Wuthering Heights Reading Group

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I was waiting to hear your thoughts on Heathcliff later in the book.

I always thought the subtitle of Brontë's novel should be:

Wuthering Heights:
Because Psychopaths Fall in Love, Too

Would that subtitle have been possible in Bronte's time?

I am one of those compulsive ones who hate seeing a 1969 car in a scene that's supposed to be from 1967 LOL

That is such a fitting title! Yes the way this love is described is so good that i still feel his pain after everything he does. (or maybe i feel sorry for the Heathcliff that was in Catherine's heart, in her own words)

Isabella has a consummate knowledge of Wuthering Heights.....probably much more than what I can conceive at present.

Oh heavens, no it would not have been considered. Even the word "Wuthering" was perverse and amoral as it suggested moral decay. Heathcliff's behaviour was considered reprehensible even by male critics, but rather than conceding to the prevalence of domestic abuse, violence, alcoholism or mental illness which plagued their times they slandered Emily as a deranged and blasphemous heretic. Her transgression of moral law was scandalous.

"Reviewers were disgusted or shocked by the novel's brutality, confounded by the absence of a reliable, moral compass attributable to its author, and dismayed by the absence of characters to like or admire unreservedly".
(The Annotated Wuthering Heights, ed. Janet Gezari, Harvard University Press, 2014, p. 3).

Use of a term such as "psychopathy" would have placed the characters' blame on their own constitutions, rather than Emily's.
It was Emily's fault for imagining that vengeful sadism and sexual cruelty could exist, not God's or society's fault for fostering such reprehensible conduct in people at large. Google "West Riding Lunatic Asylum" to see how mental illness was treated in the 19th Century. There was no forgiveness, but rather exile from society for supposed aberrations against scripture.

Emily was not irreligious. Her Romantic poetry shows profound regard for Heaven, Earth and Nature as one entity, and she is quoted as having said religion was a private matter, spoken only between herself and God.

Red is correct in comparing Bertha Mason's treatment in Jane Eyre with Isabella Linton's. Both were held hostage and abused.

The theme continues in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne Brontë's finest), wherein Helen Lawrence also endures a violent and sadistic marriage to avoid public shame, before eventually fleeing with her child.

I think I'll post my Helen Lawrence avatar in tribute to her strength, and to celebrate Emily's and Isabella Linton's, as well.

Chapter 12 Observation: SPOILER

I apologise that I'm seemingly far behind most of you in my reading, but I take notes and cross-reference every chapter and thought with literary criticism, other editions of WH, and my own notes from previous readings.

(Yes, I'm bags of fun at parties).

ASD assessor: "So, do you have any rituals or obsessions?"
Isabella: Whistles a tune and looks like this:


Catherine's sickbed scene of Chapter 12 has always fascinated me. I wonder if it suggests that spiritual or astral projection is possible, thus allowing Catherine to travel from 1784 Thrushcross Grange to 1801 Wuthering Heights, appearing at the casement window for Lockwood to perceive in ghostly form? Do these two scenes (Chapter 3 of 1801 and Chapter 12 of 1784) occur simultaneously? Is Brontë deconstructing time? Are the feathers that Catherine tosses like "snowflakes" from her pillow in 1784 the same snowflakes that prevent Lockwood's travel, and force him to sleep at The Heights in 1801? In 1801, Catherine's spectre tells Lockwood that she has been roaming the moors for "twenty years" to find Heathcliff. 1784 - 1801 is indeed just seventeen years, but add 1781, 1782 and 1783 accounting for Heathcliff's mysterious disappearance prior to Chapter 12, and twenty years are perfectly explained.

From the time of Heathcliff's departure, 1781 - 1801 matches the twenty year span during which Catherine's heart is broken prior to Lockwood's encounter at the box bed. She claims to have existed in spirit form for twenty years although she hadn't been dead for twenty years at that point in time. Was Catherine's soul truly lost in 1781 when Heathcliff vanished? Was Heathcliff himself her soul? Was Catherine only a spirit for three years prior to 1784 and during her early marriage?

