Wuthering Heights | |
![]() Title page of the first edition |
|
Author | Emily Brontë |
---|---|
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | Novel |
Publisher | Thomas Cautley Newby |
Publication date | 1847 |
Media type | Print (Hardback) |
ISBN | 9781932535143 |
Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's only novel. It was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second edition was edited by her sister Charlotte. The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centres (as an adjective, wuthering is a Yorkshire word referring to turbulent weather). The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.
Now considered a classic of English literature, Wuthering Heights' met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared, with many horrified by the stark depictions of mental and physical cruelty.[1][2] Though Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was originally considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works, many subsequent critics of Wuthering Heights argued that its originality and achievement made it superior.[3] Wuthering Heights has also given rise to many adaptations and inspired works, including films, radio, television dramatisations, a musical by Bernard J. Taylor and songs (notably the hit "Wuthering Heights" by Kate Bush), ballet and opera.
Contents |
The narrative is non-linear, involving several flashbacks, and two narrators - Mr. Lockwood and Ellen "Nelly" Dean. The novel opens in 1801, with Lockwood arriving at Thrushcross Grange, a grand house on the Yorkshire moors he is renting from the surly Heathcliff, who lives at nearby Wuthering Heights. Lockwood is treated rudely and coldly by the brooding, unsociable Heathcliff, and is forced to stay at Wuthering Heights for a night when one of the savage dogs of the Heights attacks him and the weather turns against him. The housekeeper cautiously takes him to a chamber to sleep through the night, and warns him to not speak to Heathcliff about where he is sleeping. During the night, Lockwood finds a book of the experiences of a girl named Catherine Earnshaw, in which he discovers that she and Heathcliff were extremely close as children. As he slowly doses off, Lockwood has a terrifying dream of Catherine's ghost coming in through the window, deathly pale and frightening, and begging him to let her in to the home. Heathcliff awoken as Lockwood shouts in fear comes running in. His mood changes dramatically when Lockwood tells him of Catherine's ghost. Heathcliff asks Mr. Lockwood to leave the room and Lockwood hears him sobbing from outside the door saying "Oh Cathy please come in." The following morning, Lockwood sets off to Thrushcross Grange where he asks the housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to tell the story of Heathcliff, Catherine, and Wuthering Heights while he recovers from a cold.
Nelly takes over the narration and begins her story thirty years earlier, when Heathcliff, a foundling living on the streets of Liverpool, is brought to Wuthering Heights by the then-owner, the kindly Mr. Earnshaw, and raised as his own. Ellen comments casually that Heathcliff might have been descended from Spanish or American origins. He is often described as "dark" or "gypsy". Earnshaw's daughter Catherine becomes Heathcliff's inseparable friend. Her brother Hindley, however, resents Heathcliff, seeing him as an interloper and rival. Mr. Earnshaw dies three years later, and Hindley (who has married a woman named Frances) takes over the estate. He brutalises Heathcliff, forcing him to work as a hired hand. Catherine becomes friends with a neighbour family, the Lintons of Thrushcross Grange, who mellow her initially wild personality. She is especially attached to the refined and mild young Edgar Linton, whom Heathcliff instantly dislikes.
A year later, Hindley's wife dies, apparently of consumption, shortly after giving birth to a son, Hareton; Hindley takes to drink. Some two years after that, Catherine agrees to marry Edgar. Nelly knows that this will crush Heathcliff, and Heathcliff overhears Catherine's explanation that it would be "degrading" to marry him. Heathcliff storms out and leaves Wuthering Heights, not hearing Catherine's continuing declarations that Heathcliff is as much a part of her as the rocks are to the earth beneath. Catherine marries Edgar, and is initially very happy. Some time later, Heathcliff returns, intent on destroying those who prevent him from being with Catherine. He has, mysteriously, become very wealthy. Through loans he has made to the drunken and dissipated Hindley that Hindley cannot repay, he takes ownership of Wuthering Heights upon Hindley's death. Intent on ruining Edgar, Heathcliff elopes with Edgar's sister Isabella, which places him in a position to inherit Thrushcross Grange upon Edgar's death.
Catherine becomes very ill after Heathcliff's return and dies a few hours after giving birth to a daughter also named Catherine, or Cathy. Heathcliff becomes only more bitter and vengeful. Isabella flees her abusive marriage a month later, and subsequently gives birth to a boy, Linton. At around the same time, Hindley dies. Heathcliff takes ownership of Wuthering Heights, and vows to raise Hindley's son Hareton with as much neglect as he had suffered at Hindley's hands years earlier. Later on, Heathcliff tells Nelly that he despises his own son, Linton, who reminds him of Edgar and Isabella, and favours Hareton as a son, recognising an element of Catherine in him (it having already been established that both Catherine and Heathcliff considered themselves one of the same person), and therefore himself. Yet, Heathcliff chooses to ignore these paternal emotions so that he might continue to degrade Hareton as Hindley degraded Heathcliff: thereby achieving his revenge on his hated foster-brother. This perhaps demonstrates the "evil", dehumanized character Heathcliff is so often thought to represent.
