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Darlene the Writer
Darlene wrote poems in a yellow scribbler...long since lost..in photo she was writing one about her dog, Rover.
Now she writes......
MUCH ABOUT EMILY BRONTE AND WUTHERING HEIGHTS
This page features some of my efforts to express the things that matter....firstly....my study of EMILY BRONTE...GENIUS.... then links to other personal writing.
I, Darlene, am a poet, an essay and story writer . I am student of Literature and have always been is enchanted by Emily Bronte.
I am a retired school teacher with a passion for gardening and the Brontes'. I have a walk through flower garden that stops traffic in its tracks and I am perfectly happy working in it. I use rocks of all sizes to good account and statues, one I call Emily. I do genealogy, write poetry and my memories and collect all I can on the Brontes, words and images. I paint in oils, only for fun and have no training and no talent, only determination. I love walking with my black labs, the same dogs that Heathcliff used in hunting, in the movies, at least.
In 1986 I backpacked around Europe with my 21 year old daughter. I was 40 and we passed as sisters, staying in Youth hostels. Nothing I saw compared with the beauty and power of Yorkshire. Tears flowed down my face. I went around in shock, stunned with the magic of the moors, the sky, the food, the people. I said, " No one could be wishy-washy and live here." I munched on a mince pie washed down with cold milk from a glass pint milk bottle, waiting for the parsonage to open. The girls were not there but everywhere outside, in the mist, in the gray stone, in the heather. My daughter was spooked and wanted to leave sooner than I did.
We stayed in one of the little cottages on the main street on the wonderful hill. It ran with damp, the sheets dripped and out feet almost squished on the damp floors.
We picked bilberries on the moors and marvelled at the sky. I could have stayed forever.
The morning we left, an Italian man, dressed in a long beige trench-coat and hat, paced up and down in front of the parsonage, looking up at the windows. He asked us, in Italian, which we don't speak, where Emily was buried and we understood and told him. As we walked away, I looked back, and there he waited, shrouded in mist, anxious, like a lover, for the house to open; waiting for Emily.
I would love to go to Haworth again, either by myself or with others who hold it it esteem as I do. I had another fantastic and strange experience there on a bus, but I will save that for next time.
BUT.........
The enchantment of Haworth was much deeper than I described and this little incident was the cause.
My daughter and I made our way from Liverpool to Haworth by bus, arriving in Leeds to spend the night at the Golden Lion Hotel. Our two bus drivers had convinced us we couldn't get to Haworth that day and had suggested we stay at that hotel, a real treat for us backpackers, as we usually stayed in youth hostels. The next morning, we caught another bus and we on our way when some kids, who were rather jolly in the back of the bus, caused us to turn around for a look. There, several seats behind us, were two men, one of whom, was the double of my father who had died, three years before, in 1983. We kept taking little looks behind us and suddenly both men moved up close and the other one began a conversation. " Hi, Canadians, he said, I have relatives in Grand Bay, do you know them? "
I finally said to the man who looked like my Dad, " I can't help staring at you because you are just like my Dad,- the bone structure, the hair, and the sweet and gentle manner you have about you. I can tell you are a kind person like he was."
The man burst into tears and so did I. Both my daughter and I found the hairs on our arms and on the back of our necks standing up. The man said, "I'm going to my friend's house for dinner. I was in the war, and I missed my wife. I never saw her."
Just then, it was their stop and they hurried off the bus before I could ask anything. I was in shock and my daughter was spooked. We saw everything through a haze.
Back in Canada, a book about angels took my eye. I opened it at random and read, " How to know when you meet an angel ... the hairs stand up on your arms and the back of your neck "
I am a READER TOO
All of you can be great. You may be a scientific genius. You, a famous writer. You, a great surgeon. I have been great. I’ve been an artist, a scientist, a nurse in Alaska, a missionary in China and a prisoner of war in Siberia. I have also been notorious. I have robbed, murdered and lied. I have loved, passionately and true with a love that defied even death. How have I done all of these things? I have experienced the trials and the joys of greatness vicariously, through books. These experiences are as real to me as if I were involved myself.
Vicariously, I have established a bold Canadian art while painting Indian sculpture with Emily Carr. With Gladys Albright, I guided hundreds of Chinese children over rugged mountains to safety. As a nurse, I watched an old Eskimo woman, with worn and broken teeth, pop a round, black eye of a seal whole into her mouth, like a grape, and smack her lips in satisfaction. As the Polish prisoner of war, I have walked from Siberia, through freezing winter, to Mongolia, through scorching deserts, feeding on deadly snakes, to freedom in India. As Macbeth, I dreamed of power and fashioned my doom with lies, treachery and murder. All this and more I did in the wonderful world of books, through reading.
These vicarious experiences have become dear to me, a part of me. I thrill to the passionate and tragic love of Heathcliff for Catherine. My heart aches with Lil and Our Else who “seen the little lamp” in Kieza’s dollhouse. Vicariously, I have achieved greatness without paying its price as Marie Currie did. After spending a lifetime searching for the elusive element radium, she surprised a newspaper woman by saying, “Radium, I have none. It is too expensive.”
You and I have a distinct advantage. We can touch greatness touch and have it change our lives by reading.
SOME THOUGHTS ON .....
Love and or Marriage
I am really impressed with Emily Bronte's attitude toward love and or marriage, especially with the fact that she recognized love and marriage may have little or nothing to do with each other. Her certainty that love is a thing that happens, that seizes upon the heart and soul, without the reason of rules or law, would be surprising for any ordinary spinster to know, but then Emily was never ordinary. Emily knew that the passion of great love was as terrible as it was glorious and more painful than pleasurable, because it must try to live in an ordinary world where society, as she knew it and as we know it today, has little room for passions that override the framework of everyday life. Emily is so truly great in understanding the passions of the soul that she stands alone in literature and I believe she learned these truths because she was alone with her own soul in an atmosphere of wild solitude that taught her well. Emily died unsung, and without proper recognition of her genius. But then, she died whole, a passioned and free soul. Bravo, Emily Bronte!
Emily's Grave and HEATHER ....some thoughts...
HEATHER, I've seen it bloom. Pick it. You can't keep it. The blossoms fall. Transplant it and it dies. Leave it to its windswept peat-bog and it flourishes. HEATHCLIFF- moorland native.
I feel that Emily Bronte should have been buried in the earth where heather blows in the wind and where the clouds race across the sky- on the moors.Under the church floor, weighed down by cement, is not , in my mind, a proper place for such an earth loving spirit as Emily.
The moors...her own and she....theirs.
Note: I am reading "Sunset Song" by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. The mother says to her daughter, " Oh, Chris, my lass, there are better things than your books or studies or loving or bedding, there's the countryside your own, you its, in the days when you're neither bairn nor woman".
Emily, the moors, her own and she, theirs.........the heath and the cliff.......the eternal rocks, the bones of life itself.
Still yet, the lark, in moorland skies
Skims the heather and lonely, cries
To itself. The song it sings
Of love and loss and sundry things.
In 1986 I backpacked around Europe with my 21 year old daughter. I was 40 and we passed as sisters, staying in Youth hostels. Nothing I saw compared with the beauty and power of Yorkshire. Tears flowed down my face. I went around in shock, stunned with the magic of the moors, the sky, the food, the people. I said, " No one could be wishy-washy and live here." I munched on a mince pie washed down with cold milk from a glass pint milk bottle, waiting for the parsonage to open. The girls were not there but everywhere outside, in the mist, in the gray stone, in the heather. My daughter was spooked and wanted to leave sooner than I did.
We stayed in one of the little cottages on the main street on the wonderful hill. It ran with damp, the sheets dripped and out feet almost squished on the damp floors.
We picked bilberries on the moors and marvelled at the sky. I could have stayed forever.
The morning we left, an Italian man, dressed in a long beige trench-coat and hat, paced up and down in front of the parsonage, looking up at the windows. He asked us, in Italian, which we don't speak, where Emily was buried and we understood and told him. As we walked away, I looked back, and there he waited, shrouded in mist, anxious, like a lover, for the house to open; waiting for Emily.
I would love to go to Haworth again, either by myself or with others who hold it it esteem as I do. I had another fantastic and strange experience there on a bus, but I will save that for next time.
BUT.........
The enchantment of Haworth was much deeper than I described and this little incident was the cause.
