The Limits of Sex in "The Full Bronte"

The Bronteblog mentions an article by Lucasta Miller, in which she investigates how these seemingly virginal sisters came to write some of the most passionate novels in English Literature. In an attempt to explore the "lust on the moors", she resorts to analysing factual details about the Brontes' background. However, because so much of what we know of the Brontes' is a mixture of fact and fiction, she is not free from falling into this trap. Of particular note is her assertion of Branwell's fathering an illegitimate child, a matter that is merely conspiratorial in nature. Further, she states that Emily was "shy to the point of antisocial and happy only when at home with her own family".

I refute such a belief about Emily, or anyone that is reserved. For how do we know if they were just shy, or bored with the people and world around them? What if one is just happy with the thoughts buring in their own heads that they don't need to resort to seeking 'friendships' with others? And I certainly don't think that one must experience a conventional romantic relationship in order to write about it. Emily might have been a recluse, but maybe she appeared to be so in front of those indivuduals who she deemed were 'incompetent', unable to comprehend the breadth of her intelligence. No doubt, for they might have been burnt by her intensity, of mind, of spirit.

I don't understand why so much disbelief is raised about anyone who can write a passionate, erotic story without having experienced sex. I would like to pose the question, what is sex? If sex is a means of rousing one's self and drowning in orgasms of ecstasies, then could not this pleasure be attained by other ways than sleeping with someone within the confines of the bedroom? I know it is possible for the mind to take intense delight in learning for learning's sake. There is a preculiar thrill one gets after mastering a foreign language, in solving a math puzzle, in crafting a story, in making patterns on a canvas. These are all very active, very involved acts, that employ, if done earnestly, every inch of one's being.

When the human capacity for action is so enormous, why limit pleasure to the single act of having sex in a conventional sense? After all, is pleasure something we want to limit? If pleasure is finite, why do we spend our entire lives seeking it? Surely, we also don't spend our entire lives having sex and sex only!

In discussing the lives of virgin women writers, we tend to ask more questions of their love lives than their inner lives, the lives they lived in their heads. We try so hard to find explanations in conventional form: there's the theory that Emily must have been in love with a young man, or else she could have not written Wuthering Heights. In trying to find such simple solutions, people are in fact limiting themselves. They are limiting their own imaginations from exploring the paths previously untrodden. They are tying to define the indefinable.


But I ask, is that not just as cruel, if not more, as Heathcliff, the character's, "revolting scenes" of violence? And more importantly, who is to judge?