I suppose my main objections were to the unsympathetic characters as well as to the mode of storytelling. Most of the story is in an “as told to” mode. Most of it is the servant Ellen (Nelly) Dean telling the visitor, Mr. Lockwood, of things that happened long ago to the central characters, filling him in on the grumpy and downright unsociable landlord he has just visited and met for the first time at Wuthering Heights. A few other parts are narrated by others, such as the long letter to Nelly from Isabella Linton, but very few are, as one says in this internet age “live time.” It’s a common enough way to tell a story ( also employed in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), but it makes the reader feel removed from the story and feel less of the emotional impact of the tale, at least it does this reader.
Of course the story is unremittingly sad, and meant to be so, full of crossed fortunes and errors and “if onlys.” But to speak more intelligently about its merits and its classic qualities, I shall turn to some literary experts.
Lynn’s Critical Research on Wuthering Heights
I’ll start with some really basic research on Wuthering Heights, as basic as Wikipedia. Here’s what it tells us, some of which I did already know! Published in 1847 under a pseudonym (knew that – the three sisters Emily, Charlotte and Anne published as Currer, Acton, and Ellis Bell). It’s a gothic novel (knew that) and Emily’s only novel. “Wuthering” refers to turbulent weather. The novel certainly had lots of that! And according to Wikipedia:
“Wuthering Heights met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared, mainly because of the narrative's stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty. Though Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was initially considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works, many subsequent critics of Wuthering Heights argued that its originality and achievement made it superior.”
Now I’ll turn to SparkNotes (I’m acting like a high school or college student and starting with the easy stuff!).
[Note: Here’s the correct citation for all SparkNotes quotes below (which SparkNotes provides for us, knowing those college students do forget to give credit where credit is due!)
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Wuthering Heights.” SparkNotes LLC. 2002. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/wuthering/ (accessed August 3, 2010).]
What I learn here:
When published, the book didn’t sell well and got mixed reviews. Victorians were disturbed by “its depiction of passionate, ungoverned love and cruelty” (although there isn’t any sex). Spark says the novel has “unapologetic intensity.” I like that phrase, and I think it’s accurate, and may go to the root of what disturbed me about the book (although I like to think I’m slightly more relaxed and less easily offended than the Victorians, but perhaps not). The characters were cruel to each other. Even the ones who loved each other were cruel to each other. They willfully and intentionally destroyed the lives, hopes and prospects of others for their own gain. Of course that happens all the time.
I think my reaction was more specifically confined to how I felt about Heathcliff. I wanted to try to like him. He was tall, strong, handsome, even if he scowled a lot. He’s a perfect fixer-upper for some girl who thinks she can make him happy. He was wronged by his adoptive family – a perfect underdog. He was smart and also rugged. But he so clearly pushed away anyone who tried to help him, so determined was he to keep himself apart. He did not respect or abide by any common social courtesies or behaviors. He did not in any way want or seek the sympathy of any character or of the reader. And perhaps that is one of the things that makes this book bold and significant – the daring use of a totally unlikeable, unredeemable and ultimately unredeemed central romantic figure. He’s not withdrawn from society because the world has used him cruelly and discarded him, he’s withdrawn from society because frankly, Catherine, he just doesn’t give a damn. What an interesting protagonist for a gothic romance. A dark prince of sorts, like no other (or like any others? Examples, please!)
He also has the perfect romantic hero name: Heathcliff! Just hearing that name you can imagine what he must look like. Dark and stormy (wuthering), of the earth, yet dangerous, precarious. And an early one-name celebrity. Nelly says that when he died they didn’t know what to put on his tombstone because he didn’t have a Christian name, and they didn’t even know his date of birth, so they wrote only his date of death and the one name, only Heathcliff.
I’m far from alone in my reaction to Heathcliff. Even Emily’s sister Charlotte (author, you know of course, of Jane Eyre) didn’t like Heathcliff:
“In a preface to the book, which she wrote shortly after Emily Brontë’s death, Charlotte Brontë stated, ‘Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know. I scarcely think it is.’”
More from SparkNotes:
“As a shattering presentation of the doomed love affair between the fiercely passionate Catherine and Heathcliff, it remains one of the most haunting love stories in all of literature.”
A suggestion perhaps that the hero is presented as dark and unlikeable for a strong purpose:
“The desire to understand him and his motivations has kept countless readers engaged in the novel."
“The novel teases the reader with the possibility that Heathcliff is something other than what he seems—that his cruelty is merely an expression of his frustrated love for Catherine, or that his sinister behaviors serve to conceal the heart of a romantic hero. We expect Heathcliff’s character to contain such a hidden virtue because he resembles a hero in a romance novel. Traditionally, romance novel heroes appear dangerous, brooding, and cold at first, only later to emerge as fiercely devoted and loving. One hundred years before Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights, the notion that “a reformed rake makes the best husband” was already a cliché of romantic literature, and romance novels center around the same cliché to this day.”
“However, Heathcliff does not reform, and his malevolence proves so great and long-lasting that it cannot be adequately explained even as a desire for revenge against Hindley, Catherine, Edgar, etc. As he himself points out, his abuse of Isabella is purely sadistic, as he amuses himself by seeing how much abuse she can take and still come cringing back for more. Critic Joyce Carol Oates argues that Emily Brontë does the same thing to the reader that Heathcliff does to Isabella, testing to see how many times the reader can be shocked by Heathcliff’s gratuitous violence and still, masochistically, insist on seeing him as a romantic hero.”
I didn’t see him as a romantic hero – I just thought he was a jerk!
(written July/August 2010)
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