Wuthering Heights is a story about child abuse. It's a story about other things, too, but it's an abuse novel. I think academics prefer the term "trauma," which is a better fit here, since one can include the deaths of the various parents and so on. Heathcliff comes from a terrible background (I assume - that's actually one of the novel's dark mysteries). His foster brother Hindley resents him and abuses him. Heathcliff turns on Hindley as soon as he is powerful enough, and possibly murders him; he's also brutal to Hindley's son Hareton and even worse, much worse, to his own son.
Really brutal - remember pathetic Linton out on the moors, too terrified to stand up. What is he afraid of, what will his father do to him, or what has he done? Brontë doesn't exactly say, but by this point in the book she doesn't need to. Heathcliff is a violent monster.
Sounds hilarious, I know. Romantic, too. That's the shift in tone I was talking about before. For a while, Wuthering Heights is grown-up Lemony Snicket. All sorts of horrible things are threatened, but it's so outrageous it's hard (for me) to take seriously. Look at the scene where a drunken Hindley drops his son over a banister. Heathcliff catches the baby, but is then angry that he did so. This is a terrible scene, really, just awful, but it's also sort of comical. Heathcliff's petulance is outrageous, but not yet threatening enough to spoil the fun.
I'm not so heartless. It's all Nellie Dean's fault. Yes, I blame the narrator: "A miser who has parted with a lucky lottery ticket for five shillings, and finds next day he has lost in the bargain five thousand pounds, could not show a blanker countenance than [Heathcliff] did on beholding the figure of Mr. Earnshaw above." This is what you say when someone saves a baby? That miser upset about the lottery, that's comedy.
Almost all of the story is told to us by Nellie Dean*, who is rarely quite horrified enough by anyone's bad behavior. She always finds rationalizations. The view of Heathcliff as a romantic figure is partly her fault - she likes him well enough. As a narrator, she is an ancestress of Humbert Humbert, an obscurer of atrocities. Heathcliff has corrupted her, too, at least a little.
I don't think the "trauma" interpretation is sufficient. Heathcliff is rescued from a terrible situation by a nice family, right, so he should improve, like Hareton does when rescued from Heathcliff? Heathcliff seems to be an actual monster, a creature of a not-quite-human species, a relative of Frankenstein's creation, or the Icelandic saga heroes who are half troll and can't function in normal society. And how does one explain Catherine, who's a bit of a monster herself? Surely not as a victim of Heathcliff? Wuthering Heights always turns in on itself. It's such a rich novel, but perhaps it's not quite coherent, in the latter respect like this post.
* I'm assuming Lockwood is presenting Nellie's narration more or less accurately. This book is a tangle.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Heathcliff is a monster
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A grown-up Lemony Snicket! That made me laugh. Yes, this novel is a tangle, all right.
ReplyDeleteI've often wondered, with little resolve either way, how faithful Lockwood is to Nellie Dean's account of things. He is quite ill for part of the story, and perhaps somewhat disoriented. You are right that Miss Dean is overly sympathetic to Heathcliff, though—a result, in my opinion, of having known him since a child. She also seems to hold his and Cathy's relationship in a relatively romantic light.
ReplyDeleteAs to a nice family rescuing Heathcliff from a terrible situation—do we have evidence of this? I don't know that his previous situation was terrible, and I'm partial to thinking Heathcliff is an illegitimate half-brother to Cathy, brought home by his own father for whatever reason.
Do we have evidence, nicole, that Heathcliff had a terrible childhood? Yes - Mr. Earnshaw says he found Heathcliff "starving and houseless" in Liverpool. Also, Nellie says that he was "hardened, perhaps, to ill-treatment."
ReplyDeleteDo we have proof? No - Mr. Earnshaw could be lying. And we agree that we can't quite trust Nellie (and what's that "perhaps"?).
It's this sort of thing that leads to the incest theory you mention. (as if Catherine and Heathcliff weren't weird enough). Heathcliff's life off the moors - his early childhood, his years of wandering - are complete mysteries. How does a reader fill the holes?
So I just googled "Lemony Snicket" and "Wuthering Heights," and the first hit is an interview in which Handler says specifically that his books are descended from WH.
I like your question here about Nellie Dean and how she obscures the reader's sympathies..or skews them anyway. It would be interesting, maybe, to try and sort out what Bronte's purpose was in writing the novel. Would she have wanted her reader's to think of Heathcliff as a monster? of Cathy as a monster too?
ReplyDeleteEmily could have had a highly Goth attitude for all I know - Heathcliff opening Catherine's coffin is, like, the coolest thing ever.
ReplyDeleteCharlotte thought that Wuthering Heights was immoral, and tried to excuse it in various ways. It's actually a Christian novel; it teaches by negative example; it's simply a picture drawn from life. I'm forgetting one. None is entirely wrong, none is sufficient.