The Lunatic and the Devil's Disciple: The 'Lovers' in Wuthering Heights

Author(s): Marianne Thormählen

Source: The Review of English Studies , May, 1997, Vol. 48, No. 190 (May, 1997), pp. 183-
197
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/518669

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 THE LUNATIC AND THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE:

THE 'LOVERS' IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS

By MARIANNE THORMXHLEN

ANY discussion of Wuthering Heights, whether amon

in classrooms, or in the pages of scholarly works, is b
relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heath
ship is usually referred to as 'love'-'the passion of e
love that devours life itself',2 and so on. It is often repr
able force, overriding the laws, conventions, and con
mortals, even transcending the boundary between l
adolescent reader is easily swept along by this force and
Catherine and Heathcliff as the protagonists of the gr
of English fiction.
But to the adult reader who returns to Wuthering H
tion is soon undermined by a growing sense of wron
thing decidedly odd about this supposedly archet
truly infatuated teenage girl tells a confidante that mar
whom she claims to be inseparable would degrade he
ine's claim, uttered at the same time, to 'love the gro
feet, and the air over his head, and everything he tou
he says'? And how can two people supposedly in love
so cruelly as Catherine and Heathcliff do, recklessly r
assertions such as 'I care nothing for your suffering
word of comfort-you deserve this'?
For anyone who turns his or her 'attention to the
novel', as Q. D. Leavis urged Wuthering Heights crit
mental problem manifests itself: the problem of sym
views regarding the relative degrees of evil exhibited
Wuthering Heights reflect the issue, from the earl

' L. Abercrombie, 'The Unquestionable Supremacy of Emily', Bro

(1924); repr. in M. Allott (ed.), Emily Brontei Wuthering Heights: A C
(But an early commentator, W. C. Roscoe, spoke interestingly of the i
in the novel; his review of Mrs Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronti was pr
July 1857 and is reprinted on pp. 74-7 of Allott's Casebook volume.)
2 Swinburne's opinion, first printed in Athenaeum in 1883 and quo
book, 98.
'Q. D. Leavis, 'A Fresh Approach to Wuthering Heights', from F. R. and Q. D. Leavis, Lectures
in America (New York, 1969); quoted in the Norton Critical Edition of Wuthering Heights, ed.
W. M. Sale, Jr. (New York, 1972), 321.

RES New Series, Vol. XLVIH, No. 190 (1997) COxford University Press 1997

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 184 THORMAHLEN

Heathcliff to the twentieth-ce

Nelly Dean (or even Lockwood
both Catherine5 and Heathclif
although she is capable of wa
love of her two charges, H
unmoved by the sufferings of
childhood. In fact, as James H
actions sometimes exacerbate them. As for Catherine and Heathcliff them-
selves, they have no tenderness or compassion for anybody, not even for
each other.
'I own I did not like her, after her infancy was past.'6 Nelly's frank
admission prepares the reader for her seeming callousness in the face of
young Mrs Linton's troubles. Catherine Earnshaw never sets any store by
being liked: during her father's decline, for example, she takes positive
delight in harassing him, and 'she was never so happy as when we were all
scolding her at once'.7 Nor does she take much trouble to win the friend-
ship of the Lintons, and she does not have to: the 'honeysuckle' of the
Grange dwellers is always all too ready to wind itself around her 'thorn'.8
Sure of Heathcliff's, and later Edgar's, unconditional devotion, she is
basically uninterested in what anyone else might feel about her.
While the boy Heathcliff's wrongs at Hindley Earnshaw's hands at least
foster a feeling that he is the victim of harshness and injustice, the growth of
true sympathy for him is checked by several circumstances, such as his lack
of discernible affection for his benefactor, old Mr Earnshaw; the realiza-
tion that Hindley has cause to be jealous, having had his nose cruelly put
out of joint by the sudden arrival of the new favourite; Heathcliff's black-
mailing effort over the colts; and his intractable sullenness, even to
Catherine, during his years of degradation. It should be noted, though,
that none of this prevents Nelly from pitying the young Heathcliff even to
tears and from trying, unsuccessfully, to remedy his situation. It is when
the grown man resorts to deception and cruelty against those whom she
loves (and against herself, too) that Nelly gradually withdraws from
4 Several commentators have remarked that modern criticism of Wuthering Heights has tended
to become increasingly sympathetic towards Heathcliff; see e.g. J. Twitchell, 'Heathcliff as
Vampire', Southern Humanities Review, 11 (1977), 355-62. The best-known attempt to rehabilitate
Heathcliff at Nelly Dean's expense is J. Hafsley's 'The Villain in Wuthering Heights', Nineteenth-
Century Fiction, 13 (Dec. 1958), 199-215.
1 Like Edgar Linton, and many Bronte critics, I distinguish between mother and daughter by
calling the elder 'Catherine' and the younger 'Cathy'.
6 Nelly to Lockwood, vol. i, ch. vmi, p. 65 in the World's Classics edition of Wuthering Heights,
ed. I. Jack (Oxford, 1981); all subsequent references to the text of Wuthering Heights are to this
edition.
7 Vol. i, ch. v, p. 41.
8 See vol. i, ch. x, p. 91. The only person who really likes Catherine is her sister-in-law Isabella,
whose parents died of Catherine's febrile illness and whose own life is subsequently ruined, partly
at Catherine's malicious instigation.

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 WUTHERING HEIGHTS 185

Heathcliff, to the point of refusing to sit w

one to keep him company shortly before
Fortunately, interest in a person is not d
or her, or Lockwood would never have as
cross Grange to tell him 'the history of M
have rendered such a detailed narrative, d
conversations. The contrast between the h
Heights and the extraordinary main pro
commented on for more than a hundred
the former ensure that a reader's sympat
with any viewpoint of theirs. The result is
any pressure to identify with any person
Bronte forces us to take up our own stan
adoption of any point of view at all. The
effect that this absence of guidance towards
deliberate authorial policy. Bronte doe
warmhearted and courageous in herself, b
siderate, too-to ingratiate herself with th
with Lockwood on his first arrival at the
The nature of the bond between Catherine and Heathcliff has been the
subject of much speculation. Several recent commentators have picked up
the suggestion, first put forward-as far as I have been able to find out-by
Eric Solomon,9 that Heathcliff may have been an illegitimate child of old
Mr Eamrnshaw's, and hence Catherine's half-brother. This would go some
way towards accounting for the kinship one senses between them. In
addition, it would explain Mr Eamrnshaw's seemingly incomprehensible
partiality for the gypsy-dark foundling. The chroniclers of Gondal and
Angria, who were also admirers of Byron, were thoroughly familiar with
the existence of various kinds of forbidden love, including that of half-
siblings. The sexlessness of the Catherine-Heathcliff relationship, noted
(as 'purity') by early reviewers and emphasized in Lord David Cecil's
seminal appraisal,'o has been regarded in the light of possible blood ties.
But if Catherine and Heathcliff are indeed related by blood, they will
hardly know it themselves. Nor will anybody else after the death of old Mr
Earnshaw, who does nothing to check their intimacy. Consequently, talk
of 'incest' seems a little off-target.
The only time when the closeness between Catherine and Heathcliff is
untroubled by anything except the interference of elders is their child-
hood. It is a state of total alliance which ends with Catherine's first stay at

9 'The Incest Theme in Wuthering Heights', Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 14 (June 1959), 80-3.
10 First printed in Early Victorian Novelists in 1935 and reprinted, in excerpts, in several volumes
of Wuthering Heights criticism, including Allott's Casebook and the Norton Critical Edition of the
novel.

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 186 THORMAHLEN

the Grange, from which she

Exposed to the attractions of
Earnshaw adopts the latter strat
sister-in-law), the pathological
explore other avenues of self-gr
childhood companion.
'Pathologically egotistical' is
obsession is always more poten
young. Not even Nelly's sugges
when deliberately vexing fam
once she made you cry in good
not keep you company, and ob
her.'1 In other words, she compe
the author of their anger and
behaviour in any human being
It is Catherine's inability to
distance, and to admit the poss
that makes for her undoing a
sensitive to her surroundings
attempts to adapt herself to th
ladylike manner among the L
nature' at the Heights. Nelly is
Catherine evinces this 'doubl
deceive anyone'.12 In her self-a
of Wuthering Heights that she
whenever she wants it.
Her inability to conceive of any other viewpoints except her own is
crucial to her relationship with Heathcliff. When, in the most quoted
speech in the book, Catherine tells Nelly that she is Heathcliff, she means
exactly what she says. Heathcliff being a part of her, she does not see him
as a twin spirit. Nor does she feel erotically attracted to him; 'one does not
mate with one's self, with one's kind', as one critic has pointed out.3 To
Catherine, Heathcliff is an extension of her self and an integral component
of her egomania; this is why she cannot understand why marriage to
Edgar Linton would separate her from Heathcliff. When she marries
Edgar, the part of her that is Heathcliff will as it were marry him too,
gaining access to the wealth and civilizing influence at the Grange, like
Catherine herself. To a sane person, this seems a most peculiar idea, even
" Vol. I, ch. v, p. 40. 12 Vol. I, ch. VIII, p. 66.
13 W. Thompson in 'Infanticide and Sadism in Wuthering Heights', PMLA 78 (1963), 69-74.
The same point was made by D. Van Ghent some ten years earlier, in an article in Nineteenth-
Century Fiction, 7 (Dec. 1952); repr. in her The English Novel. Form and Function (New York, 1953).
These two analyses were reprinted in A. Everitt (ed.), Wuthering Heights: An Anthology of Criticism
(London, 1967); see pp. 148 and 163.

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 WUTHERING HEIGHTS 187

from a 15- or 16-year-old living in a rem

England.14 Nelly Dean, applying an or
and attitudes to the scheme proposed
disgust; but she simply does not unders
all-exclusive (Heathcliff-inclusive) self-
ing Heights critics who have succumbe
slip' of a girl15 to the extent of becoming
love carried to the extreme'.'6
It is this self-love that sets the disastrous train of events in motion.

Catherine dies half-way through the book, but not before she has i
directly killed her benefactors, the Linton parents;17 destroyed the lives
the two men who love her; brought ruin and misery on her sister-in
and left her small nephew helpless in his drunken father's hands w
removing his nurse (whom Catherine selfishly wants for her own ser
It is true that the initial cause of the dire events at the two estates is old Mr
Earnshaw's bringing the child Heathcliff to Wuthering Heights; but if
Catherine had been able to register any valid desire or sentiment apart
from her own, the effects would not have been so horrendous. The sole
rational grounds for extending any degree of clemency to this monstrous
young woman are offered by her mental instability, which must diminish
her responsibility for her notions and actions.
The fact that Catherine becomes delirious following her quarrel with
Heathcliff and Edgar in January 178418 and never recovers mentally after-
wards is amply demonstrated by chs. xx-xni in Wuthering Heights, with
expressions such as 'fits, rages, ravings, mania[c], insanity, delirium,
derangement, madness'. Catherine is left with a 'shaken reason'9 in a state
of melancholy, and is only roused from it when Heathcliff invades the

14 In his preface to the Washington Square Press edition of the novel (1960), A. J. Gu6rard calls
Catherine's expectation to 'have' both Heathcliff and Edgar the 'major oddity' of the book; the
preface is reprinted in T. A. Vogler (ed.), Twentieth Century Interpretations of Wuthering Heights
(Englewood Cliffs, 1968).
1s Vol. 1, ch. v, p. 40. One example of what looks like over-charitableness towards Catherine is
offered by a critic who has observed that 'insanity is not so far away' from her; P. W. Martin says
that Edgar would 'make a poor analyst, for he will not allow Cathy consciously to reconcile herself
to her love for Heathcliff in the context of her idealized love for him' (a tough order for a devoted
husband, one would have thought); see his Mad Women in Romantic Writing (Brighton, 1987), 111-
12.
16 A spot-on diagnosis in M. Spark and D. Stanford, Emily Bronte Her Life and Work (London,
1953; reissued 1985), p. 252 in the 1985 edition.
7 It is a little unkind to lay this misfortune at Catherine's door; but she does catch her illness
through sheer negligence, and she seems to have been an extremely demanding patient-maybe
one reason why the neighbourly Lintons offer to take her in.
1s C. P. Sanger's classic 'Chronology of Wuthering Heights' in his 'The Structure of Wuthering
Heights' is reprinted, with the ground-breaking essay itself, in the Norton Critical Edition of the
novel (pp. 296-8). A similar chronology is prefixed to U. C. Knoepflmacher, Wuthering Heights: A
Study (Athens, Oh., 1994), by arrangement with Cambridge University Press.
" Vol. i, ch. xiii, p. 134.

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 188 THORMAHLEN

Grange again and has another

last farewell. But there are in
further back. One is supplied by
the first row, '[t]he spirit which
she could neither lay nor contro
Jane Eyre, where Mr Rocheste
agent which prompts her to
Another is the repeated admon
Dr/Mr Kenneth, who warns fi
not to let anything vex or annoy
during the night of Heathcliff's
mental constitution has been w
not lost on Edgar Linton. He ta
his bride into a tantrum-not,
he is afraid of her, but becau
reason.

There are grounds for suspecting that Catherine's m

always been more pregnable than, for instance, that
Nelly. Her father's last illness is a bad omen: it is accom
symptoms that will in due course afflict Catherine h
grievously irritable', and 'suspected slights of his auth
him into fits'.22 It is noteworthy that his daughter, w
regards anyone who contradicts her as a potential mu
qualms about tormenting her visibly ailing father: on
takes 'a naughty delight' in provoking him.24 This be
means deliberately wicked; it is simply an early indica
inability to step outside the boundaries of her self.
The physical sturdiness of the Earnshaws is hen
matched by soundness of mind. Both old Mr Earnshaw
to the fact: Hindley's wilful self-destruction after his wif
token of mental imbalance in the family. At one point,
he is 'on the verge of madness'25-though it has to
Hindley's life-style over the past five years or so coul
most strong-minded man to that state, and Isabella is o
authority. But the contrast-noted by several comm
Edgar Linton's spiritual resilience following the lo
Hindley's moral collapse makes it clear that, while the

20 Vol. I, ch. xi, p. 113.

21 Vol. iII, ch. I, p. 305 in the World's Classics edition of Jane Eyre by M
1980).
22 Vol. I, ch. v, p. 39. 23 Vol. I, ch. ix, p. 88. 24 Vol. I, ch. v, p. 41.
25 Vol. I, ch. xIII, p. 141. Hindley is not only addicted to alcohol; he has a 'mania for gaming',
too (vol. nii, ch. ii, p. 187).

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 WUTHERING HEIGHTS 189

to the Eamrnshaws where physical health

in the matter of mental and spiritual stre
So far, my contention that Catherine
tion to insanity which duly develops in
on the evidence of the text itself. The que
known about mental illness must be an
indications of mental ill health that
coincidental circumstances, and in a
charged, words such as 'madness' need
First of all, the early nineteenth centur
major issue. Great strides were being m
ing manifestations of parliamentary
illness of King George III had contribut
ment a matter of national interest. Books with such titles as Causes and Cure
of Insanity, A General View of the Present State of Lunatics and Lunatic Asylums,
A Treatise on Insanity, and Outlines of Lectures on Insanity kept pouring from
the presses.27 John Conolly, who became Resident Physician at Hanwell in
1839, lectured at Mechanics' Institutes in the 1830s and became a national
celebrity in the 1840s. Madhouses had been places of unmitigated horror
and filth; by contrast, Conolly and many of his colleagues advocated
'constant superintendence, constant kindness, and firmness when
required',28 transforming their institutions with the aid of forward-looking
laymen.
The treatment of the insane was a contentious area, however, a circum-
stance which ensured that it remained in the public eye for decades. The
medical profession insisted that mental illness was due to somatic dis-
orders and should be remedied by medical means (including pharmaceut-
ical preparations as well as the perennial purging). By contrast, laymen
such as the Quaker Samuel Tuke at the York Retreat claimed that what
they called 'moral treatment' was far more effective as well as more
humane.
There can be no doubt that the contemporary debate on the treatment
and cure of the insane was well known to the Bront? family. Charlotte's
delineation of the Bertha Mason case exhibited a number of characteristic
features in early nineteenth-century views on women and madness,

26 Isabella is arguably a poor Linton specimen; but it might at least be said in her defence that
she, unlike her Earnshaw counterpart, Catherine, manages to break free from an intolerable situ-
ation and shows some initiative.
27 See e.g. A. Scull, The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain 1700-1900 (Ne
Haven and London, 1993); W. F. Bynum, R. Porter, and M. Shepherd (edd.), The Anatomy o
Madness (London, 1985), vol. i; and R. Hunter and I. Macalpine (edd.), Three Hundred Years
Psychiatry (London, 1963).
28 See A. Scull, 'A Victorian Alienist: John Conolly, FRCP, DCL (1794-1866)', in Bynum et al
The Anatomy of Madness, 121.

