Emily Brontë - Wuthering Heights (Barnes & Noble Classics)

Table of Contents

From the Pages of Wuthering Heights

A perfect misanthropists heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. (page 3)

Hell love and hate equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or hated again. (page 6)

Im now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself. (page 28)

Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves. (page 56)

Ive dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: theyve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. (page 79)

Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. (page 80)

Hes more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. (page 80)

If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldnt love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have: the sea could be as readily contained in that horse-trough as her whole affection be monopolised by him. (page 148)

I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething; and I grind with greater energy in proportion to the increase of pain. (page 151)

I dont know if it be a peculiarity in me, but I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, should no frenzied or despairing mourner share the duty with me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafterthe Eternity they have enteredwhere life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fulness. (page 163)

And I pray one prayerI repeat it till my tongue stiffensCatherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed youhaunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me alwaystake any formdrive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul! (page 165)

He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, and the larks singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly. (page 239)

I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth. (page 326)

Reserved and reclusive by nature, Emily Jane Bront remains a figure whose life and personality are largely shrouded in mystery. She was born on July 30, 1818, at Thornton in Yorkshire. Her father, Patrick, was the curate of Haworth, and her mother, Maria Branwell Bront, died of cancer when Emily was three. Two of Emilys older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died of consumption when she was just seven. The surviving Bront childrenCharlotte, Patrick Branwell, Emily, and Annewere brought up by a maternal aunt, Elizabeth Branwell, who came to live in their fathers parsonage. She read to them from newspapers, and the children kept abreast of political debates, such as the question of Catholic emancipation and the aftermath of the French Revolution. They also had free reign of their fathers library, where they encountered such writers of their time as Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth, along with William Shakespeare and Aesop. Two of their favorite books were John Miltons Paradise Lost (1667) and Paul Bunyans Pilgrims Progress (1678). In June of 1826 Patrick Bront gave Branwell a set of twelve wooden soldiers, and the four siblings began to create a fantasy world. Ascribing names and personalities to the toy soldiers, the Bronts wrote and performed a number of plays. Later, Emily and Anne created the Gondal saga, which centered on the inhabitants of an imaginary island in the north Pacific. These Gondal chronicles, the inspiration for some of Emilys most passionate poems, occupied her thoughts and writings throughout most of her life, even after Anne had tired of the fantasy.

Although she wrote quite extensively, Emily had little formal schooling. In 1835 she briefly attended Miss Woolers school at Roe Head, where Charlotte was a teacher; she left after only three months because she was homesick and made few friends, and as a result, her health was suffering. Around 1837 (the exact date remains in question) Emily taught at Law Hill School but remained there only a short time. In 1842 she and Charlotte studied in Brussels, where Emily was exposed to the writings of the French and German Romantics. It was at home on the moors, however, where Emily was happiest, and aside from limited travels for schooling, she spent her life in Haworth.

In the biographical notice Charlotte wrote for the republication of Wuthering Heights in 1850, she refers to her accidental discovery of a notebook of Emilys poems five years earlier: My sister Emily was not a person of demonstrative character nor one, on the recesses of whose mind and feelings even those nearest and dearest to her could, with impunity, intrude unlicensed; it took hours to reconcile her to the discovery I had made, and days to persuade her that such poems merited publication. But Charlotte did succeed, and in 1846 the three Bront sisters, using pseudonyms, published Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.

Emily is best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, first published in 1847 to much less recognition than her sisters Jane Eyre. Only with its 1850 republication and with Charlottes preface, which addresses some of the violence and nihilism of the novel, did Wuthering Heights begin to receive real recognition. Emily Bront died on December 19, 1848.

The World of Emily Bront and Wuthering Heights