After the recent release of “Emily” starring Emma Mackey as Emily Brontë, a recurrence of interest in the Brontë family has been set alight. The period drama that released on the 14th of October 2022, is both a fictitious and somewhat biographical documentation of Emily’s journey to writing classic “Wuthering Heights”, a gothic novel that explores the unsettling, gruesome nature of passionate love working against a dark, unjust society. The Brontë’s are a family of three successful female authors. Charlotte, Emily and Anne have produced an array of classical works of literature that have an impact on modern day society. From Heathcliff’s passions, Jane’s transgressions of patriarchal Victorian society, to Lucy Snowe’s spiral into depression from isolation, unrequited love and her oppressive governess role, we see our hero’s and heroine’s tackle generations worth of issues through their undying words, written by masterful authors. When discussing my favourite books with my grandmother, she stated “favourite books are friends for life”, proving the intergenerational power that strong literature holds, creating a gateway of communication between time periods.

Emily’s “Wuthering Heights”, Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre” and Anne’s “Agnes Grey” were all originally published under the pseudonyms “Currer”, “Ellis” and “Acton Bell”. During the 1850’s there was much conspiracy surrounding the nature and sex of these mystery authors. Many speculated these works were all linked to one man. However Victorian critic George Henry stated that “from the depths of a struggling, suffering, much-enduring spirit” in reference to protagonist Jane Eyre, he concluded that these books could only have been written by women, who would’ve understood the oppression they faced, especially as the Women’s Suffrage Movement kicked off in the 1850’s. There’s an immediate strong presence of feminism within Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”, particularly when Jane protests that “the more solitary, the more friendless, the more unstained I am, the more I will respect myself”. This was and is a revolutionary statement in terms of activism for women’s rights in the 1850’s. The fact that Jane could reject a man and deem her own self-worth was mirroring Charlotte’s own life as she proceeded to reject two marital proposals and pursue her own education and teachings.

Frances O’ Conners’ “Emily” was a powerful display of the harrowing love that Emily Brontë herself wrote and fantasised about. My mother having read the books in her youth claimed the film to be “a beautiful imagining of what their lives could have really been like”, highlighting the depth of writing and cinematography that went behind shooting this drama. The writing has been complimented with beautiful shots of the Haworth moors in Yorkshire, giving the actors and directors just over six weeks of shooting time whilst they were there in April 2021. Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” breaks the binaries of love, deconstructing the normalised perceptions we have surrounding it and instead replacing it with something much more grotesque and unsettling. The beautiful language is something that links the Brontë’s, which is certainly seen in Emily’s famous line “whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same”. To read, watch or listen to the Brontë’s is to communicate with the past, the present and the future.