Patrick Brontë
Patrick Brontë around 1860
Born	(1777-03-17)17 March 1777 Rathfriland, County Down, Ireland
Died	7 June 1861(1861-06-07) (aged 84) Haworth
Nationality	British
Occupation	Teacher, Reverend
Spouse	Maria Branwell (1783–1821)
Children	Maria (b. 23 April 1813, d. 6 May 1825(1825-05-06) (aged 12) Elizabeth (b. 8 February 1814, d. 15 June 1825(1825-06-15) (aged 11) Charlotte (b. 21 April 1816, d. 31 March 1855(1855-03-31) (aged 38) Branwell (b. 26 June 1817, d. 24 September 1848(1848-09-24) (aged 31) Emily (b. 30 July 1818, d. 19 December 1848(1848-12-19) (aged 30) Anne (b. 17 January 1820, d. 28 May 1849(1849-05-28) (aged 29)

The Reverend Patrick Brontë (17 March 1777 - 7 June 1861) was an Irish Anglican curate and writer who spent most of his adult life in England, and was the father of the writers Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, and of Branwell Brontë, his only son. Patrick outlived all six of his children and, by 40 years, his wife, the former Maria Branwell.

Origins[link]

Patrick Brunty (as he was originally named) was the first of ten children born to Hugh Brunty and Alice McClory,^[1] in Drumballyroney (near Rathfriland), County Down. At one point in his adult life he formally changed the spelling of his name from Brunty to Brontë. (See the article Brontë for theories for the change).

He had several apprenticeships (to a blacksmith, a linen draper, and a weaver) until he became a teacher in 1798. He moved to Cambridge in 1802 to study theology at St. John's College and received his BA degree in 1806. he was then appointed curate at Wethersfield, Essex, where he was ordained a deacon of the Church of England, and ordained into the priesthood in 1807.^[2]

Curate[link]

In 1809 he became assistant curate at Wellington in Shropshire and in 1810 his first published poem, Winter Evening Thoughts, appeared in a local newspaper, followed in 1811 by a collection of moral verses, Cottage Poems. The following year (1812) he was appointed a school examiner at a Wesleyan academy, Woodhouse Grove School, near Guiseley.

Family[link]

At Guisely Brontë met Maria Branwell (1783–1821), whom he married on 29 December 1812. Their first child, Maria (1814–1825), was born after their move to Hartshead, Yorkshire, and their second, Elizabeth (1815–1825), after the family moved to Thornton. There the remaining children were born: Charlotte (1816–1855), Patrick Branwell (1817–1848), Emily (1818–1848) and Anne (1820–1849).

Brontë was offered the perpetual curacy of Haworth in June 1819, and took the family there in April 1820. His sister-in-law Elizabeth Branwell (1776–1842), who had lived with the family at Thornton in 1815, joined the household in 1821 to help to look after the children and to care for Maria Brontë, who was suffering the final stages of tuberculosis. Elizabeth decided to move permanently to Haworth to act as housekeeper.

Brontë was responsible for the building of a Sunday school in Haworth, which he opened in 1832. He remained active in local causes into his old age, and between 1849 and 1850 organised action to procure a clean water supply for the village, which was eventually achieved in 1856.

After the death of his last surviving child, Charlotte, nine months after her marriage, he cooperated with Elizabeth Gaskell on the biography of his daughter. He was also responsible for the posthumous publication of Charlotte's first novel, The Professor, in 1857. Charlotte's husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls (1819–1906), who had been Brontë's curate, stayed in the household until he returned to Ireland after Brontë's death, at the age of 84, in 1861. Brontë outlived not only his wife (by 40 years) but all seven of his children.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• The Letters of the Reverend Patrick Brontë Edited by Dudley Green Foreword by Asa Briggs (Nonsuch Publishing Ltd 2005)
• A Man of Sorrow: The Life, Letters, and Times of the Rev. Patrick Brontë, John Lock and Canon W.T. Dixon, (1965)
• The Brontës, Juliet Barker (1995)
• Charlotte Brontë: Evolution of Genius Winifred Gerin,(1967)
• The Letters of Charlotte Brontë (3 vols, edited by Margaret Smith), (1995–2003)
• The Book of General Ignorance, Foreword by Stephen Fry (Mackays of Chatham, plc 2006)

External links[link]

• Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth
• Cottage Poems (from the Gutenberg Project)
• Bronte Family. Italian Translation

v t e Brontë sisters Charlotte The Green Dwarf (1833) Jane Eyre (1847) Shirley (1849) Villette (1853) The Professor (1857) Emily Wuthering Heights (1847) Anne Agnes Grey (1847) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) Collaborative work Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846) List of Brontë poems Family Patrick Brontë Branwell Brontë Maria Brontë Elizabeth Brontë Maria Branwell Arthur Bell Nicholls See also Brontë Country Brontë Parsonage Museum Brontë Waterfall Brontë Way Cowan Bridge School Constantin Héger Ellen Nussey Gondal Victorian literature

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Branwell Brontë, self portrait, 1840

Patrick Branwell Brontë ( /ˈbrɒnti/ or /ˈbrɒnteɪ/; 26 June 1817 – 24 September 1848) was a painter and poet, the only son of the Brontë family, and the brother of the writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne.

Youth[link]

Branwell Brontë, Map of Angria, ca. 1830–1831

Branwell Brontë was the fourth of six children and the only son of Patrick Brontë and his wife, Maria Branwell Brontë. He was born in Thornton, near Bradford, Yorkshire, and moved with his family to Haworth when his father was appointed to the perpetual curacy in 1821.

Of the four Brontë siblings who survived into adulthood, Branwell Brontë seems to have been regarded within the family as the most talented, at least during his childhood and youth.^{[citation needed]} While four of his five sisters were sent to Cowan Bridge boarding school (resulting in the death of his two oldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, from tuberculosis),^{[clarification needed]} Branwell was kept at home to be privately educated by his father, who gave him a classical education suitable for admission to Oxford or Cambridge.^{[citation needed]} Elizabeth Gaskell, biographer of his sister, Charlotte Bronte, says this of Branwell's schooling:

Mr. Brontë's friends advised him to send his son to school; but, remembering both the strength of will of his own youth and his mode of employing it, he believed that Patrick was better at home, and that he himself could teach him well, as he had told others before.^[1]

Brontë collaborated as a writer with his sisters in childhood and adolescence, creating fictional worlds. His surviving juvenilia shows that he collaborated most closely with Charlotte on their imaginary world, Angria.^{[citation needed]}

Adulthood[link]

Branwell Brontë painted himself out of this painting of his three sisters.

As a young man, Branwell Brontë was trained as a portrait painter in Haworth, and worked as a portrait painter in Bradford in 1838 and 1839. His most famous portrait is of his three sisters: he seems to have painted himself out, though a legend holds that after an argument his father rubbed the image out with turpentine.

