Who was the real Emily Brontë? How did a seemingly quiet young woman living in a Yorkshire parsonage create Wuthering Heights, one of the wildest, darkest and most extraordinary novels in English literature? And why does Emily Brontë remain such an enigmatic figure nearly two centuries after her death?
In this episode of The Scholar's Armchair, Dr John Burton talks to Deborah Lutz, Professor of Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature at Penn State University, about her remarkable new biography, This Dark Night: The Life of Emily Brontë.
Drawing on previously inaccessible manuscripts, historical records and the material world of the Brontë household, Lutz brings us closer to the elusive woman behind Wuthering Heights.
Together, we explore Emily's extraordinary imagination, her relationship with her sisters Charlotte and Anne, the fictional worlds they created as children, and the importance of the Yorkshire moors, animals, weather and the natural world to her writing.
We also discuss how Emily combined the ordinary demands of domestic life with an astonishingly rich imaginative existence, and how her fascination with freedom, imprisonment, death and the supernatural shaped both her poetry and her only novel.
Above all, we ask whether the familiar image of Emily Brontë as a solitary, mysterious genius has prevented us from understanding the woman and the remarkable artist she really was.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Deborah Lutz is the George and Barbara Kelly Professor in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature at Pennsylvania State University. She is an acclaimed scholar of Victorian literature and the author of several books, including The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects and Victorian Paper Art and Craft.
Her latest book, This Dark Night, offers a fascinating new perspective on the life, imagination and literary achievement of Emily Brontë.
BOOK AND AUTHOR LINKS
