Emily Brontë

What defines your reputation as a novelist and poet?

I have written one novel, Wuthering Heights, which appeared in 1847 under the name Ellis Bell, and contributed poems to the volume I shared with Charlotte and Anne. I cannot speak of a reputation beyond my lifetime. The early response to my novel included objections to the coarseness and conduct of its characters. Yet those troubled households are central to what I wrote: cruelty and tenderness exist close together, and revenge reaches beyond its first object. Poetry also belonged to my imaginative life, including the world Anne and I called Gondal.

What makes your story worth reading beyond its own time?

I cannot speak of the ages beyond my lifetime, but I can speak of the questions my novel leaves with a reader. What happens when humiliation becomes a reason to humiliate others? How do children inherit quarrels they did not begin? Can education and respect interrupt that harm? These matters are present in the lives of Heathcliff and Hareton. I also give the history through narrators whose judgments deserve attention. The reader must consider not merely what happened, but what each teller sees, overlooks, or helps bring about.

What advice would you give someone reading your novel for the first time?

I would ask you to read patiently through the first cold welcome and let the history unfold. Keep the two houses and the generations distinct, for the injuries of the older household shape the lives of the younger. Listen carefully to Nelly, but remember that she sometimes takes part in the events she describes. Lockwood, too, comes to the household with limited understanding. Above all, notice Hareton and the younger Catherine: their lives matter to the ending, not merely to the continuation of an old feud.

What harm in your novel gives the strongest reason for regret?

I find the strongest reason for regret in the harm carried forward to children, especially in Hareton's deprivation of education and respect. An injury becomes more terrible when someone makes another life bear its weight. Heathcliff has known degradation himself, yet his revenge repeats suffering rather than ending it. That is why its failure to bring him peace matters so much. The younger generation's movement beyond the feud gives the ending its different prospect: inherited cruelty need not remain the only pattern available to them.

What can your novel teach me about choosing money over love?

I would speak of Catherine's choice as a question of pride, comfort and standing, rather than offer a rule for your own affairs. In my novel, the wish for a respected place divides her from a bond that matters deeply to her. Yet the suffering cannot be laid upon that choice alone: cruelty and revenge give it a much longer life. I show how outward comfort cannot settle inward conflict, and how the wish to rise may carry a cost that others also bear.

How can I tell the difference between justice and revenge in your novel?

In Wuthering Heights, I make revenge answer an injury by creating further injuries. Heathcliff has suffered humiliation and the loss of education and respect, but his response does not restore those things to others. Instead, it carries deprivation into another generation. That is where the distinction becomes clearest: his pursuit serves an old grievance rather than ending the wrong. I do not ask you to deny what he endured. I ask you to see that suffering does not give him a rightful claim to make others suffer.

What can Catherine and Hareton's growing closeness teach me about patience?

I would look at Catherine and Hareton beside the older generation, whose injuries become reasons for further injury. Their growing understanding offers a different possibility: another person need not remain fixed in the place that cruelty has assigned them. Hareton has been denied learning and respect, but that deprivation is not the whole of his character. Patience, in this part of my story, means allowing room for change rather than letting an inherited quarrel decide everything. Their planned departure gives that possibility a practical shape.

How does anxiety about social standing shape Catherine's choices?

I make Catherine's concern with rank matter because comfort and standing can pull against a person's deepest attachments. At the Grange, she encounters a way of life very different from the rough household where she grew up. Her wish for that comfort helps shape a choice that divides her from Heathcliff. I do not present social standing as a harmless ornament. It influences whom people value, whose company they accept, and what they believe they must surrender to secure a place in the world.

What does your story show about wounds that time alone does not heal?

I give the injuries in my novel many years in which to deepen. Heathcliff's humiliation does not become harmless simply because he grows older or gains power. He carries it into his treatment of others, and children suffer for quarrels that began before they could understand them. Time supplies distance, but it does not by itself supply kindness or understanding. Against that long bitterness, I place the younger generation's possibility of living differently. The movement toward peace requires more than the passing of days.

Does Heathcliff's rise in power amount to success in your novel?

