emily bronte's version of feminist history: wuthering heights

Emily Bronte's Versionof Feminist History:

Wuthering Heights

CAROL A. SENF

Perhaps more than the people of any period before or since, theVictorians were acutely aware of history, an awareness fostered by bothintellectual developments and political and social events and one that, atmid-century, resulted in university reform and the establishment of historyas a legitimate profession. The immediate result for most Victorians,however, was not a systematic approach to either the past or the presentbut simply a profound interest in anything that might be included undera broad umbrella called "history."

When first confronted with the artifacts of ancient civilizations, whichexplorers brought home with them, the Victorians began to think aboutthe past; and they were made even more conscious of the changes thattake place over time by what Walter L. Reed calls "theories and eventsin a world . . . beyond history . . . by new scientific theories in biologyand geology (Werner, Hutton and Lyell, Lamarack, Cuvier, and Darwin)and of course most profoundly by the political events of the Revolutionin France."' Immersed in a historical period that was changing before theireyes, they attempted to come to grips with the present and even to predictthe future. As a result, the nineteenth century was, as Andrew Sandersstates, "an acutely historical age" which "believed in the efficacy of thestudy of the past . . . avidly collected the relics and the art of the past"and "rejoiced . . . in the idea of being enveloped by Time, past, present,and future."^

In addition, James C. Simmons explains that people in the nineteenthcentury became aware that the past was "profoundly different from thepresent," a realization "nurtured and encouraged by the profusion ofhistorical romances which provided many Victorian readers with theirsense of the historical past."^ He adds, however, that writers (he citesDickens, Kingsley, Edwin Abbott, Dean Frederic W. Farrar, and CardinalsWiseman and Newman as examples) often used the historical romance "asa medium for the discussion of contemporary problems; the past for themwould reflect the present."* Similarly, Roy Strong, who in Recreating thePast: British History and the Victorian Painter links Victorian history paintingto the historical novel and to history itself, reinforces the notion of

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relevance; "History to the Victorians was practical wisdom. It waspresented in nationalistic terms as the evolution of a people and theirculture."5 Both Simmons and Strong thus assert that Victorian artists oftenchose historical subjects that helped them come to terms with their owntimes.

While many Victorian writers probed the past for subject matter, othersrevealed their interest in history by focusing on their own time insteadof on some remote period. As a result, when one thinks of the greatnineteenth-century writers of history, the names Carlyle, Macaulay, Ranke,Michelet, Burckhardt, and Tocqueville come to mind. When one thinksof historical novelists, one is likely to think of Lytton, George Eliot, orThackeray, but not of Emily Bronte. Sanders, Simmons, and Lukacs, forexample, don't even mention her in their studies of the historical novel;and Keith Sagar's study of Wuthering Heights restates the prevailing viewthat she was uninterested in history; "Emily Bronte had no social life, fewrelationships outside the household, and neither knew now cared aboutthe world beyond Haworth."^ However, another view was expressed byArnold Kettle who thirty years ago reminded readers that Wuthering Heightstakes place "not in a never-never land but in Yorkshire;"^ and recent studiesby Terry Eagleton, Rosemary Jackson, David Musselwhite, and SandraGilbert and Susan Gubar also focus on her response to the times in whichshe lived.*

Although Wuthering Heights will not meet everyone's definition ofhistory, not only because those definitions are both complex and varied,but because history includes so many facets (including the currentsystematic studies of political and constitutional development, biography,social evolution, and economics), it is, in fact, a profoundly historical work.First, because Wuthering Heights narrates events that took place during aparticular period (in this case, the early nineteenth century, when Englandexperienced rapid industrialization and repercussions from the recentrevolution in France)' and because it creates vivid representatives of thatperiod, it meets Hayden White's definition of history; "a verbal structurein the form of a narrative prose discourse that purports to be a model, oricon, of past structures and processes in the interest of explaining what theywere by representing them."^° More important, Wuthering Heights alsoprovides a symbolic reading of the movement of history, one that—likethose of Bronte's contemporaries, Macaulay, Marx, and Engels—revealsa belief in evolutionary development; that each age evolves from theprevious one and that history itself reveals a gradual and progressivemovement for the betterment of man, not only materially but intellectuallyand spiritually as well. However, Bronte in one way surpasses thesehistorians—by writing a novel that, unique among literature of its time,reveals that this evolution towards a greater social good will not be completeuntil women enter the mainstream of history.

To argue that Wuthering Heights explores the question of historicalevolution is not to argue that Bronte was necessarily influenced by the samethinkers who influenced other Victorians." A highly original writer, Bronteassimilated the history that was taking place around her, material from

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the past, and her own uniquely personal vision. Although a work of genius,Wuthering Heights was not created in an intellectual vacuum, for Brontewas familiar with classical historical texts, including Goldsmith's Historyof Rome, Hume's History of England, and Scott's Life of Napoleon Bonaparte;^^she was also a pragmatic observer who watched history unfold. An avidnewspaper reader like the rest of her family, she had an additional reasonfor keeping abreast of current events. Because she had taken some of themoney that she and her sisters had inherited from their aunt and investedit in the railways, she watched the newspapers carefully and, accordingto Charlotte, read " 'every paragraph and every advertisement in thenewspapers that related to railroads. . . .' " " Furthermore, as Eagletonexplains, she lived during a historical period when the impact of modernindustrialism brought far-reaching social consequences to the area whereshe lived,'* a period in which the power base shifted from rural areas tolarge industrialized towns and cities. It was a period of intense andsometimes violent confrontations between individuals and classes, a timethat resembled the conclusion of Lockwood's first dream when "Everyman's hand was against his neighbour."'^ Such enormous social changeshad a profound effect on the lives of individuals.

To construct a feminist history, it is necessary to combine an interestin history with an interest in women as a unique group of people. Thereare no letters to indicate that Emily shared Charlotte's interest in "thewoman question," but evidence other than Wuthering Heights reveals herinterest in women's condition. G6rin, for example, uses Gondal materialto suggest Bronte's preoccupation with strong women characters'^ and alsoalludes to Emily's interest in Queen Victoria. Apparently concerned withthe manner in which Victoria would use the immense power given to her,Bronte named one of her Gondal heroines Augusta to assert her "regalstatus" and to comment on "the known fact that the name had been refusedthe Princess Victoria at her baptism by her uncle George IV because it hadsounded ominously imperious in his ears."'^

Reading history and newspapers and being interested in Queen Victoriaand the condition of women do not make Emily Bronte unique, however,since these interests were shared by other people of her time. The markof her genius is that she combines so many insights into historical evolutionand the condition of women into a highly original work. In WutheringHeights, when she writes her version of historical development, sheincorporates her awareness that most women do not have Victoria's accessto power. Thus she concludes her novel with a vision of what might happenif the relationships between the sexes (relationships that give men powerover women and certain men power over other men and make womeneither passive victims or sly manipulators) so familiar to patriar:chal historywere replaced by something both more feminine and more egalitarian.Moving away from the mythic world of Gondal to the more realistic worldof Wuthering Heights, she also chooses a realistic heroine, the youngerCatherine, to embody her feminist vision, the final stage in her history.No longer a queen, her heroine has power over only her own life.

Bronte reaches this concluding Vision by examining three distinct


historical stages in the novel, each represented by a particular family orperson: the Earnshaws, yeoman farmers, are the remnants of an earlierhistorical period;'* the Lintons, landed gentry, are the ruling class at thetime the novel was written;'» and Heathcliff, an odd and seeminglycontradictory mixture of primitive nature and modern capitalism, is thepower of the future.̂ " A natural man at the beginning, Heathcliff lateracquires the tools of patriarchy and uses these tools to bring about hisrevenge. When he returns after his three-year absence, he is no longermerely a representative of nature. The great unknown, Heathcliff is aproduct of both an urban and a rural environment. Although both Catherineand Mrs. Dean associate him with the unchanging forces of nature, Mr.Earnshaw apparently finds him in Liverpool; and Heathcliff presumablyacquires his later sophistication in the city as well. As both a natural forceand a representative of modern capitalistic development, however,Heathcliff opposes the gentry, the group in power at the time the eventsof the novel take place. In both cases, he is a vital force of unpredictablepower.

In addition, in the courtship and projected marriage of Cathy andHareton, Bronte reveals the peaceful merger of capitalistic economic powerwith the traditional political power of the landed gentry, a merger thatwould have been familiar to her contemporary readers. She also adds afeminist twist because their mutual acceptance of one another providesa glimpse of a more egalitarian, more feminine future.

Moreover, although Wuthering Heights suggests that Bronte shares theVictorian belief that history is progressive, it also reveals that, more thanmany other historians, Bronte realizes that the violence and irrationalityof the primitive past have been transformed, not eliminated, in thepresent.^! She reveals, for example, that violence, which is an integral partof Hindley's power over others, remains in Edgar Linton, the despicableLinton Heathcliff (who acquires his love of power in the city, not fromhis father), and the effete Lockwood—described by one critic as Bronte'sview of "what is wrong with the present state of society. "̂ ^ Early in thenovel, she has Lockwood unwittingly reveal his desire for power, his skillat psychological violence, and his ability to manipulate others when herelates his seacoast experience:

I "never told my love" vocally; still if looks have language, the merest idiotmight have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, andlooked a return—the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? Iconfess it with shame—shrunk icily into myself like a snail; at every glanceretired colder and farther; till, finally, the poor innocent was led to doubt herown senses. . . . By this curious turn of disposition, I have gained the reputationof deliberate heartlessness, how undeserved, I alone can appreciate, (p. 15)

Although Lockwood relates this episode as proof that he is unworthy ofa "comfortable home," it is evident from the conclusion of the passagethat he sees nothing intrinsically wrong in his overt manipulation of theyoung woman. A complete egotist, Lockwood focuses on his behavior, noton the victim of it. Bronte, however, uses this brief episode both to illustratea shift in the modern world from physical violence to psychological


cruelty and to indicate that men continue to have inordinate power overwomen. As Gilbert and Gubar comment, "Thus if literary Lockwood makesa woman into a goddess, he can unmake her at whim without sufferinghimself."" Bronte is also aware that, although the sheer physical powerthat men have over other men is diminishing, men still have power overwomen. The young woman of Lockwood's choice, like Catherine Earnshawand most other women during this historical period, had apparently learnedto consider herself only in relation to men. Having no strong sense ofindividual identity, she comes to doubt her sanity as well as her intrinsicvalue when she sees herself through Lockwood's indifferent eyes.

Lockwood's rejection of the young woman at the seacoast is not asopenly violent as the behavior of either Heathcliff or Hindley, but it isBronte's first indication that supposedly civilized men can be both cruel andperverse. Later in the novel, she uses Lockwood's response to the littleghost girl to reveal that the civilized man can be as openly violent as hisprimitive ancestors:

As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through thewindow. Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking thecreature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and frotill the blood ran down and soaked the bed-clothes. . , . |p. 30)

This is one of the most horrifying scenes in the book precisely becauseLockwood's violence is so opeiily directed against a weaker individual andbecause only a day's residence in the primitive world of the Heightsunleashes the violence masked by Lockwood's urbanity. Similarly, whenHeathcliff returns, his civilized veneer serves merely to mask the primitivenature of his passions.

The violence of Lockwood and Heathcliff and the presence of ghostsin the novel are Bronte's ways of suggesting that history—althoughprogressive—does not move in a straight line; shadows from the pastcontinue to exert their influence on the present. The cruelty andexploitiveness of the male characters also provide objective reasons forchanging patriarchal history by introducing gentleness and cooperation,virtues generally associated with women—in short, of making history morefeminine.

Bronte is aware that history is more than the objective events, that itis also the subjective narration (or interpretation) of these events.Lockwood, the novel's first narrator, is also the novel's chief historian.Therefore, it is significant that the first word in the text is the date "1801,""a date which immediately focuses the reader's attention on Bronte's interestin the recent past. (Had she been interested only in writing a romance,she could have chosen any historical period or even a timeless era, suchas those she had used in the Gondal saga. Instead she chooses Yorkshireand a period of significant historical change in England, when the Industrialand French Revolutions made most Englishmen aware of change over time.)Almost immediately thereafter, Lockwood confirms his interest in historyby commenting on the antiquity of the house:


I detected the date '1500,' and the name 'Hareton Earnshaw.' I would havemade a few comments, and requested a short history of the place from thesurly owner, but, , . I had no desire to aggravate his impatience, previous toinspecting the penetralium. (p. 14)

Initially more interested in the remote past than in the present and curiousabout the origins of Wuthering Heights, Lockwood is soon caught up inthe history of his own times when he is confronted by the strange behaviorof Catherine Heathcliff and the even more enigmatic behavior of Heathcliffhimself.

Bronte reveals, however, that the historian must understand the pastbefore he can come to grips with the present; and she emulates one methodcommori to nineteenth-century historians when she confronts Lockwoodand the reader with a number of artifacts from the past.^s The first, ofcourse, is the house itself, which Lockwood attempts to "read" as theremnant of a past civilization.̂ ^ Named for a distant patriarch and thereforeliterally a relic of the past, the house remains an enigma to Lockwood. Moreimportant, however, are the artifacts he discovers at its interior when asnowstorm forces him to spend the night in Catherine Earnshaw'schildhood bedroom, the heart of the house.

The first of the artifacts in the bedroom is "nothing but a name repeatedin all kinds of characters, large and small—Catherine Earnshaw, here andthere varied to Catherine Heathcliff. and then again to Catherine Linton"(p. 25). Nothing but a name! Yet that repetition of names is a key thatunlocks the mystery of patriarchal history as well as the history ofWuthering Heights. Although she is not a trained historian, Emily Brontehas insights that surpass those of Hume, Macaulay, and John RichardGreen,27 historical writers who attempted to expand their readers'understanding of historical development by showing that history includessocial as well as political development. Bronte's genius is that she alsoshows how the lives of women and other groups previously ignored evenby these historians can influence the course of historical development.

The story of Wuthering Heights is not the story of Hareton, the patriarch,or even of Heathcliff, the character who initially piques Lockwood'scuriosity. It is the almost buried story of Catherine, mother and daughter.Although Lockwood continues to be more interested in Heathcliff and neverunderstands this fact, the reader eventually discovers that decyphering themystery behind Wuthering Heights necessitates understanding these threenames as well as the name over the door—in short, understanding bothpatriarchal history and women's hitherto buried history. This revelation—that understanding history includes understanding the victims of patriarchalhistory as well as the patriarchs themselves—makes Emily Bronte seemso much more modern than most Victorian historians. (The most notableexception to this generalization is another woman novelist, George Eliot.)

