ABSTRACT
The Brontë siblings were lovers of nature and of animals. From family birds to Emily’s falcon, Anne’s terrier to Emily’s mastiff, the young Brontës had great sympathy for animals; indeed, Emily’s real-life attachment to her dog is legendary. In their 1847 fictions, animals and children are significant. In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the child orphan is paralleled with birds in the opening sequence while she dreams of escape while contemplating avian pictures and the young woman’s mind is captured by the fairy tale ideal of a man on horseback. In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey, animals are essential to a consideration of turn from Romanticized, innocent youth to the cruel powerlessness of animals and/as young persons. This chapter considers what happens when the basic truth of kindness to animals as well as to children and young persons is an obligation thrown aside by adults. It highlights how animals and children are treated, and/or how children treat animals, and the way children are treated as animals in the fictions of the Brontës.
