As I resume my tour of the Brontë novels, Wuthering Heights, by
Emily Brontë, is next. It was her first and only novel. It is believed Charlotte destroyed—at Emily’s
direction—a novel in progress upon her death.
A journal of Emily’s has tantalizing letters in the remaining fragments
of torn out pages, and some poetry and scattered diary entries are all that
remain. Emily died in 1848, and in 1849,
Charlotte published a novel, Shirley,
about a character which bears a striking resemblance to Emily. I have often wondered whether the missing
novel was autobiographical, or a tribute to Emily from Charlotte, or something
else. More about Shirley in future visits to the Brontë parsonage.
To me, Wuthering
Heights is one of the finest Gothic novels of all time. It has nearly everything a reader could
want—love, betrayal, jealousy, revenge, ghosts, a haunted house, and lots of
peculiar plot references. The novel
begins with a mixture of conflicting passages.
She writes in Lockwood’s diary, “1801—I have returned from a visit to my
landlord—the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all of England, I do not believe that I
could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of
society. A perfect misanthropist’s heaven—and
Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between
us. A capital fellow! He little imagined
how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so
suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up and when his fingers sheltered
themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I
announced my name” (3).
The beginning of the novel is fraught with a set of images
hard to overlook. Including the name of
the new tenant, Lockwood. We also see a
“gate,” which “manifested no sympathizing movement”; Lockwood’s horse was,
“fairly pushing the barrier, but [Heathcliff] did not pull out his hand to
unchain it” (3). The novel delivers a
healthy set of images, which set the mood.
She describes “storm weather,” “stunted firs,” “gaunt thorns,” a “bitch
pointer surrounded by a swarm of squealing puppies, and other dogs haunted
other recesses” (4-5). Heathcliff is
described as “a dark-skinned gypsy” (5).
Heathcliff himself adds to the atmosphere, when a dog
“provoked a long, guttural snarl” and “You’d better let the dog alone,” growled
Mr. Heathcliff” (6). Lockwood notes, “an
obscure cushion full of something like cats.
What sort of creature might that be?”
Two lines later, we are treated to “a heap of dead rabbits” (9). Then, “‘Get [dinner] ready, will you?’, uttered
so savagely that I started. The tone in
which the words were said revealed a genuine bad nature. I no longer felt inclined to call Heathcliff
a capital fellow” (10).
--Chiron, 5/17/18
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