The two main characters of Emily Bronte’s earth shattering novel, Wuthering Heights are now part of our collective consciousness and, therefore, need no introduction. At the time of publication, because of the restrictions placed upon female writers, the novel was issued under the male pseudonym of Ellis Bell. Regarded initially by some as scandalous and ‘coarse’ it remains one of the most discussed books of all time.
Wuthering Heights is an unconventional romance and some would say it isn’t a love story at all but for me there isn’t a love story to top it. The storyline is deeply troubling and evades satisfactory analysis but, nevertheless, I love everything about it; the construction, the unreliable narrators, the stormy characters and wild setting of the wild moors, the creaking farmhouse and the stately Grange. The sweeping story is just like life, or how life can be; wildly chaotic, ungovernable and I wish with all my heart I had written it.
Emily Bronte was just thirty when she died but hopefully she took some satisfaction from having written such a shockingly brilliant novel. The Brontes had a tough life. I am not going to go deeply into all the conflicting opinions and controversy that surrounds them, I am just going to say, ‘it was tough.’
Death was no stranger to Emily. The girls’ mother and two of their sisters died while they were young and, largely ignored by their father, Reverend Patrick Bronte, the three remaining sisters and their brother, Branwell formed a strong bond. In later years Branwell became an alcoholic and a drug addict and was subject to bouts of insanity during which he threatened suicide and murder. The bouts of delirium eventually ended in his death. Sickness, death, madness, anorexia, class, religion, race and gender issues and, of course, love are all to be found within the pages of a Bronte novel which when one considers their life experiences is no surprise. In Emily’s case what is remarkable is the consummate skill and detail with which she created Wuthering Heights.
The love between Cathy and Heathcliff is one of several romantic relationships depicted in the novel and it is the one that everyone remembers. The wild sweeping passion, the unrequited longing and the strength of the love that transcends even death is not easily forgotten. The puzzling thing is how such ungoverned emotion emerged from the mind of an unmarried, sheltered twenty eight year old woman.
Surrounded all her life by death, alcohol/drug abuse and madness Emily knew all about passion and she knew about love and grief but surely she must have experienced love at first hand to be able to gain such a deep understanding of how being in love feels.
The recurring themes were shocking to the nineteenth century world but she neither promotes nor judges but merely presents the negative facts of life as she sees them. The resulting novel is such a whirl of emotion that it is impossible to logically account for every element of the story and the plot remains largely indefinable, just as love is.
The love she presents between Cathy and Heathcliff is a destructive one. We are never quite sure of the reasons why they cannot be together but we have our suspicions although we know that, ultimately, they belong together. Cathy’s matter of fact statement, ‘I am Heathcliff,’ is the most revealing of all. Emily doesn’t have her say, I want Heathcliff or I love Heathcliff but ‘I am Heathcliff.’ And it comes from the heart. For Cathy, Heathcliff transcends everything; he is her soul, her body, her breath, her blood, her life, her passion.
We cannot choose who we love. It is something quite outside human control. We can deny it or we can walk away from it but the emotion will always remain. There is an academic school of thought that believes Cathy and Heathcliff are siblings, either he is her bastard brother brought into the home by their father or that, because they have been raised as siblings, there is a legal bar to their union.
I am not in the position to state this as fact but it is an interesting hypothesis to explore. Emily Bronte has been quite oblique about the detail of the situation and she would have been aware that indelicate matters such as incest were not for the pages of a novel. But, when you consider all her other controversial themes, race, religion, gender, madness, then it wouldn’t surprise me if she had also quietly embraced the subject of incest. If her intention was to examine forbidden love then I can’t think of a love that is more forbidden than a romantic attachment between brother and sister.
There was a bar to sexual relationships between those brought up as siblings, there may well still be today, but even if there was no blood tie their relationship still contravened social and moral boundaries of the time. But does that matter? Their love is never consummated; what Bronte is doing is examining the feeling of forbidden love, the desperate wrenching pain that it inflicts upon those involved.
Bronte uses the impetuosity and tempestuous behaviour of the couple to demonstrate that forbidden love is a part of the human condition just like all the other unpleasant social taboos that the Brontes chose not to omit from their work.
For me, Heathcliff is a hero to end all heroes. He may be a dark, threatening antithesis of what we have come to expect in a romance and his actions may make it difficult to sympathise with him but he loves Cathy, unreservedly.
Unconformist in every way, it is a simpler matter for him to ignore the bar to their union but Cathy, more conventional than Heathcliff, denies their love because of the social taboos that surround it. Or maybe I should say she tries to deny it, for their love does not end with death and she does not find rest until Heathcliff’s demise many years later. Their unfulfilled love drives Cathy to an early grave and turns Heathcliff into a bitter, cruel man.
I have read Wuthering Heights many times. It is a puzzle and a storm – a whirling cyclone created by the uncontrollable passion of the forbidden love of two souls who belonged together. For me, the enigma is increased by the fact that the novel was the work of a unique young woman who’s soul, in the words of her sister Charlotte, was made up of ‘a peculiar music -- wild, melancholy, and elevating.’
