Charlotte Brontë on Jane Eyre
"You have taken much trouble about the work, and it would grieve me
seriously if your active efforts should be baffled and your sanguine
hopes disappointed. Excuse me if I again remark that I fear they are
rather too sanguine. . . . What will the critics of the monthly reviews
and magazines be likely to see in Jane Eyre? It has no learning, no
research, it discusses no subject of public interest. A mere domestic
novel will, I fear, seem trivial to men of large views and solid
attainments.“ (Charlotte and Emily by Laura L. Hinkley. New York:
Hastings House, 1945, pp. 250-1)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (Smith, Elder & Co.,
1847) - plot
•
The heroine, a penniless orphan, has been left to the care of her aunt, Mrs Reed. Harsh
and unsympathetic treatment rouses the spirit of the child and a passionate outbreak
leads to her being sent to Lowood Asylum, a charitable school, where after some
miserable years she becomes a teacher. Thence she passes to be a governess at
Thornfield Hall to a little girl, the natural daughter of Mr Rochester, a man of grim
aspect and sardonic temper. In spite of Jane Eyre's plainness, Rochester is fascinated
by her selfish wit and courageous spirit, and falls in love with her and she with him.
Their marriage is prevented at the last moment by the revelation that he has a wife
living, a raving lunatic, kept in seclusion at Thomfiela Hall. Jane flees from the Hall
and, after nearly perishing on the moors, is taken in and cared for by the Revd St John
Rivers and his sisters. Under the influence of Rivers' strong personality, she nearly
consents (in spite of her undiminished love for Rochester) to marry him and
accompany him to India. She is prevented by a telepathic appeal from Rochester and
sets out for Thornfield Hall, to leam that the place has been burnt down and that
Rochester, in vainly trying to save his wife from the flames, has been blinded and
maimed. She finds him in utter dejection, becomes his wife, and restores him to
happinness.
The Brontë novels were published
anonymously
Charlotte = Currer Bell
Emily = Ellis Bell
Anne = Acton Bell
Their real identities remained secret until
after Emily and Anne had died.
Structure of Jane Eyre
Setzt man diese Zeiteinteilung in Beziehung zum aufgewendeten
Textumfang, so wird schnell deutlich, wo die erzählerischen
Schwerpunkte liegen.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Gateshead
Lowood
Thornfield
Moor House
Ferndean
Kap. l- 4
Kap. 5-10
Kap. 11-27 (ca. 45% of the text)
Kap. 28-35
Kap. 36-38
Jane Eyre …
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
… is a woman's Pilgrim's Progress or a pilgrim's progress of feminism
… is "furious love-making” and “a wild declaration of the 'Rights of
Woman' in a new aspect" (Mrs. Oliphant) or the creation of a feminist myth
… exposes the angel in the house as a simpering construction of a maledominated society or performs textual services for the very patriarchy it
critiques
… is a testimony of the extraordinary and continuing ways a female writer ,
intervened in the lives of readers
… seems hardly related to the 1840s, revolutions in Europe and the
wretched poverty and Chartist protests in England.
See "Speak what we think": The Brontës and Women Writers”, in: John Richetti, ed. The
Columbia History of the British Novel. Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 353.
Charlotte Brontë’s strongest influence: William M. Thackeray
(THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION)
There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle delicate ears: who,
to my thinking, comes before the great ones of society, …; and who speaks truth as
deep, with a power as prophet ... Is the satirist of Vanity Fair admired in high places? I
cannot tell; but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek fire of his
sarcasm, …
Why have I alluded to this man? I have alluded to him, Reader, because I think I see in
him an intellect profounder and more unique than his contemporaries have yet
recognised; because I regard him as the first social regenerator of the day- as the very
master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of
things; because I think no commentator on his writings has yet found the comparison
that suits him, the terms which rightly characterise his talent. They say he is like
Fielding: they talk of his wit, humour, comic powers. He resembles Fielding as an
eagle does a vulture: Fielding could stoop on carrion, but Thackeray never does. His
wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious
genius that the mere lambent sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the summercloud does to the electric death-spark hid in its womb. Finally, I have alluded to Mr.
Thackeray, because to him- if he will accept the tribute of a total stranger- I have
dedicated this second edition of Jane Eyre.
