Emily Bronte was 1 of 4 siblings, 3 girls and 1 boy. She was not the only famous writer in her family. All three sisters, Anne, Emily, and Charlotte, became published writers. Her older sister Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre. Her younger sister Anne Bronte wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. In youth they wrote many stories together along with their brother Branwell about fantasy worlds, taking place in other realities, which were partly inspired by novels such as Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. Barely any evidence is left of these stories other than in letters.
When they published their first book of poetry together all three sisters wrote under male pseudonyms. The book was entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Ellis Bell was the pseudonym of Emily Bronte. The book achieved little fanfare. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre was the next to be published, also under a pseudonym, and became a big hit. In an effort to cash in on the success of Jane Eyre, the publisher implied that Wuthering Heights was written by "the author of Jane Eyre”. Because of the confusion created by the pseudonyms no one could say otherwise.
Before it could be cleared up there was a succession of tragedy. The same year Wuthering Heights was published their brother Branwell died, in 1847. Emily Bronte caught a cold at her brother's funeral and died the following year, at the age of 30. Anne Bronte died the next year. It wasn't until 1850 that Charlotte revealed the true author of Wuthering Heights to be Emily Bronte.
The book was a favorite of the surrealist crowd in the early 1930s. Many film versions have been made, one of them by surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel. Having written one of his first films with Salvador Dali in 1929, Bunuel turned next to one of his favorite books Wuthering Heights. What fascinated the Surrealists about the novel was its portrait of l’amour fou, which is french for "mad love", a self-sacrificing passion that sweeps away reason. This love they believed revealed the lies and hypocrisies of the world and exposed social conventions. Surrealists felt desire was the only pure force available in a world of deception.
This force is a double edged sword however, and Wuthering Heights themes of marriage for economic gain and the ability of a person in love to deny reality and compulsively harm themselves and others, made the book, for Buñuel, not a watery-eyed romance novel, but the story of deranged self-indulgence which treads across a landscape of class and sexual taboos, leaving devastation.
Critic David Cecil in 1935 identified cosmic forces as the central impetus and controlling force of the novel. Cecil believed that Bronte was concerned with what life means, so she focused on her characters' place in the cosmos. Everything–alive or not–was animated by one of two spiritual principles: the principle of the storm, which was harsh and ruthless, and the principle of calm, which was gentle, and passive. The distinction between human being and nature did not exist for Emily Bronte.
High waving heather, 'neath stormy blasts bending,
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars;
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,
Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,
Man's spirit away from its drear dongeon sending,
Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.
All down the mountain sides, wild forest lending
One mighty voice to the life-giving wind;
Rivers their banks in the jubilee rending,
Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending,
Wider and deeper their waters extending,
Leaving a desolate desert behind.
Shining and lowering and swelling and dying,
Changing for ever from midnight to noon;
Roaring like thunder, like soft music sighing,
Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,
Lightning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,
Coming as swiftly and fading as soon.
(1836)
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