Biography Essay

The biographer of Emily Bronte faces considerable problems. Her slender output of one great novel and some impressive but baffling poems does not give one a great deal upon which to build. Unlike her sister Charlotte, whose works have an autobiographical streak, Emily did not seem to draw upon her own rather humdrum experiences in creating her masterpiece. Attempts to find a real-life Heathcliff in Emily Bronte's Irish forebears or Yorkshire neighbors seem highly speculative. Because Charlotte Bronte won instant fame while she was still alive, far more is known about her life than about Emily's; and it is largely through Charlotte's eyes that Emily is seen: either in incidental references among her correspondence to Ellen Nussey when Emily was alive, or in pious memories when she was dead. Emily Bronte's surviving correspondence is limited to a handful of brief notes, the diary papers she wrote...