Twelve years later, the dying Isabella asks Edgar to raise her and Heathcliff's son, Linton. However, Heathcliff finds out about this and takes the sickly, spoiled child to Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff has nothing but contempt for his son, but delights in the idea of him ruling the property of his enemies. To that end, a few years later, Heathcliff attempts to persuade young Cathy to marry Linton. Cathy refuses, so Heathcliff kidnaps her and forces the two to marry. Soon after, Edgar Linton dies, followed shortly by Linton Heathcliff. This leaves Cathy a widow and a virtual prisoner at Wuthering Heights, as Heathcliff has gained complete control of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. It is at this point in the narrative that Lockwood arrives, renting Thrushcross Grange from Heathcliff, and hearing Nelly Dean's story. Shocked, Lockwood leaves for London.
During his absence from the area, however, events reach a climax that Nelly describes when he returns a year later. Cathy gradually softens toward her rough, uneducated cousin Hareton, just as her mother was tender towards Heathcliff. When Heathcliff is confronted by Cathy and Hareton's love, notably Hareton's determination to protect the defiant Cathy from Heathcliff's attack, he seems to suffer a mental break from reality and sees Catherine's ghost. He abandons his life-long vendetta and dies broken and tormented, but glad to be rejoining Catherine. Cathy and Hareton marry. Heathcliff is buried next to Catherine (the elder), and the story concludes with Lockwood visiting the grave, sorry that he had not courted Cathy, and unsure of what to feel.
Heathcliff
Catherine Earnshaw
Edgar Linton
Isabella Linton
Hindley Earnshaw
Ellen (Nelly) Dean
Linton Heathcliff
Catherine Linton
Hareton Earnshaw
Joseph
Lockwood
Frances Earnshaw
Mr. Kenneth,
1757 | Hindley born (Summer); Nelly born |
1762 | Edgar Linton born |
1764 | Heathcliff born |
1765 | Catherine Earnshaw born (Summer); Isabella Linton born (late 1765) |
1771 | Heathcliff is brought to Wuthering Heights by Mr Earnshaw (late summer) |
1773 | Mrs Earnshaw dies (Spring) |
1774 | Hindley is sent off to college |
1777 | Hindley marries Frances; Mr Earnshaw dies (October); Hindley comes back (October); Heathcliff and Catherine visit Thrushcross Grange, Catherine remains behind (November), then returns to Wuthering Heights (Christmas Eve). |
1778 | Hareton is born (June); Frances dies |
1780 | Heathcliff runs away from Wuthering Heights; Mr and Mrs Linton both die |
1783 | Catherine marries Edgar (March); Heathcliff comes back (September) |
1784 | Heathcliff marries Isabella (February); Catherine dies and Cathy is born (20 March); Hindley dies; Linton is born (September) |
1797 | Isabella dies; Cathy visits Wuthering Heights and meets Hareton; Linton is brought to Thrushcross Grange and is then taken to Wuthering Heights |
1800 | Cathy meets Heathcliff and sees Linton again (20 March) |
1801 | Cathy and Linton are married (August); Edgar dies (August); Linton dies (September); Mr Lockwood goes to Thrushcross Grange and visits Wuthering Heights, beginning his narrative |
1802 | Mr Lockwood goes back to London (January); Heathcliff dies (April); Mr Lockwood comes back to Thrushcross Grange (September) |
1803 | Cathy plans to marry Hareton (1 January) |
Though tourists are often told that Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse, near the Haworth Parsonage (Brontë Parsonage Museum), is the model for Wuthering Heights, it seems more likely that the now demolished High Sunderland Hall, near Halifax was the partial model for the building. This Gothic edifice, near Law Hill, where Emily worked briefly as a schoolmistress in 1838, had grotesque embellishments of griffins and misshapen nude men similar to those described by Lockwood of Wuthering Heights in chapter one of the novel:
The originals of Thrushcross Grange have been traditionally connected to Ponden Hall near Haworth (although it is far too small) and, more likely, Shibden Hall, near Halifax.[4][5] A feud centred around Walterclough Hall is also said to have been one inspiration for the story along with the story of Emily's grandfather, Hugh Brunty.
Traditionally, this novel has been seen as a unique piece of work written by a woman confined to the lonesome heath, detached from the literary movements of the time. However, Emily Brontë received literary training at the Pensionnat Héger in Brussels by imitating and analysing the styles of classic writers. She also learned German, and was able to read the German Romantics in the original. The work of Lord Byron was also admired by all three Brontë sisters. The brother-sister relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy is reminiscent of the brother-sister couples in Byron's epics. The character of Heathcliff is reminiscent of the Byronic hero.