In 1840, Brontë became a tutor to a family of young boys in Broughton-in-Furness but was dismissed within six months. During this time he did a translation of Horace. He was then employed by the Manchester and Leeds Railway, initially as 'assistant clerk in charge' at their Sowerby Bridge station, being appointed to that post in August 1840, his salary being £75 per annum paid quarterly;^[2] neither the station nor the line had opened – this event took place on 5 October 1840.^[3] Brontë's salary was increased to £130 when he was transferred to Luddendenfoot railway station as 'clerk in charge' on 1 April 1841.^[2] He was dismissed in 1842 due to a deficit of eleven pounds, one shilling and sevenpence in the accounts, probably stolen by Watson, the porter, who was left in charge when Brontë went drinking.^[2] This was attributed to incompetence rather than theft, and the missing sum was deducted from Brontë's salary.^[2] During his period of employment both as a tutor and on the railways he harboured literary ambitions and published poetry under various pseudonyms in the Yorkshire press.

In 1843 Brontë took up another tutoring position in Thorp Green, appointed as the tutor to the Reverend Edmund Robinson's young son. He gained this position through his sister Anne, who was the governess to the Robinsons' two older daughters. During this time he corresponded with a number of old friends about his increasing infatuation with Robinson's wife Lydia, who was the daughter of Rev. Thomas Gisborne. He was dismissed on unspecified charges in 1845. It is thought, according to his account to his own family, the Robinson family's silence on the reason for his dismissal, and subsequent gifts of money from Mrs. Robinson through her servants, that he had an affair with Mrs. Robinson and that the affair had been discovered by her husband.

Elizabeth Gaskell refers to a letter received after his dismissal

sternly dismissing him, intimating that his proceedings were discovered, characterising them as bad beyond expression, and charging him, on pain of exposure, to break off immediately, and for ever, all communication with every member of the family.^[1]

Brontë returned home to his family at the Haworth parsonage, but he was devastated by Mrs. Robinson's abandonment and the increasing unlikelihood of a reunion and turned to alcohol. He became an alcoholic and was thought to be addicted to laudanum.^[1] His behaviour became irrational and dangerous as he developed delirium tremens. Charlotte's letters from this time demonstrate that she was angered by his behaviour, but that her father was patient with his broken son. Although it was at this time that his sisters' first novels were being accepted for publication, it is not known whether he was even informed.

Self caricature of Branwell (1847) in bed waiting to die.

Brontë's severe addictions masked the onset of tuberculosis, and his family did not realise that he was seriously ill until he collapsed outside the house and a local doctor identified him as being in the disease's terminal stages. He died shortly thereafter.

Emily Brontë died of the disease in December of that year and Anne Brontë the following May.

Cultural references[link]

A portrait of Emily, by Branwell

Under the collective title Brotherly Sisters, Terence Pettigrew tells the Brontë story in fifty-three individual narrative poems. The collection starts with their father's farewell to his native Ireland in 1802 (The Road From Drumballyroney), includes Branwell's disastrous affair with Lydia Robinson, (In Love And Talking Nonsense) and ends with a poignant description of Anne Brontë's death, in Scarborough, in 1849 (Do Angels Feel The Cold ?).

In Stella Gibbons' novel Cold Comfort Farm (1932), the character Mr. Mybug is introduced as writing a psychological study of Branwell Brontë intended to show that Branwell wrote Wuthering Heights.

Branwell and his sisters are the central figures in the play The Gales of March written by Lee Bollinger in 1987.

In June 2009 the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth hosted an exhibition entitled Sex, Drugs and Literature - The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë focusing on Branwell's life.^[4]

In 2011 Blake Morrison wrote We are Three Sisters, a re-working of Chekhov's Three Sisters based on the lives of the Brontë sisters and featuring Branwell and Mrs Robinson, which premiered in Halifax on 9 September before touring.

Branwell Brontë poems[link]

• Lines
• On Caroline
• Thorp Green
• Remember Me

Juvenilia[link]

(written with his sisters)

• The Young Men's Magazine, Number 1 - 3 (August 1830)
• The Spell
• The Secret
• Lily Hart
• The Foundling
• The Green Dwarf
• My Angria and the Angrians
• Albion and Marina
• Tales of the Islanders
• Tales of Angria (written 1838–1839 - a collection of childhood and young adult writings including five short novels)
  • Mina Laury
  • Stancliffe's Hotel
  • The Duke of Zamorna
  • Henry Hastings
  • Caroline Vernon
  • The Roe Head Journal Fragments

References[link]

Further reading[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Branwell Brontë

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Branwell Brontë

• Branwell Brontë: a biography by Winifred Gérin (Toronto/NY: T. Nelson & Sons, 1961, Hutchinson 1972)
• The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë by Daphne du Maurier (Victor Gollancz 1960, Penguin Books 1972)
• The Poems of Patrick Branwell Brontë, ed. by Tom Winnifrith (Oxford: Blackwell Ltd, 1983)
• The Life of Patrick Branwell Brontë by Tom Winnifrith
• The Brontës and their Background by Tom Winnifrith (1973 Macmillan, 1988 Palgrave Macmillan)
• The Brontës by Juliet Barker (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994)
• A Brontë Family Chronology by Edward Chitham (2003 Palgrave Macmillan)
• Branwell, A Novel of the Brontë Brother (ISBN 1-933368-00-4), by Douglas A. Martin
• A Chainless Soul, a biography of Emily Brontë, by Katherine Frank

External links[link]

• Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth
• Brontë Italian Site

v t e Brontë sisters Charlotte The Green Dwarf (1833) Jane Eyre (1847) Shirley (1849) Villette (1853) The Professor (1857) Emily Wuthering Heights (1847) Anne Agnes Grey (1847) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) Collaborative work Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846) List of Brontë poems Family Patrick Brontë Branwell Brontë Maria Brontë Elizabeth Brontë Maria Branwell Arthur Bell Nicholls See also Brontë Country Brontë Parsonage Museum Brontë Waterfall Brontë Way Cowan Bridge School Constantin Héger Ellen Nussey Gondal Victorian literature

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2009)

Charlotte Brontë
Portrait by George Richmond
Born	(1816-04-21)21 April 1816 Thornton, Yorkshire, England
Died	31 March 1855(1855-03-31) (aged 38) Haworth, Yorkshire, England
Pen name	Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley Currer Bell
Occupation	Novelist, poet
Nationality	English
Genres	Fiction, poetry
Notable work(s)	Jane Eyre Villette
Spouse(s)	Arthur Bell Nichols (1854–1855 (her death))
Signature

Charlotte Brontë ( /ˈbrɒnti/; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards. She wrote Jane Eyre under the pen name Currer Bell.

Early life and education[link]

Charlotte was born in Thornton, Yorkshire in 1816, the third of six children, to Maria (née Branwell) and her husband Patrick Brontë (formerly surnamed Brunty or Prunty), an Irish Anglican clergyman. In 1820, the family moved a few miles to the village of Haworth, where Patrick had been appointed Perpetual Curate of St Michael and All Angels Church. Charlotte's mother died of cancer on 15 September 1821, leaving five daughters and a son to be taken care of by her sister Elizabeth Branwell.