Saintsbury about the characteristic Brontë Style:
prose and poetry
What Emily and Charlotte Brontë did was to effect the union of realism
and of dream in the English novel. The best poetry is always more or
less dream. It never gives you the fact only, but something beyond and
above the fact, suggested by it, coming from it, but not it. The best
prose merely as such gives you the fact only
=> The opposite of what one could say about
Thackeray who is not interested in poetry but
theatrical elements
Jane hearing Rochester voice –
Elements of Gothic/Romance:
„All the house was still; for I believe all, except St John and myself,
were now retired to rest. The one candle was dying out: the room was
full of moon-light My heart beat fast and thick: I heard its throb.
Suddenly it stood still to an expressible feeling that thrilled it through,
and passed at once to my head and extremities. The feeling was not
like an electric shock, but it was quite as sharp, as strange, as startling.
It acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had been but
torpor, from which they were now summoned and forced to wake They
rose expectant' eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered on my
bones ,What have you heard? What do you see?' asked St John I saw
nothing, but I heard a voice somewhere cry — ,Jane! Jane1 Jane!' —
nothing more (444)
Ideology and the Novel:
"woman embodies our highest ideas of purity and refinement"
Mrs. Sarah Ellis, The Daughters of England (1843):
"[Love] is woman's all--her wealth, her power, her very being. Man, let him love as he may, has
ever an existence distinct from that of his affections. He has his worldly interests, his public
character, his ambition, his competition with other men--but woman centres all in that one
feeling, and 'In that she lives, or else she has no life.'"
E. S. Dallas The Gay Science (1866):
=>
(1) "Woman peculiarly represents the private life of the race. Her ascendancy in literature must
mean the ascendancy of domestic ideas, and the assertion of the individual, not as a hero, but as
a family man--not as a heroine, but as an angel in the house.„
(2) "The first object of the novelist is to get personages in whom we can be interested: the next is to
put them in action. But when women are the chief characters, how are you to set them in
motion? The life of women cannot well be described as a life of action. When women are thus
put forward to lead the action of a plot, they must be urged into a false position. . . . This is what
is called sensation. It is not wrong to make a sensation; but if the novelist depends for his
sensation upon the action of a woman, the chances are that he will attain his end by unnatural
means."
Defending her Souveranity
„I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered
a prayer“ (117)
„grant me at least a new servitude!“ (117).
„my very conscience and reason turned traitors against
me, and charged me with crime in resisting him" (344).
„I care for myself (344).
Jane Eyre in wedlock: Feminist or obedient wife?
I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live
entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold
myself supremely blest—blest beyond what language can
express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is
mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am;
ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his
flesh (ending of Jane Eyre)
Jane‘s radicalism
"I know no medium: I never in my life have
known any medium in my dealings with
positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my
own, between absolute submission and
determined revolt. I have always faithfully
observed the one, up to the very moment of
bursting,
sometimes
with
volcanic
vehemence, into the other. (426)
Rebellion – Repentance - Love – duty – a lover‘s calling
„Yet I knew all the time, if I yielded now, I should not the less be
made to repent, some day, of my former rebellion." (444).
„I had now put love out of the question, and thought only of
duty" — (444).
„,Show me, show me the path!' I entreated of Heaven" (444).
Jane Eyre does not "conform to nature"
... as defined by her Aunt Reed, Reverend Brocklehurst, or her "lovers" Rochester
and St. John Rivers.
a)
She tells Brocklehurst, she will „keep in good health, and not die.“
b)
She rejects Rochester's suggestions to dress like an angel: „I never can bear being
dressed like a doll by Mr. Rochester, or sitting like a second Danae with the
golden shower falling daily round me.“
c)
She rejects Rivers's wish to become his dutiful missionary wife:
"If I were to marry you, you would kill me."
His reply: "Your words are such as ought not to be used: violent, unfeminine, and
untrue.“
coarseness and sexuality of Jane Eyre
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar:
It seems not to have been primarily the coarseness and sexuality of Jane
Eyre which shocked Victorian reviewers ... but ... its "anti-Christian"
refusal to accept the forms, customs, and standards of society—in
short, its rebellious feminism. They were disturbed not so much by the
proud Byronic sexual energy of Rochester as by the Byronic pride and
passion of Jane herself.
Charlotte Brontë did "'protest' against the
conventionalities in which the world clothes itself."
Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the
masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm
generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their
faculties, and a field for their effort, as much as their brothers do; they suffer
from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would
suffer. . . . It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to
do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
political rebellions Ù domestic rebellions
Women have an equal right to learn and be ambitious in life
Charlotte Brontë‘s protest ...
„... does not merely spring from personal grievances; her social
criticism incorporates the mid-century topics: education, governessing,
unemployment, female profession and various apects of the marriage
debate (divorce, the double Standard of morality, the rights of the
married woman).“
Harriet Björk. The Language of Truth: Charlotte Brontë,
The Woman Question, and the Novel. Lund 1974, p. 137
“a work of great promise” – Jane Eyre
and its contemporary critics
This is not merely a work of great promise; it is one of absolute
Performance. It is one of the most powerful domestic romances which
have been published for many years. It has little or nothing of the old
conventional stamp upon it; none of the jaded, exhausted attributes of a
worn-out vein of imagination, reproducing old incidents and old
characters in new combinations; but is full of youthful vigour, of
freshness and originality, of nervous diction and concentrated interest.
The incidents are sometimes melo-dramatic, and, it might be added,
improbable; but these incidents though striking, are subordinate to the
main purpose of the piece, which depends not upon incident, but on the
development of character; it is a tale of passion, not of intensity which
is almost sublime. It is a book to make the pulses gallop and the heart
beat, and to fill the eyes with tears (Allott, Miriam, ed. The Brontës:
The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1974, p. 67/68)
The mid-Victorian fantasy of upward mobility:
the story of the self-made man
class difference -- colonial dominance -- gender
relations
Eugéne Forçade‘s review of Jane Eyre (1848):
law of primogeniture =>
political, colonial and mercantile activities of
the English people
It is not quite the same for women:
1) not the same means of winning a place in the sun.
2) In the middle classes many girls belonging must decline through poverty to
dependence and destitution
3) a disharmony between birth, education and fortune.
in this class Charlotte Brontë chose the heroine of her novel
The mid-Victorian fantasy of upward mobility:
the story of the self-made man
class difference -- colonial dominance -- gender relations
Eugéne Forçade‘s review of Jane Eyre (1848):
The political, colonial and mercantile activities of the English people, that spirit of
enterprise that takes Anglo-Saxons to every comer of the world, do it is true redress, for
men, the effects of the law of primogeniture. It is not quite the same for women; they
have not the same means of winning a place in the sun. Among the middle classes
especially, how many girls belonging to the junior branch of the family, must decline
through poverty to dependence and destitution! How often must one find, especially
among these Englishwomen, that inner conflict, that fatality arising from their situation,
so cruelly felt by our needy middle classes, and which grows out of a disharmony
between birth, education and fortune. It is in this class that our author has chosen the
heroine of her novel. (Eugéne Forçade, Review of Jane Eyre, from Revue des deux
mondes, in The Brontës: The Critical Heritage, ed. Miriam Allott (1974), 102 or Elsie
B. Michie. Outside the Pale: Cultural Exclusion, Gender Difference, and the Victorian
Woman Writer. Cornell University Press, 1993, p. 47).
=> The Brontë sisters' gender thus implied that they were defined as excluded from
enacting narratives of upward mobility.
“presentation of the imprisoned female self in a society
convulsed by social problems that have no solution”
⇒ The Brontë sisters are excluded from any hopes of upward mobility.
Eugene Forçade on Jane Eyre:
"a drama in which society plays more or less the cruel and tyrannical role
assigned to fate in the tragedies of antiquity"
He praised Brontë for her refusal to "call down a fiery judgment" on that
society.
Forçade called Shirley a panoramic picture of a nation and its individuals in
the "throes of a sort of moral earthquake“
The Novel invests the middle class
with ideological authority (Nancy Armstrong):
gender came to mark the most important
difference among individuals
the difference between male and female =>
their respective qualities of mind
men political and women domestic:
Heathcliff: identity based on his behavior to sexual desire.
Rochester: identity based on his role within a purely emotional network of
relationships overseen by a woman (and loosing his aristocratic bearing by the
end of the novel).
Subordinating all social differences to those based on gender
=> order to social relationships.
Conclusion:
the power of the middle classes Ù middle-class love
Middle Class Ideology - Gender Politics and love
gender = most important difference among individuals
=> the difference between male and female = qualities of mind/
psychological differences:
=> men = political and women = domestic
both acquired identity on the basis of personal qualities that had formerly
determined female nature alone:
Wuthering Heights/ Heathcliff: Gypsy from Liverpool => sexual desire
Jane Eyre/ Rochester: aristocratic bearing => emotional network of relationships
overseen by a woman.
Middle-class authority and the female
⇒ subordinating all social differences to those based on gender
⇒ order to social relationships
⇒ the power of the middle classes had everything to do with that of
middle-class love
⇒ middle-class authority rested in large part upon the authority that
novels attributed to women and in this way designated as specifically
female.
Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel.
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 4.
See quotation:
Gender Politics and love
As gender came to mark the most important difference among individuals, men were
still men and women still women, of course, but the difference between male and
female was understood in terms of their respective qualities of mind. Their
psychological differences made men political and women domestic rather than the
other way around, and both therefore acquired identity on the basis of personal
qualities that had formerly determined female nature alone. During the course of
Wuthering Heights, for example, one can see Heathcliff undergo a transformation
that strips away the features of a Gypsy from Liverpool at the turn of the century and
attributes all his behavior to sexual desire. By a similar process, Rochester loses his
aristocratic bearing by the end of Jane Eyre to assume a role within a purely
emotional network of relationships overseen by a woman. It is only by thus
subordinating all social differences to those based on gender that these novels bring
order to social relationships. Granting all this, one may conclude that the power of
the middle classes had everything to do with that of middle-class love. And if this
contention holds true, one must also agree that middle-class authority rested in large
part upon the authority that novels attributed to women and in this way designated as
specifically female.
Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel.
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 4.
Jane Eyre’s rise to a secure position within the
dominant class:
insisting on sovereignty, truthfulness and love
Jane Eyre tells Mrs. Reed:
“Speak I must; I had been trodden on severely, and must turn: but how? What
strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist? I gathered my energies and
launched them in this blunt sentence: ‘I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I
loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I declare I dislike you the worst of
anyone in the world.’
… when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you
treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you
treated me with miserable cruelty.'
'How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?'
'How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth. You think I have
no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot
live so: and you have no pity” (ch. 4)
economic autonomy => sovereignty
Jane’s declaration of independece:
I broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have detained me.
It was my time to assume ascendency. My powers were in play and in
force. I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him to leave
me: I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once. Where there is
energy to command well enough, obedience never fails.
Armstrong on empowering gender
Jane describes her role in relation to the blind Rochester as a combination
of nursemaid and interpreter:
"He saw nature--he saw books through me; and never did I weary of
gazing for his behalf, and of putting into words the effect of field, tree,
town, river, cloud, sunbeam . . . and impressing by sound on his ear
what light could no longer stamp on his eye" (p. 397).
Relinquishing her economic identity thus empowers Jane to rewrite the
material conditions under which sexual relationships ideally occur
Jane’s Social Rise Concluded
The „myth of power" in Jane Eyre:
„In the end the outcast bourgeoise achieves more than a
humble place at the fireside: she also gains independence
vis-à-vis the upper class, and the right in the process of
taming it.“
Terry Eagleton. Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontës.
A Marxist Study of the Brontës. London/New York 1975, p. 32
The Sexual Contract as Narrative Process
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: geographical shift
⇒ relocating political authority at Pemberley and at distance from the town where the
Bennets' embarrassing relatives live
⇒ continuity of traditional political authority
Brontë’s Jane Eyre: redistribution of authority
⇒ disruptive effects of any redistribution of authority
⇒ the social gap between male and female widens in Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and
in Vanity Fair.
The distance closes only when one of the contending parties has been eliminated or
otherwise clearly subordinated (e.g. Rochester’s mutilation)
⇒ the contract underlying sexual relationships had to change with the entrenchment of
middle-class power (Armstrong 53f.)
revising the sexual contract Ù
a new mode of economic thinking
… by virtue of its apparent insignificance, a body of
writing concerned with devising a special kind of
education for women in fact played a crucial role in the
rise of the new middle classes in England. (Armstrong 60)
Rochester proposes to Jane
'Come to my side, Jane, and let us explain and understand one another.'
