Emily Bronte Research Paper

Emily Bronte
Emily Bronte was a very shy and peculiar girl, who found comfort in her books, poems, and family. Called a romanticism writer. The settings, plot, and characters that she writes about, resemble Emily’s life.Even tho Emily’s life was hard,she still took what she had and made it work for her.
Emily Bronte was born in Thornton, July 30,1818. The daughter of Patrick Bronte and Maria Branwell. The fifth child born out of six. Both parents showed interest in literature. Patrick Bronte being a reverend wrote The Cottage in the Wood. A religious and spiritual tale about sunday school, church, and sin. Maria wrote an unpublished piece of work called The Advantages of Poverty, in Religious Concerns. Explaining how it is very important to care for the poor. Emily grew up watching her father write sermons, articles, fictional stories, and poetry.
The Bronte children lived in a very strange and unhappy home. After the death of their mother on September 15, 1821 from cancer, their father became a withdrawn man. The only focus he

really had after the loss of his wife was ministry. Their Aunt Branwell was sent to help raise the children after the death of their mother, but she was also a very withdrawn women. Emily lost her two oldest sisters as a child. Her brother, Patrick Branwell was psychologically an unstable man. An alcoholic and drug addict, put tremendous mental scars on the other siblings with his threats about killing his other siblings, their father, and even threatened to commit suicide.
Emily Bronte became a reclusive child and women. Only speaking to her family around her and keeping her focus on her books and poems. The siblings ended up making an imaginary world called Angria and talked about its turbulent history. Angria metaphorically represented their home life. Then years down the road it changed to Gondal. Emily took a strong love and interest in the imaginary world and kept the story alive until the end of her life. Emily tried to hold down many jobs. She tried attending law school, but realizing that it wasn’t for her she quit and returned home. Then Emily tried attending school with her sister Charlotte to get a teaching degree, for the sisters to open their own establishment, but realizing that it was not the career for her either, both sisters returned home and Emily settled for a domestic life in the parsonage, cooking and looking after her father, and working on her poems. Emily finally published her first book called Wuthering Heights under a pen name, Currer Ellis. Then in 1850 the book was republished, but under Emily’s real name. Many of Emily’s works were lost before she died of tuberculosis on December 19,1848 but the pieces that did survive have affected literature in a positive way.
Bronte wrote many pieces of poems and stories before she died that was never published because she did not think they were good and burned the most of them and rewritten some before she died. Some of the few that survived were Wuthering Heights and the letters and diary entries that Emily and her sister Anna Wrote to each other.
Wuthering Heights is a very popular and phenomenal book. Acknowledged as a classic in literature and considered to be from the age of romanticism. Bronte was a shy and quiet but she had a strong knowledge of society. Bronte being reclusive helped make her stories so powerful. Wuthering Heights had two main characters, Catherine and Heathcliff, two people very much in love but kept away from each other and it finally destroys them. Catherine being high class and Heathcliff being low class are not meant to be together. Hindley, being Catherine’s brother, who dislikes Heathcliff, ends up inheriting Wuthering Heights and making Heathcliff work in the fields. Catherine and Heathcliff grow even closer. Hindley not liking this ends up making Catherine stay at Thrushcross Grange, where she grows attached to Edgar Linton. Hindley’s wife dies a few years later from childbirth and he turns to alcohol. Two years later Catherine becomes engaged to Edgar, causing Heathcliff to leave. Heathcliff years later becomes wealthy and ends up buying Wuthering Heights from Hindley. After he takes Wuthering Heights from Hindley, Heathcliff then marries Edgar’s sister Isabella. Heathcliff is still having hate was vicious to his wife and son. Years later, Catherine dies giving childbirth to a little girl who was also named Catherine. Around the same time, Hindley dies and Heathcliff having full control of all the property ended up making Catherine’s daughter and his son marry each other. Seeing the couple actually loved each other, Heathcliff put his hate behind him and decided to finally be happy. Heathcliff made peace with his past before he died and was buried next to Catherine.
The other records that remained from Emily was the diary entries and letters that Anna and Emily ended up writing to each other every four years. The first letter written was to a friend that Emily’s sister Charlotte went to see and stay with. Emily talked about how excited Charlotte was to come be coming there and visiting with Ellen. Emily asked when Charlotte plans on coming back can Ellen write the family so they can prepare for Charlotte’s arrival. The second letter was a diary entry talking about Emily’s aunt’s cooking and how she can be bossy. Emily continues to talk about her imaginary world of Gondal. The third diary entry, Emily talked about Branwell getting back into writing stories and working hard to try to make a turn around and continued to talk about her imaginary world Gondal again. Emily was very curious about where her whole family would be at in four years. The final last two things written were between Emily and Anna. They talked about how their lives have progressed in the last eight years, how the family has changed and the people that they lost, how they are happy to have the family, and the people they have around them now. Anna talks about the imaginary world Grondal and they part by saying they will write again in four years.
Many historical events happened around the time Emily Bronte was alive. The first event is Victoria becomes queen after her uncle died in 1837. Queen Victoria has the second longest British Monarch. Queen Victoria helped Britain expan culturally, advances in industry, science, and communications. The second thing she did was exercise her influence over foreign affairs. British Empire only had a few wars and she led them with love and compassion, but with a firm hand to protect her country.
The second event that happen during Emily Bronte’s time is slavery. Britain decided to try to pass a bill to abolish slavery in July of 1833. The British Empire had a change in economic interest. As America became independent, the sugar colonies around Britain declined because America could trade directly with the French and Dutch. The Industrial Revolution took place and Britain no longer needed slave-based goods. Britain was able to prosper more through free trade and free labor. The main product traded in Britain was cotton instead of sugar. When the Emancipation Bill had come around enslaved people were resisting the trade since it began. French Revolution brought the idea of equality. Many citizens were against slaves being free but the plantation owners finally were able to accept abolition rather than a widespread war.
Finally the third historical event was the Vaccination Act that was passed in 1853, Britain trying to get their sickness and diseases under control, started to pass laws that within three or four months, if the child is not vaccinated, the parents would get fined, with imprisonment time. They they refine the law for the poor. When a family fell into a certain class, they would get the vaccines for free to help sustain the families health and control diseases better.
Emily Bronte went through an abundance of social norms during her time. Social Norms different from today. Two very specific ones, Women’s Rights and Gender Roles, along with Child labor.
Women’s Rights and Gender Roles have always been a continues issue to this present moment in time.

