I read a recent piece in Vanity Fair about the weirdness of Emily Brontë.

There are a couple of interesting bits I like, such as how Brontë “wore outdated fashions and refused to squeeze herself into a corset.” Here is another: “While teaching at age twenty, holding her one and only job, Emily told her pupils she much preferred her mastiff dog, Keeper, to every one of them.” Keeper, Brontë’s male Bullmastiff, loyal but aggressive, was her close companion who stayed by her side even after her death at thirty in December 1848. He stayed on Emily’s deathbed in her final moments, walked in her funeral procession, and slept outside her room after she died. Keeper lived about three more years, and passed away on December 1, 1851, with his burial place being the Brontës’ garden.

(Deborah Lutz has a forthcoming biography about Emily Brontë titled This Dark Night, which interests me for what she may say about Keeper.)

Media coverage in 2026 has not been very charitable to Emily, no more so than during her life. The Daily Mail recently spun Brontë’s actions into “animal abuse” by claiming that she punched Keeper so much that it left him “half blind and stupefied.” This highly dramatic framing comes from Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1857 biography of Charlotte Brontë published two years after her death, nearly ten years after Emily’s, notably criticized for sensationalism to sell the book. Ironically, Gaskell tried to help the Brontës’ reputation, especially Charlotte, whom critics declared “unchristian” and “unwomanly,” but her dramatic storytelling has had unintended consequences. Allegedly, Keeper dirtied Emily’s freshly washed bedcovers, as Emily had just done the laundry, and she disciplined him for it. At the Haworth parsonage, her familial duties included cleaning, ironing, and cooking, which she did while studying German and writing poetry—and she was very serious about housekeeping. My sense is that Emily disciplined Keeper that one time and cleaned him up afterward, as there were no other such episodes recorded. But I think it was far from a regular boxing match with Emily punching the dog into disability. The fact that Keeper constantly accompanied her and mourned her until his death says more than Gaskell in recording Emily’s “violent” episode.

(In general, I really admire Gaskell’s efforts, but I hate that her biography of Charlotte gets appropriated to attack Emily this way.)

In Vanity Fair, Rosemary Counter rightly notes how “modern armchair psychologists” cast all manner of “diagnosis” on Brontë. Does labeling her “agoraphobic,” “anxious,” or “autistic” help readers understand her work? I cannot say that “diagnosis” truly describes more than it prescribes and circumscribes personality and character.

There are some obvious bits I dislike, such as calling Wuthering Heights “the horniest Gothic novel ever written,” mentioning that Emily “could have been” in an incestuous relationship with her brother Branwell, the use of “seminal” in reference to women authors (come now, pick a non-semen-related synonym—e.g., “pioneering,” “major,” “groundbreaking”), and, of course, Camille Paglia, who is unnecessary.

Overall, I find the renewed public fascination with the Brontës a relatively positive development, even if some of the media coverage irks me.