Class Blog

There are multiple Gothic elements at work in Chapter 19 of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which undermine the striking tranquility of  Hareton’s education. Describing Hareton’s transformation, Nelly states, “His honest, warm, intellectual nature shook off rapidly the clouds of ignorance and degradation in which it had been bred” (Brontë 323). In this passage, the key tension exists between the words “nature” and “bred.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines nature as “physical strength or constitution,” while bred means “to produce offspring” (Oxford English Dictionary Online 1b, 1a). In using these two words in such proximity, one must consider the implicit argument between birth order and eventual merit of personality. Considering that Hareton’s father, Heathcliff, was appropriated into a relatively wealthy lifestyle after his low-class birth, and the pair were kept in similar ignorance during their shared childhoods displays Heathcliff’s affinity for maintaining ignorance.  The implication of the lines is that his birth order does not impact the ability to become “civilized” by the Victorian standard. A valuable British citizen emerges as the dominant identity once Hareton is assimilated into Englishness through a British education.  

There is a clearly implicit anxiety that rises within the Victorian time period of the national “Other,” which the novel subtly expresses through extremely characteristic imagery.  Nelly emphasizes that Hareton’s ignorance was dispelled like clouds. The same imagery is used throughout the novel to describe the tumultuous and mysterious moors between Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange: a threatening, liminal space full of uncertainty. Similarly, Hareton signifies a questionable entity because he has a foreign countenance and, particularly distressing, unknown origin.  This micro image of the British colonial system testifies to Roger Luckhurst’s theory that the gothic as a genre “pulses in sympathy with the rhythms of expansion and crisis in the British empire” with a distinct fear of “returning us to a savage state” (Luckhurst xiii-xiv). In this instance, Wuthering Heights is devoted to upholding the colonial doctrines of the British Empire, even if not explicitly because of the urgency and relief that accompanies Hareton’s conversion from intellectual “Other” to citizen. 

Another distinctive link that testifies to a palpable relief at the success of Catherine’s efforts toward civilization exist at the end of the passage when Nelly observes, “His brightening mind brightened his features, and added spirit and nobility to their aspects” (Brontë 323). In this moment, the distinct influence of physiognomic principles is obvious. Nelly believes she can tell that Hareton’s mind is progressing based on the increased attractiveness of his features. This implication is further complicated by the prominence of physiognomic ugliness as associated with criminality and violence across the rest of the novel. Furthermore, with his increasing intelligence, he gains nobility, a claim to a place in economic and social society, but also a spirit. This is fascinating because it reveals a distinct bias informed by religion, implying (through, and possibly misplaced in the British born Hareton) that perhaps global populations have no place in an afterlife beside good British citizens. In effect, to Nelly, a British education has quite literally saved Hareton’s soul.

In Alexandra Lewis’ “Memory Possessed: Trauma and Pathologies of Remembrance in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights,” she discusses how during the time of the novel’s publication, mental trauma was only just beginning to be understood and linked to outward symptoms.  For example, on pages 411-412, Lewis points out that other characters label Catherine’s destructive behaviors, like starvation and inducing sickness, as “manipulative” and intentionally self-induced when they are clearly “processes of the mind at work far beneath…Cathy’s conscious control.”  Everything that Catherine has been through has affected her psyche to the point that it has become a physical illness.  Brontë is experimenting with the idea that past trauma can actually affect one’s psyche and manifest in physical illness, when at the time, “trauma” was more associated with bodily wounds.  Lewis highlights how Brontë reveals the way in which past events can affect the brain.  