'I will never again come to your side: I am torn away now, and cannot return.'
'But, Jane, I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry.'
I was silent: I thought he mocked me.
'Come, Jane- come hither.' [...]
'My bride is here,' he said, again drawing me to him, 'because my equal is here, and my
likeness. Jane, will you marry me?'
Still I did not answer, and still I writhed myself from his grasp: for I was still incredulous.
'Do you doubt me, Jane?'
'Entirely.'
'You have no faith in me?'
'Not a whit.'
'Am I a liar in your eyes?' he asked passionately. 'Little sceptic, you shall be convinced. What love
have I for Miss Ingram? None: and that you know. What love has she for me? None: as I have
taken pains to prove: I caused a rumour to reach her that my fortune was not a third of what was
supposed, and after that I presented myself to see the result; it was coldness both from her and her
mother. I would not- I could not- marry Miss Ingram. You- you strange, you almost unearthly
thing!- I love as my own flesh. You- poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are- I
entreat to accept me as a husband.'
'What, me!' I ejaculated, beginning in his earnestness- and especially in his incivility- to credit his
sincerity: 'me who have not a friend in the world but you- if you are my friend: not a shilling but
what you have given me?'
'You, Jane, I must have you for my own- entirely my own. Will you be mine? Say yes, quickly.'
Elaine Showalter on Bertha Rochester:
conflicts of selfhood and identity
„Madness is explicitly associated with female sexual passion, with the
body, with the fiery emotions Jane admits to feeling for Rochester.“
Bertha = Jane‘s Alter Ego
Elaine Showalter. A Literature of Their Own. Bntish Women
Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton 1977, p. 122.
Charlotte Brontë in a letter to W. S. Williams,
August 14, 1848:
Mr. Rochester has a thoughtful nature and a very feeling heart; he is
neither selfish nor self-indulgent; he is illeducated, misguided; errs,
when he does err, through rashness and inexperience: he lives for a
time as too many other men live, but being radically better than most
men, he does not like that degraded life, and is never happy in it. He is
taught the severe lessons of experience and has sense to learn wisdom
from them. Years improve him; the effervescence of youth foamed
away, what is really good in him still remains. His nature is like wine
of a good vintage, time cannot sour, but only mellows him. Such at
least was the character I meant to portray.
Emily Brontë (1818-1848)
Wuthering Heights
In a preface to the book, which she wrote shortly after Emily Brontë's
death, Charlotte Brontë stated,
"Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff,
I do not know. I scarcely think it is."
Chronology
1500 - The stone above the front door of Wuthering Heights, bearing the name of Hareton
Earnshaw, is inscribed, possibly to mark the completion of the house.
Heathcliff (In-Depth Analysis)
1758 - Nelly is born.
The story is told through flashbacks recorded in diary entries
Events are often presented out of chronological order
Lockwood's narration forms a frame around Nelly's
Approximate reconstruction of the novel’s chronology suggests
the following:
Catherine (In-Depth Analysis)
~1761 - Heathcliff and Catherine
are born.
Edgar (In-Depth Analysis)
~1767 - Mr. Earnshaw brings Heathcliff to live at Wuthering Heights.
1774 - Mr. Earnshaw sends Hindley away to college.
1777 - Mr. Earnshaw dies; Hindley and Frances take possession of Wuthering Heights;
Catherine first visits Thrushcross Grange around Christmastime.
1778 - Hareton is born in June; Frances dies; Hindley begins his slide into alcoholism.
1780 - Catherine becomes engaged to Edgar Linton; Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights.
1783 - Catherine and Edgar are married; Heathcliff arrives at Thrushcross Grange in
September.
1784 - Heathcliff and Isabella elope in the early part of the year; Catherine becomes ill with
brain fever; young Catherine is born late in the year; Catherine dies.
1785 - Early in the year, Isabella flees Wuthering Heights and settles in London;
Linton is born.
~1785 - Hindley dies; Heathcliff inherits Wuthering Heights.
~1797 - Young Catherine meets Hareton and visits Wuthering Heights for the first
time; Linton comes from London after Isabella dies (in late 1797 or early 1798).
1800 - Young Catherine stages her romance with Linton in the winter.