Women started to fight for equality in 1787. The issue was women not being able to vote or have a say so in the matters of this country. Women believed that they were treated like slaves to men then equal in the social classes. What it meant to be a man was to have social power in both their private and public life. To be educated, men had the right to go to college. To contribute to the community, their labors made their social status in the community. To participate in the government, men could serve as public officials. To own property, men inherited or bought land more than women. Finally, to maintain a family, they were to adequately provide for the family, and control their behaviors. The men assisted their wives on how and what the children should be taught. The man represent the house of the family and the women were the help

maid.
Women were looked at very differently and had very different roles than men. As a women, they maintained household order, women took care of the children, prepared food and attended to all household chores, such as spinning, weaving and churning. They encouraged faith and moral development, Mothers were the ones to teach the faith and the primary spiritual instructor of the household. By the age of 13, girls shared in tasks of adult women and were taught between what's right and what's wrong. Women were to be subordinate to their fathers and when they got married, to their husbands. The identity, property, and manner of a women was all connected to the man in their lives. Women were looked at as a house slave and would not be a help to society.
The second social norm of the time was child labor. When the industrialisation came to Britain it led to an enormous increase in child labour. New factories and mines were desperate for workers. The average age that a child started working during this time was eight years old. The task they would perform were simple task for their age such as crawling beneath machinery to clean it. In the mines they would have them work the trap door, picking out coals, and carrying picks for miners. The children who lived in rural areas worked on farms. They did bird scaring, sowing crops, and driving horses. The boys who lived in the city ran errands or swept chimneys. Children all worked under the same disadvantages. The got paid low wages, performing dangerous task, and pulling very long hours as well. The British Government saw this as a problem and wanted a change. With that change came the Mine’s Act of 1842 to put an end to child labour.
In Conclusion, Emily Bronte was a very talented, brilliant, and romantic writer. She used her isolation and the hurt from loss and a broken family to make the stories and poems. The historical events and social norms that occurred back in the 19th century and shaped the world around Emily and her writings are the ones that shape the world today.