Considering Lewis’ lens of how mental trauma manifests, I believe Catherine’s ghost is also a manifestation of trauma.  Specifically, how she appears to Heathcliff.  Rather than Catherine’s ghost solely being a supernatural element in the novel, it is also possible that all of the traumatic events of Heathcliff’s past have taken such a toll on his brain that he is giving his trauma a form: that of Catherine.  Where Catherine’s trauma causes her brain to escape her control and makes her ill, Heathcliff’s trauma causes his brain to escape his control and makes Catherine’s ghost.  On page 289, Heathcliff states “I was wild after she died, and eternally, from dawn to dawn, praying her to return to me–her spirit…”  Heathcliff’s psyche latches onto his desperation to be with Catherine and he begins to actually see and feel her everywhere before his death.  The trauma of losing her is dictating what he sees and feels, replicating an image of Catherine.  Heathcliff experienced discriminatory trauma growing up, which already began to affect his brain, making him inclined to act the way he was perceived (as evil).  Then he experienced the traumatic loss of his love.  These facts combined with the fact that he is desperate to see her again, particularly her “spirit,” causes his affected, distraught brain to conjure her image forth.  To someone who has not undergone trauma, like Lockwood or random neighbors, Catherine’s ghost is just a dream, or a rumor.  To Heathcliff, who has been repeatedly traumatized, Catherine’s ghost is a reality.  She is his trauma manifested.  Similar to how Catherine’s illness is evidence that trauma has affected her psyche yet is not taken as such by others, Catherine’s ghost is evidence that trauma has affected Heathcliff’s psyche, and yet is not treated as such.  To readers, and likely to Lewis as well, seeing Catherine’s ghost is one of the first signs that Heathcliff’s mental state is deteriorating.  To other characters, his involvement with her spirit and corpse is further proof of his evilness and creepiness.  Brontë is experimenting with the extent to which trauma can affect the psyche throughout Wuthering Heights, which is in alignment with the discoveries of mental trauma in the Victorian era illustrated by Lewis.

Lewis, Alexandra. “Memory Possessed: Trauma and Pathologies of Remembrance in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.” Pp. 411-412.

Alexandra Lewis states that “Heathcliff himself becomes a symbolic embodiment of the operations of trauma upon the mind” (417). She goes on and shows how characters’ reactions with Heathcliff’s return are similar with actions of people who have experienced traumas (417-418). He intrudes people’s life. He makes Catherine unearth her violent emotions, leading to her eventual breakdown. He drives Hindley to murder attempts and more alcoholism with his presence. He scares Linton into doing his bidding. All of his actions and effects on people can be translate to trauma response, such as mood swings, breakdowns, constantly haunted by the memories, alcoholism, depression, and so on. Through Lewis’ view, Heathcliff essentially represents the traumatic memory that resurfaces after seemingly disappears for years and disrupts everyone’s life.

However, it is also important to remember that Heathcliff is how he is because of trauma. He is constantly being treated as the Other by everyone around him, tormented by Hindley, and antagonized even by Catherine herself. All of this abuse and trauma, along with the seemingly rejection from Catherine, lead him to run away. In other word, while Heathcliff seems to embody the work of traumatic memory, he is also created by traumas. Not only so, he is affected by traumas as well. And his trauma response is rage. Unlike other characters, whose traumatic memories seem to go away then come back, Heathcliff’s traumas stay with him, boiling and fueling his obsession for revenge. They also lead him to desecrate the graves, look for ghosts, and most importantly, traumatize the next generation. With his effects on Hareton, Linton, and Catherine the younger, the traumas are no longer contained within his generation’s cycle of trauma and abuse, but branching out to the next, potentially creating an entirely new cycle. This is also one of the commonly known results of trauma and abuse. Thus, through Lewis’ lens, Wuthering Heights represents trauma, its effects, and its cycle of existence through Heathcliff.

Lewis, Alexandra. “Memory Possessed: Trauma and Pathologies of Remembrance in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.” Pp. 406-423.

Alexander Lewis’ connection to psychology through Emily Brontë’s novel is an extremely intriguing connection. What is most interesting to me is that he is able to pick up these large connections to the character’s mental health when Wuthering Heights was written over 40 years before Freud would publish any of his research and subsequently coin the term “psychoanalysis”. One major plot point of the novel that fits into this psychological theory is when Cathy tells Nelly that she cannot remember the past seven years of her life (Brontë, 125). This suggests that Catherine experienced such a large amount of trauma during that time of her life, that in order to remain sane, her brain has now blocked it all out.

In psychology, there have been many times where a person will experience either a lot of traumatic experiences in a short period of time or one giant traumatic experience at one moment. When that happens, in some people, it has been found that your brain will cause amnesia and you will forget that traumatic experience. This is what happened to Catherine Earnshaw. This becomes evident during a fit of hysteria that Catherine is experiencing. During that fit, she confides with Nelly about those years that she seems to be missing. She tells Nelly that the last time she remembers something was when her “father was just buried, and [her] misery arose from the separation that Hindley had ordered between [her] and Heathcliff…” (Brontë, 125). Her time in Wuthering Heights after her fathers death was extremely traumatic to her.

The last words Catherine ever heard her father say were “why canst thou not always be a good lass, Cathy?” (Brontë, 43). After her fathers death, she and Heathcliff were brutally abused by Hindley. She was forced to be away from her closest friend, and due to the actions towards Heathcliff, she began to despise his differences. She watched her brother become a drunkard and almost kill his own son multiple times. So why does this matter? Even though Heathcliff is the central character to Wuthering Heights, the story would not have taken shape without Catherine Earnshaw. Her actions and reactions create this novel and her loss of memory from trauma makes one wonder what would have happened if she and Heathcliff were treated differently, how would their lives be different? It also makes us wonder if this is truly just a novel steeped in child abuse, or if this is a novel of what it was like to grow up wealthy in the country side in the early 17th century.

The Victorian Era was a time of change across all aspects of society. As working conditions began to improve, so did room for literacy. According to Richard Altick, the forms of the novel which emerged in the Victorian Era catered to the increasingly literate working class with one, key caveat—The “reading matter had to be devoid of all but the most familiar literary and historical allusions” (Altick 61). These narratives communicated a simplicity and coalesced into a “many-voicedness” which allowed “the several classes [to come to] a certain understanding of one another’s positions in the fluid state of society” (Altick 72). Although I hold some reservations concerning his tone towards the working class, Altick’s broader point that the contemporary literature communicated ideas in simple and familiar terms provides a lens for reading Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights”. If ideas were blunt and instructive about class standings, then where does that leave a bastard like Heathcliff?

That bastard is selfish, cruel, and unforgiving. The caretaker, Nelly, describes Heathcliff in the following words:

“He has nobody knows what money, and every year it increases. Yes, yes, he’s richer to live in a finer house than this; but he’s very near—close-handed; and, if he had meant to flit to Thrushcross Grange, he could not have borne to miss the chance of getting a few hundreds more. It is strange people should be so greedy, when they are alone in this world” (Bronte 34)

While Nelly reveals to Lockwood the vast wealth Heathcliff has acquired, she includes mention that this fortune is tainted by its excess. Since his expansion into Thrushcross Grange would only [emphasis added] produce “a few hundreds more,” he is greedy. In fact, Nelly puts the whole of Heathcliff’s standing under fire. Since Heathcliff does not renovate his house, he is “near.” Without family, he is “alone,” which only adds to making him more cheap and more greedy. All of these criticisms compound to reconcile the achievement in her first statement. Heathcliff does well in society, but Heathcliff doing well does not conform with the image of the Bastard.

Being alone from a family restricts Heathcliff and taints how others see both his success and failures. If we assume the blunt image of the Bastard, as a conniving, evil bastard, then Heathcliff makes a fine villain. However, if we assume the blunt messaging reveals “a certain understanding of one another’s positions” (Altick 61), then Heathcliff unravels into a rich commentary about Victorian prejudices and rigidity. Nelly accurately points out that Heathcliff is “alone” (Bronte 34), but his loneliness is not of his sole doing. Heathcliff endured abandonment to reach his position, but despite his acquisition of status, he goes unrecognized and remains disconnected. “Wuthering Heights” is a tragic depiction of neglect in society, the indifferent cruelty of others, and the continual suffering that prejudice produces. The Bastard, while a blunt literary image, works here as a lesson against such discrimination. At all levels of society, hate breeds hate, and resentment breeds sufferings.

Words Cited

Altick, Richard D. “The Power of the Press.” Victorians: Actors and Audience, Norton, 1973, pp 64-72.

Altick, Richard D. “The Reading Public.” Victorians: Actors and Audience, Norton, 1973, pp 59-64.

Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Penguin Random House, 2003.

“However, Catherine would not be persuaded into tranquility. She kept wandering to and fro, from the gate to the door, in a state of agitation which permitted no response, and at length took up a permanent situation on one side of the wall, near the road; where, heedless of my expostulations, and the growling thunder, and the great drops that began to plash around her, she remained, calling at intervals, and then listening, and then crying outright. She beat Hareton, or any child, at a good, passionate fit of crying.”

