Emily Bronte

EMILY BRONTE
Emily was a poet as well as novelist, and her only novel Wuthering Heights is a poem as well as a novel. There is no other
book, says Longinus which contains so many of the hassled, tumultuous, and rebellious elements of romanticism. She is fiercer
than over charlotte, but her fierceness is strangely accompanied by numeric strokes of intuitive illumination.
Wuthering Heights is a story of primal passions enacted amongst elemental environment. Walter Allen observes: The central
fact about Emily Bronte is that she is a mystic. Her mysticism lies not only in her handily of the voice of the dead Catherine
cabling Heathcliff to her, but also in her use of symbols. In many of her poems, too Emily tries to give expression of her mystical
experience.
Mrs. Gaskell
Mrs. Gaskell had nothing of this passion and frustration of the Bronte sister. She was wife of a quite Unitarian clergyman in
Manchester one of the bugging centres of English industry. She was mother of seven children.
What distinguishes the novels of Mrs. Gaskell is her deep social consciousness combined with a compassionate observation of
the life around her? Her novels divide themselves into two well defined categorizes. First, we have novel like Mary Barton and
North and south which deal with the social and industrial problem arising out of the masters workmen struggles which were a
features of the industrial age which had then just got under way. Being herself a resident of Manchester, Mrs. Gaskell was a
witness to the blessings of the Industrial Revolution. Secondly we have novel like Ganford, Ruth, wives and Daughters and
Sylvias Lovers which eschew all industrial problems and are concerned with rural life and manners which she knew so well,
thanks to her long stay at Knutsford with her aunt, before she settled at Manchester with her husband. Of all the novels of this
category the best known is Coranford which is a disguised name for her own Knutsford Ganford is a classic of its own kind. It
portrays a world in habited by woman alone. These women belong to middle class families.
GEORGE ELIOT
With George Eliot we come to the most philosophy of all the major Victorian novelists, both female and
male philosophy is both her strength and weakness as a novelists. It keeps her from falling into bathos or
triviality, but at the same time gives her art an ultra serious and reflective quality which makes it heavy
reading. Even her human the faculty in which she doubtlessly is quite seen has about it the quality of
ponderous reflectivity. George Eliots important novel are the following:- The mill on the Floss, Adam
Bede, Felix Holt, Daniel Deronda and Middlemarch. All of them are marked by extreme
seriousness of purpose and execution. As Samuel Chew observes, in George Eliot hands the novel was
not primarily for entertainment but for the serious discussion of moral issues. She is indeed, too didactic
and make every incident a text moralistic expatiation. In her novels we invariably meet with the clash of
circumstances with human will. She indeed, believed that circumstances influenced character, but she
did not show circumstance entirely determining character. A man called upon to choose between two
women or a woman to choose between two men is the common motif of the novels.
Another important feature of her novels is their very deep concern with human psychology. Her novels are
all novels of character. She, says Compton Rickett was the first novelist foray the stress wholly upon
character rather than incident; to make her stories spiritual rather than physical dramas. In her
characterization she displays both subtlety and rarity. Her studies of the inner man, but more
particularly the inner woman, are marvelous.
George Eliot excels at portraying the tragedy of unfulfilled female longing. She identified herself with her
chief female characters unfold their inner feelings with masterly strollers. Compton Rickett points out:
Maggies was for fuller life, Romolas for ampler knowledge, Darotheas for larger opportunity for doing
well. She stands at the gateway between the old novel and the new, a massive caryatid heavy of
countenance uneasy of attitude, but noble, monumental, profoundly impressive.

Emily Bronte

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EMILY BRONTE

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