The novel contains many Gothic and supernatural elements. The mystery of Heathcliff's parentage is never solved. All film interpretations have failed in accurately depicting Heathcliff's appearance; He is described as "a dark skinned gypsy in appearance," with black hair and black eyes. It is assumed that he is a gypsy; there were, from what M. Earnshaw said, no people in the town who knew him or claimed him; he belonged to no one. In literature, the smoky, threatening, miserable factory-towns were often represented in religious terms, and compared to hell. The poet William Blake, writing near the turn of the nineteenth century, speaks of England’s “dark Satanic Mills.” Heathcliff is described by Hindley as an 'imp of Satan' in chapter four. Near the end of the novel Nelly Dean wonders if Heathcliff is a ghoul or vampire, but then remembers how they grew up together and dismisses the thought. The awesome but unseen presence of Satan is also alluded to at several points in the novel, and it is noted in chapter three that 'no clergyman will undertake the duties of pastor' at the local chapel, which has fallen into dereliction. Heathcliff is constantly described as a devil or demon by many different characters throughout the course of the book. His wife, Isabella Linton, asks Nelly if Heathcliff is a man at all, after she marries him and is exposed to his true nature.
An important theory is often overlooked and has never truly been conveyed in any film adaptation; Heathcliff and Cathy are two halves of the same soul, and are good and evil, angel and devil. Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is based on their shared perception that they are identical. Their love denies difference, and is strangely asexual. The two do not kiss in dark corners or arrange secret trysts, as adulterers do. Cathy famously proclaims "I am Heathcliff!" In that same conversation with Nelly, she talks about a "dream" she had, where she was in heaven, but was very unhappy and wanted to be back on earth. The angels grew so angry with her that they cast her onto the heath and onto Wuthering Heights, and when she woke, she wept for joy. Cathy goes through a transformation in the book; during an argument with Edgar Linton she starts going crazy, biting and ripping the pillows and then lying still as though dead. She is ill for a period of time but never fully recovers; she asks Nelly "Why am I so changed?" Her angelic nature, previously frustrated, surfaces, but she cannot live for long afterwards. Nelly wonders often if she will get into heaven, because of her less than saintly life, but when she watches her on her death-bed she is filled with a wonderful feeling of calm and release, and is assured that she has entered heaven. While Cathy's soul is angelic, Heathcliff's is demonic. Heathcliff's long-lasting malevolence and gratuitous violence can only be explained by his being a demon incarnate. Moreover, Heathcliff, upon Catherine’s death, wails that he cannot live without his “soul,” meaning Catherine.
Ghosts also play a role in the novel. Lockwood has a horrible vision of Catherine (the elder) as a child, appearing at the window of her old chamber at Wuthering Heights and begging to be allowed in. Heathcliff believes this story of Catherine's ghostly return, and late in the novel behaves as though he has seen her ghost himself. When Heathcliff dies, he is found in the bedroom with the window open, raising the possibility that Catherine's ghost entered Wuthering Heights just as Lockwood saw in his dream. At the end of the novel, Nelly Dean reports that various superstitious locals have claimed to see Catherine and Heathcliff's ghosts roaming the moors. Lockwood, however, discounts the idea of "unquiet slumbers for those sleepers in that quiet earth."
In 2006, it was reported that a new film adaptation was in development, with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp attached to star, however, no further developments appear to have been forthcoming. M. Night Shyamalan was once offered the project to direct, but he turned it down to work on The Village, which he later revealed to be inspired partly by the novel.[11]
ITV has commissioned a new adaptation, to be written by Blackpool writer Peter Bowker. The three-hour Brontë is expected to be broadcast in early 2008.[12] It will star Charlotte Riley and Tom Hardy.
In early 2008, a highly publicised fight for the role of Catherine made headlines across the UK with both Keira Knightley and Lindsay Lohan vying for the role. John Maybury is slated to direct the latest adaptation.[13]. In April 2008, Natalie Portman was cast as in the role[14] although she had to leave the project soon after.
Sienna Miller was in early talks to play Catherine Earnshaw, the heroine of Wuthering Heights, while Michael Fassbender, the fast-rising London-based actor signed on officially to play the brooding figure of Heathcliff. Sienna entered negotiations following the dramatic withdrawal from the production of actress Natalie Portman. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1020030/Sienna-Miller-play-Wuthering-Heights-heroine-Cathy-Natalie-Portman-drops-out.html
On August 1, 2008, director John Maybury pulled out of the film.[15]
Since the Yorkshire Post declared Abbie Cornish as the latest actress slated to star in the role of strong-willed Catherine Earnshaw of the upcoming film, her own fansite, www.abbie-cornish.com, also confirmed the news, as well as numerous other movie sites such as Rotten Tomatoes, and BronteBlog, the daily updated site that posts news articles relating to the Brontë sisters. While Cornish and Fassbender will star, however, there has still been no director to step into Maybury's directing place after disagreements with screenwriter Olivia Hetreed resulted in his quitting the job.
Director Peter Webber has no signed on to the upcoming HanWay title.[16]
|