Emily Brontë (1818-1848) has been described by family members and acquaintances and later by critics as quiet, innocent, childlike, reserved, strange, stubborn, independent, and fiercely imaginative. She preferred solitude over socializing, the world of her mind over the real world, which she recognized as cruel and uncertain. As she writes in her poem “To Imagination,” “So hopeless is the world without; / The world within I doubly prize; Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt, / And cold suspicion never rise; / Where thou, and I, and Liberty, / Have undisputed sovereignty” (lines 7-12). Much like Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein (1818)—which it is likely Emily and her sisters read, and which likely influenced Wuthering Heights (1847)—Brontë understood and relied on the self-transcendent power of the imagination to free herself from harsh reality. However, in Wuthering Heights, despite the fantastical Gothic elements of ghosts and hauntings, Brontë does not shy away from depicting the real world, “where guile, and hate, and doubt / and cold suspicion” are ever-present. As this talk will suggest, although Brontë did not wish to be immersed in society, she did desire to question and critique it.

Shoshannah Bryn Jones Square

Dr. Shoshannah Bryn Jones Square is an Assistant Professor (LTA) in the Department of English at Bishop’s University. She received her PhD in English literature from the University of Oxford, after which she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Manitoba (UM) and a Research Affiliate with the UM Institute for the Humanities.