Emily Jane Bronte（1818-1848）

    Emily Brontë, in full Emily Jane Brontë, pseudonym Ellis Bell, (born July 30, 1818, Thornton, Yorkshire, England—died December 19, 1848, Haworth, Yorkshire), English novelist and poet who produced but one novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), a highly imaginative work of passion and hate set on the Yorkshire moors. Emily was perhaps the greatest of the three Brontë sisters, but the record of her life is extremely meagre, for she was silent and reserved and left no correspondence of interest, and her single novel darkens rather than solves the mystery of her spiritual existence.

    Her father, Patrick Brontë (1777–1861), an Irishman, held a number of curacies: Hartshead-cum-Clifton, Yorkshire, was the birthplace of his elder daughters, Maria and Elizabeth (who died young), and nearby Thornton that of Emily and her siblings Charlotte, Patrick Branwell, and Anne. In 1820 their father became rector of Haworth, remaining there for the rest of his life.

    After the death of their mother in 1821, the children were left very much to themselves in the bleak moorland rectory. The children were educated, during their early life, at home, except for a single year that Charlotte and Emily spent at the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. In 1835, when Charlotte secured a teaching position at Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, Emily accompanied her as a pupil but suffered from homesickness and remained only three months. In 1838 Emily spent six exhausting months as a teacher in Miss Patchett’s school at Law Hill, near Halifax, and then resigned.

    To keep the family together at home, Charlotte planned to keep a school for girls at Haworth. In February 1842 she and Emily went to Brussels to learn foreign languages and school management at the Pension Héger. Although Emily pined for home and for the wild moorlands, it seems that in Brussels she was better appreciated than Charlotte. Her passionate nature was more easily understood than Charlotte’s decorous temperament. In October, however, when her aunt died, Emily returned permanently to Haworth.

    In 1845 Charlotte came across some poems by Emily, and this led to the discovery that all three sisters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—had written verse. A year later they published jointly a volume of verse, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, the initials of these pseudonyms being those of the sisters; it contained 21 of Emily’s poems, and a consensus of later criticism has accepted the fact that Emily’s verse alone reveals true poetic genius. The venture cost the sisters about £50 in all, and only two copies were sold.

    By midsummer of 1847 Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Anne’s Agnes Grey had been accepted for joint publication by J. Cautley Newby of London, but publication of the three volumes was delayed until the appearance of their sister Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, which was immediately and hugely successful. Wuthering Heights, when published in December 1847, did not fare well; critics were hostile, calling it too savage, too animal-like, and clumsy in construction. Only later did it come to be considered one of the finest novels in the English language.

    Soon after the publication of her novel, Emily’s health began to fail rapidly. She had been ill for some time, but now her breathing became difficult, and she suffered great pain. She died of tuberculosis in December 1848.

  艾米莉·勃朗特（Emily Jane Bronte，1818年7月30日－1848年12月19日），19世纪英国作家与诗人，著名的勃朗特三姐妹之一，世界文学名著《呼啸山庄》的作者。这部作品是艾米莉·勃朗特一生中唯一的一部小说，奠定了她在英国文学史以及世界文学史上的地位。此外，她还创作了193首诗，被认为是英国一位天才型的女作家。

  艾米莉·勃朗特出生在约克郡靠近布拉德福的索顿，双亲为帕特里克·勃朗特（Patrick Brontë，1777年—1861年）与玛丽亚·布伦威尔（Maria Branwell）。艾米莉在勃朗特夫妇6个小孩中排行第五（大女儿玛利亚，二女儿伊丽莎白，三女儿夏洛蒂，独子勃兰威尔，下面就是艾米莉和小女儿安妮），是夏洛蒂·勃朗特的妹妹与安妮·勃朗特的姐姐。父亲帕特里克原本是个爱尔兰的乡村牧师。因为帕特里克·勃朗特从1819年开始在哈沃斯担任长期的副牧师，于是勃朗特全家在1820年4月搬到了哈沃斯，勃朗特三姐妹的文学情怀就在这样的环境下开始萌芽。

  艾米莉的父亲是个激进的保守党人，喜欢读书，在家里谈论政治。受父亲的影响，姊妹四个富有正义感，同情周围的穷人，也养成了良好的读书习惯，夜晚，她们常以读书写诗、杜撰故事来打发寂寞的时光。每逢这时，艾米莉总是表现得沉默寡言。可是，内心里她却是热情奔放，对许多事都有自己独到的见解。

  就在他们的母亲玛丽亚于1821年因癌症去世之后，年轻的勃朗特三姐妹与她们的兄弟帕特里克·布伦威尔·勃朗特（Patrick Branwell Bronte）在他们的作品中创造了幻想的国度（包括了安格利亚、贡代尔、Gaaldine、Oceania）。这些幻想后来变成了他们作品的主要特征之一，不过艾米莉在这个时期的作品只有少数被保存了下来。

　　和其他姐妹一样，艾米莉坚强、能干。在母亲去世后的相当长一段时间内，家里收入很少，三姐妹不得不经常出外谋生，以教书或做家庭教师来补贴家用。1846年，三姐妹筹款以化名出版了一本诗集，结果只卖掉两本。1847年，三姐妹的小说《简·爱》《呼啸山庄》《爱格尼斯·格雷》终于出版，然而，只有《简·爱》获得了成功，受到了当时文坛的重视。而《呼啸山庄》却并不为当时的读者所理解。

　　1848年9月，三姐妹惟一的兄弟布伦威尔由于长期酗酒、吸毒而染病死去。在精神上解脱之余，艾米莉因怜悯和悲伤，身体也急剧地衰弱下去，并于同年12月与世长辞。这位后来驰名世界文坛的女作家就这样默默地离开了让她备感冷漠的人间。

