Anne Bronte (1820-1849), Emily Bronte (Thornton, 1818 - Haworth, 1848) and
Charlotte Bronte (Thornton, 1816 - Haworth, 1855), English writers, Oil on
canvas by Patrick Branwell Bronte (1817-1848), ca 1834. Photograph.
Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 19 Dec 2015.
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte's only
novel, published in 1847 under the pen name Ellis Bell, is a shock to the
system, no matter
which state of life you find yourself reading,
or re-reading it. I first read this masterpiece when I was a teenager and was
transfixed by what I
considered an enviable, riveting love story.
Re-reading it in midlife, I am able to be able to see how this is also about
literally every character being consumed with revenge, trauma, and violence,
or gravely impacted by the chaos. Tuberculosis and death also permeate
Wuthering Heights, claiming multiple characters.
From a 21st century recovery and self-help perspective,
Wuthering Heights is also rife with alcoholism and
a whole
DSM-IV-TR manual of personality and mood
disorders.
Set in the 18th century, doomed lovers Catherine
Earnshaw Linton and
Heathcliff, grow up together on the Yorkshire
moors and within the confines of the isolated
Wuthering Heights farm. Their story is told from
the perspective of faithful servant Ellen "Nelly" Dean, to the
current tenant of
Thrushcross Grange, the transfixed Mr. Lockwood, our
first window, into this tense Gothic standoff of
profoundly wounded characters.
UK, West Yorkshire, Aerial view of moorland at Haworth Aerial view of the moorland at Haworth - West Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom Credit De Agostini / W. Buss / Universal Images Group Rights Managed / For Educational Use Only
At the center of
Wuthering Heights is the mysterious, nameless,
gypsy orphan Mr.
Earnshaw adopts and renames
Heathcliff. The new member of the family is
initially hated by Mr.
Earnshaw's wife and two children
Hindley and Catherine, but Mr.
Earnshaw loves
Heathcliff even more than his own son
Hindley. Heathcliff's
Gypsy origins are part of
why he is treated with such discrimination and hostility. After
Earnshaw's death,
Heathcliff is relegated
from a son to servant by the jealous
Hindley. Catherine foolishly marries pampered
neighbor Edgar Linton, despite her deep love and attachment to
Heathcliff, who flees
Wuthering Heights in a snarl of searing emotional
pain and abandonment.
Wuthering Heights, colour lithograph, Phillips, Edwin (20th Century) Credit
Private Collection / Look and Learn / Bridgeman Images
Emily Bronte's impassioned words from her tormented characters are mini masterpieces
strewn throughout the narrative. On the night
Heathcliff runs away, Cathy agonizes to Nelly
Dean,
"I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in
heaven and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of it.
It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now so he shall never know how I love him and that not because
he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our
souls are made of his and mine are the same and Linton's is as different as a
moonbeam from lightning or frost from fire.”
Illustration for 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Bronte - Valentine Hugo - French Artist - Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, France - LITERATURE - 1946 - colour lithograph
As a middle aged reader, I remain vexed with Catherine
Earnshaw. Given the
time this character lives in, her only immediate
hope for escaping the most dysfunctional of families is through an advantageous
marriage to the lukewarm, prosperous Edgar. Catherine whines to Nelly that she and
Heathcliff would be reduced to begging in the
street and sells
Heathcliff's abilities short, even to the point of
thinking that Edgar would be willing to provide for them both. It is possible
to see Catherine as backed into a corner or a warped personality. Her marriage
to Edgar is seen as a "betrayal of the heart" by
Heathcliff. Even Nelly, who raised Catherine,
grows exasperated with her selfishness and mood swings.
When a wealthy, successful
Heathcliff returns years later, he exacts
merciless revenge on the
Earnshaws and
Lintons, through dispossessing the families and
marrying Edgar's sister Isabella Linton. Catherine succumbs to a nervous
breakdown, gives birth to a premature daughter, and dies.
Heathcliff's malediction is the crown jewel of Gothic romance:
"'May she wake in torment!' he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. 'Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not THERE - not in heaven - not perished - where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer - I repeat it till my tongue stiffens - Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you - haunt me, then! The murdered DO haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts HAVE wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! Only DO not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I CANNOT live without my life! I CANNOT live without my soul!'
Heathcliff is portrayed as a veritable ghoul at the height of his
deranged obsession with Catherine. He trespasses into her sick room and funeral
viewing, ripping a lock of her husband's hair out of her locket and replacing
it with his own. When the opportunity arises, during the digging of her husband
Edgar's grave, which happens several years after her death, he bribes the
sexton to open her coffin, in order to get a glimpse of his long dead
beloved.
Heathcliff's festering bitterness carries into the second
generation of children, through abuse, forced marriage, and servitude.
Violence erupts throughout the book. The orphaned Hareton, who loses his
father Hindley to alcoholism, becomes a frightening, foul-mouthed child who
hangs puppies from the back of a chair. In modern terms, we'd be contending
with a budding serial killer. Heathcliff brutalizes his wife Isabelle, to the
point that she escapes to London with their child Linton, whose tubercular
condition is exacerbated by his father's cruelty and manipulations when he's
unfortunate enough to be returned to Heathcliff after her death.
Edgar's daughter Catherine, Hindley's son Hareton, and Isabelle's son Linton
become captives of Wuthering Heights. The warped and sniveling Linton is
dispatched by an especially bloody case of tuberculosis, while Catherine and
Hareton grow to love and support each other. Heathcliff reacts to this
development, by becoming increasingly obsessed with his lost love, to the
extent that he ceases to eat, speaks incessantly to her ghost, and perishes
after a long night hallucinating and walking on the moors.
In one of Heathcliff's final speeches, his response to Nelly's query about
his state of mind is laid bare: "
Afraid? No!’ he replied. ‘I have
neither a fear, nor a presentiment, nor a hope of death. Why should I? With my
hard constitution and temperate mode of living, and unperilous occupations, I
ought to, and probably shall, remain above ground till there is scarcely a
black hair on my head. And yet I cannot continue in this condition! I have to
remind myself to breathe—almost to remind my heart to beat! And it is like
bending back a stiff spring: it is by compulsion that I do the slightest act
not prompted by one thought; and by compulsion that I notice anything alive or
dead, which is not associated with one universal idea. I have a single wish,
and my whole being and faculties are yearning to attain it. They have yearned
towards it so long, and so unwaveringly, that I’m convinced it will be
reached—and soon—because it has devoured my existence: I am swallowed up in the
anticipation of its fulfilment. My confessions have not relieved me; but they
may account for some otherwise unaccountable phases of humour which I show. O
God! It is a long fight; I wish it were over!"
The only hopeful note involves the two survivors, Hareton and
Catherine inheriting Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, and planning to
marry on the following New Year’s Day. After Nelly concludes her story,
Lockwood visits the graves of Catherine and Heathcliff. This particle of hope
was lost on scandalized Victorian readers. One critic from the
Eclectic Review
declared
Wuthering Heights to be "one of the most repellant books
we ever read". Readers were perplexed as to how a curate's
daughter could write such a haunting and disturbing book.
After Emily's death, her sister Charlotte wrote an introduction for
Wuthering Heights that half-apologized for its feral nature. Charlotte wrote: "Under an unsophisticated culture, inartificial tastes, and an unpretending outside, lay a secret power and fire that might have informed the brain and kindled the veins of a hero; but she had no worldly wisdom; her powers were unadapted to the practical business of life. An interpreter ought always to have stood between her and the world."
Of all the Bronte sisters,
Emily is my favorite, the one I want to live vicariously through, at least on my most pensively introverted days. She was
deeply sensitive, but also known to be extremely anti-social and rough. Her vocabulary and writing powers are sublime. Other than her family and animals, she wasn't known to have friends.
Whatever correspondence she left behind, doesn't offer any insight into the inner workings of her brilliant mind. Emily Bronte is an enigma
to biographers, but I believe that
Wuthering Heights and her poetry are
the clearest statements about a writer who used formidable imagination and her love
of nature to express something that freed her from the unimaginative
constraints of placid Victorian womanhood.
*This post is part of our year-long Brilliant
Brontës challenge! To see more posts, search for the labels "Brontë, challenge" in the blog sidebar.
