Walter Scott and Emily Brontë: The Rhetoric of Love

Abstract

Was it Scott who fascinated the young Brontes with the themes, prominent in Charlotte's youthful writings, of love and faithlessness, adultery, rivalry, and revenge? Scott is and was admired more as the 'social historian'l of Scotland than as the author of romantic lovestories. The young Brontes may nevertheless have made Scott's heroes and heroines their literary standard and model for writing about sexual passion. In 1937/Florence Dry quoted Chapter 4 of The Black Dwaifto illustrate the resemblance between the Dwarfs thwarted passion and desire for vengeance and Heathcliffs.2 However, .resemblances to Wuthering Heights are found in other Scott novels, suggesting that Emily Bronte's love scenes and speeches do indeed derive, at least in part, from her reading of Scott; the novels which matter -in this relationship are tragedies which turn on sexual rivalry like The Black Dwarf, (a tragedy from the Dwarfs point of view), The Bride of Lammermoor, Kenilworth, The Surgeon's Daughter, and St Ronan's Well. In St Ronan's Well (1823), the only novel Scott set in nearcontemporary times, Clara's brother Mowbray, her true love, Tyrrel, and Lord Etherington, who has in the past tricked her into marriage, all behave in an oddly interchangeable way, as Emily Bronte's three male leads also do at times; Clara's reactions, including her half-mad state, are often recalled by Catherine's. On Tyrrel's reunion with his beloved Clara, for instance: