My feeling is this, Elena - I do NOT think that Emily willed her own death. In fact, on the afternoon before she died, she said: "�If you will send for a Doctor, I will see him now.� Charlotte also says: �I cannot forget Emily's death day. It becomes a more fixed, a darker, a more frequently recurring idea in my mind than ever. It was very terrible -- she was torn conscious, panting, reluctant, though resolute, out of a happy life.� Reports are that she struggled until the end. As far as refusing t eatment -- I think she was simply SMART. The ridiculous remedies for T.B. in those days only made Anne weaker through nausea, & she tried them all. It's hard to envision someone with that will of iron succumbing to despair & basically commiting suicide. If Emily didn't have T.B., I'm sure she would have been happy to live on many years & continue her writing.

Wow, an interesting idea either way. If Emily had been about to lose her moors and the life she loved at home, I'd believe that she "willed" her death. But there wasn't anything like that occuring, was there? TB is still such a dangerous, easily communicable disease. The wonder is that Charlotte escaped.

T.B. was so insidious at that time, not to mention cholera!! It really was amazing that Charlotte escaped, since there was so much contagion in the house, & she and Anne actually shared the same bed before Anne got really sick. True, Emily always sickened when she was away from home, but it seemed she had happily found her place @ Haworth in 1848-9. She knew she wouldn't have to work as a teacher again, since she was a published author. I've bee meaing to ask you a question too: What kind of person do you think that Emily was? I've been reading all these bios, but none of them really offer a clue. She remains such an enigma: was she really someone who liked animals better than people; who had mystic visions on the moors; who was rude & unsociable, or are we only hearing a part of the story? I just can't get a handle on her. Thanks!

I've been trying to figure out Emily for years, and I hardly think I'm closer now now than when I started. The half-dozen biographies I have, and the others I have read, agree on a few basic points but that's all. Her personal reserve and the lack of factual detail make it difficult in the extreme - Charlotte's letters, particularly while Emily was dying, indicate that she was still trying to understand her sister. Gaskell was unable to form a pleasant impression of her, although she concedes Charlotte would hardly have loved her as she did if she were truely unpleasant. I think she was proud, independant and rather misanthropic - refusing to teach Sunday school, learning to shoot, prefering animals to people (I've always loved that remark she made to her students that the house dog was dearer to her than them). What I'd really like to know is how engaged she was with the political and social issues of her day. I'd like to know just how far her transcendentalism took her - it has been suggested (I can't remember if it was Winifred Gerin or Katherine Frank, I think it might have been Frank) that she experienced states that almost sound like out of body experiences. She certainly saw things differently to her contempories. She also has been closely identified with her creation - almost as if "Nelly, I am Heathcliff" is her own declaration as well as Cathy's. This is all rather poorly expressed, but I can only offer this image: in the beautifully illustrated Folio Books edition of the Bronte works, there is a haunting frontspiece to WH. The illustrator took the profile portrait of Emily and reproduced it faithfully as an etching, even down to the cracks in Branwell's poorly mixed paint. But she is raising her left hand, obscuring her face and shutting out the viewer. It is a very resonant image.

Thank you for your insight. I hadn't heard about the learning to shoot part before now! I've read that Emily valued an earthly type of Paradise over Heaven itself, & eschewed conventional religion -- do you agree? I also know that she was almost universally disliked in Brussels, except by Charlotte & a single younger girl. Do you also think she was really that sympathetic to Branwell? That she would go & retrieve him from the Black Bull after a bender? That last one sounds kind of 'mythlike' to me. hanks for joining this Board -- it's great to have an Emily expert here!!

It was her father who taught her how to shoot. So much for the stern authoritarian figure he is often held to be! This is a fairly gut level reaction, but I believe that Emily's Heaven would have looked very much like the earth she loved. I can imagine her as Cathy, dreaming she was hurled out of Heaven by the angry angels and weeping for joy that she had been returned to earth. I think Charlotte was right, and she was VERY reluctant to leave this world. On the other hand, she already half inhabited a world of spirit anyway. These lines are from Gondal, but they seem embody how she saw the imaginative process: A messenger of Hope comes every night to me And offers, for short life, eternal liberty. He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs, With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars; Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire And visions rise and change which kill me with desire ...... But first a hush of peace, a soundless calm decends; The struggle of distress and fierce impatinence ends; Mute music soothes my breast - unuttered harmony That I could never dream till earth was lost to me. Then dawns the Invisible, the Unseen its truth reveals; My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels - Its wings are almost free, its home its harbour found; Measuring the gulf it stoops and dares the final bound! This is getting a bit lengthy, but I'll just say something quickly on the Branwell stories. Emily's only recorded comment on Branwell's dissolution is that he was a "hopeless being". There is no supportive evidence for the stories that she was the one who dragged him home from the Black Bull, put out the fires he started accidently by leaving candles lit, or snuck out to leave a light burning to guide him home after all the other household lights had been extinguished. These are old Haworth gossip, but they do make sense. Someone had to do it while Mr Bronte was ailing, and Emily was the tallest and strongest of his daughters. She was - and this is often forgotten - extremely practical. She ran the house after Aunt Branwell died, and wasn't nicknamed "the Major" for nothing. These stories are often cited as proof of a special bond between her and Branwell, but as Chitham points out, if she was lugging him home from the Black Bull in a drunken stupor, he probably wasn't in any condition for profound philisophical discussion. Thanks for having me on the board - and you can imagine how flattered I am to be called an Emily Expert!

Thanks for your expertise once again! I tend to agree with you - I don't think Emily viewd Branwell with especial pity -- she may not have been as vehement as Charlotte, who had lost her youthful collaborator & was very angry. Charlotte nicknamed Emily "the Major" after she tried to prevent William Weightman from paying too much attention to Ellen Nussey -- is that great? I wish we knew more about it -- she seems like such a singular person. Maybe I will be able to get more of a clue when I visit Hawo th next month.

I think visiting Haworth will give you as much of an insight into Emily as any biography could - that's why I'd love to visit there! There is so much condensed into that line of Charlotte's - "My sister Emily loved the moors". I don't know if she would have emerged as that strangely strong spirited figure if she had lived under different conditions. Charlotte, Shirley, tries to suggest what she might have been like as a comfortable, independent heiress. I think Emily would have been Emily in any time, place or social condition. Conversely, it is hard to disassociate her from Haworth.

I agree. I think she would have been a complete iconoclast even if she were living in the middle of the London social swirl. She was just one of those indomitable personalities who stood apart from everyone else, like Joan of Arc. I sense from Charlotte that she loved & respected her sister, but also feared her to a certain degree. E. just wouldn't bend to her older sister's will!

Reading between the lines of Charlotte's letters, Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell and her 1850 Preface, it is fascinating to discern hints of the artistic disagreements the three sisters had. I particularly like the Preface's comment "Had she but lived, her mind would of itself have grown like a strong tree; loftier, straighter, wider-spreading, and its matured fruits would have attained a mellower ripeness and sunnier bloom; but on that mind time and experience alone could work: to the influence of other intellects, it was not amenable". As Stevie Davies points out, Charlotte doesn't point out what species this Emily-tree was to be. Thorn? Bitter-elder? What Charlotte means, of course, is that Emily was not amenable to her influence. She seems to have been quite happy to absorb what she could from Shelly, Scott and the German Romantics. Nonetheless, awe and love breathe through Charlotte's words about her sister, just as affection does with Anne. I think she may have done a greater disservice to Anne, because she rated her powers much lower than Emily's. Charlotte also came to believe that Anne seemed to have always been prepared for an early death, and that she died almost happily. She actually died resolutely because she had no alternative. Her poem upon learning her illness was mortal is heartbreaking - and Charlotte altered it before publication so as to make Anne seem more resigned than she was. And only weeks before her death, Anne still expressed a desire to live because she had some modest plans she wished to guide to fruition.

Yes, Anne presented such a brave face to the world at the end, but she certainly didn't welcome the prospect of dying -- she was terrified of it, really. I think she's terribly underrated as a writer -- AGNES GREY & WILDFELL HALL are just amazing creations -- if there weren't two other towering geniuses in the family, she might have been put on a similar footing with Jane Austen, since she shares JA's dry, ironic sense of humor & power of observation. I think it annoyed Charlotte that Emily wouldn't lis en to her opinions; but as you say, she was "the dearest thing to her" in the world.

Just a question about the poem you mention above -- what is the title? Are there any books of Anne's poetry out there? Thanks.

Lorie, sorry it took a couple of days to get back to you. I'm not sure of the title of the poem, or even if it has one (many of the Bronte works went untitled). It was written in response to what was effectively her death sentance, delivered by Dr Teale, when she was diagnosed with "consumption" - tuberculosis. It's fairly lengthy, but the first verse runs: A dreadful darkness closes in On my bewildered mind O let me suffer & not sin Be tortured yet resigned. A fairly good indication of the state of her mind at the time! Charlotte ommitted the following stanza when she edited Emily and Anne's poems in 1850: O Thou hast taken my delight And hope of life away And bid me watch the painful night And wait the weary day replacing it with Thou, God, hast taken our delight Our treasured hope away. Thou bidst us now weep through the night And sorrow through the day. This substituted verse is reflective of Charlotte's thoughts, not Anne's. It also makes no sense in the context, unless Charlotte has intended it to look as if Anne is thinking of Emily. There are a few volumes of the Brontes work that include poems by Anne. I have an "Everyman" edition, edited by Juliet Barker, that was published a few years ago. This includes other poetry in addition to that published in the Brontes' lifetime as the "Bells", and also verse by Branwell. Wordsworth also put out a volume of Bronte poetry, and I imagine Penguin has as well. They've issued Charlotte's juvenalia in a volume with Jane Austen's early works, and their "Complete Poems of Emily Bronte" is the best of several volumes around. Anne's poetry has been published in the past with an emphasis on her religious works, a trend started by Charlotte. She also, however, wrote upon other subjects, and made a valuble contribution to the "Gondal" cycle with Emily. Her poetry is interesting to read as a companion to Emily's works - they seem to have sometimes selected the same subject as a sort of an exercise.

The poem is "Self Confession." It's very long -- Anne composed it over a period of time. And Rochelle, I just read the Katherine Frank bio of Emily, UNCHAINED SOUL, which seems to posit that Emily -did- will her own death, possibly because of anorexia? An interesting theory, but I'm not quite sure that I buy it.

I wasn't remarkably taken by the Frank bio. As you say, interesting theory. However, anorexia has become a fashionable theory among biographers, and I don't believe Frank produced anything substantive to support the idea. It is true that the man who made Emily's coffin commented that it was the narrowest he had ever made, but she was quite lightly built, and the severity of her final illness would account for that. For what it's worth, the best straightforward bio of Emily is Edward Chitham's. Stevie Davis is even better (she had access to Chitham's material and discussed a lot of Bronte theories with him), but her work is not a straight bio. Glad you had the title to Anne's poem. I seem to have temporarily misplaced my Bronte poetry books. They're not on the Bronte bookshelf where they live! Good thing I've got a couple of copies of Emily's poems.

"Self Confession" is the one where Anne kind of refutes Emily. I do have the other Emily bios & I'm going to read them! I wasn't to convinced by Frank either -- it seems very modern & far-fetched, frankly. Of course the Brontes dealt with food in their work, esp. JE -- I mean, Charlotte said she was perpetually hungry at Cowan Bridge, & she was unable to eat meat for years after, because of the disgusting, rancid cooking. But I don't think that means she has an eating disorder, do you? Ditto for Emil -- when she was miserable, she lost weight. So do a lot of people. Even me!!

Absolutely. Emily does write about food, but she also writes about many of the very practical aspects of life - fires, tending the animals, etc. It is one of the aspects of WH that is often noted, the fact that you get a sense that WH is a working farm set in a real world - a backdrop against which extraordinary things happen. I don't think food was an obsession with her. Anorexia has simply become a "fashionable" illness. Of course it is very real, and fairly common today in our image conscious society, but to make a diagnosis like that on the available evidence and then largely hang a book on it is just to speculative. Of course, that is all part of biographical workings - developing theories, which in turn will be challenged. There will never be such a thing as a definitive biography, as each age is writing as much about themselves as about the past when they do bios.

Thanks for all the info on Anne's poetry and the bios, too.

Some of the bios I've read do promote a pet theory without having much fact to back them up. Hence: Barker on Charlotte "destroying" Emily's 2nd novel; Helen Moglen on the sexual content of almost everything in Jane Eyre; Frank on Emily's "anoexia," etc. I told my fiancee' we should come up with a wacko theory, like: I am the reincarnation of Charlotte Bronte; or -- Patrick & Branwell were lesbians!! I'm sure we could make the talk-show rounds with that one...

LOL. The moors are mysterious, and no one really understands those northerners, right? I wonder if Aunt Branwell is central enough (well known enough) to figure in those wild theories. How about if she's Charlotte's natural mother? Or really a man ala Charley's Aunt?

HA! Why not? Or we could say that Mr. Bronte was having an affair with Tabitha Akyroyd! It seems like anything goes in bios these days, so maybe we can do a Kitty Kelly "tell all" & take the academic world by storm. I spend much of my time shaking my head while reading these books....

Here's an oldie but a goodie - Branwell actually wrote Wuthering Heights! Seems he bragged about it to his friends...mind you, Branwell bragged about a lot of things he probably shouldn't have. Another good Emily theory is that she had transcendental states, or even astral travelled. But here's one for you, Amy. What do you think of the idea that's been around for a while that the "red room" passage in JE was drawn from the fact that one of the Bronte - Emily is suggested as the most likely - experienced a fit simmiler to Jane's? Then there's an amusing little poem by Branwell, the first line of which - from memory - runs "Eamalia is a gurt bellaring bull", and goes on to describe how Emily got into some grog one day and worked herself into a drunken fit, finally having to be bundled off to bed. The theory runs that it describes an actual incident.

Oh brother! I have heard the one about Branwell being the "real" author of WH because of course, a mere GIRL couldn't write that book, could she? As far as Branwell's juvenalia -- the whole thing was drenched with tales of drunkenness & adultery, but I hardly think these children had personally experienced it at this point! Charlotte even makes fun of him by having his character brag about drinking all this gin, & it turns out he's just had several cups of tea!