Hewn in a Wild Workshop: Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte

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Hewn in a Wild Workshop: Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
by Marilyn Green Faulkner

Where would English literature be without the Yorkshire moors? These wild, mostly uninhabited lands that stretch across the north of England have provided the setting for some of the greatest stories ever told. They formed the backdrop for Jane Eyre’s wanderings and Heathcliff’s ravings. It was there that poor intrepid Dr. Herriott made his veterinary rounds, the hound of the Baskervilles howled, and little Mary found her secret garden. Several years ago, while in York on business, we had occasion to drive up to Edinburgh for some meetings. On the way up we enjoyed a breathtaking view of the moors, with beautiful patches of heather dotting the craggy hills. That night, as we returned, the same scenery looked entirely different: eerie, foggy and forbidding. Clutching our new baby in my arms I peered through the window into the dark night and tried to imagine what it would be like to be raised in that wild, cold country. I thought of the four Bronte children, growing up in virtual isolation on those very moors, creating imaginary characters to fill their lonely existence, and it made sense that the characters they created would be as stormy and forbidding as the moors themselves. It was in this setting that quiet, serious Emily Bronte crafted the remarkable Wuthering Heights. Her sister Charlotte said of the book, “It is rustic all the way through. It is moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath. Nor was it natural that it should be otherwise; the author being herself a native and nursling of the moors.”

The title of Emily Bronte’s classic comes from a Yorkshire word, “withering,” which refers to stormy and changeable weather. There is a great deal of “wither” in this book, most of it bad. (One of our book club members chided me for trying to read this novel in the summer. She claims it can only be properly read in January!) The novel’s curious structure is laid out in the first three chapters, where a Mr. Lockwood comes as a tenant to meet his landlord, Heathcliff, at Wuthering Heights. He is, predictably, trapped there by a snowstorm and ends up spending the night in the haunted room of the doomed Catherine, Heathcliff’s great love. By the time he escapes from various ghosts, dogs, grumpy men and several snowdrifts, poor Mr. Lockwood is very ill, and turns to his housekeeper, Mrs. Dean, for entertainment. He persuades her to tell him the story of the weird inhabitants of Wuthering Heights, so that we receive the tale “twice-removed, “ from Mrs. Dean through Lockwood to us. Bronte’s complicated narrative style has been much commented upon. The novel also has a very complex plot line and a challenging time line, but Bronte handles the many details with alacrity to bring us a long, involved story of a whole group of people hopelessly intertwined in envy and malice.

Same Name

It may not be a coincidence that so many people in this novel have the same name. There is two of nearly everyone, and Catherine herself possesses, at one time or another, the name of all three families that form the center of the action. As Mr. Lockwood finds himself imprisoned in the oaken closet that was Catherine’s bed, he finds her names, scratched over and over on the wood and in the margins of her books:

Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Heathcliff, and Catherine Linton. There seems to be a deliberate intent to confuse us with the names of the characters, as if their setting, both emotional and physical, causes them to melt into one great bundle of painful emotion.

One of the first reviewers of the novel, Sidney Dobell, saw this repetition of names and histories as a kind of philosophical statement about human nature. He remarks, “There are minds whose crimes and sorrows are not so much the result of intrinsic evil as of a false position in the scheme of things, which clashes their energies with the arrangements of surrounding life. It is difficult to cure such a soul from within. The point of view…is in fault.” I think this is an important insight about the troubled characters of Wuthering Heights. Like many people we know, they are not evil, just out of step somehow with the proper rhythm of happy existence.

Why Frightening?

When Emily Bronte read the criticism of her wild, violent characters, she was amazed, and could not see why the novel was considered so frightening. She never encountered any of her critics directly, however, since during the first few years after the publication of Wuthering Heights, critics believed that Emily Bronte was not its author. It did not seem possible that one family could produce three talented authors, so critics believed that both Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall were earlier, less polished works by the creator of Jane Eyre. Since the women lived in almost total seclusion and Emily and Anne died within a few months of each other, it was difficult to persuade the public that there were, in fact, three authors instead of one. In the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights, Charlotte wrote an editor’s preface in an attempt to convince the world of the truth, and paid tribute to the unique gifts of its creator. “Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone,” she said of Emily. Charlotte acknowledged the faults of the work while defending its honesty and courage. Though she affirmed that over much of the story “there broods a horror of great darkness,” she believed that this was a result of Emily’s lonely, melancholy existence, and that “had she lived, her mind would of itself have grown like a strong tree, loftier, straighter, wider-spreading, and its matured fruits would have attained a mellower ripeness and sunnier bloom…”

Wuthering Heights, Bronte concluded, “was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely materials…with a rude chisel, and from no model but the vision of his meditations.” It is a compelling tale of love gone wrong, and a faithful representation of a wild land, beautiful and dangerous, that shapes the lives and souls of its inhabitants. It is also a narrative tied to the earth in every way, as expressed in one of Emily’s poems:

Few hearts to mortals given

On Earth so wildly pine;

Yet few would ask a Heaven