An All Hallow's Eve Ghost Story: Wuthering Heights

This book has been assigned to several generations, filling classrooms and book club living rooms around the world. 

It was written by a young woman who kept hardly any society beyond her immediate family, and even they found her aloof and inaccessible. The book also has a nearly inaccessible narrative structure: a visiting tenant is told a tale second-hand by a housekeeper, who is looking back over thirty years at the main characters of Heathcliff and Cathy, whom she no longer lives with. The housekeeper recounts all of it with dread and distaste, and most readers seem to feel the same way. The poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti referred to it as "A fiend of a book–an incredible monster...The action is laid in hell–only it seems places and people have English names there."

Yet this branded “unfilmable” story has not only been filmed, but translated and remade several times in various languages, and still others are currently under production. Although the critics hated the book upon publication, it has has never been out of print since 1854. 

In the second half of the 19th century, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre was considered the best of the Brontë works, but following later re-evaluation, critics began to argue that Wuthering Heights was superior. The book has inspired adaptations, including film, radio and television dramatizations, a musical, a ballet, operas, a role-playing game, and a 1978 hit song by English pop star Kate Bush.

So why does the slog of Wuthering Heights suck us in and stay with us?

Wood engraving by Fritz Eichenberg

Its staying power comes from the challenge presented by the nature of Heathcliff to our notions of humanity and redemption. People keep creating new ways of interpreting this challenge, because it refuses to settle itself, like the ghosts that roam across the moor.

It's not a likable story, with likable characters. The setting is off-putting and bleak. The events are over the top, even for a Gothic novel. The happy ending isn't really all that happy, but only provides a little bit of relief. So, why haven't we, as a culture, rejected this book, just like the angels rejected Cathy out of heaven, flinging her back to the top of Wuthering Heights? Why did it not live and die within the confines of its own time and place? How did this story worm its way into our consciousness and remain there, even when it is somewhat repulsive?

Let's have a little mood music before we begin the challenge of Heathcliff. Here is the song by Kate Bush, covered by Pat Benatar, the rock queen of the Eighties. She had classical training in opera, and you can hear her hit those high notes like a proper diva.

Out on the wiley, windy moors

we’d roll and fall in green

You had a temper like my jealousy

too hot, too greedy

How could you leave me

when I needed to possess you?

I hated you, I loved you, too

Bad dreams in the night

they told me I was going to lose the fight

Leave behind my wuthering, wuthering

Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy

I've come home, I'm so cold!

Let me in-a-your window

Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy

I've come home, I'm so cold!

Let me in-a-your window

Ooo, it gets dark, it gets lonely

on the other side from you

I pine a lot, I find the lot

falls through without you

I'm coming back, love

Cruel Heathcliff, my one dream

My only master

Too long I roam in the night

I'm coming back to his side, to put it right

I'm coming home to wuthering, wuthering
Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy

I've come home, I'm so cold!

Let me in-a-your window

Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy

I've come home, I'm so cold!

Let me in-a-your window

Ooo, let me have it!
Let me grab your soul away
Ooo, let me have it!
Let me grab your soul away
You know it's me, Cathy!

Coming Back to the Heathcliff Challenge: A few years ago, I read that Charlotte Brontë, after Emily's death at age thirty, revised Wuthering Heights because she felt that Heathcliff was too immoral and couldn't attain a Christian salvation. He had not been redeemed before his death, and in Charlotte's mind, eternal condemnation couldn't sit on the head of a protagonist. I don't know what changes were made, but the original way that Emily had written it was soon restored by the publisher and it became a monolith in English Literature.

I think that Charlotte's mistake was in seeing Heathcliff as a protagonist or a hero, or even a lovable anti-hero, or any of the forms of a male character that Charlotte was familiar with. Although Heathcliff is the pivot of the events surrounding Wuthering Heights, I don't believe he was meant to be the book's exemplar. I believe that Nelly the housekeeper, who lived and witnessed everything at Wuthering Heights, and who was part of it before Heathcliff appeared as a foundling, is a type of Charlotte; but a Charlotte who doesn't change the story from how it happened. Emily seems to be putting her hope and faith in Nelly as more than a faithful servant to a fictional family, but as a faithful witness of Emily's heart, one who doesn't miss a trick or a beat.

So why are these two sisters fighting over a fictional man? Go to part 2