Editing Emily Brontë (section)

==Early life==
[[File:Painting of Brontë sisters.png|thumb|upright|The three Brontë sisters, in an 1834 painting by their brother [[Branwell Brontë]]. From left to right: Anne, Emily and Charlotte. (Branwell used to be between Emily and Charlotte, but subsequently painted himself out.)]]

Emily Brontë was born on 30 July 1818 to [[Maria Branwell]] and an Irish father, [[Patrick Brontë]]. The family was living on Market Street, in a house now known as the [[Brontë Birthplace]] in the village of [[Thornton, West Yorkshire|Thornton]] on the outskirts of [[Bradford]], in the [[West Riding of Yorkshire]], England.  Emily was the second youngest of six siblings, preceded by [[Maria Brontë|Maria]], [[Elizabeth Brontë|Elizabeth]], [[Charlotte Brontë|Charlotte]] and [[Branwell Brontë|Branwell]].  In 1820, Emily's younger sister [[Anne Brontë|Anne]], the last Brontë child, was born. Shortly thereafter, the family moved eight miles away to [[Haworth]], where Patrick was employed as [[perpetual curate]].<ref name="Fraser 16" />  In Haworth, the children would have opportunities to develop their literary talents.<ref name="Fraser 16">Fraser, ''The Brontës'', p. 16</ref>

When Emily was only three, and all six children under the age of eight, she and her siblings lost their mother, Maria, to cancer on 15 September 1821.<ref name="Fraser 28">Fraser, ''The Brontës'', p. 28</ref> The younger children were to be cared for by [[Elizabeth Branwell]], their aunt and Maria's sister.

Emily's three elder sisters, Maria, Elizabeth, and Charlotte were sent to the [[Cowan Bridge School|Clergy Daughters' School]] at Cowan Bridge. At the age of six, on 25 November 1824, Emily joined her sisters at school for a brief period.<ref name="Fraser 35">Fraser, ''The Brontës'', p. 35</ref> At school, however, the children suffered abuse and privations, and when a [[typhoid]] epidemic swept the school, Maria and Elizabeth became ill. Maria, who may actually have had [[tuberculosis]], was sent home, where she died. Elizabeth died shortly after.

The four youngest Brontë children, all under ten years of age, had suffered the loss of the three eldest women in their immediate family.<ref name=" Fraser 31">Fraser, ''The Brontës'', p. 31</ref>

Charlotte maintained that the school's poor conditions permanently affected her health and physical development and that it had hastened the deaths of Maria (born 1814) and Elizabeth (born 1815), who both died in 1825. After the deaths of his older daughters, Patrick removed Charlotte and Emily from the school.<ref>Fraser, ''Charlotte Bronte: A Writer's Life'', pp. 12–13</ref> Charlotte would use her experiences and knowledge of the school as the basis for Lowood School in ''[[Jane Eyre]]''.

The three remaining sisters and their brother Branwell were thereafter educated at home by their father and aunt Elizabeth Branwell. A shy girl, Emily was very close to her siblings and was known as a great animal lover, especially for befriending stray dogs she found wandering around the countryside.<ref>Paddock & Rollyson ''The  Brontës A to Z''  p. 20.</ref> Despite the lack of formal education, Emily and her siblings had access to a wide range of published material; favourites included [[Walter Scott|Sir Walter Scott]], [[Lord Byron|Byron]], [[Percy Bysshe Shelley|Shelley]], and ''[[Blackwood's Magazine]]''.<ref name="Fraser 44-45">Fraser, ''The Brontës'', pp. 44–45</ref>

[[File:Gondal Poems.jpg|thumb|179 px|Emily's [[Gondal (fictional country)|Gondal]] poems]]

Inspired by a box of toy soldiers Branwell had received as a gift,<ref>Mezo, Richard E. ''A Student's Guide to Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë'' (2002), p. 1</ref> the children began to write stories, which they set in a number of invented [[paracosm|imaginary worlds]] populated by their soldiers as well as their heroes, the [[Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington|Duke of Wellington]] and his sons, [[Lord Charles Wellesley|Charles]] and [[Arthur Wellesley, 2nd Duke of Wellington|Arthur Wellesley]]. Little of Emily's work from this period survives, except for poems spoken by characters.<ref>''The Brontës' Web of Childhood'', by Fannie Ratchford, 1941</ref><ref>An analysis of Emily's use of paracosm play as a response to the deaths of her sisters is found in Delmont C. Morrison's ''Memories of Loss and Dreams of Perfection'' (Baywood, 2005), {{ISBN|0-89503-309-7}}.</ref> Initially, all four children shared in creating stories about a world called Angria.

However, when Emily was 13, she and Anne withdrew from participation in the Angria story and began a new one about [[Gondal (fictional country)|Gondal]], a fictional island whose myths and legends were to preoccupy the two sisters throughout their lives. With the exception of their Gondal poems and Anne's lists of Gondal's characters and placenames, Emily and Anne's Gondal writings were largely not preserved. Among those that did survive are some "diary papers", written by Emily in her twenties, which describe current events in Gondal.<ref>[http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/wuthering/diary_papers#diary "Emily Brontë's Letters and Diary Papers"], City University of New York</ref> The heroes of Gondal tended to resemble the popular image of the Scottish Highlander, a sort of British version of the "noble savage": romantic outlaws capable of more nobility, passion, and bravery than the denizens of "civilization".{{sfn|Austin|2002|p=578}} Similar themes of romanticism and noble savagery are apparent across the Brontës' juvenilia, notably in Branwell's ''The Life of Alexander Percy'', which tells the story of an all-consuming, death-defying, and ultimately self-destructive love and is generally considered an inspiration for ''Wuthering Heights''.<ref name="Paddock p. 199">Paddock & Rollyson ''The  Brontës A to Z''  p. 199.</ref>

At 17, Emily began to attend the Roe Head Girls' School, where Charlotte was a teacher, but suffered from extreme [[homesickness]], according to Charlotte, and left after only a few months. Charlotte wrote later that "Liberty was the breath of Emily's nostrils; without it, she perished. The change from her own home to a school and from her own very noiseless, very secluded but unrestricted and unartificial mode of life, to one of disciplined routine (though under the kindest auspices), was what she failed in enduring... I felt in my heart she would die if she did not go home, and with this conviction obtained her recall."<ref name="Gaskell 149">Gaskell, ''The  Life of Charlotte Brontë'', p. 149</ref> Emily returned home and Anne took her place.<ref name="Fraser 84">Fraser, ''The Brontës'', p. 84</ref>{{efn|name=Pic|[http://mick-armitage.staff.shef.ac.uk/anne/cast-2.html At Roe Head and Blake Hall] with pictures of the school then and now, and descriptions of Anne's time there.}} At this time, the girls' objective was to obtain sufficient education to open a small school of their own.