Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights as portrayed by the movies and popular culture:

Conceit number 1: ‘Wuthering Heights is a book about love and romance’. It is not. Most definitely not.

Conceit number 2: ‘Heathcliff and Cathy are star-crossed lovers who are meant for one-another, and whose struggle to be together, even beyond death, forms the basis of the story’. Really, this is so far from the truth I clench my fists in frustration at the very thought that people might actually think this. Pick Romeo and Juliet; pick Lizzie Bennet and Mister Darcy; heck, pick Gomez and Morticia if you really want to, but Cathy and Heathcliff are not the perfect couple, not by a long shot, and the book is largely made by the radioactive fallout of their inability to function as rational people.

          Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, younger sister of Charlotte and thus one of the fabulous Brontë set, is a dark dark book. Not the pitiful Comic Book style of dark, or grim in the sense of horror, but the sickening kind of dark that eats away at you as you watch functioning human beings growing steadily more twisted and horrible as the story saunters on, daring you to believe it can’t possibly keep up this trail of misery and decadence, only to laugh as it twists another knife in somebody’s gut. It’s a bit like Eastenders in that case.

          The story takes place on the bleak moors of the north, something of a rugged wasteland if the book is to be believed, back in that lovely Georgian era that Jane Austen seems so keen to glorify. There are but two man-made locations to explore – the titular Wuthering Heights which is a rustic early-modern pile of stones owned by the Earnshaw family, and Thrushcross Grange, the large domain of the much more posh Linton family. Aside from a village somewhere in the distance, these two houses represent the sole habitation of the region. Mister Lockwood, a newcomer to the neighbourhood, arrives at Wuthering Heights to find a rather unfortunate tangled knot of human beings; an incomprehensible and sadistic old retainer, a rough young man, an unhappy young lady, and presiding over it all is the surly, middle-aged and unwelcoming landlord, Mister Heathcliff, and his pack of half-murderous dogs. Of the relations between these characters, our Mister Lockwood can’t make heads nor tails – each and every one of them seem to hate one another. A couple of chapters in, Lockwood stumbles upon the metaphorical ghost of some Catherine or other, and winds up ill and bedbound, with only the stories of his housekeeper to occupy his time and energy.

          This housekeeper, Mrs Ellen Dean – often known as Nelly – turns out to be intimate with the entire sordid history of Heathcliff, Catherine, and the troubles they caused. In a confusing shift of narrative, Nelly in essence becomes the protagonist, telling of how the orphaned child Heathcliff was brought to Wuthering Heights one day by old Mister Earnshaw, how he befriended his adoptive father’s daughter Catherine/Cathy and made enemies with his son Hindley; then when Earnshaw died not long later, and Hindley succeeded him as master of the family, Heathcliff was degraded to the level of household labourer and forced into squalor. Cathy’s companionship was his only pleasure in life, and that was quickly taken away from him when she ends up marrying Edgar Linton, the rich-kid of the neighbourhood – causing Heathcliff to run away never to return. Only he does return, years later, now with a bit of cash to his name and a dream of revenge against literally everybody who had ever wronged him in the slightest way. The following three quarters of the book, and about two decades of plot, consist of just that.

          The character roster contains some of the most dreadful and unpleasant human beings to appear this side of English Literature. Catherine Earnshaw, who thankfully dies before the halfway mark of the story, is no perfect princess – she’s not the nastiest character, but manages with a number of badly thought out words and actions to send the entire plot spiralling out of control. However she rationalises marrying Linton, she proves later on how manipulative, selfish and slightly crazy she is when Heathcliff comes back and rocks the boat. On top of that is her brother, whose earlier cruelty to Heathcliff is matched by his ensuing slide into drunkenness and gambling which essentially ruins him; Hindley’s neglected son Hareton (Cathy’s nephew) who spends his childhood as an uncouth, vile-mouthed little toad; there’s Joseph, the bible-bashing old sinner who loves the idea of Hell much more than any soppy old thing like Heaven; there’s the weak-willed and foppish Edgar Linton and his stupid sister Isabella; and finally the sickly offspring of Heathcliff and Isabella Linton, their son who just goes by the name of Linton (as if the names couldn’t get any more confusing), pathetic, grasping, selfish, snobbish, and cowardly.

          But of all these disgusting creatures, there is none more frightful or monstrous than Heathcliff himself. Now, each of the characters in Wuthering Heights is a fully developed entity, packed with understandable motives, a degree of sympathy, and one or two features which could go part the way to redeeming them for their many flaws – after all, Hindley Earnshaw did lose his wife, Edgar Linton is actually a fairly decent guy it turns out, and Catherine Earnshaw had done what she thought was right, rationalising her marriage to Edgar as if it was the best thing for everybody. Heathcliff likewise begins quite understandably; a street urchin who suddenly finds he has a home and a loving family, only to have that taken from him not long later to be replaced by a life of degradation and servitude, whose only consolation is the friendship and love of Cathy, who then goes off and selfishly marries some guy who has money and social status. You can see why he might be a bit pissed off. But whereas somebody else ought to be able to just get over a broken heart, run off and start a new life, Heathcliff gets his hands on some money and comes back with only revenge on his mind, revenge against the two families which he now holds an inconsolable grudge against.

         This essentially involves playing the part of the cuckoo. Using Hindley Earnshaw’s debts, Heathcliff manoeuvres himself into a position of essential ownership over Wuthering Heights, and uses that as his base from which to launch a campaign of aggression against the Lintons; first merely getting into regular contact with Catherine, through which to irritate her husband Edgar, then when he realises how Edgar’s sister Isabella has fallen in love with him, he sees just how badly he can use the intertwining family relationships to his advantage. Isabella is a bit silly for throwing herself on this sworn enemy of her family, but Heathcliff’s conduct in using her as a mere pawn in his grand scheme, and making her miserable seemingly just for the pleasure of it, is not what anybody deserves. Heathcliff subjects her to near constant isolation and domestic abuse, until she finally runs away to give birth to their sickly son Linton.

          It’s around this point that the various weak-fisted movie adaptations begin to lose faith in the story. The older generation are beginning to die off; Catherine being the first to go, sickening as though Heathcliff himself is acting as poison to her, and finally slipping away with the birth of hers and Edgar’s daughter, also named Catherine/Cathy (confusingly). Her brother Hindley Earnshaw, Heathcliff’s old tormentor and now dependent, also dies around this time, allowing Cliffy to seize the Heights in fullness and train up Hindley’s son, Hareton, as his dogsbody. After the three children grow older, Isabella Linton dies thus resulting in Heathcliff gaining custody of his son, Linton. With me so far? Good, because Stage Two of the plan commences: the younger Catherine comes into Heathcliff’s sights, and he now knows that by manipulating and forcing the children into a marriage alliance, he can not only inflict more misery on a second generation of the two families but he can also gain control of Thrushcross Grange. With Edgar Linton on his deathbed, and Linton Heathcliff (Jr. Jr.) not likely to outlive him by much, our bad guy ends up being diabolically efficient in getting his way – resorting to kidnapping and imprisonment, and even bribing a solicitor.

          So basically Heathcliff is the villain of the tale – a ‘bad guy’ in both senses of the phrase. The dull and ordinarily miserable lives of the characters are upset and overturned purely by the hand of this wicked nemesis, this antagonist; and the more pain and suffering that he causes, the less we feel any sympathy for him – or at least that’s how we should feel, and I hereby declare any Heathcliff Apologists to be making a ridiculous argument. At any time he could have laid off his relentless assault, asked for forgiveness and left the world as it should be, but no; he pursues his war against the Lintons long after Catherine’s (the senior Cathy’s) death, when he ought to have had some kind of epiphany, but which instead spurs him on to battle Edgar to the death and corrupt the next generation. And if there is to be a hero of this tale, then the closest we have is Nelly Dean, the protagonist through whose eyes we witness all this awful stuff happen. Mister Lockwood may be writing the tale, but Nelly is the one telling it (or should that figure of speech be the other way round?). She is superstitious and meddlesome, and sometimes her interventions cause more harm than good, but at the end of the day she is doing stuff, trying to do the right thing, and she seems to at least have a sense of human decency to her. The later part of the book feels as though it’s her and Cathy (Jr.) struggling directly against Heathcliff, and one can’t help but feel sorry for them, having to stand up to such a monster – a fight which you feel sure they are going to lose. In the end, Heathcliff’s eventual death is the only real way for the surviving characters to find peace and joy; though the villain’s strange decline shows that perhaps all this wickedness was having an adverse effect on him after all. Who knows. It’s a strange finale, and I’m sure one would be better served in seeking out literary criticism of the book than in paying heed to a casual review such as this.

          So would I recommend this? I would indeed; it’s a bloody good book, written with the skill and devotion you would expect from a Brontë, though it’s not an easy nor pleasant read. The subject matter is as dark as it gets, and if you wanted a love story then you won’t like this one bit – not unless you’re sick and twisted. Admittedly I did not enjoy it like I did Jane Eyre, but then, it’s a very different tale – one is actually about love, and quite good at telling it, while the other is a tale of hatred, of suffering, and of powerlessness. Mister Rochester is a good man who has his faults and things to hide, while Heathcliff is a vindictive monster who delights in inflicting pain and misery on people who never wronged him in the first place.

          Like all Georgio-Victorian literature it takes a great deal of time and energy to ingest, but it is by all means worth it. Certainly more so than Pride and Prejudice, which ultimately does not amount to much – the Brontës on the other hand actually give us a fresh and interesting story, populated with richly woven characters and containing themes stronger than a mere ‘marry a man with lots of cash’; this is about people in the middle of nowhere, driven to each other’s throats by their most awful human failings, and it makes for a memorable tale. A tale, at least, that was ignored by Laurence Olivier and many others, I’m sure, who attempted to adapt it for film. If there’s nothing else you take away from this review, then it is that Heathcliff is not some moody romantic, but is one of the most evil men in English literature.

Bibliothing Heights

Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Alexander Hamilton Publishers (c.1940-47 [First Published 1847])