Emily Bronte

– Yorkshire, England

Wuthering Heights

The county of Yorkshire inspired Emily Bronte’s famous 1847 novel, Wuthering Heights. Emily grew up in Haworth in a lonely area which she describes so well in this, her only novel. Her father was a parson* so the family lived in Haworth Parsonage*, now a museum dedicated to the Bronte sisters and their classic novels. Inspired by their surroundings in the Yorkshire Moors, the famous sisters described this dark, wild area in their books. Near Haworth, a ruined* farmhouse called Top Withens was the inspiration for the location of the Earnshaw family house in Wuthering Heights. Its desolate* setting on the top of a hill is similar to Emily’s description in her book. The ruin is on the Pennine Way, a walking destination so popular with Japanese literary tourists that some signs in the area have directions in Japanese.

Heathcliff and Catherine

Wuthering Heights is a tragic* love story set in the wild Yorkshire Moors, representing both freedom and danger, like the love between Heathcliff and Catherine. The novel, covering three generations, is told by different narrators, mostly in flashback. There have been many film and TV versions. The most famous one is the 1939 film, with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. A Japanese film in 1988 called Arashi ga oka was set in Japan in a mountain setting.

FIND THE WORDS

Fill the spaces to find the words used in the article to describe Yorkshire.

The answers are on page 15

The English singer, Kate Bush, who wrote and sang the 1978 song “Wuthering Heights” was born 30th July, the same day as Emily Bronte.

Glossary

inspiration: ideas for art parson: old name for an English priest parsonage: house where a parson lived ruined: destroyed, not in perfect condition tragic: very sad, terrible