Emily in a portrait by her brother Branwell

Today is Emily Bronte‘s birthday (1818-1848).  Earlier posts on Anne and Charlotte here and here.

Frye in “Four Forms of Prose Fiction”:

In novels that we think of as typical, like those of Jane Austen, plot and dialogue are closely linked to those of the comedy of manners.  The conventions of Wuthering Heights are linked rather with the tale and the ballad.  They seem to have more affinity with tragedy, and the tragic emotions of passion and fury, which would shatter the balance of tone in Jane Austen, can be safely accommodated here.  So can the supernatural, or the suggestion of it, which is difficult to get into a novel.  The shape of the plot is different: instead of maneuvering around a situation, as Jane Austen does, Emily Bronte tells her story with linear accents, and she seems to need the help of a narrator, who would be absurdly out of place in Jane Austen.  Conventions so different justify us regarding Wuthering Heights as a different form of prose fiction from the novel, a form we shall here call romance.  (CW 21, 79)