The second artifact—the marginalia in her book, which Lockwooddescribes as "faded hieroglyphics"—records a period of innocence in thefirst Catherine's history before she was aware of the power that patriarchyhas over her. The freedom of the marginalia thus contrasts with the nameson the windowsill, names that suggest the limited choices—spinsterhood


or marriage—available to Catherine.Lockwood's curiosity about these artifacts, his confrontation with the

little ghost girl, his interest in Heathcliff's response, and his romanticfascination with the younger Catherine combine with his illness to bringhim to Ellen Dean, the novel's second historian, who explains thesignificance of the "faded hieroglyphics."

Unlike Lockwood, Mrs. Dean is an "eyewitness" to most of the eventsin Wuthering Heights. However, while Mrs. Dean should be a more reliablehistorian, Bronte reveals that both she and Lockwood are to be distrustedbecause their prejudice in favor of the present makes them ineffectualhistorians, or at least historians who are guilty of distortion. Lockwood,for example, shows that he is definitely the product of his historical periodwhen he mistakes a brace of dead rabbits for Catherine's house pets.Although, like most gentlemen of his time, he goes hunting—he mentions,for example, his invitation "to devastate the moors of a friend, in the North"(p. 241)—Lockwood is apparently imfamiliar with people who hunt for foodinstead of sport (or with people who keep game in the front parlor).Accustomed to pampered and protected women with a sentimentalattachment to their pets, he is even more uncomfortable with the youngerCatherine's recognition that the dogs at the Heights are working animals,retrievers and herding dogs, and with her refusing both his assistance andhis offer of companionship. Such behavior (as well as the fact that, whilehe does not work, he can travel to the seacoast and rent Thrushcross Grangefor a year) suggests that he is a member of the landed gentry. (The sonsof factory owners and tradesmen at this period were more likely to jointheir fathers in business.) His overall fastidiousness reveals him assomething of a dandy as well.

Ellen Dean, on the other hand, appears to be a simple rustic, but sheis actually much more. Characterized by Gilbert and Gubar as "astereotypically benevolent man's woman,"^* she is also allied with theforces of the landed gentry. For example, when she first begins to tell herstory to Lockwood, she makes a curious slip: "Hareton is the last of them,as our Miss Cathy is of us—I mean, of the Lintons" (p. 37). This statementmight be interpreted simply as a servant's identification with the familyshe serves except that Nelly had been reared at the Heights and is currentlyemployed by Heathchff. Moreover, she identifies herself with the Lintonswhen she confesses with pride that she is familiar with books—the wayby which history is usually transmitted: "I have read more than you wouldfancy, Mr. Lockwood. You could not open a book in this library that I havenot looked into, and got something out of also. . . . it is as much as youcan expect of a poor man's daughter" (p. 59). That Nelly is a reader linksher conclusively with the bookish Lintons. Furthermore, confessing herfamiliarity with books may be her way of telling Lockwood and the readerthat she is also familiar with the wills and other documents by whichpatriarchal culture and patriarchal power are transmitted from generationto generation. She certainly knows the law well enough to act for Cathyuntil the younger woman learns to manage her affairs. A "poor man'sdaughter" and a servant to the gentry, Mrs. Dean recognizes power when


she sees it. More important, being a survivor, she generally sides with thatpower or, at least, rarely challenges it openly.

Oriented to the present instead of to the past (with Hindley's death Mrs.Dean shifts allegiance from the yeomanry to the gentry) or the future,Lockwood and Mrs. Dean are confused by Heathcliff and Catherine andthe primitive forces that they represent. Lockwood initially believes thatHealthcliff is simply a man like himself whose "reserve springs from anaversion to showy displays of feeling—to manifestations of mutualkindliness" (p. 15), and Nelly's story does not convince him that the forcesof raw nature continue to influence the present. Therefore, believing thatthese primitive forces have been removed forever, he concludes the novelwith the pious assertion that the dead are at rest. Similarly, Ellen Deanadmits her preference for Edgar over Heathcliff.̂ ^ She is extremely criticalof the adult Catherine's desire to be "a girl again, half savage, and hardy,and free" (p. 107); and she doesn't even try to understand the peculiar lovethat Heathcliff and Catherine feel for one another. Her response toHeathcliff's suffering at Catherine's death is characteristic of her prejudices:

He dashed his head against the knotted trunk; and, lifting up his eyes,howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast getting goaded to death withknives and spears.

I observed several splashes of blood about the bark of the tree, and hishand and forehead were both stained; probably the scene I witnessed was arepetition of others acted during the night. It hardly moved my compassion-it appalled me. |p. 139)

Incapable of understanding this asocial passion, Mrs. Dean prefers theyounger Catherine because her "anger was never furious; her love neverfierce; it was deep and tender" (p. 155). Because she cannot understandthe primitive forces in Catherine and Heathcliff, her rendering of eventsis bound to be distorted.

While the first half of the novel focuses on the past, the second half,which details Heathcliff's revenge, follows a pattern familiar to Bronte'scontemporaries. Heathcliff, who represents primitive, natural forces in thefirst part of the book, comes to resemble many nineteenth-centurycapitalists after his return; and he uses the sophisticated strategies by whichmany of them gained economic and political power during the period. Hisacquisitions of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange is typicalof both their using wealth gained through industry or trade to aquire landedproperty and their marrying into established families to gain respectabilityor power or both.*>

Although recognizing this historical pattern is easy, interpreting itssignificance is much more difficult. Thus it is not surprising that criticalresponses to the conclusion of Wuthering Heights have been mixed. Q. D.Leavis, Tom Winnifrith, and John Hewish believe that the old world hasyielded to the new while Rosemary Jackson and Gilbert and Gubar believethat the conclusion is the victory of tradition over innovation.^' However,because the text suggests a slightly different view of history, I want to offera third interpretation of this conclusion, a period that begins withLockwood's departure from Thrushcross Grange and his return the


following year.Bored with the misanthropic role he had chosen to play and with his

attempts to understand Wuthering Heights, Lockwood leaves the area andvows never to pass another winter there. Before departing, however, heconcludes with his version of how that history might have ended: "Whata realization of something more romantic than a fairy tale it would havebeen for Mrs. Linton Heathcliff, had she and I struck up an attachment,as her good nurse desired, and migrated together into the stirringatmosphere of the town!" (pp. 240-41). Had Bronte wished merely toreproduce what was happening in England at the time she wrote, thismigration from country to city would have been the logical conclusion.However, because that marriage would ignore both Catherine's needs andLockwood's desire for power over women, it would merely repeat the otherunhappy marriages in the novel—the first Catherine's marriage to Edgaror Isabella's even more disastrous marriage to Heathcliff. Wanting to createa version of history that is both more feminine and more egalitarian, ahistory in which women are no longer the victims of patriarchal history,Bronte concludes her novel with a different kind of marriage.

When Lockwood returns, the new historical epoch has already begun.Heathcliff is dead, and Cathy stands to inherit his fortune, which includesboth the Heights and the Grange. Recognizing that economic independencegives women some freedom from masculine power (the first Catherine,having no money of her own, had been more or less forced to make a "goodmarriage"), Bronte makes her heroine an heiress like the heroines of hersister Charlotte's novels—Jane Eyre, Shirley Keeldar, and Lucy Snow.However, realizing that true power and identity demand more than wealth,Bronte undercuts the importance of wealth in her heroine's future. Thus,she has Cathy plan to marry her cousin Hareton at a period when herfortune would automatically belong to her husband.

Although the projected marriage might appear to be another versionof the conventional happy ending which will produce more unhappinessby giving Hareton absolute power over Cathy, it is not, as Leo Bersani states,"as if Emily Bronte were telling the same story twice, and eliminating itsoriginality the second time.''̂ ^" Bersani is correct to focus on the numerousrepetitions in the novel. However, he doesn't recognize that the marriageof Cathy and Hareton provides a unique twist to the familiar plot andillustrates a shift in the history of patriarchal power.

To understand that difference fully, the reader must understand thatHareton and the younger Catherine differ from their predecessors in severalimportant ways. When Cathy enters his life, Hareton is what Heathcliffterms ' 'a personification of my youth, not a human being'' (p. 255). Haretonis thus in the same state of graceless nature that Heathcliff was when thefirst Catherine said that it would degrade her to marry him; however,Hareton is apparently without Heathcliff's greed or his desire for powerover others. The younger Catherine is similarly different from her motherand from her two aunts. True heir to the Lintons and therefore consciousof rank and power, she initially treats her boorish cousin like a servantand attempts to make both him and the servants subject to her commands.


However, disinfranchised from her economic and social heritage, Catherinesoon learns to interpret life differently and to recognize Hareton's humanequality. The scene in which she makes peace with him is proof of thesechanges. Instead of responding with the Earnshaw violence or the Lintonmanipulation, Catherine plants a friendly kiss on Hareton's cheek to makepeace. When this gesture fails to elicit the desired response, she wraps abook as a present and asks Mrs. Dean to be her messenger: "And tell himif he'll take it, I'll come and teach him to read it right. . . and, if he refuseit, I'll go upstairs, and never tease him again" (p. 248). Rather than tryto dominate him or seduce him (an attempt to gain power that is typicallyused by those without power), Cathy leaves Hareton free to choose.

Hareton chooses to accept her offer, and the two become as obliviousto Heathcliff's threats as the first Catherine and Heathcliff had been to theviolence of Hindley and Joseph. Despite the apparent similarities, however,the two relationships are quite different. The love between Heathcliff andCatherine had been primitive, violent, elemental, and frequently as cruelas those natural elements. Catherine confesses, "I am Heathcliff—he'salways, always in my mind—not as a pleasure, any more than I am alwaysa pleasure to myself—but as my own being" (p. 74). The love betweenHareton and Cathy, on the other hand, is more conscious and mature,partially because it begins when they are older, partially because it developsover books. However, unlike the other "readers" in the novel, Cathy andHareton use these written texts (the legacy of patriarchal culture) toestablish a relationship that extends far beyond anything they might havelearned directly from the texts or from the human models around them.For example, the pragmatic Mrs. Dean reads books to understand the powershe sees around her. The romantics, Lockwood and Isabella, attempt tomodel their lives on the material they find in popular romances and fairytales; and Gilbert and Gubar demonstrate that these romantic fictionsreinforce the traditional sexual roles that give power to men. ThusLockwood pretends to worship women, but his "phrases, like most of hisassumptions, parody the sentimentality of fictions that keep women in their'place' by defining them as beneficent fairies or amiable ladies.''̂ ^ The sameworks that have taught Lockwood to exert power over women haveprepared Isabella to be a passive victim:

Ironically, Isabella's bookish upbringing has prepared her to fall in love with(of all people) Heathcliff. Precisely because she has been taught to believe incoercive literary conventions, Isabella is victimized by the genre of romance.Mistaking appearance for reality, tall athletic Heathcliff for 'an honourablesoul' . . . she runs away from her cultured home in the naive belief that it willsimply be replaced by another cultivated setting.'*

Another reader, Edgar Linton asserts his power over his wife by ignoringher needs for human warmth and escaping to his library; and Joseph usesthe printed word to justify his harsh behavior. In a marvelous scene, whichbriefly hints at the social and economic power given even to a factotumlike Joseph and denied to virtually all women, he "solemnly spread hislarge Bible on the table, and overlaid it with dirty bank-notes from hispocket-book, the produce of the day's transactions" (p. 249). These people.


no matter hov? well they have learned the lessons of partriarchy and theway to gain power over others, are hardly healthy role models for the peoplewho will initiate a new stage in historical development.

Although Bronte is silent about the titles of the books Cathy and Haretondiscuss, practically any book would have reinforced the human role modelsfovmd in their society. Even though they are victims of patriarchal power,Cathy and Hareton reject the role models they saw around them or foundin books, refusing to follow them blindly. Therefore, as the first membersof a more egalitarian historical stage, they are different from theircontemporaries because their relationship is based on cooperation and trustrather than on dominance. Eagleton notices this difference although heseems unaware of its larger significance: "The culture which Catherineimparts to Hareton in teaching him to read promises equality rather thanoppression, an unemasculating refinement of physical energy.''̂ ^ Thus theyounger Catherine and Hareton—strong individuals nonetheless—use theirstrength to support, not to manipulate, the other. In this way, they areunlike their equally strong ancestors,

By using literal genealogy to symbolize economic and culturaldevelopment, Bronte shows how one historical stage evolves naturally intothe next. Despite apparent repetitions, the conclusion is unlike thebeginning; and it provides a glimpse—merely a glimpse—at a feministversion of history. For example, the Hareton Earnshaw who prepares toleave Wuthering Heights is not the same Hareton whose name is carvedover the door; and Cathy is his strong and equal partner, not his namelessbride. Her history will not be scrawled at the interior of the house—hiddenfrom the world—as her mother's had been: it will not be a fadedhieroglyphic, but the articulate history of an equal partnership.

Free of oppressive models, Cathy and Hareton represent the next stageof historical development. As a result, Bronte shows that they are nothaunted by the past in the same way as Heathcliff and the other characters,including the pragmatic Ellen Dean. Although pretending not to believethat Heathcliff and Catherine walk the moors, she tells Lockwood aboutthe shepherd boy who claimed to see them; and she refuses to stay at theHeights at night. Having rid themselves of their oppressive past, Cathy andHareton are, as Lockwood grumbles jealously at the conclusion, "afraidof nothing" (p. 265), including the ghosts of an oppressive past.

Having rid themselves of the burden of the past, Cathy and Haretonmust leave Wuthering Heights, the masculine house with its hiddenfeminine center. The move to Thrushcross Grange is not an entirelysatisfactory move in terms of historical theory even though Bersanidemonstrates that "the Lintons are somewhat squeezed out" by the unionof Cathy and Hareton.'^ Eliminating the Lintons may be Bronte's wayof combining the best of the old with the best of the new. It may also bea concession to the direction in which history was moving at the time Brontewrote. To ask her to do more is to insist that she write the kind of feministUtopian fiction that was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman or the kindof science fiction currently being written by feminist writers such as UrsulaLeGuin. Such writers have had to leave their society—even their planet—


behind. Bronte attempts something much more revolutionary in suggestingthat the next stage of historical evolution, the stage of equality, will developnaturally and logically from the old. Having Cathy and Hareton move toThrushcross Grange is her way of suggesting that they do not have to leavetheir old world behind.

Having seen too many of the problems associated with traditionalmarriage, both as symbol and as reality, modern feminists are usuallyuncomfortable with the anticipated marriage of Cathy and Hareton.However, seeing that it differs from the other marriages in WutheringHeights, readers should see it as a softening—a feminizing—of patriarchalhistory, and therefore, as the first tentative step toward a less oppressiveworld for both men and women.

Georgia Institute of Technology

NOTES' Walter L. Reed, "A Defense of History: The Language of Transformation in Romantic

Narrative," Bucknell Review, 23 (1977|, 42.Georg Lukdcs also credits the French Revolution with making people aware of

historical progression: "It was the French Revolution, the revolutionary wars and the^ rise and faU of Napoleon which . . . made history a mass experience. . .. During the decades

between 1789 and 1814 each nation of Europe underwent more upheavals than theyhad previously experienced in centuries. And the quick succession of these upheavalsgives them a qualitatively distinct character, it makes their historical character far morevisible than would be the case in isolated, individual instances: the masses no longerhave the impression of a 'natural occurrence.' " Georg Lukfics, The Historical Novel, trans.Hannah and Stanley Mitchell (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1962), p. 23.

2 Andrew Sanders, The Victorian Historical Novel 1840-1880 (New York: St. Martin'sPress, 19791, p. 1.

In his study of the Victorian historical novel, James C. Simmons documents thenineteenth-century interest in history: "The voltmie of historical research swelled to suchproportions t h a t . . . for the thirty-five year period between 1816 and 1851 books on historyand geography far outstripped fiction, titles in the latter category being a full third fewerthan in the former." James C. Simmons, The Novelist as Historian: Essays on the VictorianHistorical Novel, Studies in English Literature, 88 (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), p. 31.

' Simmons, p. 27.* Simmons, p. 21.' Roy Strong, Recreating the Past: British History and the Victorian Painter (New York:

Thames and Hudson, 1978), p. 32.LukScs also connects the interest in history with nationalism when he discusses Scott's

historical novels: "He is a patriot, he is proud of the development of his people. Thisis vital for the creation of a real historical novel, i.e. one which brings the past closeto us and allows us to experience its real and true being. Without a felt relationship tothe present, a portrayal of history is impossible" (p. 53).

" Keith Sagar, "The Originality of Wuthering Heights," in The Art of Emily Bronte,ed. Anne Smith (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976), p. 121.

' Arnold Kettle, "Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights," in Tvi>entieth Century Views ofWuthering Heights, ed. Thomas A. Vogler (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968), p. 28.

' Terry Eagleton, Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontes (New York: Barnesand Noble, 1975); Rosemary Jackson, "The Silenced Text: Shades of Gothic in VictorianFiction," The Minnesota Review, 13(1979), 98-112; David Musselwhite, "Wuthering Heights:the unacceptable text," in Literature, Society and the Sociology of Literature (Proceedingsof the conference held at the University of Essex, 1977), pp. 154-60; Sandra M. Gilbertand Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-CenturyLiterary Imagination (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1979).


' John Kenyon, The History Men: The, Historical Profession in England Since theRenaissance (Pittsburgh: Univ.of Pittsburgh Press, 1983) also links the Victorian interestin history to the French Revolution: "As the careers of men like Macaulay, Carlyle, andFroude show, there was an enormous appetite for history in Victorian England, and anew belief in its importance. The movement for university reform in general at last forcedmodern history into the degree syllabus. . . . The international reputation of Mommsenand Ranke drew attention to England's comparative backwardness. At the same timethe French Revolution was a cataclysmic interruption of the orderly development ofhuman history, calling for an explanation which presumably historians were best equippedto give" (p. 144).

"• Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1973), p. 2.

" Winifred G6rin does make one interesting connection between Macaulay andBronte: "From his various literary contacts (aiid Branwell still had some, like Macaulay,Hartley Coleridge, Edward Baines, from his Bradford days) he learnt that fiction wasthe most profitable form of literary hack work at the time." Emily Bronte: A Biography(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 180.

" Winifred G6rin, Charlotte Bronte: The Evolution of Genius (New York: Oxford Univ.Press, 1967), p. 24. G^rin also mentions the books that Mr. Bronte used to teach hisdaughters: the Bible, Magnall's Historical Questions, Lindley Murray's Grammar, andGoldsmith's Geography (p. 22). Certainly the first two books would have reinforced thechildren's interest in history.

" Gfirin, Emily Bronte, p. 163; she cites Charlotte's letter to Miss Wooler on April23, 1845.

" Eagleton notes: "The Brontes' home, Haworth, was close to the centre of the WestRiding woollen area; and their lifetime there coincided with some of the fiercest class-struggles in English society. . . . Their childhood witnessed machine-breaking; theiradolescence Reform agitation and riots against the New Poor Law; their adulthood sawthe Plug strikes and Chartism, struggles agaiiist the Corn Laws and for the Ten HoursBill" (p. 3). One of the first to notice the historical origins of Wuthering Heights, whichhe calls "an expression . . . of the stresses and tensions and conflicts . . . of nineteenth-century capitalist society," (p. 42) Kettle conunents on an interesting exhibit in theHaworth museum: "a proclamation of the Queen ordering the reading of the Riot Actagainst the rebellious workers of the West Riding" (p. 42). Less interested in industrialism,Gerin also comments on contemporary influences: " . . . in August 1845 Branwell wassent to Liverpool in the care of John Brown after his dismissal by the Robinsons. It wasthe time when the first shiploads of Irish immigrants were landing at Liverpool and dyingin the cellars of the warehouses on the quays. Their images, and especially those of thechildren, were unforgettably depicted in the Illustrated London News. . . . The relevanceof such happenings within a day's journey of Haworth . . . cannot be overlooked inexplaining Emily's choice of Liverpool for the scene of Mr Earnshaw's encounter withHeathcliff" (pp. 225-26).

'= Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, ed. William M. Sale, Jr. (New York: Norton CriticalEditions, 1963), p. 29. All future quotations will be to this edition and will be includedin the text.

'» Gerin, Emily Bronte, pp. 22-23." G6im, Emily Bronte, p. 23.'* Gilbert and Gubar observe that Wuthering Heights is "close to being naked or 'raw'

in Levi Strauss's sense—its floors uncarpeted, most of its inhabitants barely literate, eventhe meat on its shelves open to inspection. . ." (pp. 273-74).

" Following their argument that Wuthering Heights is a myth of the war between natureand culture, Gilbert and Gubar explain that Thrushcross Grange is "clothed and 'cooked':carpeted in crimson, bookish, feeding on cakes and tea and negus" (p. 274).

" Gilbert and Gubar argue that Heathcliffs general aim ". . . is to wreak the revengeof nature upon culture by subverting legitimacy" jp. 296).

'̂ Leo Bersani comments on the numerous repetitions in the novel: "There are obviousdifferences between the two situations, but in each case children are tyrannized orneglected (or both) by a man grief-stricken at the loss of a loved woman. And this


similarity tends somewhat to dilute Heathcliff's originality. When we look at the novelin this way, certain configurations of characters begin to compete for our attention withthe individual characters theniselves." A Future for Astyanax: Character and Desire inLiterature (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1969), p. 199.

" Irving H. Buchen, "Metaphysical and Social Evolution in Wuthering Heights," TheVictorian Newsletter, 33 (1967), 18.

" Gilbert and Gubar, p. 289." Charles Percy Sanger states that the date was what first brought him to study the

book more closely. Sanger, who also wrote Rules of Law and Administration relating toWills and Intestaces, demonstrates that Bronte knew the laws of property and inheritance.His article is included in the "Essays in Criticism" section of the Norton Critical Editionof Wuthering Heights, pp. 286-97. A more recent article by Barbara Gates shows that Brontewas also familiar with both the law and the lore of suicides. "Suicide and WutheringHeights," The Victorian Newsletter, 50 (1976), 15-19.

25 Kenyon mentions at least two historical methods when he explains that Macaulay's"technique was thus entirely divergent from that of his contemporary Ranke, whoforcefully argued that the sources must be allowed to tell their own story. . . . [It] wasthe historian's function to establish and evaluate these sources, which would then imposetheir own pattern on his narrative; in fact, the material would construct its own story.This ideal, which was never fully realized, even by Ranke himself, nevertheless dominatedthe historical thinking of the nineteenth century" (p. 85).

" A number of critics have focused on "reading" in the novel. Included in this groupare Musselwhite and Carol Jacobs, "Wuthering Heights: At the Threshold of Interpretation,"Boundary 2, 7 (1979), 49-71.

" According to Kenyon, Green was "the first historian of England who tried to giveequal weight to social as well as political development, and to include art and literature"jp. 161). Kenyon also refers to the Scottish reaction against narrative or biographical historyin the previous century: "John Logan, in his Elements of the Philosophy of History, publishedin 1781, deprecated the current preoccupation with the achievements of great men—'All that legislators, patriots, philosophers, statesmen and kings can do,' he wrote, 'isto give a direction to that stream which is for ever flowing.' The great Adam Ferguson,in his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) had already sketched out a 'total' history,covering commerce, social habits and the arts as well as politics and war. . . . The briefgeneral chapters on trade and social trends tacked by Hume onto his account of eachreign were a hesitant step in the same direction . . . " (pp. 57-58). Such historians wereworking along the same lines as Bronte.

" Gilbert and Gubar, p. 291.'̂ Gilbert and Gubar call Nelly Dean "patriarchy's paradigmatic housekeeper, the

man's woman who has traditionally been hired to keep men's houses in order bystraightening out their parlors, their daughters, and their stories . . . and she expressesher preference by acting throughout the novel as a censorious agent of patriarchy" (pp.291-92).

*• John Hewish relates a true story of a Halifax man on whom Bronte may havemodeled Heathcliff. This man was taken into the household as a dependent nephew,but "he was clever and unscrupulous enough to gain control of their business'' in muchthe same way that Heathcliff gained control of the Linton and Earnshaw land. "Heathcliff,to the extent that he is a villain of property melodrama . . . may owe something to thisman." Emily Bronte: A Critical and Biographical Study (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1969),p. 47.

3' Leavis's article, "A Fresh Approach to Wuthering Heights" is found in the "Essaysin Criticism" section of the Norton Critical Edition of Wuthering Heights, pp. 306-321;Tom Winnifrith, The Brontes and Their Background: Romance and Reality (New York: Barnesand Noble, 1973).

'* Bersani, p. 22233 Gilbert and Gubar, p. 261." Gilbert and Gubar, p. 288.35 Eagleton, p. 28." Bersani, p. 199.

emily bronte's version of feminist history: wuthering heights

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