Lines (Emily Brontë Poem)

Lines (Emily Brontë Poem)

Lines is a poem written by English writer Emily Brontë in December 1837. It is understood that the poem was written in the Haworth parsonage, two years after Brontë had left Roe Head, where she was unable to settle as a pupil. At the time Lines was written, Emily had already lived through the death of her mother and two of her sisters, Elizabeth and Maria. As the daughter of a parson, Emily received a rigorously religious education which is evident in much of her work. Lines is representative of much of Emily’s poetry, which broke Victorian gender stereotypes by adopting the Gothic tradition and genre of Romanticism, allowing her to express and examine her emotions.

Throughout their lives, the Brontë children struggled with leaving their in home in Haworth to which they felt so closely attached. The gender prejudice of the nineteenth century left little choice for young women, like Emily, who were seeking employment, occupation or education. It was widely accepted that females would hold self-effacing roles as housewives, mothers, governesses or seamstresses. Any poetry written by females was expected to address issues of religion, motherhood and wifehood on an instructive and educative level.

The Brontës subverted these stereotypes, choosing to write on topics such as death and love. The family lived in a parsonage opposite the church graveyard and was plagued with poor health and loss of life- inevitably death appears frequently in their writing.