The Bronte Sisters Various aspects of Charlotte and Emily Bronte's background greatly influenced them to write the novels Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. The death of their mother influenced them as young children when she died of a lingering illness, and this loss drove the Bronte children into an intense and private intimacy (Dunleavy 239). But their father remained, and he directed their education at home, letting his children read freely and treating them as intellectual equals (Stabenau 179). Similarly, both of the main characters, Jane Eyre and Catherine Earnshaw, lose their mothers to illnesses as young children and the remaining parent or relative must raise the child. Both stories make use of the popular nineteenth century motif of the orphaned child who must make his or her own way in an antagonistic world (Dunleavy 242). Besides the absence of a mother figure, both sisters spent most of their lives in isolation on the Yorkshire moors, another important influence on the novels (Abbey and Mullane 414).
English: Title page, first edition, en:Jane Eyre.
English: North Lees Hall, Hathersage. Charlotte Br...
English: North Lees Hall and out buildings Otherwi...Rebecca Fraser, a biographer of the Bronte family, believes that they clearly preferred a reclusive lifestyle admist the primitive beauty of the moors (23). By comparison, the bleak, lonely moors of Yorkshire serve as the same setting for two of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights ("Bronte" CD-ROM). According to an essay written in The Eclectic Review in 1851, Charlotte and Emily Bronte were at home amongst the moors; therefore, a vividness and graphic power in their sketches present them before the reader (108). "The Bronte's work was shaped by the wild and lonely moors where they spent most of their lives. Although quiet and withdrawn women, they possessed a mystical streak that responded to the natural environment around them" ("Heights" 1). Many unique individuals in both...