Was Catherine able to project herself live, but in metaphysical form, through the casement of Thrushcross Grange as she demanded of Nelly in Chapter 12 -- set in 1784? ("My soul will be on that hilltop ... all you had in me is gone!", Catherine warns Edgar during this scene). Does Catherine indeed search the moors for seventeen years until Lockwood hears her cries in the night? Why does Lockwood perceive her soul at the window, and never Heathcliff? Is Heathcliff capable of the same psychic connection with Catherine that she claims to feel?

When Emily wrote "It is twenty years, twenty years! I’ve been a waif for twenty years!", in her preparation of Wuthering Heights (1846-1847) it was twenty years, almost to the day, after the deaths of her own two sisters, Maria and Elizabeth.

Food for thought.

Questions:
Have any of you ever seen a ghost?
Did Emily believe in ghosts?
Is there indeed a mystic power connected to love?
Did Catherine leave her body in 1781 when she ran on the moors to find Heathcliff?
Did this severance last three years until at least 1784 (Chapter 12)?
Did Catherine project herself in spirit form to WH, to be perceived a further seventeen years later, in 1801?

"Twenty years -- I've been a waif twenty years!"
I wonder if death was necessary for Catherine's spirit to transcend her form?
It seems to me that Emily thinks otherwise, and I do too.

---
Note, Charlotte refers to a psychic and supernatural connection between Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester when he hears her cries from afar, and they reunite.

The Brontës' servant, Tabby Aykroyd, claimed that ghosts and faerie sprites roamed the moors in her childhood.

Just my random thoughts as I ponder this book one more time.
Happy Hallowe'en!

Chapter 13: SUPPLEMENTAL READING

I recommend the following article and I am attaching an abstract for those who are interested.

"My name was Isabella Linton": Coverture, Domestic Violence and Mrs. Heathcliff's Narrative in Wuthering Heights
Judith E. Pike, Nineteenth-Century Literature. Vol. 64, No. 3 (December 2009), pp. 347-383





Please feel free to post your own thoughts on Chapter 13.

I am still running behind, but as I have a plane trip later in the day I imagine I can do a bit of catching up.

I find the whole subject of psychic love connection fascinating. My own love story with my partner follows ups and downs and separation and agonising separation but a connection that transcended common sense or earthly practicality. I think in times of severe stress our spirits can wander from our bodies. This is purely anecdotal of course, no science or whatnot. A biblical quote comes to mind from the Song of Songs "love stronger than death" - don't know the exact place will have to look it up.

I got through Chapter 13, which is upsetting...but realised that Vol II Ch. 3 is the most distressful for me.

I love your love story. We should all be so blessed.

I'm a wee bit ahead because I don't do any of that. I just read and throb.

Have we considered Branwell as possible model for Heathcliff?
Has Branwell saved himself from family obligations (the only male) by becoming incapable?
Could Heathcliff be the redemption of Branwell?

But has Charlotte only assumed Branwell's proper role as head of the family? The word "domineering" does apply but is it because she is a woman?

Good point. The nearest in age, Charlotte and Branwell were extremely close as children. They co-wrote their own stories and poems in the Angrian juvenilia, and they spent a considerable amount of time playing together outdoors (usually acting out their writing, or replicating battle scenes from the Napoleonic Wars). Branwell was absolutely broken by the death of his mother and his sisters (particularly Maria), within 3 years, when he was 8. He is said to have been haunted by the images of lifeless Maria for the rest of his life, and in this regard may have suffered PTSD from a young age. Charlotte loved Maria and used her character to inspire Helen Burns in Jane Eyre. Whether Charlotte's dominance was a direct response to Branwell's repeated failure as a young man is unclear. She was always very bossy, having assumed the roles of her late mother and two older sisters, teaching the others to read, and raising them like her own children from the time she was 9. Their father Patrick experienced such grief at being widowed that the running of the household was left to Charlotte, until such time as Aunt Branwell came to stay.