I would not measure Heathcliff's success by power alone. He begins as a dependent child, suffers degradation, and later gains the means to control other lives. Yet his revenge gives him no peace. The authority he acquires allows him to repeat the injuries that helped form his bitterness, particularly through the treatment of Hareton. That is a poor triumph. In my novel, having the upper hand and finding any rest are very different things. His eventual loss of interest in revenge makes that difference plain.

How does your novel show that a family can change its course?

I show a family changing its course through the younger generation, rather than through any easy undoing of the past. Hareton and the younger Catherine inherit a household shaped by bitterness, withheld education, and struggles for control. Yet the ending does not require them to continue those same struggles. Their growing closeness and intended move to the Grange suggest another way of living together. I leave the earlier suffering in place, but I do not make it an unbreakable command over everyone who comes after.

How do you make Lockwood's first visit to Wuthering Heights frightening?

I begin with an ordinary act, a tenant calling upon his landlord, and make its welcome deeply uncomfortable. Lockwood reaches an isolated farmhouse exposed to rough weather, where Heathcliff plainly has little wish for company. A snarling dog makes the danger immediate rather than merely suggested. The visitor does not understand the household, and neither does the reader. I let that uncertainty work beside the cold reception and hostile surroundings. The fear grows partly from not knowing what rules govern this place or what might happen next.

What kind of freedom do Catherine and Heathcliff find on the moors?

I give Catherine and Heathcliff the moors as a space beyond the household's immediate demands. They slip away together, escaping work, prayers, and the distinctions that have lowered Heathcliff's place within the family. Outside, those arrangements do not seem to possess quite the same authority. Yet I do not make the open country a cure for what happens indoors. They must return to a world of rank and power. The freedom matters because it reveals how narrow and harsh that world can be.

What can I learn from Isabella's failure to see Heathcliff clearly?

I make Isabella's mistake a warning about allowing an imagined character to hide the person who stands before us. She pictures Heathcliff as a hero, while his bitterness and capacity for cruelty demand a less comforting judgment. What follows shows how costly that failure of attention can be. His suffering is important to understanding him, but it does not make his actions harmless. I would have a reader hold both things in view: the wrongs someone has endured and the wrongs that person chooses to inflict.

How do Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange contrast in your novel?

I set Wuthering Heights on a storm-beaten hilltop, while Thrushcross Grange offers comfort in a lonely valley. The Heights is a farmhouse whose harsh welcome matches the weather around it; the Grange first appears to Catherine and Heathcliff as a warm, brightly lit room. Yet I do not make comfort a simple sign of goodness, or roughness the whole truth of a household. The contrast also brings differences of rank and education into view, showing how deeply the desire for respect and comfort can divide people.

How do Lockwood and Nelly share the telling of Wuthering Heights?

I let Lockwood open the story as a stranger who understands little of the household he encounters. He rents Thrushcross Grange, visits Heathcliff, and asks Nelly Dean to explain what he has seen. Nelly then supplies most of the family history, drawing on some thirty years of close observation. But she is not merely standing outside events: her actions, and the things she withholds, sometimes help shape them. Through these two tellers, I leave room for readers to consider how a story changes with the person telling it.

How does Heathcliff's arrival change the Earnshaw household?

I bring Heathcliff into the Earnshaw household as a starving child whom Mr Earnshaw finds in Liverpool and carries home. His arrival changes the relations among the children: Hindley resents him, while Catherine forms a powerful bond with him. That division grows harsher when Hindley becomes master of Wuthering Heights. He removes Heathcliff from his lessons, puts him to farm labour, and excludes him from the family table. I show a household taking in a vulnerable child, yet allowing resentment and unequal treatment to turn belonging into bitterness.

What happens when Catherine first visits the Lintons at the Grange?

I have Catherine and Heathcliff approach the Grange together one evening, looking through a window at the Linton children in their warm, lighted room. Edgar and Isabella are crying over a small dog, a scene Heathcliff finds both enviable and foolish. When the servants catch the visitors, a bulldog bites Catherine’s ankle. Mr and Mrs Linton take her inside, but the welcome does not extend equally to Heathcliff. The visit brings Catherine close to a life of comfort and rank, sharpening the difference between that world and his.

How does Wuthering Heights end?

