McCurdy says of Brontë’s father and his interactions with his children, “The Reverend Patrick Brontë devoted himself to his church duties, and apparently saw little of the children, who were largely left to their own devices until the four eldest girls were enrolled m a charity school in 1824” (137). As documented by McCurdy, Brontë grew up in Haworth, in the Yorkshire moors, following the death of her mother when Brontë was three (137). The location of the novel resembles Brontë’s home. Earnshaw is alive, Heathcliff is treated well.

At the same time, they do receive some education. They enjoy getting dirty and playing with animals. They appear to have little adult supervision while they are outside the house. Both Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff have volatile tempers, arguing with each other occasionally but reconciling. She describes the hours the Earnshaw children spend playing on the moors. In the novel, the narrator Nelly Dean gives the new tenant Lockwood a chronological history of the Earnshaw and Linton families. Although Emily Brontë never married and there is no evidence she was ever formally engaged to marry, she may have personally experienced having an intense love for a boy that her family considered beneath her, and experienced a consuming grief at his early death. A few specific characters, such as Catherine Earnshaw, Hindley Earnshaw and Heathcliff, share some personality traits with members of Brontë’s family. The ongoing elements of illness and death function not just as plot devices to advance the story, but as reminders of how common serious illnesses and death were in Brontë’s time, in addition to within her own family. Her unflattering depiction of religious fanaticism, as displayed by the character Joseph, reflects her own adult alienation from organized religion. The childhood activities of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, playing on the moors, parallel Brontë’s own childhood. Instead, Brontë uses familiar events and characteristics of her own personality and that of family members to tell a story about intense love, marriage and death. Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights contains numerous similarities to events and people in her life, but the novel is not autobiography.

Charlotte bronte wuthering heights