On this day in 1818, a renowned British novelist and poet, Emily Brontë was born. To pay homage to Brontë‘s enormous writing talent, we compiled a list of little-known, yet interesting facts about her.
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Emily Brontë wrote “Wuthering Heights” in 1847. She died one year later, never to discover the notable success of her novel.
Even though she is one of the most distinguished authors of the Victorian period, little is known about her private life. What is absolutely sure is that she led secluded and silent life in the Yorkshire moors. Apart from a visit to Brussels and a period while she was a teacher, Emily Brontë was tied to her native place all her life. Having this in mind, it does not come as a surprise that her only novel is set in wild windswept Yorkshire.
There is a striking contrast between her reserved life and her novel full of mystery and wild passion.
#onthisday in 1818, #EmilyBrontë was born. pic.twitter.com/9m5tXbaAvE
— Anglozine (@anglozine) July 30, 2015
The richness of genres and specific narrative technique is what has made “Wuthering Heights” a must-read novel for the last 160 years and so.
Romantic and Victorian features of the plot are closely intertwined resulting in the various genres of the novel. The love story between characters together with highly prominent social class determination and supernatural elements lead us to conclude that the most important genres in the novel are a love story, a family novel, a social novel, a gothic novel, a revenge tragedy, a bildungsroman, a mystery novel and a psychological novel. The skillfulness with which all these genres are combined is a true masterpiece.
Emily Brontë was ahead of her time when it comes to the narrative technique. There is no a third- person omniscient narrator in the novel which Victorian novels often feature. With two narrative frames consisting of two unreliable narrators, the eyewitness narration, flashbacks as well as the multi-perspective and non-chronological structure of the plot, Emily Brontë broke up with tradition anticipating the narrative techniques used in the Modernist period of the British literature.
Taking everything into consideration, “Wuthering Heights” will definitely continue to amaze us for years to come.
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