Emily Bronte and the Strategic Art of Social Distancing

Blowfield, C.

Emily Bronte was famously reclusive. In the eighteen months she spent away from home during her short life she was deeply unhappy, and at Roe Head and Law Hill she was distressed enough to become physically ill. Whilst Emily's 'social distancing' was her own decision as opposed to one imposed by government, there are intriguing parallels between her seclusion and our own experience of enforced isolation almost two hundred years later. Through close analysis of her work, this article discusses how unrelenting exposure to death, destruction and disease challenged Bronte's thinking and attitudes, relating these to our current experience of living and dying during a pandemic. It will suggest that themes of disease, destruction and death resonate throughout her writing to a much greater extent than has been previously acknowledged.