Quote by Emily Brontë: “I wish I were a girl again, half‑savage and hardy, and free.”

This lament expresses a deep yearning for the uninhibited freedom and raw vitality of youth, contrasting it with the constraints and sorrows of adult life. It suggests a desire to return to a natural, untamed state, unbound by societal expectations and personal hardships, embodying a longing for liberation.

This reflects a yearning for a lost, wilder youth, contrasting with the constraints and sorrows often faced by women in 19th-century society.

English novelist and poet whose only novel, Wuthering Heights, published in 1847, is one of the great works of Romantic literature. She spent most of her short life on the Yorkshire moors, and her poetry was equally remarkable for its visionary intensity.