Wuthering Heights(呼啸山庄)

    Emily Brontë’s work on Wuthering Heights cannot be dated, and she may well have spent a long time on this intense, solidly imagined novel. It is distinguished from other novels of the period by its dramatic and poetic presentation, its abstention from all comment by the author, and its unusual structure. It recounts in the retrospective narrative of an onlooker, which in turn includes shorter narratives, the impact of the waif Heathcliff on the two families of Earnshaw and Linton in a remote Yorkshire district at the end of the 18th century. Embittered by abuse and by the marriage of Cathy Earnshaw—who shares his stormy nature and whom he loves—to the gentle and prosperous Edgar Linton, Heathcliff plans a revenge on both families, extending into the second generation. Cathy’s death in childbirth fails to set him free from his love-hate relationship with her, and the obsessive haunting persists until his death; the marriage of the surviving heirs of Earnshaw and Linton restores peace.

    Sharing her sisters’ dry humour and Charlotte’s violent imagination, Emily diverges from them in making no use of the events of her own life and showing no preoccupation with a spinster’s state or a governess’s position. Working, like them, within a confined scene and with a small group of characters, she constructs an action, based on profound and primitive energies of love and hate, which proceeds logically and economically, making no use of such coincidences as Charlotte relies on, requiring no rich romanticsimiles or rhetorical patterns, and confining the superb dialogue to what is immediately relevant to the subject. The sombre power of the book and the elements of brutality in the characters affronted some 19th-century opinion. Its supposed masculine quality was adduced to support the claim, based on the memories of her brother Branwell’s friends long after his death, that he was author or part author of it. While it is not possible to clear up all the minor puzzles, neither the external nor the internal evidence offered is substantial enough to weigh against Charlotte’s plain statement that Emily was the author.

  《呼啸山庄》是英国女作家勃朗特姐妹之一艾米莉·勃朗特的作品，是19世纪英国文学的代表作之一。

  小说描写吉卜赛弃儿希斯克利夫被山庄老主人收养后，因受辱和恋爱不遂，外出致富。回来后，对与其女友凯瑟琳结婚的地主林顿及其子女进行报复的故事。全篇充满强烈的反压迫、争幸福的斗争精神，又始终笼罩着离奇、紧张的浪漫气氛。此作品多次被改编成电影作品。

  英格兰北部，有一座几乎与世隔绝的“呼啸山庄（Wuthering Heights）”。主人欧肖（Earnshaw）收养了一个弃儿，取名希斯克利夫（Heathcliff），让他与自己的儿女辛德雷（Hindley）和凯瑟琳（Catherine）一起生活。希斯克利夫与凯瑟琳朝夕相处并萌发了爱情，但辛德雷十分憎恶他。老欧肖死后，辛德雷不仅禁止希斯克利夫与凯瑟琳接触，还对他百般虐待和侮辱，这加剧了希斯克利夫对辛德雷的怨恨，也加深了他对凯瑟琳的爱。

  一天，希斯克利夫与凯瑟琳秘密外出，认识了邻近的画眉田庄（Thrushcross Grange）的小主人埃德加·林顿（Edgar Linton）。这个温文尔雅的富家子弟倾慕凯瑟琳的美貌，向她求婚，天真幼稚的凯瑟琳同意嫁给林顿。希斯克利夫知道凯瑟琳出嫁的消息，痛不欲生，愤然出走。

  数年之后，衣锦还乡的希斯克利夫要向辛德雷和林顿进行报复。辛德雷是个生活放荡的纨绔子弟，酗酒、赌博，肆意挥霍家产，终至穷困潦倒。连剩下的家产都抵押给了希斯克利夫，并沦为他的奴仆。希斯克利夫经常拜访画眉田庄，林顿的妹妹伊莎贝拉（Isabella Linton）对他倾心不已，最后随他私奔。但希斯克利夫把她囚禁在呼啸山庄并折磨她，以发泄自己强烈的怨愤。

  凯瑟琳嫁给林顿以后，虽然凯、林思想分歧巨大，但由于林顿的迁就，二人生活幸福。希斯克利夫的衣锦荣归，唤醒了她曾经对野性的爱的追求。激动中她病倒了，并很快就死去了，留下一个早产的女婴——凯蒂（Cathy）。

  伊莎贝拉趁乱逃了出来，来到伦敦郊外，不久生了一个男孩，取名林顿·希斯克利夫（Linton Heathcliff）。辛德雷在凯瑟琳死后不到半年便酗酒而死，而他的儿子哈里顿（Hareton）落入希斯克利夫的掌心，希斯克利夫在孩子身上进一步实施报复。12年后，伊莎贝拉病死他乡，希斯克利夫接回儿子，却非常厌恶他的羸弱、娇气。

  希斯克利夫趁林顿病危之际，将凯蒂接来，并强迫她与儿子结婚。几天后，林顿死去，希斯克利夫又成了画眉田庄的主人。小希斯克利夫婚后不久也悄然死去。

  这时，哈里顿已经23岁了，尽管被剥夺了受教育的权利，缺乏人间的温暖，但他敦厚忠实，风度翩翩。凯蒂对他产生了爱情。这让希斯克利夫大为恼怒，他决心拆散这对恋人。然而，当他再仔细观察他们时，昔日的凯瑟琳和他相爱时的情景浮现眼前。此时此刻，他心头的恨消退了，爱复活了，他不忍心再报复。他要去寻找凯瑟琳。在一个风雪之夜，他呼唤着凯瑟琳的名字，离开了人世。