Background material for The House of Dead Maids
By Clare B. Dunkle. New York: Henry Holt, 2010.

For those who wish to learn more about the background of The House of Dead Maids, I have written a number of web pages dealing with my research into the Brontë family and Wuthering Heights. You may reach all of those pages by clicking on the links below:

Tabby’s World: A Photographic Exploration of Haworth and Yorkshire

The Mysteries of Wuthering Heights

The Literary Motifs and Techniques ofWuthering Heights

• Breaking barriers, crossing boundaries


• Deep inside the house: the moor


• Impersonal personal names


• Twinnings/battles to the death


• The plundered nest


• The coffin/bed


• The eternal rocks beneath


• The most reliable of unreliable narrators


• The ghost

Musings on Heathcliff

Nelly and Joseph: Yorkshire Spirits

“Rougue”: Branwell’s Pirate

Brontë Myths: Fact or fiction?

• Emily Brontë was a passive visionary who wrote what her muse led her to write.


• Emily Brontë was too eccentric to thrive away from home.


• Emily Brontë loved her brother Branwell more than the others did.


• Emily Brontë willed her own death.


• Emily Brontë was anorexic.


• Emily Brontë had a secret lover.


• Emily Brontë loved animals more than people.


• Branwell Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights.


• Patrick Brontë was cruel and morose.


• Charlotte Brontë burned Emily’s second novel.

Some Criticisms of My Prequel (and My Responses)