1801 - Early in the year, young Catherine is imprisoned by Heathcliff and forced
to marry Linton; Edgar Linton dies; Linton dies; Heathcliff assumes control of
Thrushcross Grange. Late in the year, Lockwood rents the Grange from
Heathcliff and begins his tenancy. In a winter storm, Lockwood takes ill and
begins conversing with Nelly Dean.
1801-1802 - During the winter, Nelly narrates her story for Lockwood.
1802 - In spring, Lockwood returns to London; Catherine and Hareton fall in love;
Heathcliff dies; Lockwood returns in September and hears the end of the story
from Nelly.
1803 - On New Year's Day, young Catherine and Hareton plan to be married.
Motifs = recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices
Doubles (characters and themes-into pairs):
Catherine and Heathcliff –
Catherine and young Catherine –
Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange –
Nelly and Mr. Lockwood –
Lintons and the Earnshaws
Repetition (time seems to run in cycles, the past repeats itself in the
present; names of characters are recycled, plot elements seem to
repeat themselves)
Wuthering Heights (1847) is composed of two stories told
one after the other.
Cathy Earnshaw's relationships with Heathcliff and Edgar
Linton. (Cathy-Heathcliff plot)
Catherine Linton's relationships with her two cousins, Linton
Heathcliff and Hareton Earnshaw. (Catherine-Hareton
plot)
The Conflict between Nature and Culture
Nature: Passions of the Earnshaw family, by Catherine and Heathcliff
=> Wuthering Heights
Culture, refinement, convention, and cultivation are represented by the
Linton family
=> Thrushcross Grange
Collision course: Catherine is bitten by the Lintons' dog (Chapter VI)
Wuthering
Heights
Earnshaw children
Hindley
Lockwood - Lockwood's narration forms a frame around Nelly's
Nelly Dean - Nelly Dean (known formally as Ellen Dean) serves as
the chief narrator of Wuthering Heights.
& Catherine
& Heathcliff
Wuthering
Heights
marr. Frances
Earnshaw
marr. Edgar Linton
marr. Isabella Linton
Thrushcross
Grange
⇒ Hareton
Earnshaw
=> Young Catherine
Linton dies => Heathcliff controls both Wuthering Heights & Thrushcross Grange
Heathcliff rents Thrushcross Grange to Lockwood
after Heathcliff‘s death: Hareton and Young Catherine fall in love and plan to be
married
Narrative Situation
1801: Lockwood rents Thrushcross Grange and meets his
landlord, Heathcliff, who lives in Wuthering Heights.
Lockwood asks his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to tell him the
story of Heathcliff. Lockwood writes down Nelly’s tale;
this is the main part of Wuthering Heights. Some parts of
the story are narrated by Lockwood himself.
Nelly remembers when she worked as a servant at Wuthering
Heights for Mr. Earnshaw and his family.
Unpartial role of Nelly Dean
Nelly does not tell Catherine Earnshaw about Heatchcliff’s
presence when she talks about degrading herself by
marrying him
Young Catherine's collection of letters to Edgar Linton is
destroyed by Nelly.
Lockwood‘s attempt to explain the mystery of
Heathcliff
But Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of
living. He is a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a
gentleman, that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire:
rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss with his negligence,
because he has an erect and handsome figure-and rather morose.
Possibly, some people might suspect him of a degree of under-bred
pride; I have a sympathetic chord within that tells me it is nothing of
the sort: I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to
showy displays of feeling-to manifestations of mutual kindliness. He'll
love and hate, equally under cover, and esteem it a species of
impertinence to be loved or hated again-No, I'm running on too fast-I
bestow my own attributes over-liberally on him. (Chapter I)
Gothic: as vivid as spectres
The ledge, where I placed my candle, had a few mildewed books piled up in one
corner; and it was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This writing,
however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and
small- Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and
then again to Catherine Linton.