In August 1824, Charlotte was sent with three of her sisters, Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth, to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire (Charlotte later used the school as the basis for the fictional Lowood School in Jane Eyre). The school's poor conditions, Charlotte maintained, permanently affected her health and physical development and hastened the deaths of her two elder sisters, Maria (born 1814) and Elizabeth (born 1815), who died of tuberculosis in June 1825. Soon after their father removed them from the school.^[1] At home in Haworth Parsonage Charlotte acted as "the motherly friend and guardian of her younger sisters".^{[citation needed]} She and the other surviving children — Branwell, Emily, and Anne – created their own literary fictional worlds, and began chronicling the lives and struggles of the inhabitants of these imaginary kingdoms. Charlotte and Branwell wrote Byronic stories about their imagined country ("Angria") and Emily and Anne wrote articles and poems about theirs ("Gondal"). The sagas which they created were elaborate and convoluted (and still exist in partial manuscripts) and provided them with an obsessive interest during childhood and early adolescence, which prepared them for their literary vocations in adulthood.^{[citation needed]} Charlotte continued her education at Roe Head, Mirfield, from 1831 to 32, where she met her lifelong friends and correspondents, Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor.^[1] During this period, she wrote her novella The Green Dwarf (1833) under the name of Wellesley. Charlotte returned to Roe Head as a teacher from 1835 to 1838. In 1839, she took up the first of many positions as governess to various families in Yorkshire, a career she pursued until 1841. Politically a Tory, she preached tolerance rather than revolution. She held high moral principles, and, despite her shyness in company, she was always prepared to argue her beliefs.^[2][3]

Brussels[link]

Plaque in Brussels

In 1842 Charlotte and Emily travelled to Brussels to enroll in a boarding school run by Constantin Heger (1809–96) and his wife Claire Zoé Parent Heger (1804–87). In return for board and tuition, Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. Their time at the boarding school was cut short when Elizabeth Branwell, their aunt who joined the family after the death of their mother to look after the children, died of internal obstruction in October 1842. Charlotte returned alone to Brussels in January 1843 to take up a teaching post at the boarding school. Her second stay at the boarding school was not a happy one; she became lonely, homesick and deeply attached to Constantin Heger. She finally returned to Haworth in January 1844 and later used her time at the boarding school as the inspiration for some experiences in The Professor and Villette.

First publication[link]

In May 1846, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne self-financed the publication of a joint collection of poetry under the assumed names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. These pseudonyms deliberately veiled the sisters' gender whilst preserving their real initials, thus Charlotte was "Currer Bell". "Bell" was also the middle name of Haworth's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, whom Charlotte would later marry. Of the decision to use noms de plume, Charlotte later wrote:

Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because — without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called 'feminine' – we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.^[4]

Although only two copies of the collection of poetry were sold, the sisters continued writing for publication and began their first novels, continuing to use their noms de plume when sending manuscripts to potential publishers.

[edit] Jane Eyre

Title page of the first edition of Jane Eyre

Charlotte's first manuscript, called The Professor, did not secure a publisher, although she was heartened by an encouraging response she received from Smith, Elder & Co of Cornhill, who expressed an interest in any longer works which "Currer Bell" might wish to send.^[5] Charlotte responded by finishing and sending a second manuscript in August 1847, and six weeks later this second manuscript (titled Jane Eyre: An Autobiography) was published. Jane Eyre was a success, and initially received favourable reviews. Straightaway there was speculation about the identity of Currer Bell, and whether Bell was a man or a woman. A couple of months later this speculation heightened upon the subsequent publication of the first novels by Charlotte's sisters: Emily's Wuthering Heights (by "Ellis Bell") and Anne's Agnes Grey (by "Acton Bell").^[6] Accompanying this speculation was a change in the critical reaction to Charlotte's work; accusations began to be made that Charlotte's writing was "coarse",^[7] a judgement which was made more readily once it was suspected that "Currer Bell" was a woman.^[8] However sales of Jane Eyre continued to be strong, and may even have increased due to the novel's developing reputation as an 'improper' book.^[9]

[edit] Shirley and family bereavements

Following the success of Jane Eyre, Charlotte began work in 1848 on the manuscript of what was to become her second novel, Shirley. However the manuscript was only partially completed when the Brontë household suffered a tragic turn of events, experiencing the deaths of three family members within a period of only eight months. In September 1848 Charlotte's brother, Branwell, the only son of the family, died of chronic bronchitis and marasmus exacerbated by heavy drinking, although Charlotte believed his death was due to tuberculosis. Branwell was also a suspected "opium eater", (i.e. a laudanum addict). Emily became seriously ill shortly after Branwell's funeral, dying of pulmonary tuberculosis in December 1848. Anne died of the same disease in May 1849. Charlotte was unable to continue writing during this period.

After Anne's death Charlotte resumed writing as a way of dealing with her grief,^[10] and Shirley was published in October 1849. Shirley deals with the themes of industrial unrest and the role of women in society. Unlike Jane Eyre, which is written from the first-person perspective of the main character, Shirley is written from the third-person perspective of a narrator. It consequently lacks the emotional immediacy of Jane Eyre,^[11] and reviewers found it less shocking.

In society[link]

In view of the success of her novels, particularly Jane Eyre, Charlotte was persuaded by her publisher to visit London occasionally, where she revealed her true identity and began to move in a more exalted social circle, becoming friends with Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Gaskell, and acquainted with William Makepeace Thackeray and G. H. Lewes. However Charlotte never left Haworth for more than a few weeks at a time as she did not want to leave her ageing father's side. Thackeray’s daughter, the writer Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie recalled a visit to her father by Charlotte:

…two gentlemen come in, leading a tiny, delicate, serious, little lady, with fair straight hair, and steady eyes. She may be a little over thirty; she is dressed in a little barège dress with a pattern of faint green moss. She enters in mittens, in silence, in seriousness; our hearts are beating with wild excitement. This then is the authoress, the unknown power whose books have set all London talking, reading, speculating; some people even say our father wrote the books – the wonderful books… The moment is so breathless that dinner comes as a relief to the solemnity of the occasion, and we all smile as my father stoops to offer his arm; for, genius though she may be, Miss Brontë can barely reach his elbow. My own personal impressions are that she is somewhat grave and stern, specially to forward little girls who wish to chatter… Every one waited for the brilliant conversation which never began at all. Miss Brontë retired to the sofa in the study, and murmured a low word now and then to our kind governess… the conversation grew dimmer and more dim, the ladies sat round still expectant, my father was too much perturbed by the gloom and the silence to be able to cope with it at all… after Miss Brontë had left, I was surprised to see my father opening the front door with his hat on. He put his fingers to his lips, walked out into the darkness, and shut the door quietly behind him… long afterwards… Mrs. Procter asked me if I knew what had happened… It was one of the dullest evenings [Mrs Procter] had ever spent in her life… the ladies who had all come expecting so much delightful conversation, and the gloom and the constraint, and how finally, overwhelmed by the situation, my father had quietly left the room, left the house, and gone off to his club.^[12]

Friendship with Elizabeth Gaskell[link]

Charlotte sent copies of Shirley to selected leading authors of the day, including Elizabeth Gaskell. Gaskell and Charlotte subsequently met in August 1850^[13] and began a friendship which, whilst not necessarily close, was significant in that Gaskell would write a biography of Charlotte after Charlotte's death in 1855. The biography, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, was published in 1857 and was unusual at the time in that, rather than analysing its subject's achievements, it instead concentrated on the private details of Charlotte's life, in particular placing emphasis on aspects which countered the accusations of 'coarseness' which had been levelled at Charlotte's writing.^[14] Though frank in places, Gaskell was selective about which details she revealed; for example, she suppressed details of Charlotte's love for Heger, a married man, as being too much of an affront to contemporary morals and as a possible source of distress to Charlotte's still-living friends, father and husband.^[15] Gaskell also provided doubtful and inaccurate information about Patrick Brontë, claiming, for example, that he did not allow his children to eat meat. This is refuted by one of Emily Brontë's diary papers, in which she describes the preparation of meat and potatoes for dinner at the parsonage, as Juliet Barker points out in her recent biography, The Brontës. It has been argued that the particular approach of The Life of Charlotte Brontë transferred the focus of attention away from the 'difficult' novels of not just Charlotte but all the Brontë sisters, and began a process of sanctification of their private lives.^[16]