My daughter and I made our way from Liverpool to Haworth by bus, arriving in Leeds to spend the night at the Golden Lion Hotel. Our two bus drivers had convinced us we couldn't get to Haworth that day and had suggested we stay at that hotel, a real treat for us backpackers, as we usually stayed in youth hostels. The next morning, we caught another bus and we on our way when some kids, who were rather jolly in the back of the bus, caused us to turn around for a look. There, several seats behind us, were two men, one of whom, was the double of my father who had died, three years before, in 1983. We kept taking little looks behind us and suddenly both men moved up close and the other one began a conversation. " Hi, Canadians, he said, I have relatives in Grand Bay, do you know them? "
I finally said to the man who looked like my Dad, " I can't help staring at you because you are just like my Dad,- the bone structure, the hair, and the sweet and gentle manner you have about you. I can tell you are a kind person like he was."
The man burst into tears and so did I. Both my daughter and I found the hairs on our arms and on the back of our necks standing up. The man said, "I'm going to my friend's house for dinner. I was in the war, and I missed my wife. I never saw her."
Just then, it was their stop and they hurried off the bus before I could ask anything. I was in shock and my daughter was spooked. We saw everything through a haze.
Back in Canada, a book about angels took my eye. I opened it at random and read, " How to know when you meet an angel ... the hairs stand up on your arms and the back of your neck "
I am a READER TOO
All of you can be great. You may be a scientific genius. You, a famous writer. You, a great surgeon. I have been great. I’ve been an artist, a scientist, a nurse in Alaska, a missionary in China and a prisoner of war in Siberia. I have also been notorious. I have robbed, murdered and lied. I have loved, passionately and true with a love that defied even death. How have I done all of these things? I have experienced the trials and the joys of greatness vicariously, through books. These experiences are as real to me as if I were involved myself.
Vicariously, I have established a bold Canadian art while painting Indian sculpture with Emily Carr. With Gladys Albright, I guided hundreds of Chinese children over rugged mountains to safety. As a nurse, I watched an old Eskimo woman, with worn and broken teeth, pop a round, black eye of a seal whole into her mouth, like a grape, and smack her lips in satisfaction. As the Polish prisoner of war, I have walked from Siberia, through freezing winter, to Mongolia, through scorching deserts, feeding on deadly snakes, to freedom in India. As Macbeth, I dreamed of power and fashioned my doom with lies, treachery and murder. All this and more I did in the wonderful world of books, through reading.
These vicarious experiences have become dear to me, a part of me. I thrill to the passionate and tragic love of Heathcliff for Catherine. My heart aches with Lil and Our Else who “seen the little lamp” in Kieza’s dollhouse. Vicariously, I have achieved greatness without paying its price as Marie Currie did. After spending a lifetime searching for the elusive element radium, she surprised a newspaper woman by saying, “Radium, I have none. It is too expensive.”
You and I have a distinct advantage. We can touch greatness touch and have it change our lives by reading.
SOME THOUGHTS ON .....
Love and or Marriage
I am really impressed with Emily Bronte's attitude toward love and or marriage, especially with the fact that she recognized love and marriage may have little or nothing to do with each other. Her certainty that love is a thing that happens, that seizes upon the heart and soul, without the reason of rules or law, would be surprising for any ordinary spinster to know, but then Emily was never ordinary. Emily knew that the passion of great love was as terrible as it was glorious and more painful than pleasurable, because it must try to live in an ordinary world where society, as she knew it and as we know it today, has little room for passions that override the framework of everyday life. Emily is so truly great in understanding the passions of the soul that she stands alone in literature and I believe she learned these truths because she was alone with her own soul in an atmosphere of wild solitude that taught her well. Emily died unsung, and without proper recognition of her genius. But then, she died whole, a passioned and free soul. Bravo, Emily Bronte!
Emily's Grave and HEATHER ....some thoughts...
I feel that Emily Bronte should have been buried in the earth where heather blows in the wind and where the clouds race across the sky- on the moors.Under the church floor, weighed down by cement, is not , in my mind, a proper place for such an earth loving spirit as Emily.
The moors...her own and she....theirs.
Emily, the moors, her own and she, theirs.........the heath and the cliff.......the eternal rocks, the bones of life itself.
Skims the heather and lonely, cries
To itself. The song it sings
Of love and loss and sundry things.
I believe Emily says she would not willing trade her earthly home for any promised life after death.....she seems to accept an eternal rest in the earth, or an eternal awareness shared with the earth."
Emily was many things...all double...animal and mystic. But she wanted to live on the earth, however flawed.
Emily said" I will go my own way". Live on my own terms or starve. Emily saw the murderous and terrible world of which she was a part clearly and exalted in it's terrible and solitary beauty....she was a loner.