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 190 THORMAHLEN

including the component of le

to refer to the explanations of
being 'taken from the discours
sure that the mental illness o
deal to her creator's knowledg
It was, for example, accepted
ness that violent passions-e
could cause insanity.31 Doctor
disease.32 A tendency to ment
by pregnancy and childbirth.3
ticularly dangerous in that th
brain 'which continues when t
their healthy tone'.34 'Sleep is o
greatest analogy between dream
these circumstances are relev
connection between extreme s
Disturbances in the self's rela
were always regarded as suc
reality, even existence, of huma
a sign of mental disturbance, a
another. In more modern parl
be called schizoid.37 Catherine
29 See the chapter on Jane Eyre in S.
Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Ce
Women's Madness: Misogyny or Mental Il
30 E. Showalter, The Female Malady: W
1987), 67. For a fascinating analysis of
ground of early 19th-century psycholo
Eye": The Constitution of Neurosis in "V
and Literature (Madison, Wisc. 1987), 31
New Casebook (Basingstoke, 1992), 141-
31 See e.g. the phrenologist DrJ. G. Spurz
Mind, or Insanity (London, 1817), 152. Ph
early 19th century, and the Brontes wer
'science'.
32 See e.g. Sir W. C. Ellis, A Treatise on the Nature, Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment of Insanity
(London, 1838), 42. In the Haworth bible on illness, John Graham's Modern Domestic Medicine,
Patrick Bronti underlined the words 'hereditary disposition' in the description of the causes of
insanity.
33 Ellis, Treatise, 89; Spurzheim, Observations, 171.
34 Ellis, Treatise, 94. 3j Spurzheim, Observations, 112-13.
6 Ibid. 167. Spurzheim will literally have alienated some of his readers by arguing that the high
incidence of insanity in England was connected with the rampant selfishness (manifest, among
other things, in the English preoccupation with commerce) of her people (p. 167). Catherine's
madness may be regarded as a factor in hastening her death; Spurzheim points to the connection
between madness and mortality (p. 207).
37 The term has been applied to Catherine by B. L. Knapp in The Brontes: Branwell, Anne, Emily,
Charlotte (New York, 1992), 122. (A detail in Knapp's chronology might be corrected here;
Catherine dies at the age of 19, not 22.)

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 WUTHERING HEIGHTS 191

cannot have both Heathcliff and Edgar, an

the 'fate of Milo'38 on herself.
Most analyses of Wuthering Heights a
Heathcliff, and his actions certainly domi
though, they are undertaken as parts
actions by others on himself. The boy H
ably under old Mr Eamshaw's rule and
closeness to Catherine is enough to kee
Heights: when he leaves, it is because C
away. His return three years later is dic
his desire to see Catherine, however
avenged on Hindley.
In order to be able to achieve his dual p
self of the handicaps which he has
impediments to a union with her: his p
social status. His thirst for revenge is par
these handicaps are of Hindley's makin
acknowledges in the last sentences he hear
there had not brought Heathcliff so
[marrying Edgar Linton]').39
When Heathcliff comes back, he ha
gentleman, and he is rich. The transfo
ploughboy to educated man of substanc
who knew him before and for raptu
possible causes of it are mentioned by c
seriously-a sizar's place at university (P
respectability),40 highway robbery-but
all-comprehensive change could have t
without supernatural intervention.
The novel does indicate a source of suc
especially after Heathcliff's return as a
attended by such words as 'hell, devil, d
diabolical, fiend'.41 A pact with the dev
held no terror for the young man wh
3" Vol. I, ch. Ix, p. 81. 'When Milo attempted to pull
closed on his hands and held him fast. He was d
World's Classics edition of Wuthering Heights, p. 3
cliff's departure, Catherine avers that this fate wil
Heathcliff.
3 Vol. i, ch. ix, p. 80.
40 Three years at university certainly work considerable change in Hindley Earnshaw; but the
total transformation of Heathcliff is different in kind and extent from the civilizing (temporary, as
it turns out) of Hindley.
41 This usage has not, of course, gone unnoticed among Bronte critics; see e.g. W. A. Craik, The
Bronte Novels (London, 1968), 33.

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 192 THORMAHLEN

rejected him for someone else,

life is to be avenged on the p
thereby adding the final and m
which (according to Nelly) wer
But there was never anything
almost as if it came from the de
idea of leaving the punishment
satisfaction that I shall'.44 Under
as if the lad were possessed of
brings disorder into a previous
ties and forming a focus of extr
and hair strike everyone who
features. In both respects, he
darkness and of chaos. Like ot
intentioned people for admiss
carries the small boy inside W
and the man Heathcliff, uncha
on his return to the neighbour
Pacts with the devil are usually
which are relevant to Heathcli
knowledge/learning; worldly p
interest attached. Around 1800,
as in continental fictional tale
Maturin's The Fatal Revenge, or
Hoffmann's Die Elixiere des Te
mention just a few specimens
and their souls for love, wealth,
of, if not read, these works. T
demoniac possession, too: Sir W

42 Vol. I, ch. viii, p. 65. The idea of a F

previous Bronte scholars; see e.g. P. Dr
Wuthering Heights', in Nineteenth-Centu
Casebook, where the relevant passages oc
prehensive enquiry into the reasons for t
43 Old Mr Eamrnshaw's description; vol.
44 Vol. i, ch. vii, p. 60.
45 Vol. I, ch. x, p. 92; see also p. 95, wh
Catherine-waits under the porch unti
orders. Cf. Coleridge's 'Christabel', wher
threshold by the innocent girl whom she
46 See H. R. Brittnacher, 'Der Leibhaft
and W. von Rahden (edd.), Die andere Kr
general background, see also J. B. Russel
and London, 1986), 168-213 on 'The Ro
any, to Hoffmann has been raised now
discussion.

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 WUTHERING HEIGHTS 193

discourse on the subject called Letters on D

addition to his explorations of men, dei
Lord Byron composed his own drama o
The Deformed Transformed.48 Both Sco
in connection with their sources, and both
temporary Teufelspakte, Goethe's Faust
the about-to-be-transformed young ma
Byron's drama, the former says, ingenu
not uncomely', to which compliment th

If I chose,
I might be whiter; but I have a penchant
For black-it is so honest, and besides
Can neither blush with shame nor pale with fear.

Obviously, early nineteenth-century Britain did not lack writers who

would agree with Achim von Arnim that '[e]s sind noch nicht genug
Fauste geschrieben' and with Heinrich Heine that jeder Mensch sollte
seinen Faust schreiben'.50
Literary works were not the only source of Teufelspakt lore to which the
Brontis and their contemporaries had access. There was a store of
domestic legendry on the subject, some of which found its way into print.
As late as 1769, a pamphlet was printed bearing the following title: A
Timely Warning To all Rash and Disobedient Children, being A strange and
wonderful relation of Thomas Williams, a young Gentleman in the Parish of
Bridgewater, that sold himself to the Devilfor twelve Tears,' in order to be revenged
on his Father and Mother; and how his time being expired, the Devil in a dreadful
Storm of Thunder and Light'ning, Rain and Hail, fetch'd him away ... Accord-
ing to the title-page admonition, this work was '[v]ery useful and necessary
for Christian Families', and 'no one ought to be without' it. In true Teufels-
pakt fashion, the bargain between the devil and the young man is sealed
with blood from the latter's arm.

47 (London, 1830). Scott is interested, but not credulous; he distinguishes between witches, in
whom he does not believe, and demons, whom the Christian cannot but believe in (p. 63).
48 (London, 1824), one of several editions. With respect to Cain, it might be noted that Byron
calls Abel's wife Zillah, the name of the housekeeper at Wuthering Heights under Heathcliff's
regime. (In Genesis 4, Zillah is one of Lamech's two wives.)
" See p. 217 in Scott's book and the preface in Byron's. Part I of Faust was first published in
1808 and Part II in 1832. For useful information about the vicissitudes of Faust in Britain, see J. W.
Smeed, Faust in Literature (London, 1975), 224-8, and E. M. Butler, The Fortunes of Faust (Cam-
bridge, 1952), passim.
50 See D. Borchmeyer, 'Gerettet und wieder gerichtet: Fausts Wege im 19. Jahrhundert', in
P. Boerner and S. Johnson (edd.), Faust through Four Centuries: Retrospect and Analysis / Vierhundert
Jahre Faust: Ruickblick und Analyse (Tiibingen, 1989), 169.
51 This was one customary period for the devil's service; another was the double time-span,
twenty-four years. See e.g. The English Faust Book: A Critical Edition Based on the Text of 1592, ed.
J. H. Jones (Cambridge, 1994), 98 and 176-7.