[edit] Villette

Charlotte's third published novel (and her last to be published during her lifetime) was Villette, which came out in 1853. The main themes of Villette include isolation, and how such a condition can be borne,^[17] and the internal conflict brought about by societal repression of individual desire.^[18] The book's main character, Lucy Snowe, travels abroad to teach in a boarding school in the fictional town of Villette, where she encounters a culture and religion different to her own, and where she falls in love with a man ('Paul Emanuel') whom she cannot marry due to societal forces. Her experiences result in her having a breakdown, but eventually she achieves independence and fulfilment in running her own school. Villette marked Charlotte's return to the format of writing from a first-person perspective (that of Lucy Snowe), a technique which she had used so successfully in Jane Eyre. Also similar to Jane Eyre was Charlotte's use of aspects from her own life history as inspiration for fictional events in the novel,^[18] in particular her reworking of her own time spent at the pensionnat in Brussels into Lucy spending time teaching at the boarding school, and her own falling in love with Constantin Heger into Lucy falling in love with 'Paul Emanuel'. Villette was acknowledged by the critics of the day as being a potent and sophisticated piece of writing, although it was still criticised for its 'coarseness' and for not being suitably 'feminine' in its portrayal of Lucy's desires.^[19]

Illness and subsequent death[link]

In June 1854, Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate and, in the opinion of many scholars,^[who?] the model for several of her literary characters such as Jane Eyre's Edward Rochester and St. John Rivers.^{[citation needed]} She became pregnant soon after the marriage. Her health declined rapidly during this time, and according to Gaskell, her earliest biographer, she was attacked by "sensations of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness."^[20] Charlotte died, along with her unborn child, on 31 March 1855, at the young age of 38. Her death certificate gives the cause of death as phthisis (tuberculosis), but many biographers^[who?] suggest she may have died from dehydration and malnourishment, caused by excessive vomiting from severe morning sickness or hyperemesis gravidarum. There is also evidence to suggest that Charlotte died from typhus she may have caught from Tabitha Ackroyd, the Brontë household's oldest servant, who died shortly before her.^{[citation needed]} Charlotte was interred in the family vault in The Church of St. Michael and All Angels, Haworth, West Yorkshire, England.

Posthumously, her first-written novel was published in 1857. The fragment she worked on in her last years in 1860 has been twice completed by recent authors, the more famous version being Emma Brown: A Novel from the Unfinished Manuscript by Charlotte Brontë by Clare Boylan in 2003. Much Angria material, too, has appeared in published form since the author's death.

Gallery[link]

• 

  Branwell Brontë, Painting of the 3 Brontë Sisters, l to r Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë. Branwell painted himself out of the painting of his three sisters.

• 

  Charlotte Brontë, photograph, 1854

• 

  A postum idealized portrait by Duyckinick, 1873, based on a drawing by George Richmond

• 

  Portrait by J. H. Thompson at the Bronte Parsonage Museum.

Bibliography[link]

Juvenilia[link]

• The Young Men's Magazine, Number 1 - 3 (August 1830)
• The Spell
• The Secret
• Lily Hart
• The Foundling
• The Green Dwarf
• My Angria and the Angrians
• Albion and Marina
• Tales of the Islanders
• Tales of Angria (written 1838–1839 - a collection of childhood and young adult writings including five short novels)
  • Mina Laury
  • Stancliffe's Hotel
  • The Duke of Zamorna
  • Henry Hastings
  • Caroline Vernon
  • The Roe Head Journal Fragments

The Green Dwarf, A Tale of the Perfect Tense was written in 1833 under the pseudonym Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley. It shows the influence of Walter Scott, and Brontë's modifications to her earlier gothic style have led Christine Alexander to comment that, in the work, "it is clear that Brontë was becoming tired of the gothic mode per se".^[21]

Novels[link]

• Jane Eyre, published 1847
• Shirley, published in 1849
• Villette, published in 1853
• The Professor, written before Jane Eyre, submitted at first along with Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, then separately, and rejected in either form by many publishing houses, published posthumously in 1857
• Emma, unfinished; Charlotte Brontë wrote only 20 pages of the manuscript, published posthumously in 1860. In recent decades, at least two continuations of this fragment have appeared:

• Emma, by "Charlotte Brontë and Another Lady", published 1980; although this has been attributed to Elizabeth Goudge,^[22] the actual author was Constance Savery.^[23]
• Emma Brown, by Clare Boylan, published 2003

Poetry[link]

• Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846)
• Selected Poems of The Brontës, Everyman Poetry (1997)

	Novels portal
	Poetry portal

Notes[link]

References[link]

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & Sons; New York, E. P. Dutton.
• Margaret Lane (1953) The Brontë Story: a reconsideration of Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë.

Further reading[link]

• The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, 3 volumes edited by Margaret Smith
• The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell
• Charlotte Brontë, Winifred Gérin
• Charlotte Brontë: a passionate life, Lyndal Gordon
• The Literary Protégées of the Lake Poets, Dennis Low (Chapter 1 contains a revisionist contextualisation of Robert Southey's infamous letter to Charlotte Brontë)
• Charlotte Brontë: Unquiet Soul, Margot Peters
• In the Footsteps of the Brontës, Ellis Chadwick
• Charlotte Brontë, Rebecca Fraser
• The Brontës, Juliet Barker
• Charlotte Brontë and her Dearest Nell, Barbara Whitehead
• The Brontë Myth, Lucasta Miller
• A Life in Letters, selected by Juliet Barker
• Charlotte Brontë and her Family, Rebecca Fraser
• The Oxford Reader's Companion to the Brontës, Christine Alexander & Margaret Smith
• A Brontë Family Chronology, Edward Chitham
• The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte, James Tilly, 1999
• I Love Charlotte Bronte, Michelle Daly 2009

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Charlotte Brontë

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Charlotte Brontë

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Charlotte Brontë

• Website of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire
• Online editions of Charlotte Brontë's works at eBooks@Adelaide
• Works by Charlotte Brontë at Project Gutenberg
• Charlotte Brontë – Drawing by George Richmond (National Portrait Gallery)
• Modern Day Images of Charlotte Bronte Residences
• Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle, by Clement K. Shorter, from Project Gutenberg
• Charlotte Brontë at the Internet Book List
• More Information about Charlotte Bronte
• Charlotte's Web: A Hypertext on Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre
• Memorial Page for Charlotte Bronte on FindaGrave
• Various images depicting residences of Charlotte Bronte
• 'Napoleon and the Spectre', taken from the manuscript of the Green Dwarf
• 'The Secret' and 'Lily Hart': An Early Manuscript by Charlotte Bronte

v t e Brontë sisters Charlotte The Green Dwarf (1833) Jane Eyre (1847) Shirley (1849) Villette (1853) The Professor (1857) Emily Wuthering Heights (1847) Anne Agnes Grey (1847) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) Collaborative work Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846) List of Brontë poems Family Patrick Brontë Branwell Brontë Maria Brontë Elizabeth Brontë Maria Branwell Arthur Bell Nicholls See also Brontë Country Brontë Parsonage Museum Brontë Waterfall Brontë Way Cowan Bridge School Constantin Héger Ellen Nussey Gondal Victorian literature

