The Sisters Brontë Have a Smackdown: Act Two

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As you may recall, when we last left the Brontë sisters. Emily had expressed a desire to eschew her needle and thread in favor of horse wrangling and start her herd using the stud services of the family plow horse, Heathcliffe. Charlotte has informed her that this will not do because Heathcliffe is a gelding, but of course no genteel daughter of a Parson can be expected to know what a gelding is.  And how did Charlotte ever come to possess this earthy information, so lacking in delicacy or dignity?



Color inflamed Emily's cheeks as she pondered Charlotte's question.  Heathcliffe, a gelding?   With a toss of her ringlets she drew the fine lawn handkerchief from her sleeve and fluttered it with an airy gesture. "I don't give a fig for where Heathcliffe was born. He's as fine a steed as a horse from London."


"What's all this?" Anne said as she entered the parlor with a tea tray.  "Emily, you look flushed.  Here come sit down and have a crumpet."  She made her way gracefully to the table by the hearth, oblivious of the building tension in the room


Charlotte's plain but pleasant face darkened with anger.  "Tea and crumpets don't solve everything Anne.  Are you aware that our sister wants to become a horse wrangler?"


The tea tray, when it dropped from Anne's hands seemed to fall in slow motion, a thin stream of translucent liquid arcing from the white china pot  and crumpets launching like diminutive baked bombs.  The explosion on the stone hearth was tremendous, china shattering, tea sizzling as it hit the coals and the tray clattering for ages before it settled.

The silence, after the explosion, was not a peaceful lack of sound, but rather like the humming noise on the heath as electricity charges the air before a great crack of thunder.  Suddenly guttural screams were torn from three lovely white throats as the sister's Brontë rushed at each other headlong in the frenzy of familial passion turned into a bout of wrestling, hair pulling and name calling.


Let us draw a curtain on the scene so as not to observe the torn pantaloons, the clumps of hair on the parlor floor, the bloodied noses, the unladylike oaths, the climbing on the horsehair sofa and launching with an airborne assault on a writhing pile of crinoline.  A painful scene, a display of suppressed emotion let loose.  A scene eventually forgiven but not forgotten, to come to light in literary masterpieces like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

The End

    

The Sisters Brontë Have a Smackdown

The untold story of the altercation that brought the Brontë sisters to a brouhaha

Charlotte Brontë

When Charlotte heard Emily sigh for the third time in an hour, she put down her mending and glared.  The glare however, was wasted as Emily was staring fixedly out the rain streaked window.  A sudden gust roared across the heath and through the garden, shaking the panes with a great rattle of icy raindrops.

Charlotte flexed her stiff fingers and rose, crossing the chilly parlor to poke with angry jabs at the coal glowing dimly in the grate.  Emily started, her reverie shattered.   "Goodness Charlotte, you don't have to make quite so much noise."

Charlotte ignored her younger sister and went on poking and prodding at the meager lumps that would never be sufficient to warm the spare parsonage.  "If you've nothing to do, you could help me with the mending.  Anne has torn another nightgown playing the pianoforte."

Emily rose ungraciously, the feet she'd tucked under her grey wool skirt had gone to sleep.  She stamped her tiny boots against the cold floor.  "I've got pins and needles enough in my feet.  I don't need them in my hands."

Charlotte's back stiffened, her head, covered with unremarkable brown hair raised slowly, her back still facing her ungrateful sister.  She stared into the fire, her spine as straight as the poker gripped in her hand.  A chill, unrelated to the cold room ran down Emily's spine.

Charlotte turned smoothly, her eyes narrowed into cruel slits.  When she spoke, her words were deliberate and low.  "What did you say?"

Emily  Brontë

Emily swallowed, her throat suddenly dry as dust.  "I...well I have decided."  Her back straightened as nervous hands fumbled at her waist.  A look of resolve swept across her clear brow and she cleared her throat.  Her voice was high but her tone was clear. "I am resolved not to do any more mending.  I'm sick to death of needlework.  I have decided I want to be a horse wrangler."

Charlotte gave a derisive snort.  "That will be a simple task as we've only one horse."

Emily's shoulders rounded for a moment in discouragement.  Charlotte did have a point.  The Brontë herd consisted of only one tired plow horse named Heathcliffe.

She brightened.  "I'll use Heathcliffe to start my herd!"  She clapped her tiny hands in excitement.  "We'll have a colt every year and soon I'll have a stable full of glorious creatures to wrangle."

Charlotte's laugh was harsh and without jollity.  "You are aware Emily, that Heathcliffe is a gelding?"

Emily raised a bewildered eyebrow.  "What's a gelding?"

to be continued