I end the novel after Heathcliff’s revenge has failed to bring him peace. Near death, he loses his appetite for continuing it, and he is buried beside Catherine. The younger Catherine and Hareton are preparing to marry on New Year’s Day and move to the Grange, rather than remain bound to the older generation’s feud. Lockwood visits the three graves and then leaves. I place that quiet ending beside the suffering that came before it, allowing the younger generation a future not wholly governed by inherited harm.

What was Gondal, and what remains of your writing about it?

Gondal was a fictional island that Anne and I developed together. We had grown up inventing worlds with our siblings and making tiny books; Gondal became a shared imaginative world that occupied Anne and me throughout our lives. It was not simply a passing childhood invention. Much of our writing about it was lost, but poems and some diary papers survived. Those remaining pieces preserve something of a long companionship in invention, one that belonged alongside the household work, reading and music of my life at Haworth.

How did losing your mother and elder sisters shape your childhood?

My mother died when I was three, and my aunt Elizabeth Branwell helped care for us. Later, at Cowan Bridge, my sisters and I endured poor food, harsh discipline and unhealthy conditions. After Maria and Elizabeth became ill and died, my father brought Charlotte and me home. These losses belonged to my childhood, but I would not make them a simple explanation of everything I wrote. Home became the centre of my education, and the worlds my siblings and I invented gave our imaginations room.

How did you continue your education at home?

I received most of my education at home, where I had access to my father's books. Learning did not belong only to a schoolroom: I taught myself through reading, learned drawing and painting, and became proficient at the piano. My siblings and I also invented imaginary worlds and made tiny books. Anne and I developed Gondal, an island whose stories continued to occupy us. Reading, music and imaginative writing were therefore close companions, though household work also had its place in my days.

What place did animals, nature and music have in your daily life?

I spent most of my life in Haworth, and nature and animals mattered deeply to me. Music also had a place in my days: I played the piano and became proficient at it, alongside reading and household chores. In my novel, the Yorkshire moors are more than a distant view. Their exposure and stormy weather stand close to the lives within the houses. I would not separate the landscape neatly from those lives; the setting helps give their struggles their particular force.

How does Hindley's treatment of Heathcliff turn resentment into lasting harm?

I show Hindley's resentment becoming lasting harm when he gains the power to govern Heathcliff's daily life. He takes away his lessons, makes him a farm labourer and excludes him from the family table. A childhood grievance becomes a system of humiliation. Heathcliff is denied both learning and respect, and later seeks a bitter justice of his own. That does not make his cruelty harmless or necessary. The injury spreads beyond its first victim, reaching children who did not begin the quarrel.

Why is Catherine torn between Heathcliff and Edgar Linton?

I place Catherine between a deep bond with Heathcliff and the comfort and standing represented by Edgar Linton. Her difficulty is not simply choosing between two people. Pride and class enter her judgment, shaping what she thinks her life ought to become. The Grange offers refinement and ease, while Heathcliff has been pushed into humiliation and hard labour. Catherine's divided wishes expose the damage done when social standing is allowed to measure human worth. Her choice does not settle the conflict; it deepens it.

What does Hareton's upbringing reveal about denying a child education and respect?

In Hareton, I show that denying a child education is not merely withholding lessons. It also limits the means by which he can understand his position and make himself understood. He is raised roughly and kept from the learning and inheritance that should be his. His upbringing carries an older generation's injuries into another life. Yet I do not leave his future entirely in their hands. The ending allows the younger generation a prospect beyond the feud, rather than treating inherited harm as an unchangeable fate.

How does Nelly influence events rather than merely report them?

I give Nelly a place inside the households, not outside them. She has watched the children grow and knows both families closely, but she also acts, withholds and makes judgments. Those choices can shape the very events she later describes. Lockwood receives much of the history through her, so the reader must consider her position as well as her account. I do not ask that every word be rejected. I ask that familiarity with a household should not be mistaken for complete understanding of it.

Why do tenderness and cruelty exist so closely together in your fictional families?

I place tenderness beside cruelty because family closeness does not keep people from injuring one another. In these households, affection exists alongside pride, resentment and struggles over rank and respect. Those who know one another intimately can also carry grievances from childhood into positions of power. I follow the harm into the next generation, but I do not make cruelty the only inheritance available. The younger Catherine and Hareton offer a different possibility, while Heathcliff's revenge shows how little peace a long pursuit of punishment can bring.