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Charlotte Brontë (1816-55) Emily Brontë (1818-48). Rev. Patrick Brontë, Charlotte and Emily’s father. Bronte, Family Tree. Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë, by their brother. Emily Brontë (1818-48), by her brother Branwell.
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“Emily Brontë had by this time acquired a lithesome, graceful figure. She was the tallest person in the house, except her father. Her hair, which was naturally as beautiful as Charlotte's, was in the same unbecoming tight curl and frizz, and there was the same want of complexion. She had very beautiful eyes – kind, kindling, liquid eyes; but she did not often look at you; she was too reserved. Their colour might be said to be dark grey, at other times dark blue, they varied so. She talked very little. She and Anne were like twins – inseparable companions, and in the very closest sympathy, which never had any interruption.” In 1871, Ellen Nussey’s first impressions of the fifteen-year-old Emily in Reminiscences of Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Bronte, on why she and her sisters adopted pseudonyms "Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell [when they published a book of poems in 1846]; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names, positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because--without at the time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called "feminine,"--we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice. . . .” (Bell, "Biographical Notice" 16)
Charlotte Bronte on her sister’s novel Wuthering Heights • “It is moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath. Nor was it natural that it should be otherwise; the author being herself a native and nursling of the moors. Doubtless had her lot been cast in a town, her writings, if she had written at all, would have possessed another character.”
“Five years ago, my two sisters and myself … found ourselves reunited, and at home. Resident in a remote district where education had made little progress, and where, consequently, there was no inducement to seek social intercourse beyond our own domestic circle, we were wholly dependent on ourselves and each other, on books and study, for the enjoyments and occupations of life” Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell (1850)
He struggled long to keep up an equality with Catherine in her studies and yielded with poignant though silent regret: but, he yielded completely; and there was no prevailing on him to take a step in the way of moving upward, when he found he must necessarily, sink beneath his former level. Then personal appearance sympathized with mental deterioration; he acquired a slouching gait, and ignoble look; his naturally reserved disposition was exaggerated into an almost idiotic excess of social moroseness; and he took a grim pleasure, apparently, in exciting the aversion rather than the esteem of his few acquaintances (60).
“I [Lockwood] lingered round them, under than benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in the quiet earth” (300).
From the preface to Jane Eyre “Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved me, I turn to another class; a small one, so far as I know, but not, therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt the tendency of such books as "Jane Eyre:" in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry -- that parent of crime -- an insult to piety, that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain simple truths. Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.”
From Charlotte Brontë to William Smith Williams, 15 June 1848 “. . . Should your daughter, however, go out as a governess, she should first take a firm resolution not to be too soon daunted by difficulties, too soon disgusted by disagreeables; and if she has a high spirit, sensitive feelings, she should tutor the one to submit the other to endure for the sake of those at home [CB’s underlining]. That is the governesses’ best talisman of patience -- it is the best balm for wounded susceptibility -- When tried hard she must say ‘I will be patient not out of servility -- but because I love my parents -- and wish through my perseverance, diligence, and success, to repay their anxieties and tenderness for me.’
From Charlotte Brontë to William Smith Williams, 15 June 1848 “With this aid the least deserved insult may often be swallowed quite calmly, like a bitter pill with a draught of fair water. I think you speak excellent sense when you say that girls without fortune should be brought up and accustomed to support themselves; and that if they marry poor men, it should be with a prospect of being able to help their partners. If all parents thought so, girls would not be reared on speculation with a view to their making mercenary marriages -- and consequently women would not be so piteously degraded as they now too often are.”