In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the window, and continued spelling
over Catherine Earnshaw- Heathcliff- Linton, till my eyes closed; but they had
not rested five minutes when a glare of white letters started from the dark as
vivid as spectres- the air swarmed with Catherines; and rousing myself to
dispel the obtrusive name, I discovered my candle wick reclining on one of the
antique volumes, and perfuming the place with an odour of roasted calf-skin. I
snuffed it out, and, very ill at ease under the influence of cold and lingering
nausea, sat up and spread open the injured tome on my knee. It was a
Testament, in lean type, and smelling dreadfully musty: a flyleaf bore the
inscription- "Catherine Earnshaw, her book," and a date some quarter of a
century back. (Chapter III )
Destructiveness of Catherine’s and Heatcliff’s love =>
The Precariousness of Social Class
turning-point of the plot
„I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than
I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in
there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I
shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me
to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know
how I love him: and that, not because he's
handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself
than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and
mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a
moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.“
(Chapter IX )
Nelly‘s intervention => unreliable narrator
Nelly’s lies:
Ere this speech ended, I became sensible to Heathcliff's presence. Having
noticed a slight movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise from the
bench, and steal out noiselessly. He had listened till he heard Catherine say
it would degrade her to marry him, and then he stayed to hear no further.
My companion, sitting on the ground, was prevented by the back of the
settle from remarking his presence or departure; but I started, and bade her
hush!
"Why?" she asked, gazing nervously round.
"Joseph is here"
Heathcliff's desire to rejoin Catherine
". . . I got the sexton, who was digging Linton's grave, to remove the earth
off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed
there, when I saw her face again-it is hers yet-he had hard work to stir
me; but he said it would change, if the air blew on it, and so I struck
one side of the coffin loose, and covered it up-not Linton's side, damn
him! I wish he'd been soldered in lead-and I bribed the sexton to pull it
away, when I'm laid there, and slide mine out too. I'll have it made so,
and then, by the time Linton gets to us, he'll not know which is
which!" "You were very wicked, Mr. Heathcliff!" I exclaimed; "were
you not ashamed to disturb the dead?“ (Chapter XXIX )
Heathcliff's "monomania on the subject of his
departed idol" (Nelly)
That, however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination,
is actually the least, for what is not connected with her to me? and what does
not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on
the flags! In every cloud, in every tree-filling the air at night, and caught by
glimpses in every object by day, I am surrounded with her image! The most
ordinary faces of men and women-my own features-mock me with a
resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she
did exist, and that I have lost her! (Chapter XXXIII )
Reconciliation of Catherine and Hareton Earnshaw
He blackened and scowled like a thunder-cloud, and kept his fist
resolutely clenched, and his gaze fixed on the ground. Catherine, by
instinct, must have divined it was obdurate perversity, and not dislike,
that prompted this dogged conduct; for, after remaining an instant
undecided, she stooped and impressed on his cheek a gentle kiss.
The little rogue thought I had not seen her, and, drawing back, she took
her former station by the window, quite demurely. I shook my head
reprovingly, and then she blushed and whispered:
"Well! what should I have done, Ellen? He wouldn't shake hands, and
he wouldn't look: I must show him some way that I like him- that I
want to be friends."
Whether the kiss convinced Hareton, I cannot tell: he was very careful,
for some minutes, that his face should not be seen, and when he did
raise it, he was sadly puzzled where to turn his eyes.
Heathcliff dies unreconciled and
is seen in the moors with Cathy
“… I might offer some advice that would make you happier."
"What is that?" he asked. "Give it."
"You are aware, Mr. Heathcliff," I said, "that from the time you were thirteen years old, you
have lived a selfish, unchristian life; and probably hardly had a Bible in your hands during all
that period. You must have forgotten the contents of the Book, and you may not have space to
search it now. … how unfit you will be for its heaven, unless a change takes place before you
die?"
"I'm rather obliged than angry, Nelly," he said, "for you remind me of the manner in which I desire to
be buried. It is to be carried to the churchyard in the evening. […]
"There's Heathcliff and a woman, yonder, under t' nab," he blubbered, "un' I darnut pass 'em."
I saw nothing; but neither the sheep nor he would go on; so I bid him take the road lower down. He
probably raised the phantoms from thinking, as he traversed the moors alone, on the nonsense he
had heard his parents and companions repeat. Yet, still, I don't like being out in the dark now; and I
don't like being left by myself in this grim house: I cannot help it; I shall be glad when they leave
it, and shift to the Grange.
"They are going to the Grange, then," I said.
"Yes," answered Mrs. Dean, "as soon as they are married, and that will be on New Year's
day."