And Keats knew that life and or beauty was aching pleasure and Emily was steeped in the "divinest anguish". What else could any awareness produce? We are all doomed to suffer and to marvel.
How did Emily know of and feel all the raw passions in Wuthering Heights, if not by experience, by nature? I can suffer pain and feel joy that is not mine.
I have read many biographies of Emily Bronte, and several have quoted an account by John Greenwood, who ran the stationary shop in Haworth, that told how Patrick Bronte taught Emily how to shoot his gun, giving her lessons in target shooting in the garden and about how Emily loved it and how good she was at it. Also, Greenwood mentions how Emily would return from a solitary ramble on the moors with a " heavenly light on her face" So added to her passions ... shooting and rambling the moors.
Romantic love, to fall in love, to be madly in love, to loose one's identity in the other, to think of no one else and nothing else, to be obsessed, to suffer separation, to be filled with joy and despair, to rage, to forgive, to be rejected, to be abandoned, to be lost in an empty world, to yearn, to seek, to hold, to cherish, to need, to be one and split asunder, the pain ........... the ecstasy and the agony. I've suffered it. I know it. How did Emily? What a genius!
The Double Soul of Emily Bronte
I lov'd her, and destroy'd her!" Byron
The soul of Wuthering Heights is universal and it yearns, it suffers, it seeks, it withholds mysteries, it is orphaned and crying. Emily herself was orphaned, her mother dead and her father, a representative of the Christian religion which Emily rejected, a religion that preached and oppressed, was aloof, leaving the orphaned children to themselves. Emily was orphaned again and again, by the death of her sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, the little mothers, and by the death of her Aunt and brother, Branwell. She clung to her Mother Earth, to the moors, the sky, the winds, the rocks, the heather, her animals, her kitchen, her home, to the path overgrown with weeds; and when torn from this great mother, she suffered, grieved and almost died.
In her great novel, orphans abound. Cathy is motherless and fatherless, being rejected by her father in life and deserted by her mother and father in death. Heathcliff is parent-less, almost origin-less and his adoptive father soon dies, leaving both Cathy and himself at the mercy of the vengeful, Hindley and to the persecution of the old hypocrite, Joseph.
Hindley, another suffering orphan has no mother and is rejected by his father in favour of Heathcliff, the stranger.
Hareton is orphaned at birth, his mother dead and his grieving father lost in drink. The younger Cathy enters the world as her mother leaves it. Young Cathy has a father but he is powerless to protect her from Heathcliff's revenge. As Edgar dies, Heathcliff, the avenger, walks his new daughter home. He is her jailer.
Young Linton, son of the dead Isabella, is sneered at by his father, Heathcliff. Linton is the most miserable of orphans, having no strength of his own.
Yet the need for love is great, the need for the boundless mother love. Cathy and Heathcliff protect their great love for each other, as two parts of a whole, as one being in two visible parts by hanging up their pinafores and making a sanctuary in the arch of the dresser, by sleeping together in the same bed, by scampering on the moors and by general rebellion.
From all of these safe places they are sundered and split apart. Joseph tears down their privacy pinafore screen, he drives them out from the bed and Cathy is laid alone for the first time, as she will be for the second time in death, and Hindley bars Heathcliff out from the home, debasing him in body and spirit. The Lintons accept Cathy and reject Heathcliff. Cathy realizes she is " Heathcliff" at the same moment that she betrays both herself and him by marrying, Edgar.
Hareton seeks a father in his abuser, Heathcliff, and loves him, as Heathcliff does him, though he won't let himself show it. Young Cathy loves her father, young Linton and Hareton, all in spite of strife and anger. The need for love and to find the right love drives the story.
But to err is to die. Emily Bronte, if she had any religion at all, paints a religion of the self in Wuthering Heights. Like The Byronic Hero, she must be true to herself and be united as a whole soul with her mirror image, Heathcliff. Cathy betrays the code, marries Edgar, suffers and dies but does not find rest. She is cloven in two. Heathcliff is forever faithful and cloven in two by Cathy's rejection and death. Yet he is always true to Cathy and to himself. He regrets nothing he has done, as it is true to his code. He must be with and for Cathy. He seeks, suffers and dies. He believes he will attain his goal. He will dissolve with his love; his Cathy.
