.

In her poetry, Emily Brontë achieves a remarkable effect by the energy and sincerity, and often by the music, with which she portrays her stoicism, independence, and compassion in stanzas which in many instances are the commonplace vehicles used by mere rimers. It is as though she were brought up to feel that certain forms of verse were the patterns, and had, with dogged acceptance, poured into them her emotions with an honesty that made the outward form seem negligible. [Lieder 287-288]

References

Davies, Stevie. Emily Brontë. Key Women Writers series, ed. Sue Roe. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana U. P., 1988.

Jack, Ian. "A Chronology of Emily Brontë." Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. The World's Classics. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1988. Pp. xxvi-xxvii.

Lieder, Paul, ed. "Emily Brontë (1818-1848)." Eminent British Poets of the Nineteenth Century, Volume Two: Tennyson to Housman. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1938. P. 287.

McGovern, Una, ed. Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap, 2003.

Ousby, Ian, ed. The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2003.

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Emily Jane Bronte: Poet and Novelist (1818-48)

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Sealed in her art-world, the moor strategically placed for escape above the house, no domesticating and limiting mother to weaken her capacity for identification with whatever sex she chose to impersonate at a particular moment, polite society at a safe distance, and a father who seems to have selected her as an honorary boy to be trusted with fire-arms in defence of the weak, Emily Brontë's life exemplifies a rough joy in itself, its war-games, its word games and its power to extend its own structuring vision out upon the given world.