Liberation Through Winter Weather: Emily Brontë’s Poem

"Watchtower near Hospenthal on the St. Gotthard Pass," 1914, by Franz Hecker Wachturm. It's easy to imagine Augusta Almeda imprisoned within the tower in this cold, bleak landscape. Public Domain

In many poems, such as Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush,” winter imagery is a symbol of gloom, depression, and barrenness. But this isn’t always the case. Emily Brontë’s “To a Wreath of Snow” takes a different approach. In a deft reversal of expectations, Brontë turns the chilly image of snow into a symbol of hope and the liberating aspirations of the soul.

In December 1837, Emily Brontë had need of hope. Her younger sister, Anne, had fallen deathly ill, and Emily—only 19 years old at the time—found an outlet for her anxiety and grief in this poem, which references an imaginary kingdom that she and her sister shared in childhood. The poem allowed Emily to connect with her suffering sister since it was an expression of a secret world that they once shared together. It also plays with themes of confinement and freedom, death and hope, nature and the individual.

(L-R) The Brontë sisters (Anne, Emily, and Charlotte) were painted by their brother, Branwell Bronte, in 1834. Oil on canvas; 35 1/2 inches by 29 1/4 inches. National Portrait Gallery, London. Public Domain

Shared Love for Gondal

The speaker of the poem is Augusta Almeda, the queen of the Brontë sisters’ fictional kingdom Gondal, a land inspired by the wild, rough Yorkshire landscape set solidly in the girls’ imaginations. She lies imprisoned in the belly of a fortress and contemplates a shimmering swath of snow, visible through her prison window.

The shackled queen can be compared both to Anne, imprisoned by sickness, and Emily,  imprisoned by anxiety and the portent of loss. However, it’s wisest not to identify this speaker too closely with either the poet or her ailing sister. Realize instead that the poem is a fragment of a larger collection of stories and poems forming a complete saga. The Brontës wrote an entire set of chronicles about Gondal, though all that remains today is this poem and a few other scraps.

The queen in the poem has literary significance beyond just this poem.  Though she need not be read as Emily herself, they share certain commonalties. Brontë seems to use the character’s plight and consolation as catharsis for her own as she deals with Anne’s illness.

To understand the poem, it’s important to understand that the “thee” and “thou” within it refer to the snow, as indicated by the poem’s title. Brontë apostrophizes the snow—that is, speaks directly to it as though it were human. Usually, an apostrophe is addressed to an inanimate object or to a person who is not present, as in Hamlet’s famous address to the skull of the dead Yorick.

The first stanza begins by calling the wreath of snow “a transient voyager”:

O transient voyager of heaven! O silent sign of winter skies! What adverse wind thy sail has driven To dungeons where a prisoner lies?

The snow’s transience is a fitting note to strike at the outset of the poem. On the poet’s mind is the life of her sister, which seems already to be coming to a close. On the queen’s mind there is, perhaps, some thought of the how quickly power evaporates and those on top find themselves at the bottom, exiled or imprisoned. In both cases, the transience of earthly things rises to the top of the mind.

The speaker finishes the first stanza by asking the snow what bad fortune (“adverse wind”) brought it to such a doleful place as this dungeon. Then she beautifully depicts the moment the snow appeared, and how it lifted her spirits:

For many a week, and many a day My heart was weighed with sinking gloom When morning rose in mourning grey And faintly lit my prison room

But angel like, when I awoke, Thy silvery form, so soft and fair Shining through darkness, sweetly spoke Of cloudy skies and mountains bare

The repetition of “many” in stanza four suggests the ceaseless stream of weary days. The homophones of “morning” and “mourning” suggest that each dawn means only more dreariness and misery. But a sudden shift occurs when the pure white of the snow appears in stanza five, almost like a spirt of deliverance.

Delivering Freedom to the Soul

Brontë makes an unexpected contrast between the personified snow and the light of the sun. She finds more comfort in the sliver of snow than she does in the sunlight, which her guards take greater pains to separate her from. “All the suns that ever shone/ Have never been so kind to me!” Almeda cries out to the snow.

In another stanza, she compares herself to a mountaineer who finds the snowcaps of the mountains more attractive than the green plains below the mountain. Is her suffering in the prison cell perhaps the spiritual equivalent of climbing a mountain? Her preference of snow to sun upsets expectations, since most people find the warmth and brightness of the sun more cheering.

Yet, there is logic in her attraction to the snow. As Dr. Oliver Tearle puts it, “The snow reflects the speaker’s mood far more closely than the glaring sun, which merely heralds another day trapped within her prison cell. She identifies with the snow and its transience perhaps reminds her of the brevity of her own life—and of all life.”

"Princess Marie Louise of Savoy is led through the Prison Gates." Almeda's situation was much more dire than that of Princess Marie Louise; Almeda was alone in a cold, windswept prison cell. Fæ/CC BY-SA 4.0

Though the snow may be transient, it also reminds Almeda of something of great permanence: mountains and the sky, and nature in general. “Thy silver form, so soft and fair / Shining through the darkness, sweetly spoke / Of cloudy skies and mountains bare.” These immense realities and wide-open spaces associated with mountains and the sky suggest freedom and the desire for freedom. The thought of them refreshes Almeda and, in some sense, sets her soul free.

This central theme of interior freedom reminds us of Richard Lovelace’s poem “To Althea, from Prison,” which also addresses the juxtaposition of physical imprisonment and spiritual liberation. Poets have long understood that physical bondage can’t really restrain someone who possesses interior freedom.

The snow comes to Almeda like a memento of a beloved homeland and the taste of the wild, untethered freedom of the skies and mountain places. In these visions, her soul rejoices:

Voiceless, soulless, messenger Thy presence waked a thrilling tone That comforts me while thou art here And will sustain when thou art gone.

So the poem concludes. Are these final words of the poem also addressed to Anne, whom Emily fears will soon be gone? It may be that Emily is telling her sister that she brought a source of hope and beauty into her life that will remain even after she’s gone.

In reality, the sisters didn’t make the anticipated parting at that time and had several years together yet—Anne did not die until 1849, a year after Emily’s death. Both sisters passed away from tuberculosis.

Whatever the case, the austere imagery, stately meter, reversal of expectations, and glimmer of hope within this poem all point to the fact that Emily Brontë was already a highly skilled poet at age of 19. It’s worth remarking, too, how small Emily Brontë’s oeuvre really is, containing only a handful of poems and the novel “Wuthering Heights.” Yet with that relatively limited body of work, Brontë staked out for herself a high place in English letters.

The full text of "To a Wreath of Snow" by Emily Brontë. Public Domain

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