If you have any siblings, you could easily sympathize with sibling rivalry and unseen favoritism from adults, including from parents. This favoritism can have negative effects on a person, such as weak self-esteem, an inferiority complex, and jealousy. However, there is a bright side as well. Since young siblings can motivate each other when they are at the age of utmost potential, they can discover the very best in themselves. Also, thanks to similar backgrounds, they can mutually exemplify each other.

The Brontë sisters, one of the most accomplished literary families, were no exception to this sibling rivalry. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, along with their brother Branwell, were born under a clergyman father and were raised in relative isolation in Haworth and Thornton, England, where the four siblings were the only ones to entertain each other. So, the siblings’ childhood was filled with imaginative storytelling and play in the attic, which became the ground for their later accomplised works! Let’s compare the sisters through their most famous works, Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Emily’s Wuthering Heights.

-In Common

1) The Gothic

The two works have similar spooky settings, which could be seen as an influence from their own background growing up in isolation in rural villages. These settings included isolated old castles and grand houses, dark, moody tomes, and taboo or hidden secrets. In Gothic fiction, which is a subgenre of Gothic horror, a combination of horror, death and romance depict the emotions of the characters and creates a pleasurable terror. This genre first became popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, starting with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otrant, as an extension of the Romantic literary movement.

Settings: Lowood, Moor House, Thornfield.

Secrets: Rochester’s hidden wife Bertha

Supernatural occurrences: Jane’s encounter with the ghost of Uncle Reed(later logically explained).

Settings: rundown country house of Wuthering Heights (perhaps the most gothic!)

Secrets: family secrets and social status of Catherine and Heathcliff that imperil their romance.

Taboos: incest and necrophilia.

2) Byronic Heroes

The byronic hero is a variant of the romantic hero, named after the English Romantic poet Lord Byron. His persona and the characters of his writings set the defining features of the byronic heroes. They can be descibed as proud, moody, cynical, defiant (shown on the brow), miserable (in the heart), scornful, implacable in revenge, but still capable of deep and strong affection(which leads to romance in the Gothic fiction). In short, a byronic hero equals a classic ‘bad boy’, who steps over social decorum, but is undeniably charismatic and irresistible!

Rochester is nominally a gentleman who rejects the social class he was born into. He is old, rude, ugly, and violent. His violence is highlighted by the fact that he keeps his wife Bertha locked in the attic. However, despite all these flaws, Jane cannot resist falling in love with him owing to his honest and passionate character on one side.

Heathcliff possesses the traits of the Byronic hero: he is brooding, ostracized from the society in some way, arrogant, intelligent, and hyperly aware of himself. He defies both human reasoning and English tradition, making him one of the most brutal characters in English literature.

- Differences

1) Narrative

In literature, the style of narrative has a strong influence on the work. If the protagonist is the narrator, the work usually defends the writer’s thoughts or even his or her life, meaning that it is autobiographical. As we can see in the title, Jane Eyre is entirely focused on and narrated by Jane, who is no doubt the protagonist. This style is called a first-person narrative. As the readers can assume throughout the work, Charlotte is depicted as Jane! Jane speaks on behalf of the author to convey Charlotte’s desperate, repressed feelings and conscious view toward reality. On the other hand, Emily’s Wuthering Heights takes shifting points of view and two levels of narration: internally as Nelly Dean, externally as Mr. Lockwood. Moreover, Emily takes an unconventional style beginning with the deaths of the two protagonists and proceeds with flashbacks. This narrative style makes Wuthering Heights more mysterious and poetic, having the stark contrast between the concrete and realistic language of the narrators.

2) Depiction of the Characters (human nature)

Jane and Catherine show a stark contrast in confronting their emotional conflicts. When Jane finds out that Rochester is already a married man, she renounces her passion following social norms, and respects the voice of her inner self. However, Catherine is more impulsive, indominable, and immature in dealing with her emotions that conflict with convention.

3) Ending

The main themes(feelings, relationships, and nature) of the two novels are common; nevertheless, the way Charlotte and Emily approach their themes are different: Jane faces the “happy-ever-after” ending of self-realization, fulfillment, independence, and not to mention, a happy marriage. On the contrary, Catherine shows a dualism between her emotions and social manners. Also, Wuthering Heights shows how a distorted conception of love can fire hatred and become cruely destructive.

* The ending has another interpretation from the Freudian point of view. Rochester and Jane have a conventional courtship-and marriage structure, while Catherine and Heathcliff follow the intense brother-sister relationships. Thus, Jane Eyre follows the pattern that Freud called ‘normal’ femininity, marrying a father-like figure, while Catherine and Heathcliff are frustrated by the other's assertion of independent desires. *

Although Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights were published under male pseudonyms, they represent the proto-feminist novel, in that they convey the voices of the women writers. By using the male pseudonyms, Charlotte and Emily protected their independence and freedom of their minds, while still being able to shout out their voices in a world full of manners and conventions.

The Brontë sisters have another member, Anne Brontë. She was the youngest of the three sisters and was also a novelist as well as a poet. All three sisters lived short lives, they all died in their 30s. It is amazing how all three could write such accomplished works at that young age, but at the same time it is regrettable that this world could not read more of their wonderful work.