Emily Brontë in Brussels
One can only imagine how daunting the prospect
must have been for Emily to know she would leave her regulated life and
again, once she knew she would leave for Brussels.
different her new life would be, in a strange boarding school, in the
a large city and in a foreign country.
main literary legacy from their time in Brussels can be
found in two of Charlotte's novels: The
and the highly autobiographical Villette.
In addition, letters written by her from that time have survived, which
scholars and Brontë fans alike to understand this important
period of her life.
To our disappointment the same cannot be said of Emily. As we have only
material, she is our main focus for the Brussels episode.
It is time to
redress the balance and explore Emily’s side of the Brussels story.
was happiest when she was at home at the Parsonage in Haworth with the wild, windswept
moors beyond it. Periods away from her beloved moors, during her time
pupil or teacher at Roe Head and Law Hill, were overshadowed by
there are several reasons why Emily
(instead of Anne) had been chosen to join Charlotte, her own, and
only, reason why she did venture to leave her home was her thirst for
knowledge, for learning. She would enter a whole new world of other
literatures, and foreign languages. This journey would bring a great
opportunity to broaden her mind and exercise her creative and mental
And how did Emily experience all this? What
did she make of Brussels,
the Pensionnat? And what was going through her mind; how did she
As with the rest of Emily’s personal
so much is shrouded in mystery. She left no letters, and while in
Brussels, she kept
no diary. We can only form our conclusions by reading other
people’s accounts. Charlotte's
to Ellen Nussey are the most important.
Emily’s life would be transformed
‘external’ world of the Parsonage in Yorkshire to an ‘internal’ world of
the Pensionnat. This
‘Institution of Instruction’, the
boarding school run by Constantin and Zoë Heger, lay in the
sunken street of
Rue d’Isabelle, towered over by high buildings around; the
long, white front of
the school concealing an inner world of a self-contained, controlled
efficiently run establishment. And inside this internal world was an
sanctum, a beautifully kept garden. Though a peaceful retreat within a
noisy and bustling
city, with its secret
Allée Défendue and secluded arching tree boughs,
this garden was surrounded by
walls and sides of other houses, giving it a sense of a
must have felt imprisoned in what she
might have perceived as a place of detention.
was however also a place of learning. Emily’s
knowledge of foreign languages, in
particular French, was
limited to what
she was taught at Roe Head, what Charlotte had passed on to her and
had learned herself. She
had a great deal of catching up to do
in the first few months she stayed in the Pensionnat. During the free
the day, she devoted all her spare time to further reading and more
would have been a serious test for her, not only having to speak and
French everyday, but also to be taught in it. Emily
and Charlotte were given French
lessons by Constantin Heger, a gifted teacher who would notice his
talents and was able to cultivate and develop them.
against this system. Charlotte recalls: “…she
saw no good
to be derived from it; and that by adopting it, they should lose all
originality of thought and expression.” Heger did
not perhaps know Emily had been writing poems, tales and essays from a
young age and that she had long since passed the stage of finding her
distinctive voice and style.
Emily’s initial objections, she produced her
‘devoirs’, the required essays.
During the summer of 1842, Emily worked diligently, producing some ten
||In May 1842, a few months after their
arrival, Charlotte writes to Ellen:
both Emily and I
have had good health, and therefore we have been able to work well.
one individual of whom I have not yet spoken--M Heger, the husband of
He is professor of rhetoric, a man of power as to mind, but very
irritable in temperament; a little black ugly being, with a face that
expression……Emily and he don't draw well together
at all. Emily works like a horse
and she has had great difficulties to contend with--far greater than I
and Heger arose a tension that remained throughout her time as his
was an exacting master, inflexible, irritable and erratic.
the very first lesson over Heger’s method of teaching. He
proposed to the
sisters reading passages from masterpieces from French literature,
and analysing them and then getting these English pupils to write
expressing their own thoughts, based on the style of these models.
No other poetry
or prose by Emily survives from this period in her life, so these
an important insight into her creative writing. They show that
were superior both in power and imagination to Charlotte's.
pessimistic and cynical view of mankind and shrewd understanding of the
in the world around her, astounded, impressed and sometimes even
- Le Chat , 15th
- Portait: Le Roi
Harold avant la bataille de Hastings, June
- Lettre (Madame), 16th July
- Letter (Ma chère Maman), 26th
Filial, 5th August
- Lettre (d’un frère à un
frère), 5th August
- Le Papillon, 11th
- Le Palais de la
Mort, 18th October
Emily changed and he was impressed by the daring and originality of
revealed in her work. He recognised Emily’s to be the more
challenging mind of the sisters and began to value her qualities.
Years later he
should have been a man
– a great navigator…her strong imperious will
would never have been daunted by
opposition or difficulty, never have been given way but with life. She
head for logic, and a capability of argument unusual in a man and rarer
in a woman…[but]impairing this gift was her stubborn
tenacity of will which
rendered her obtuse to all reasoning where her own wishes, or her own
right, was concerned.” Emily, according to Heger,
“egoistical and exacting,
and exercised a kind of unconscious tyranny over her [i.e. Charlotte].”
the next page to read Emily's story