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2009)

Emily Brontë
A portrait of Brontë made by her brother, Branwell Brontë
Born	Emily Jane Brontë (1818-07-30)30 July 1818 Thornton, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
Died	19 December 1848(1848-12-19) (aged 30) Haworth, Yorkshire, England
Pen name	Ellis Bell
Occupation	Poet, novelist, governess
Nationality	English
Genres	Fiction, poetry
Literary movement	Romanticism
Notable work(s)	Wuthering Heights
Relative(s)	Brontë family
Influences The Holy Bible, William Shakespeare, Lord Byron, John Milton, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Charlotte Brontë
Influenced Virginia Woolf, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Carson, Phillip Roth, Alice Munro, Thomas Hardy, Sylvia Plath, William Faulkner, Anne Brontë, J. K. Rowling

Emily Jane Brontë ( /ˈbrɒnti/;^[1][2] 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her solitary novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She published under the pen name Ellis Bell.

Biography[link]

The three Brontë sisters, in a 1834 painting by their brother Patrick Branwell. From left to right: Anne, Emily and Charlotte. (Branwell used to be between Emily and Charlotte, but subsequently painted himself out.)

Emily Brontë was born on 30 July 1818 in Thornton, near Bradford in Yorkshire, to Maria Branwell and Patrick Brontë. She was the younger sister of Charlotte Brontë and the fifth of six children. In 1824, the family moved to Haworth, where Emily's father was perpetual curate, and it was in these surroundings that their literary gifts flourished.

Early life and education[link]

After the death of their mother in 1821, when Emily was three years old,^[3] the older sisters Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte were sent to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, where they encountered abuse and privations later described by Charlotte in Jane Eyre. Emily joined the school for a brief period. When a typhus epidemic swept the school, Maria and Elizabeth caught it. Maria, who may actually have had tuberculosis, was sent home, where she died. Emily was subsequently removed from the school along with Charlotte and Elizabeth. Elizabeth died soon after their return home.

The three remaining sisters and their brother Patrick Branwell were thereafter educated at home by their father and aunt Elizabeth Branwell, their mother's sister. In their leisure time the children created a number of fantasy worlds, which were featured in stories they wrote and enacted about the imaginary adventures of their toy soldiers along with the Duke of Wellington and his sons, Charles and Arthur Wellesley. Little of Emily's work from this period survives, except for poems spoken by characters (The Brontës' Web of Childhood, Fannie Ratchford, 1941).^[4] When Emily was 13, she and Anne withdrew from participation in the Angria story and began a new one about Gondal, a large island in the North Pacific. With the exception of Emily's Gondal poems and Anne's lists of Gondal's characters and place-names, their writings on Gondal were not preserved. Some "diary papers" of Emily's have survived in which she describes current events in Gondal, some of which were written, others enacted with Anne. One dates from 1841, when Emily was twenty-three: another from 1845, when she was twenty-seven.^[5]

At seventeen, Emily attended the Roe Head girls' school, where Charlotte was a teacher, but managed to stay only three months before being overcome by extreme homesickness. She returned home and Anne took her place.^[6] At this time, the girls' objective was to obtain sufficient education to open a small school of their own.

Adulthood[link]

Emily became a teacher at Law Hill School in Halifax beginning in September 1838, when she was twenty. Her health broke under the stress of the 17-hour work day and she returned home in April 1839. Thereafter she became the stay-at-home daughter, doing most of the cooking and cleaning and teaching Sunday school. She taught herself German out of books and practised piano.

Constantin Heger, teacher of Charlotte and Emily during their stay in Brussels, on a daguerreotype dated from circa 1865

Plaque in Brussels

In 1842, Emily accompanied Charlotte to Brussels, Belgium, where they attended a girls' academy run by Constantin Heger. They planned to perfect their French and German in anticipation of opening their school. Nine of Emily's French essays survive from this period. The sisters returned home upon the death of their aunt. They did try to open a school at their home, but were unable to attract students to the remote area.

In 1844, Emily began going through all the poems she had written, recopying them neatly into two notebooks. One was labelled "Gondal Poems"; the other was unlabelled. Scholars such as Fannie Ratchford and Derek Roper have attempted to piece together a Gondal storyline and chronology from these poems.^[7][8] In the autumn of 1845, Charlotte discovered the notebooks and insisted that the poems be published. Emily, furious at the invasion of her privacy, at first refused, but relented when Anne brought out her own manuscripts and revealed she had been writing poems in secret as well.

In 1846, the sisters' poems were published in one volume as Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The Brontë sisters had adopted pseudonyms for publication: Charlotte was Currer Bell, Emily was Ellis Bell and Anne was Acton Bell. Charlotte wrote in the "Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell" that their "ambiguous choice" was "dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because... we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice[.]" Charlotte contributed 20 poems, and Emily and Anne each contributed 21. Although the sisters were told several months after publication that only two copies had sold, they were not discouraged. The Athenaeum reviewer praised Ellis Bell's work for its music and power, and the Critic reviewer recognized "the presence of more genius than it was supposed this utilitarian age had devoted to the loftier exercises of the intellect."

[edit] Wuthering Heights

In 1847, Emily published her novel, Wuthering Heights, as two volumes of a three-volume set (the last volume being Agnes Grey by her sister Anne). Its innovative structure somewhat puzzled critics.

The Climb to Top Withens, Yorkshire, 2007.

Although it received mixed reviews when it first came out, and was often condemned for its portrayal of amoral passion, the book subsequently became an English literary classic. In 1850, Charlotte edited and published Wuthering Heights as a stand-alone novel and under Emily's real name. Although a letter from her publisher indicates that Emily was finalizing a second novel, the manuscript has never been found.

Death[link]

Emily's health, like her sisters', had been weakened by unsanitary conditions at home,^[9] the source of water being contaminated by runoff from the church's graveyard.^[10] She became sick during her brother's funeral in September 1848. Though her condition worsened steadily, she rejected medical help and all proffered remedies, saying that she would have "no poisoning doctor" near her.^[11] She eventually died of tuberculosis, on 19 December 1848 at around two in the afternoon. She was interred in the Church of St. Michael and All Angels family vault, Haworth, West Yorkshire.

