Wuthering High

The Victorian era (named due to the reign of Queen Victoria) was a time of great political and intellectual effervescence. This period is marked as starting in 1837 and concluding in 1901. Someway, this epoch seems more isolated than the Elizabethan period. The Elizabethans were concerned with issues still current in the XXI century, while the Victorians were obsessed with internal, self-interested matters.   

During this era many social and political problems which could not be resolved by the Parliament emerged. Even though the development of economy was increasing, (the colonization expanded and the country was euphoric due to new technologies of the Industrial Revolution), scholars of the time show the society suffered with fear of the crescent modernization. The Victorian era was, therefore, a transitional era, fighting the resistance of an extremely traditional society. It was a clash of the old world with the new world, along with its modernization and technology. The XVIII was the starting point of a new time, but news also frighten.

The XIX century came with new forms of materialism and due to that England was caught in a Puritan mania. This religious characteristic influenced the literary works of the time (the repressed sexuality in the poems of the Irish Oscar Wilde). Most novels were published in fascicles in the newspapers and served as entertainment since they were read out loud in reunions. Virtues such as discipline, hard work, chastity, and conjugal fidelity were greatly taken under consideration since they were mostly read in familiar gathering s. With the growing importance of machines, a new form of bourgeoisie was created and greatly criticized by authors such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Moreover, the society was afraid of the upcoming technological tendencies, and therefore looked refugee in the past, especially in medieval times and faraway lands with authors as Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson. The Victorian era was also the setting for many scientific and philosophical theories that changed the world. Slavery was abolished in all British colonies in 1853. Charles Darwin’s revolutionary “The origin of Species” was released in 1859. Darwin’s evolutionary theory was a great dare to the Puritan tendency of the time since it went against the Bible’s Genesis 9 another obstacle was that his wife was a feverous religious). Thomas Malthus and Marx were also great philosophers that enriched this time. The Victorian era was a great paradox. A time of revolutionaries and theoretical believes, progress and doubts. There was poverty, injustice and little certainty about faith and moral. Even with all its ideals, it was a rather puritan time regarding themes as sexuality. There was a strict and conventional morality following the model of the Queen Victoria, who greatly influenced literature and social conduct (The Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was based on her). While all this turmoil hit in the English society of the XIX century, in the isolation of a parish in Yorkshire, three sisters, none destined to live long, wrote romances and poems. They were: Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brönte.

Source: Landow, George P. “Victorian and Victorianism”. < http://www.victorianweb.org/vn/victor4.html>. Web February 19 2011.

Emily Jane Brontë was born July 30, 1818 in Thornton, county of Yorkshire in England. This one book author passed away December 19^th, 1848 due to tuberculosis. Emily was the fifth daughter of the six children generated by the Anglican pastor Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria Branwell. The Brontë’s suffered many hardships in their lives; her Maria Branwell’s premature death, shortly followed by two daughters, poverty and seclusion from the world. All these adversities can be seen in “Wuthering Heights”, for example, the sense of solitude in the moors, precipitate deaths and harsh conditions of living.

In 1845, Charlotte Brontë (Emily’s older sister) casually discovered Emily’s hidden poems and immediately realized the wild and melancholy tone her sister’s works contained. Due to Charlotte’s insistence; she, Emily and Anne Brontë published a book with their poetry under a pseudonym in 1846. Despite the discouraging sales, Emily and Anne began writing novels. The first book to be printed was Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre” in 1847, followed by Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and two months later Anne’s “Agnes Grey”.

Emily wrote under the pseudonym ‘Ellis Bell’. The collection of verses was entitled “Poems” by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, pseudonyms each sister chose. 

Source: Phillip V. Allingham. “Emily Jane Brönte”. Victorian Web.  < http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/bronte/ebronte/bio.html>. Web February 19 2011