Charlotte was known to demonstrate little patience during Branwell's decline, and it was Emily who carried him home drunk most nights, stumbling through the dark from The Black Bull such that Patrick wouldn't see, or paying his debts with her railway dividends.

Keep the dialogue going; I love it!

The comparison has been made often in criticism of WH. I see Branwell more like Hindley, because of his alcoholism, but in either event Branwell wasn't known to be particularly violent or to seek revenge on people. Emily's inspiration for Heathcliff seems to have come most directly from the Byronic heroes of early 19C literature, and from Manfred in particular:

"The Byronic hero—so named because it evolved primarily due to Lord Byron’s writing in the nineteenth century—is one of the most prominent literary character types of the Romantic period.

First appearing in his autobiographical epic, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, the Byronic hero is a faulted character who is typically isolated from society as a wanderer, or is in exile of some kind: whether the social separation is imposed upon him by some external force or it is self-imposed. The character rejects the moral codes of society and because of this, he is often unrepentant by society's standards. Due to these qualities, the Byronic hero is often a figure of cruelty as well as fascination.

One of the most discernible of these tragic heroes is Manfred, who is depicted wandering over distant and barren mountaintops, guilt-ridden his relationship with the late Astarte—its details, unspoken. It is believed that the myth of Byron’s own personality as well as his poetry—specifically Manfred—served as inspiration for the character of Heathcliff in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.

Although Heathcliff has been widely sanctioned in the realm of literature as the quintessential Byronic hero of Bronte’s novel, his identity is intrinsically consolidated with that of Catherine’s, thus rendering her the Byronic heroine. Both characters use each other to transgress societal conventions of their time: Heathcliff contravenes racial and socioeconomic standards, while Catherine contravenes the gender norm. To go even further, their consanguinity mirrors that of Manfred and Astarte, for their love lies between that of kinship and that of romance. "

Manfred Thesis

Does anyone in our group believe Catherine and Heathcliff had a physical or sexual relationship, or is the appeal of their relationship that it seems to be entirely spiritual in form?

Food for thought.

Questions:

Have any of you ever seen a ghost?
Not seen consciously but contacted in a dream, communicating, solid, and real. My mother told me that every deceased person will, within a year or two, communicate somehow with the bereaved. The purpose is to give reassurance that all is well, life can go on. Grandma communicated with Mom and Mom communicated with me in that way. In asking around I found it common. But Catherine's return is 20 years and communicates that life cannot go on, her message is unmitigated tragedy.

Did Emily believe in ghosts?
Yes but I don't know if she would have used exactly that word.

Is there indeed a mystic power connected to love?
Yes but not only to love. There are many realities and love is one of the catalysts to boost us from one to another.

Did Catherine leave her body in 1781 when she ran on the moors to find Heathcliff?
In some sense, yes. But "leave her body in 1781 when she ran on the moors" is too stuck to the reality of time and space for me.

Did this severance last three years until at least 1784 (Chapter 12)?
Did Catherine project herself in spirit form to WH, to be perceived a further seventeen years later, in 1801?

Again, time & space being illusions, she did somehow and it may have seemed that way in this dimension.

"Twenty years -- I've been a waif twenty years!"
This waif business - is it not essential? Heathcliff himself was a waif. And his son, living completely rejected in his family - is he not also a waif?

I wonder if death was necessary for Catherine's spirit to transcend her form?
It seems to me that Emily thinks otherwise, and I do too.
Agreed. And death itself is an illusion.

Beautiful!! ! I'm glad to know I'm not alone in my thoughts! Time and space are indeed an illusion. I was told so in a dream by none other than the poet Henry Longfellow, and I believe it to this day. Thank you so much for describing exactly what I feel, Claradoon!