-Wuthering Heights, page 85

One thing I continually notice as I read is that yes, Wuthering Heights is violent, but that violence is just as often self-inflicted as it is directed at others. Not only this, but the said self-inflicted violence is often done for the sake of another. Upon learning Heathcliff has run away after overhearing her, Catherine subjects herself to the storm brewing outside. Nothing forces her to do this besides her own frustration at herself. She may think Heathcliff will return if he sees her shivering in the rain, and if this is the case, she is certainly not taking “a permanent situation on one side of the wall” for her own sake. Whether she recognizes that is another matter. She appears so wrapped up in her own misery and concern that she forgoes her own health and safety. This goes beyond physical torment and also includes mental anguish too- Catherine is willing to marry Will for Heathcliff’s sake more so than her own.

Words such as ‘agitation’, ‘growling’, ‘crying’ and ‘wandering’ stand out, likening Catherine’s actions to those of a petulant child. The oncoming storm acts as the sublime- nature being something terrifying- a parallel display of power that outshines the power Catherine has when she uses her anger or despair against others. Catherine is strong, or perhaps forceful, because of her habit of lashing out and acting without care or thought for others, but the storm whittles her character down to its bare essentials- an emotionally charged child with little direction and no safe outlet. The point is driven home by the final sentence of the paragraph, where it is noted she throws tantrums better than any other actual child. She is a young woman who seems to have too much emotion, and that is all that drives her as she oscillates between emotional extremes.

I chose to close read page sixty-five. In this passage Hindley uses denial to cope with the impending death of his beloved wife Frances. Throughout this page, Nelly speaks with both Hindley and Frances about their perspectives on the future state of things. While Hindley is both in denial about Frances’ fate, he is simultaneously inconsolable over the loss of Frances before she has even died. In contrary to this, Frances laughs at Hindley’s heart going as far as to state that she almost laughed at him for crying. In this passage, the reader is shown a side of Hindley that they had not been shown before. In this particular passage, the reader is shown in great emotion just how deeply Hindley’s love and devotion to his wife goes. This aspect of Hindley not only adds another layer to all of Hindley’s relationships but also shows the human side of Hindley and the other characters in the midst of a novel full of the suppernatural. 

What type of Villain is Heathcliff? Overwhelmingly, the novel describes him as something less than human: a beast, an animal, a wild untrained thing with brutal impulses. When it does not turn to nature to describe the man, it instead uses the supernatural and describes him as devilish, or in Isabella’s case, as a devil itself. 

These descriptions are effective in inciting terror because they other Heathcliff. They obscure his motives from the reader and turn him into a mystery. Our expectations of how a human may behave are thwarted and instead we must wait in terror and wonder what the bounds of his morality will finally be, if they are ever to be met. 

However, the beastly, devilish characterizations, though frequent, are not the most powerful tools in the villain’s characterization. To over stress Heathcliff’s monsterification is to ignore the true roots of Wuthering Heights’ horror: His objectification.

When Heathcliff is first introduced to his adopted family by Mr. Earnshaw with the phrase “it’s as dark almost as if it came from the devil” although the phrase devil is used, he is not made to be any kind of creature resembling one. Instead he is an object, devoid of any personality or motives of its own, only a force of the devil, almost like a plague. The repeated reference to Heathcliff as an It over the following pages reinforces his objectification.

Although, “it” can refer to animals as well as objects, the early characterizations of Heathcliff are devoid of animalistic traits. He is a “dirty, ragged, black-haired child; big enough both to walk and talk…sullen, patient…hardened, perhaps, to ill-treatment” (Ch. 4). It is not until later in the book that the boy takes on beastly traits. In the early stages of his development he is a passive force, resembling an object more than a creature. 

He is passive in his responses to Hindley, passive in accepting his father’s affection, and does nothing to directly cause harm and yet “from the very beginning, he bred bad feeling in the house” (Ch. 4). 

The only force which raises Heathcliff from his inanimate status is Cathy. Once we consider, though, that he came to Wuthering Heights in place of her promised whip, It the raises the possibility that even in action he is an object. Obeying Cathy’s whims even in death, as he carries out her final curse on himself and Edgar.

If the actions of a monster are a mystery to readers, then the actions of an object are doubly so, and thus Heathcliff is doubly terrifying.