Heathcliff’s Case

Abstract

In the Preface Charlotte Bronte provided for the second edition of Wuthering Heights in 1850 she admitted that the novel must ‘appear a rude and strange production’ (Bronte, 2009, p. 307). Her friend Ellen Nussey certainly thought so. It was, she declared, a ‘dreadful book’ (Miller, 2001, p. 201). ‘Whether it is right or advisable to create a being like Heathcliff, I do not know’, Charlotte responded in sympathetic agreement, concluding ‘I scarcely think it is’ (Barker, 2001, p. 534). In truth, there was much about Wuthering Heights that filled Charlotte with ‘renewed admiration’, or so she sought to reassure the publishers Smith Elder when she sent in her Preface (Smith, 2007, p. 177). But she was never reconciled to Heathcliff. A century and a half on, of course, and it can be fairly said that few novels are more firmly embedded in the canon of nineteenth-century English literature than Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Few have more regularly topped lists of novels ‘most read’, few indeed have been more commonly re-written, few for sure more frequently translated onto stage and into film. The defining images Emily wrote into the pages of her novel have entranced generations of devotees: Lockwood encountering Catherine’s tormented spirit, the brooding Heathcliff roaming the moors trying to reach it, their shared entombment in the decaying graveyard of Gimmerton Kirk, and so on. So much of the Bronte ‘myth’ owes its vigour to Wuthering Heights, and also to the peculiarly enigmatic reputation of its author.