What influence did Branwell Brontë have on his sister Emily and what impact did Emily’s sibling relationship with her wayward brother have on her life and literary work? This is something we’ll discuss today.

It is well established that the family’s isolation, both geographically and socially, during the Brontë children’s early formative years ensured that Emily and her siblings grew up with a unique and deep bond for each other. In addition, the heartbreaking losses in quick succession of their eldest sisters Maria (d. May 1825) and Elizabeth (d. June 1825) only served to draw the surviving siblings even closer together as they sought comfort in the face of their overwhelming mutual grief. In particular the death of Maria, in effect their surrogate mother and by all accounts a remarkably gifted girl, following their own mother’s tragic untimely death in 1821, hit the four remaining children extremely hard.

While all the surviving Brontës ultimately struggled to ‘escape’ from their traumatic childhood once in adulthood, this inability to move on in the physical sense was seen particularly keenly in both Emily and Branwell. There are certainly parallels between them when it comes to trying to free themselves and make something of their lives beyond the parsonage and Haworth.

For Emily, her introverted nature and stubborn refusal to attempt to form new friendships (with a few rare exceptions) ensured her world, socially, remained limited outside the walls of the parsonage. On the few notable occasions that she left Haworth for a period of time, her spirit and body began to wither and engulfed by homesickness she would invariably need to return home to recover. While for Branwell, the fragile mind of a young man under the great weight of family expectation as the sole male sibling, coupled with his inclination towards self-destruction as a result of this pressure, would see him time and again return home penniless and humiliated. In this regard, Emily and Branwell were two sides of the same coin. They recognised their respective struggles in each other and as a result there was deep sympathy, frustration and empathy.

While we will never know for certain the inspiration for the character of Hindley Earnshaw in ‘Wuthering Heights’, there is certainly a feeling of Emily having drawn on elements from Branwell’s own personality when she created him. Indeed, the emotional intensity of the novel and the turmoil and destructiveness of Hindley as he descends into alcoholic madness very much aligns with what Emily would have witnessed from her brother. Not only the anger and the rage of a young man realising his chances of making something of himself were slipping away with each failure and every reluctant return to Haworth, but also the reminder that Emily herself was seeing in Branwell similarities, though expressed differently, of her own personal frustrations.

As Branwell’s life unravelled, there are instances of Emily coming to his rescue and in one particular case in all likelihood saving his life when he drunkenly almost set fire to the house having fallen asleep after reading by candlelight. Emily was said to have literally picked him up and carried him out of his room before urgently extinguishing the growing flames. Branwell was someone that Emily loved dearly, but also someone that stirred a host of conflicting emotions in her, the pity and the frustration of watching a fading sibling lose their way. The knowledge that the potential creative ability emerging in their early days would never be realised. While Branwell’s escape from the pain of his turmoil was found in drink and other vices, Emily’s was expressed passionately in her writing. This channelling of her own turmoil onto paper was her own coping mechanism for the restrictions imposed by both society and that she had imposed upon herself by her own personality.

Sally Wainwright’s wonderful 2016 film, ‘To Walk Invisible’, highlights several instances of the strength of Emily and Branwell’s relationship, one being when they sit together at night on a gate howling like wild animals toward the moon. Reverting themselves back to being carefree children for a little while, back to being equals. Two outsiders kept together by the same traumatic childhood experiences, temporarily escaping the reality of their present situation. Another time we see Emily and her sisters leave home and come across a wretched Branwell struggling up the lane by the parsonage. While Charlotte and Anne walk by, their patience exhausted, Emily stops and assists her brother home as she can’t bear to leave him in his current state even if it is self-inflicted.

Emily and Branwell both shared a close sibling and creative bond, despite their differing personalities and life trajectories. One can only imagine Emily’s devastation when Branwell passed away of tuberculosis in September 1848 less than 3 months before Emily herself would succumb to the same disease. Both would be reunited in the family vault before Christmas 1848.