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 194 THORMAHLEN

In Wuthering Heights images

from wrists evoke a wide range
use in such stories contributes one dimension. Thunderstorms and rain
typically accompany the appearances and disappearances of the devil in
Faustian tales; and in the night following Heathcliff's departure from
Wuthering Heights, a particularly violent storm

came rattling over the Heights in full fury. There was a violent wind, as well
thunder, and either one or the other split a tree off at the corner of the building
huge bough fell across the roof, and knocked down a portion of the east chimne
stack, sending a clatter of stones and soot into the kitchen fire.
We thought a bolt had fallen in the middle of us, and Joseph swung onto hi
knees, beseeching the Lord to remember the Patriarchs Noah and Lot; and, as i
former times, spare the righteous, though he smote the ungodly. I felt som
sentiment that it must be a judgment on us also.52

Interestingly enough, Joseph refers to this dramatic thunderstorm as

'visitation' and states his conviction that it 'worn't for nowt'. Other main
events in the novel are accompanied by extreme weather, too. Lockwood is
forced to remain at the Heights, and suffer his ghastly nightmare, by a
blizzard. There is a downpour on the night of Heathcliff's death, and
when Nelly finds his corpse, it is drenched with rain water. One of its
hands is grazed by the same lattice which drew blood from the waif
Catherine's arm in Lockwood's dream.
Why, one might ask, did Emily Bronte not spell out the origin of Heath-
cliff's wealth and new-found gentleman status, if she envisaged a Faustian
pact as their cause? There are several answers to this question. First of all, a
bare statement to that effect could never have been built into the novel:
how was any one of its narrators to know? Second, Emily Bronte's story
treads a fine line between realistic narrative and fantasy, allowing for a
wide variety of reactions from her readers, and I think she took care not to
compromise that freedom of response. Third, she may have registered the
impatience felt by many readers of the Gothic novel with the overly neat
explanations which writers like Ann Radcliffe provided by way of conclu-
sions to their stories.53 Leaving the matter as an open mystery while
supplying plenty of subtle indications for readers to deal with or overlook
as they see fit was a far more suggestive approach. And she did take care to
supply those indications: in addition to the many references to infernal
personages, places, and practices-most, but by no means all, connected
with Heathcliff-throughout the book, there are several allusions to
Heathcliff's likely destination. For example, in Hindley's impotent rage,
52 Vol. i, ch. ix, pp. 84-5.
5 For instance, quite a few readers felt (and feel) let down on learning that the horrific vision in
Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho was merely a waxen image of putrefaction. It is sometimes
easier to be persuaded to suspend disbelief than to be bludgeoned into accepting literality.

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 WUTHERING HEIGHTS 195

the true master of Wuthering Heights ta

shall have his soul'; Isabella refers to the
In addition, Catherine states that giving
'is as bad as offering Satan a lost soul'55
atrocious behaviour in furthering the al
young Cathy, when he lures her away from
particular ironic grimness by his swear
cousin will die unless she comes to save
swear by can hardly be imagined in his
There is another reason to be glad tha
providing an explanation which would h
pattern on her story. A pact with the devi
perdition of his bondsman after the deat
after all, an exception to the rule exemp
appearance of Heathcliff's corpse and th
give Joseph good reason for believing t
soul'.57 But such a tidy course of events co
heaven-and-hell metaphors which form
the relationship between Catherine and
heaven.58 To Catherine, heaven is bei
Heights; and to Heathcliff, it is being w
from the girl he calls his life and his so
wonder he invites her to haunt him.
Wuthering Heights offers three possible views of Catherine and Heath-
cliff's fate after death: (a) Catherine (who shows some contrition on her
death-bed, if only towards Heathcliff) goes to heaven and Heathcliff (who
dies unrepentant) to hell. (b) Both sleep quietly together in the earth by
Gimmerton Kirk, pending the Last Trump. (c) Catherine and Heathcliff
find the joint heaven they both dreamt of-at least partly, one must
assume, by courtesy of the powers of darkness, as they are seen to 'walk' on
stormy nights.60 Option (a) is favoured by Nelly's certainty, as she looks on
the face of the dead Catherine ('that untroubled image of Divine rest'), that
'[w]hether still on earth or now in Heaven, her spirit is at home with
God!'61' The marked contrast with Heathcliff's body, 'girning at death',
54 Vol. I, ch. xIII, p. 141 and vol. ii, ch. iI, p. 176.
55 Vol. I, ch. xi, p. 112. 5 Vol. I1, ch. viii, p. 233.
" Vol. II, ch. xx, p. 335.
8 See vol. I, ch. ix, p. 80 and vol. ii, ch. xx, p. 334.
9 See vol. I, ch. x, p. 93 ('I'm in hell till you do!') and vol. I, ch. xiv, p. 149 ('existence, after
losing her, would be hell'). Charlotte Bronte, a shrewd Wuthering Heights critic (as Philip Drew has
demonstrated), said that Heathcliff is '[doomed] ... to carry Hell with him wherever he wanders'
(p. 11 in the Norton Critical Edition's reproduction of her preface to the 1850 edition of Wuthering
Heights).
' The shepherd boy 'saw' them on a 'dark evening threatening thunder', and 'that old man by
the fire has seen two on 'em. . . on every rainy night since [Heathcliff's] death'; see vol. ii, ch. xx,
p. 336. 6' Vol. In, ch. Ii, pp. 164-5.

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 196 THORMAHLEN

supports it, too. The case for (

of the novel; here Lockwood
it is partly dependent on the
these people is what one w
reflection', Nelly even comes
asking Lockwood to dispel h
Catherine Earnshaw Linton.
Her question is, as the cautious Lockwood recognizes, 'somethin
heterodox', and he prudently declines to answer it. Emily BrontE has le
her readers to answer it for themselves-another example, it seems to m
of her consistent refusal to provide us with a point d'appui at which we can
seek shelter from the storms of Wuthering Heights.
There will always be those who resist the notion that Wuthering Heights i
a carefully wrought literary work written by an artist who broug
deliberation and detachment to her writing as well as imagination and
'native genius'. One element, with a bearing on the lunacy-cum-devilr
dimension, which implies elaboration is the way in which Bronte mak
Catherine and Heathcliff impute their own abnormities to others. Cathe
ine has the bad taste-to put it mildly-to taunt the lovesick Isabella wi
being mad ('You are surely losing your reason', 'Is she sane?', 'Nelly, hel
me to convince her of her madness'62). During their last meeting, Heat
cliff wildly asks Catherine, 'Are you possessed with a devil.., to talk in that
manner to me, when you are dying?'63 The tactlessness of this exclamati
(like the less than chivalrous 'Don't torture me till I'm as mad as yoursel
can be ascribed to Heathcliff's heart overflowing at his mouth; but it
hard to regard his subsequent exhortation to Edgar Linton, who enters t
room to find his adored wife senseless in the arms of the man he hates,
anything but grotesque: 'unless you be a fiend, help her first'.64 It is
difficult to believe that such pointed absurdities are not the result of a
authorial strategy.
Recent criticism of Wuthering Heights has reflected growing uneasine
over the reluctance of many mid-twentieth-century scholars to recogn
the fundamental wickedness of Heathcliff.65 As the preceding review of his
diabolical dimensions has implied, that reaction seems a reasonable one t
me. I have avoided referring to the bond between Catherine and Heathcl
62 Vol. i, ch. x, pp. 101-2. Shortly before, even more preposterously, Catherine has accuse
Edgar and Isabella of being 'spoiled children' who 'fancy the world was made for their accom
modation'-an unwittingly self-diagnosing piece of pure burlesque which Nelly loses no time
turning the right way round (pp. 98-9).
63 Vol. nii, ch. I, p. 159.
64 Ibid. 163.
6s See e.g. T. Reed, Demon-Lovers and Their Victims in British Fiction (Lexington, Ky., 1988), 70-
1, and R. D. Stock, The Flutes of Dionysus: Daemonic Enthrallment in Literature (Lincoln, Nebr. and
London, 1989), 270-3. After a damning recapitulation of Heathcliff's crimes, Stock exclaims,
"'Primordial energy" can do better than this!'

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 WUTHERING HEIGHTS 197

as 'love', and put quotation marks aroun

them, because the nature of their pas
concepts known to me.
But this does not amount to maintainin
mentally unstable girl and a man with d
pathos. On the contrary: few scenes in class
ing as the one where the delirious Catherin
contributed to the feathers in her pillow
image in the looking-glass.66 Here Nelly
that baby-work!') really grates on the r
Heathcliff's outburst at the window by t
after Lockwood has told him of his nig
once more! Oh! my heart's darling, h
last!'67-communicates itself to any r
Towards the end of the book, a climacti
cliff's Revenger's Tragedy, thereby freei
ual invasion by a sense of Catherine's
Heathcliff finds Cathy and Hareton togethe
simultaneously, and meet his-two pairs
does not seem overly sentimental to s
impulse to revenge. Undramatic as it is, t
turning-point in the novel.
The monstrosities of the two main prot
hence do not invalidate the force and ge
sequently, even readers who, like Nelly,
and little empathy with Heathcliff canno

66 Vol. I, ch. xII,67

pp. 122-4.
Vol. I, ch. III, p. 27.

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