Wuthering Heights is an unconventional romance and some would say it isn’t a love story at all but for me there isn’t a love story to top it. The storyline is deeply troubling and evades satisfactory analysis but, nevertheless, I love everything about it; the construction, the unreliable narrators, the stormy characters and wild setting of the wild moors, the creaking farmhouse and the stately Grange. The sweeping story is just like life, or how life can be; wildly chaotic, ungovernable and I wish with all my heart I had written it.
Emily Bronte was just thirty when she died but hopefully she took some satisfaction from having written such a shockingly brilliant novel. The Brontes had a tough life. I am not going to go deeply into all the conflicting opinions and controversy that surrounds them, I am just going to say, ‘it was tough.’
Death was no stranger to Emily. The girls’ mother and two of their sisters died while they were young and, largely ignored by their father, Reverend Patrick Bronte, the three remaining sisters and their brother, Branwell formed a strong bond. In later years Branwell became an alcoholic and a drug addict and was subject to bouts of insanity during which he threatened suicide and murder. The bouts of delirium eventually ended in his death. Sickness, death, madness, anorexia, class, religion, race and gender issues and, of course, love are all to be found within the pages of a Bronte novel which when one considers their life experiences is no surprise. In Emily’s case what is remarkable is the consummate skill and detail with which she created Wuthering Heights.
The love between Cathy and Heathcliff is one of several romantic relationships depicted in the novel and it is the one that everyone remembers. The wild sweeping passion, the unrequited longing and the strength of the love that transcends even death is not easily forgotten. The puzzling thing is how such ungoverned emotion emerged from the mind of an unmarried, sheltered twenty eight year old woman.
Surrounded all her life by death, alcohol/drug abuse and madness Emily knew all about passion and she knew about love and grief but surely she must have experienced love at first hand to be able to gain such a deep understanding of how being in love feels.
The recurring themes were shocking to the nineteenth century world but she neither promotes nor judges but merely presents the negative facts of life as she sees them. The resulting novel is such a whirl of emotion that it is impossible to logically account for every element of the story and the plot remains largely indefinable, just as love is.
The love she presents between Cathy and Heathcliff is a destructive one. We are never quite sure of the reasons why they cannot be together but we have our suspicions although we know that, ultimately, they belong together. Cathy’s matter of fact statement, ‘I am Heathcliff,’ is the most revealing of all. Emily doesn’t have her say, I want Heathcliff or I love Heathcliff but ‘I am Heathcliff.’ And it comes from the heart. For Cathy, Heathcliff transcends everything; he is her soul, her body, her breath, her blood, her life, her passion.
We cannot choose who we love. It is something quite outside human control. We can deny it or we can walk away from it but the emotion will always remain. There is an academic school of thought that believes Cathy and Heathcliff are siblings, either he is her bastard brother brought into the home by their father or that, because they have been raised as siblings, there is a legal bar to their union.
I am not in the position to state this as fact but it is an interesting hypothesis to explore. Emily Bronte has been quite oblique about the detail of the situation and she would have been aware that indelicate matters such as incest were not for the pages of a novel. But, when you consider all her other controversial themes, race, religion, gender, madness, then it wouldn’t surprise me if she had also quietly embraced the subject of incest. If her intention was to examine forbidden love then I can’t think of a love that is more forbidden than a romantic attachment between brother and sister.
There was a bar to sexual relationships between those brought up as siblings, there may well still be today, but even if there was no blood tie their relationship still contravened social and moral boundaries of the time. But does that matter? Their love is never consummated; what Bronte is doing is examining the feeling of forbidden love, the desperate wrenching pain that it inflicts upon those involved.
Bronte uses the impetuosity and tempestuous behaviour of the couple to demonstrate that forbidden love is a part of the human condition just like all the other unpleasant social taboos that the Brontes chose not to omit from their work.
For me, Heathcliff is a hero to end all heroes. He may be a dark, threatening antithesis of what we have come to expect in a romance and his actions may make it difficult to sympathise with him but he loves Cathy, unreservedly.
Unconformist in every way, it is a simpler matter for him to ignore the bar to their union but Cathy, more conventional than Heathcliff, denies their love because of the social taboos that surround it. Or maybe I should say she tries to deny it, for their love does not end with death and she does not find rest until Heathcliff’s demise many years later. Their unfulfilled love drives Cathy to an early grave and turns Heathcliff into a bitter, cruel man.
I have read Wuthering Heights many times. It is a puzzle and a storm – a whirling cyclone created by the uncontrollable passion of the forbidden love of two souls who belonged together. For me, the enigma is increased by the fact that the novel was the work of a unique young woman who’s soul, in the words of her sister Charlotte, was made up of ‘a peculiar music -- wild, melancholy, and elevating.’
I think that all of us have a secret desire for a Heathcliffe.
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