Shirley and Villette

Abstract

The details of the disastrous year 1848–9 in the lives of the Brontës are so well known as to need only brief rehearsal. First Branwell fell ill, and died in September 1848, a wreck of his former self. Emily took cold at his funeral, but she also seems already to have been in the grip of some kind of psychological malady which warped her and eroded her will to live. Wuthering Heights may even have forecast such an end. Within a few short months Emily sank into total apathy as her lethal cough became worse. She refused to leave the house and would not accept medical help. Charlotte tried every measure to aid her, even sending to London for a cure from a homeopathic doctor, but Emily would have no help from any such quarter. Her march towards death has been described as ‘eager’, but there seems nothing spirited about it. We might rather say that for some reason Emily sulked herself to death in circumstances which remain an insoluble mystery. The only explanation offered by those near to her was that she pined for Branwell: this seems a most unlikely hypothesis, and becomes more unlikely with careful examination.