See also[link]

	Novels portal
	Poetry portal

• Walterclough Hall
• A Death-Scene – Poem published in 1846
• Brontë family

Notes[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Emily Brontë, Charles Simpson
• In the Footsteps of the Brontës, Ellis Chadwick
• The Oxford Reader's Companion to the Brontës, Christine Alexander & Margaret Smith^{[disambiguation needed ]}
• Literature and Evil, Georges Bataille
• The Brontë Myth, Lucasta Miller
• Emily, Daniel Wynne
• Dark Quartet, Lynne Reid Banks
• Emily Brontë, Winifred Gerin
• A Chainless Soul: A Life of Emily Brontë, Katherine Frank
• Emily Brontë. Her Life and Work, Muriel Spark and Derek Stanford
• Emily's Ghost: A Novel of the Brontë Sisters, Denise Giardina
• Charlotte and Emily: A Novel of the Brontës, Jude Morgan

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Emily Brontë

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Emily Brontë

• Works by Emily Brontë at Project Gutenberg
• Website of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth
• Some poems by Emily Brontë
• Emily Brontë's grave
• Memorial Page for Emily Brontë at Find-a-Grave
• Short biography and selected Poems
• Reader's Guide to Wuthering Heights
• Map of Locations associated with Wuthering Heights and Emily Brontë
• Dutch website on the Brontës

v t e Brontë sisters Charlotte The Green Dwarf (1833) Jane Eyre (1847) Shirley (1849) Villette (1853) The Professor (1857) Emily Wuthering Heights (1847) Anne Agnes Grey (1847) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) Collaborative work Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846) List of Brontë poems Family Patrick Brontë Branwell Brontë Maria Brontë Elizabeth Brontë Maria Branwell Arthur Bell Nicholls See also Brontë Country Brontë Parsonage Museum Brontë Waterfall Brontë Way Cowan Bridge School Constantin Héger Ellen Nussey Gondal Victorian literature

This article is about human hair. For other uses, see Longhair (disambiguation) or Hair

Boy with shoulder length hair on a beach in Melanesia.

Long hair is a hairstyle. Exactly what constitutes long hair can change from culture to culture, or even within cultures. For example, a woman with chin-length hair in some cultures may be said to have short hair, while a man with the same length of hair in some of the same cultures would be said to have long hair.

Scientists view long hair as playing a large part in natural selection among many species, since long, thick and healthy hair or fur is frequently a sign of fertility and youth.^[1] As hair grows slowly, long hair reveals several years of a person's health status and reproductive fitness. Hair length is significantly correlated with female attractiveness, as rated by men as well as women.^[2] Hair length and quality can act as a cue to especially a woman's youth and health, signifying reproductive potential.^[3] The prevalence of trichophilia (hair partialism or fetischism) is 7% in the population, and very long hair is a common subject of devotion in this group.^[4][5]

Ways of life often viewed as more rigid, such as soldiers and religious cultures, often have explicit rules regarding hair length. For example, Buddhist monks shave their heads as part of their order of worship.^[6] Even outside religious structures, cultures often associate male long hair with ways of life outside of what is culturally accepted. Subservient cultures, for example, are sometimes detected by their rulers through hair length, as was the case with the Gaelic Irish under English rule and the Moors under Spanish rule in Medieval Spain.^[7]

Again, though, there are exceptions to these rules, notably among the long-haired and religiously devoted Nazarites of the Hebrew Bible (Samson being a famous example)^[8] and among the Sikhs.^[9]

East Asian cultures have traditionally seen long, unkempt hair in a woman as a sign of sexual intent or a recent sexual encounter, as usually their hair is tied up in styles such as the ponytail, plait, or any bun.^[10]

Transferred meaning[link]

The traditional connotation of "long hair" in English meant, roughly, someone artistically knowledgeable or wise, an aesthete.^[11] As a descriptive term, it has been applied to Merovingians and classical music enthusiasts, as well as hippies and aesthetes.^[11]

Hair lengths[link]

A Polish woman with hair reaching the mid-back

A Swedish male with waist-length hair

Painting of a woman with hair grown down to her hips, by Franz Xavier Winterhalter

Woman with knee-length braided hair

Hair length is measured (in centimeters or inches) from the line of the scalp on the forehead up over the highest point of the skull to its termination. In cosmetology, hair lengths are usually categorized according to the part of the body where the bulk of the longest hair terminates.^[12] Hair usually takes about two years to reach shoulder length,^[13] and at approximately 80–90 cm (32–36 inches) for most people, waist-length hair usually takes about seven years to grow, including occasional trims.^[12][13]

Maximum hair length[link]

The maximum hair length that is possible to reach is about 15 cm for infants (below the age of 1), about 60 cm for children (below the age of 13), and generally 100 cm for adults. Documentation for decrease of the maximum length with age cannot be found in the literature. Some individuals can reach excessive lengths. Lengths greater than 150 cm are frequently observed in long hair contests.^[14] Xie Qiuping had the longest documented hair in the world, measuring 5.627 m (18 ft 5.54 in) in May 2004.^[15]

The maximum terminal hair length depends on the length of the anagen (period of hair growth) for the individual. Waist-length hair or longer is only possible to reach for people with long anagen. The anagen lasts between 2 and 7 years, for some individuals even longer, and follows by shorter catagen (transition) and telogen (resting) periods. Between 85% and 90% of the hair strains are in anagen.

Psychological significance[link]

Anthropologists speculate that the functional significance of long head hair may be adornment, a by-product of secondary natural selection once other androgenic/somatic hair (body hair) had largely been lost. Another possibility is that long head hair is a result of Fisherian runaway sexual selection, where long lustrous hair is a visible marker for a healthy individual. For some groups or individuals, however, short hair is the selected trait.^[1]

By seven to nine months, infants can tell the sexes apart based on hair length, voice pitch and faces.^[16][17]

Cultural history[link]

Hair is one of the most important ways humans have of presenting themselves, being one of the parts of their body which is easiest to manipulate. Also, males having short, cut hair (or a shaven head) is often viewed as being under society's control, such as while in military service or prison or as punishment for a crime, while males having long hair signifies being outside of the mainstream.^[18]

In Jewish and Christian scriptures[link]

In the Old Testament, the Nazirites would go for long periods of time without cutting their hair to show devotion to God.^[19] Samson is one example; his strength depended upon his refraining from cutting his hair.^[8] The New Testament says, "Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering,"^[20] something followed by women in some apostolic pentecostal denominations in some countries as an act of holiness.

Western culture[link]

Ancient Greece and Rome[link]

In ancient Greece, long male hair was a symbol of wealth and power, while a shaven head was appropriate for a slave. The ancient Greeks had several Gods and heroes who wore their hair long, including Zeus, Achilles, Apollo, and Poseidon. Greek soldiers are said to have worn their hair long in battle. Such warriors considered it a sign of aristocracy and are said to have combed it openly in order to show off. Also, in order to keep enemies from getting a hold of it in battle, they were known to cut the front short, but leave it long in the back, where it was more out of reach. A widely held alternative interpretation of the conventional belief that they cut it short in the front in order to keep their enemies from getting a hold of it during battle is that, they did not in fact cut it in the front, but rather tied it back in a style known as a pony tail in order to keep it out of their enemies' reach. The pony tail method allowed warriors, who often traveled to battle with a minimal amount of equipment in order to avoid excessively heavy loads over long marches, to keep their hair manageable with a small piece of string to hold their pony tail in place and a knife to cut the back to length with one simple slice. Around the sixth century, however, the Greek men shifted to shorter hairstyles, with the exception of the Spartans. Women in the culture remained with the longer style, which for them showed freedom, health, and wealth, as well as good behavior.^[21] In men, it was considered a sign of false pride by this time.^[22] Women in Roman times valued long hair, usually with a center part. Men's hair was usually shorter than women's, (but in the early times, the custom was quite the same as in Greece) although other cultures of the time, such as Greeks in the east, considered long hair to be typical of philosophers, who were thought to be too engrossed in learning to bother with hair.^[23] Strictly in the province of Rome, however the shorter hairstyle was especially popular.^[22] When Julius Caesar conquered the Gauls, who favored long hair, he ordered it to be cut short.^[24]

Middle Ages[link]

In the European middle ages, shorter hair often signified servitude and peasantry, while long hair was often attributed to freemen, as was the case with the Germanic Goths and Merovingians.

