The Influence of Byron on Emily Bronte

Abstract

EMILY ]BRONTE had so powerful an imagination and so little in her surroundings to influence or nourish it-her mind was so active and her life so dull-that we should expect her to have been more deeply and strongly influenced by what she read than are people whose external lives are more eventful. That she did read and care passionately for what she read is suggested by Catherine Linton's outburst when she is kept a prisoner at Wuthering Heights and deprived even of her books. 'I was always reading, when I had them, and Mr Heathcliff never reads; so he took it into his head to destroy my books. I have not had a glimpse of one for weeks.... But I've most of them written on my brain and printed in my heart, and you cannot deprive me of those!' That would hardly have been written by anyone who did not herself care intensely for the 'tales and poetry' which were Catherine's favourites. Unfortunately we have practically no information as to what Emily read. Inscrutable creature! the only books she is known to have possessed are a Bible and Prayer Book, Dr Watts's Hymns, a French book given to her by Mme Heger and a copy of Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. She was not a letter-writer; the only letters of hers which survive are three notes to Ellen Nussey, none of which mentions books. In the scrap of diary written on her twenty-third birthday she mentions Blackwood's Magazine, that intellectual prop and stay of the Bronte family, but only to say that Aunt has been reading aloud from it to Papa. In Wuthering Heights she speaks several times in a general way of Catherine's books and her pleasure in them, but the only work mentioned by name, besides Joseph's theological horrors, is the Ballad of Chevy Chase, which is said to be one of Catherine's favourite poems. The only other clue is the song with which Nelly Dean sings the baby Hareton to sleep: