“A poet, a solitary”: Emily Brontë — Queerness, quietness, and solitude

Emily Brontë is often remembered for her extreme reserve and was clearly an atypical woman for her time. Although she was a figure who struggled within the conventional social fabric, rarely does empathy find a place in writings about her. This paper revisits some of the popular and dominant conceptions of Emily’s reserve and seeks to find a more productive—even compassionate—way of understanding her preference for solitude. Emily’s writings—especially her poems, provide such an opportunity to do so. While recognizing the negative and undoubtedly painful expressions of emotion in Emily’s oeuvre, the analysis argues that more positive insights into Emily’s desire for solitude can equally be found in her writing. Accordingly, drawing on queer theoretical sources, the paper posits a revised reading of this “difficult” Brontë that seeks to open alternative possibilities for understanding Emily’s introverted nature.