The Gaelic Irish (both men and women)^[25] took great pride in their long hair—for example, a person could be heavily fined for cutting a man's hair short against his will.^[26] When the Anglo-Normans and the English colonized Ireland, hair length came to signify one's allegiance. Irishmen who cut their hair short were deemed to be forsaking their Irish heritage. Likewise, English colonists who wore their hair long in the back were deemed to be forsaking their role as English subjects and giving in to the Irish life. Thus, hair length was one of the most common ways of judging a true Englishman in this period. Muslims in Christian areas were ordered to keep their hair short and parted, as their longer style was considered rebellious and barbaric.^[7]

Empress Elisabeth of Austria wearing thigh-length hair in 1865.

A long hair fad was widespread among English and French men in the 11th and 12th centuries, though otherwise it was considered, mostly because of endorsement of the Roman Catholic Church, proper for men to have shorter, and women, longer hair. The fad was largely brought about by monarchs who rejected the shorter hairstyle, causing the people to follow. Wulfstan, a religious leader, worried that those with longer hair would fight like women, and be unable to protect England from foreign invasion. This idea can be found in later military leaders as well, such as those of the American Confederacy.^[27] Knights and rulers would also sometimes cut or pull out their hair in order to show penitence and mourning, and a squire's hair was generally shorter than a knight's. Married women who let their hair flow out in public were frowned upon, as this was normally reserved for the unwed, although they were allowed to let it out in mourning, to show their distressed state. Through these centuries it was expected of Eastern Christians to wear long hair as well as long beards, which was especially expected from clergy and monks.

In England, during the English Civil Wars of 1642 to 1651, male hair length was emblematic of the disputes between Cavaliers and Roundheads (Puritans). Cavaliers wore longer hair, and were less religious-minded, thought of by the Roundheads as lecherous. The more devout Roundheads had short hair, although there were exceptions.^[6]

Recent meanings[link]

A man with waist length hair

Before World War One men generally had longer hair and beards. However, short hair on men has often been enforced as a mean of control, in police, military and other forces that require obedience and discipline. Slaves and defeated armies were often required to shave their heads. The trench warfare in 1914 to 1918 exposed men to flea and lice infestations, which prompted the order to cut short hair, establishing a norm that has persisted.^[12]

Beat poets during the 1950s wore longer hairstyles, as did many of the urban gay culture, although long hair was far from popular. By 1960, a small "beatnik" community in Newquay, Cornwall, England (including a young Wizz Jones) had attracted the attention and the abhorrence of their neighbors for growing their hair to a length past the shoulders, resulting in a television interview with Alan Whicker on BBC television's Tonight series.^[28] The 1960s also introduced The Beatles, who started a more widespread longer hair fad. The social revolution of the 1960s led to a renaissance of unchecked hair growth,^[12] and long hair, especially on men, was worn as a political or countercultural symbol or protest. This cultural symbol extended to several Western countries in the Americas, Western Europe, South Africa, and Australia.^[29] Specific long hairstyles such as dreadlocks have been part of counterculture movements seeking to define other alternative cultures and lifestyles since this time.^[10] Longer hair in general remained popular among the youth rebellion throughout the liberal decade of the 1960s.^[29] Homosexual men, many of whom had adopted a long hairstyle in the early 1950s, have largely abandoned this trend. Some people saw the long hair fad as a threat to gender identity, cultural, and religious norms as it grew with the spread of the hippie movement in the 1960s.^[29] Notably, some country-and-western performers during this period (and many fans) also sported longer hair.^[30][31]

In the 1970s, the popularity of Jamaica's reggae music and musician Bob Marley prompted interest in dreadlocks internationally. The anti-establishment philosophy of Rastafari, echoed in much of the reggae of the time, resonated with leaning youth of all ethnicities — especially and primarily among African Americans and other Blacks, but among counterculture whites as well.^[32] The Eastern Christians are encouraged to wear long hair with long beard. In the 1980s the view of long hair as a solitary signifier of political or counter-cultural identity was countered and parodied in films such as Rambo and many other militaristic heroes of media which challenged then-contemporary views of what was masculine.^[33] Today, longer hairstyles remain popular among rock enthusiasts.^[34] Long hair may be grown for the purpose of being donated to an organization, such as Locks of Love, for hairpieces to help those who could not have hair otherwise, such as those who are diagnosed with alopecia areata.

Women[link]

Women often have a stronger inclination towards long hair than men do. Younger women tend to have longer hair than older women. Hair length and quality can act as a cue to a woman's youth and health, signifying reproductive potential.^[35] Growing and wearing long hair was almost universal among women in the western world until World War One.^[12]

Sikhism[link]

The Sikhs were commanded by Guru Gobind Singh at the Baisakhi Amrit Sanchar in 1699 to wear long uncut hair called Kesh at all times. This was one of the 'five requisites of faith', collectively called Kakars that form the external visible identifiers to clearly affirm a Sikh's commitment and dedication to the order (Hukam) of the tenth master and made one a member of the Khalsa. The Khalsa is the "Saint-Soldier" of Guru Gobind Singh who stated the following: "He does not recognize anyone else except One Lord, not even the bestowal of charities, performance of merciful acts, austerities and restraint on pilgrim-stations; the perfect light of the Lord illuminates his heart, then consider him as the immaculate Khalsa." (Guru Gobind Singh in the Dasam Granth page 1350)

The Kesh or unshorn long hair is an indispensable part of the human body as created by Vaheguru that is the mainstay of the 'Jivan Jaach' and the Rehni that was prescribed by Guru Gobind Singh Sahib by which a Sikh is clearly and quickly identified, Kesh. The kanga, another requisite of faith is usually tucked behind the "Rishi Knot" and tied under the turban. The uncut long head hair and the beard in the case of men forms the main kakar for the Sikhs.

KESADHARI, a term defining a Sikh as one who carries on his head the full growth of his kes (hair) which he never trims or cuts for any reason. Anyone, Sikh or non-Sikh, may keep the hair unshorn, but for the Sikh kes, unshorn hair, is a requisite of faith and an inviolable vow. The Sikh Rahit Maryada published by the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, statutory body for the control and management of Sikh shrines and by extension for laying down rules about Sikh beliefs and practices, issued in 1945, after long and minute deliberations among Sikh scholars and theologians, defines a Sikh thus: Every Sikh who has been admitted to the rites of amrit, i.e. who has been initiated as a Sikh, must allow his hair to grow to its full length. This also applies to those born of Sikh families but [who] have not yet received the rites of amrit of the tenth master, Guru Gobind Singh. ".

Islam[link]

Transjordanian Bedouin with shoulder length hair, during World War II

In the Muslim world, it seems the trend of hair styles is now favouring short over long in men. In the past, Bedouin Muslims often wore their hair in long braids, but western influences brought on the view that such styles were feminine in nature. Now, Bedouins are much less likely to have long hair.^[36] Islamic countries in North Africa such as Egypt view long hair in men as homosexual and in one case the Egyptian police viewed it as satanic and a sign of an infidel^[37].

Muslims regard Prophet Muhammad as the best example to live by, and try to emulate him whenever possible. The Islamic Prophet Muhammad reportedly in Sahih Muslim had hair that "hung over his shoulders and earlobes".^[38] Sahih Bukhari, regarded the most authentic of hadith, also supports this using a prime example of the prophet Isa.^[39] The Prophet Muhammad has also described Jesus as "having long hair reaching his ear lobes."^[40] Malik's Muwatta 51.2.6 reported, Yahya related to me from Malik from Yahya ibn Said that Abu Qatada al-Ansari said to the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, "I have a lot of hair which comes down to my shoulders, shall I comb it? The Messenger of Allah. may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Yes, and honour it." Sometimes Abu Qatada oiled it twice in one day because the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said to him. "Honour it."

With regards to women, neither Qur'an nor Sunnah explicitly state that women cannot cut their hair. Hadith does mention that women should not imitate men, and vice versa, and hence many scholars on this assumption, decree that women should let their hair grow longer than the hair of the Prophet, reaching beyond their shoulders, as hadith mentions that the Prophet had his hair between his shoulder and his earlobes. (He described Jesus's hair, which hung to his earlobes, as long.^[41])

However culturally, some Muslims are opposed to men having long hair as it is also important in Islam to have clear differences (in appearance) between sexes. And generally these cultures encourage women to have long hair and men to have short hair.^[42] The Taliban in Afghanistan viewed long hair for men as a western influence, and punished it by arrest and forced haircuts,^[43] albeit this would be a direct contradiction of the sunnah of the Prophet. Similar measures have been taken by Islamists in Iraq.^[44] In spite of this, several Taleban affiliated members of the Mehsud clan are recognisable by their long hair. The Saudi Islamist fighter Amir Khattab was also notable for his long hair. Dervishes of some Sufi orders, such as the Kasnazani, often have long hair and whirl it around during rituals.^[45]

Native Americans[link]

Yakima boy with mid-back level hair. (Photo by Edward S. Curtis, 1868–1952.)

Many Native American men wore long hair before the arrival of western influences on their culture or rather eastern influences for them. (In Cherokee legends, for example, males said to be handsome were often described as having "long hair almost to the ground" or similar formulas.^[46]). Both men and women of these cultures have frequently struggled to maintain their tradition, but have faced heavy opposition. Many consider it a sign of giving in to western influences to have their hair cut.^[47][48] Early American settlers saw long-haired, native men as rebelling against their civilized society. Mountain men and trappers who adopted the customs were also considered amoral, and often identified by their long hair.^[49] Since the cultural movements of the sixties and seventies, however, Native Americans have felt less pressure to have short hair, as different movements have defended their cultural rights.^[50] For example, several states have loosened prison regulations, allowing Native Americans to wear long hair during incarceration, along with other cultural allowances.^[51] There has been resistance to these changes, however, as long hair is sometimes used to hide drugs, as well as to identify with a gang.^[52]

Sub-Saharan Africans[link]

Ngbandi girls with waist-length hair, central Africa, 1905

In West African cultures, women with long hair were highly valued. Long, thick hair was seen as a sign of health, strength, and capability to bear many children. In keeping with this general theme, women who were too young for marriage would shave a portion of their heads to signal so. This tradition, however, did not extend to every African tribe, as several valued shorter hair.^[53]

African Americans[link]

When African slaves were freed in the Americas, they struggled with comments from whites calling their hair ugly and nappy. Many African-American women began straightening their hair. However, there was and always will be a variety of hairstyles, such as dreadlocks, twists, short hair, long hair, curly hair, straight hair, etc. Social pressures were heavily influencing African-American females to have long straight hair. Although African Americans have short or long hair, they can do a lot with their hair. Therefore, they have hair shows to show the large variety of hairstyles. African Americans, as well as other thick curly-haired people, are often pressured to not wear their natural hair in today's society. When they wear their hair natural, it's soft and easy to manage. However, when it comes to not wanting to wear natural hair, it becomes more difficult to manage. Therefore, African Americans are wearing natural hair more, so it's finally becoming more accepted.

Asia[link]

Japanese woman combing her long hair. (Colour woodblock print from 1920 by Hashiguchi Goyō.)

Illustration of The Tale of Genji, painted by Tosa Mitsuoki (1617-1691).

Historically, East Asian cultures viewed long hair as a sign of youth and aesthetic beauty. Long hair is associated with private life and sexuality. East Asian cultures see long, unkempt hair in a woman as a sign of sexual intent or a recent sexual encounter, as usually their hair is tied up.^[10] Lay Buddhists have long hair, while Buddhist monks have shaved heads.^[6]

For Sikhs, Kesh is the practice of allowing one's hair to grow naturally as a symbol of devotion to God and lack of worldliness.^[9]

In Jewish and other cultures, shortening hair signifies mourning and sadness.^[18]

Around the seventeenth century, the Manchu people forced all men in China to adopt a hairstyle called a queue, which was basically a long braid down the back with the hair on the front part of the head shaved. This style lasted well into the nineteenth century, when the Chinese began immigrating to America. Americans at first judged them to be poor workers because their long hair brought an association with women.^[54] Both Islamic and Christian missionaries to the Chinese were strong advocates of shorter hair for their converts, but this was a small group.^[55] Around the Destruction of Four Olds period in 1964, almost anything seen as part of Traditional Chinese culture would lead to problems with the Communist Red Guards. Items that attracted dangerous attention if caught in the public included jewelry and long hair.^[56] These things were regarded as symbols of bourgeois lifestyle, that represented wealth. People had to avoid them or suffer serious consequences such as tortures and beatings by the guards.^[56] More recently, long hair was ridiculed in China from October 1983 to February 1984, as part of the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign.^[57] Li Yang, an unorthodox Chinese English teacher who brands the popular Crazy English, claims the following on his website:

"What [America, England and Japan] want most is for China’s youth to have long hair, wear bizarre clothes, drink soda, listen to Western music, have no fighting spirit, love pleasure and comfort!"^[58]

In Southeast Asia and Indonesia, male long hair was valued in until the seventeenth century, when the area adopted outside influences including Islam and Christianity. Invading cultures enforced shorter hairstyles on men as a sign of servitude, as well. They were also confused at the short hairstyles among women in certain areas, such as Thailand, and struggled to explain why women in the area had such short hair. They came up with several mythical stories, one of which involved a king who found a long hair in his rice and, in a rage, demanded that all women keep their hair short.^[55]

In rural areas in certain Asian countries, for example India, girls still usually let their hair grow long, and knee-length hair is not unusual.^[59]

In the medieval Japan, heian gentleman were not very interested in a woman's physical beauty and rarely had an opportunity to see it. The only physical attribute of interest was a woman's hair, which had to be thick and longer than she was tall. The fascination with long hair was one reason why a woman's becoming a nun was regarded with such seriousness - it could never again grow to its full length. This explains why Genji refuses to let Murasaki (his de facto wife in the classical Japanese novel the Tale of Genji) take the tonsure when she is ill.^[60]

See also[link]

• Grooming
• Haircut
• Hair extensions
• Hairstick
• Lady Godiva
• Long hair fetishism, a form of Trichophilia
• Rapunzel

Images[link]

• Female long hair in art (Gallery at Wikimedia commons)
• Female long hair photos (Gallery at Wikimedia commons)
• Male long hair in art (Gallery at Wikimedia commons)
• Male long hair photos (Gallery at Wikimedia commons)

References[link]