Dr C J M MacLachlan: Lecture on Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is a novel without authorial guidance to its meaning, which in many ways is enigmatic. For example, a major problem is who or what Heathcliff is. This question is raised by Isabella in her letter in Chapter 13. She and Nelly suggest Heathcliff is a supernatural being. Has he sold his soul to the devil? But such hellfire-and-damnation explanations are discredited by association with Joseph.
The problem of Heathcliff is not just his (supposed) diabolism but his association with love; specifically, why does Cathy love him? [Detailed examination of Cathy's dialogue with Nelly in Chapter 9.] The answer is expressed in powerful nature metaphors and the idea of a double existence, including two kinds of love, one for Edgar, the other for Heathcliff.
Yet Cathy's 'I am Heathcliff' comes just as he walks out on her, suggesting Emily Bronte's ironic detachment from her heroine. Explanations of the love of Cathy and Heathcliff often sentimentalise them, though the novel never does; she is selfish and stubborn, he is brutal and malicious.
But he is not altogether hateful to the reader, for three reasons:
1. The time structure of the novel conflates childhood and adulthood
for the main characters, skipping their adolescence. Even when they are
grown up, we retain a sense of them as children and allow them their childish
emotions.
2. Heathcliff is strongly presented to us in Chapter 3 as a tormented lover,
and this initial impression is not easy to forget.
3. The narrators influence our view of Heathcliff, Lockwood by contrast,
Nelly by the interest she shows in him.
The narrators close the story but does Emily Bronte endorse this? What finally does the novel mean?
1. Biographical information is scanty and, because much of it comes
from Charlotte Bronte, it is unreliable as a guide to the novel.
2. Evidence from Emily Bronte's other works (her poems) is also restricted
and difficult to interpret.
3. Evidence of literary influence is indirect but points strongly to romantic
writers such as Scott and Byron, so that Wuthering Heights may be a late
romantic novel.
4. But the second half of the novel suggests a repudiation of the romanticism
of the first half. But is Emily Bronte's heart in this?