Emily Bronte leaves us with the mystery. Do they walk? Do they sleep in the quiet earth? Where are they? Not here? Not there? Not perished?
Wuthering Heights is Emily Bronte's great agony of joy. It cries, I love you. Don't leave me. My heart's bliss is here, on this earth, on this moor, under this sky, with you who are more myself than I am. Wuthering Heights pulses with the passion for life, for food, for work, for family, for home, for childhood; an eternal childhood, and for an all encompassing and unending Mother-love.
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights has a double structure throughout, echoing the double opposites of the soul.
It has two narrators, Lockwood, the stranger who blunders into the mysteries and Nellie, the intimate, who relates the everyday details.
It has two families, the Earnshaws, earthy and wild working people and the Lintons, upper class and refined gentry.
It has two houses, the Heights, solid and of stone, windswept and embattled by the elements, and the Grange, in the valley, in a walled in and pleasant park.
It has two Cathy's, the first drawn away from home to destruction and the second, going toward home and fulfillment.
It has two rivals, Heathcliff, strong, passionate and true, cruel and defiant, and Edgar, civilized, gentle, weak and moderate.
It has two grieving widowers, Hindley lost in the mire of weakness and drink, and Heathcliff, grieving for his true love, Cathy, driven by the strength of his desire.
It has two degraded sons, Heathcliff, the foster son of Mr Earnshaw and Hareton, the foster son of Heathcliff.
It has two mis-marriages; Cathy and Edgar and Heathcliff and Isabella.
It has two mismatched sons . Heathcliff's son Linton is pure Linton, showing nothing of Heathcliff about him. Hareton, a fine fellow, is hardly a reflection of the cowardly Hindley. Hareton adopts Heathcliff as his true father.
In fact, it is as though Heathcliff has two sons, his own, Linton, who he says is not worth a farthing, and his foster son, Hareton, who is worthy of his love.
In the previous generation, Mr Earnshaw had the same; Hindley whom he said was nothing and would amount to nothing, and Heathcliff, the foster son, whom he valued and loved.
Throughout both generations there is a double dose of rejection, adoption, love and hate.
Wuthering Heights has two religions; the self righteous and punishing Christian Creed as hurled about by Joseph and the Earthy Creed of the integrated self, as sought and suffered by Cathy and Heathcliff.
It has two places; the inside and the outside; the inside of the family and the outside of the family; the inside of society and the outside of the society; the inside of the house and the outside on the moors; the inside of religion and the outside of personal code; the here of the earth and the there of the after-place; the double places of heaven and hell, depending on the viewer; the inside of love and the outside of hate; the inside of being together and the outside of being apart.
It has two generations, the first destroyed in woe and the second raised up in joy.
It has two endings; Heathcliff and Cathy walk the moors in death or sleep in the quiet earth. Hareton and the second Cathy return to the Grange to renew the Earnshaw family.
Two phrases could illustrate the whole novel. " Where is She?" and " Heathcliff, Come back." They express the double passion, the double loss, the double longing, the double search, the Double Soul of Emily Bronte.
In Wuthering Heights, Cathy looks for a solution for her problem. How will she live, how will she make do? She decides to marry Edgar but would not have thought of it had Hindley not degraded Heathcliff so. The naive Cathy thinks she can take a husband, use his money to raise up her true love, and keep Heathcliff as a soul-mate in the bargain. Little does she know of marriage and of men. Just as she realizes she is Heathcliff's soul-mate and that she is wrong to marry Edgar, she does so, compelled by the temporal world and its pressing needs.
Thus, the split and the tragedy. Thus the universal condition of the human creature who must be eternally himself to be happy, yet must compromise to make way in the here and now; in an indifferent world. Survival exacts a split for all of us between what we are and what we have to do to survive.
Heathcliff says nothing could have separated himself and Cathy, nothing from either God or Satan, nothing from either Heaven or Earth, nothing but free will: Cathy's free will. Heathcliff would have born with poverty and banishment to stay true to their love, their code of oneness, but Heathcliff was not a woman. A man could live where a woman could not. Cathy thinks of a roof over her head and respectability, all the while keeping her heart for her lover. The world had other ideas.
I might say that Wuthering Heights is not a love story at all, although needy pairs of lovers appear on every page: Hindley has only one idol, his wife Frances; the younger Cathy clings only to Linton who becomes her all and all after her father dies; Isabella runs to Heathcliff, tossing away family in the process; Heathcliff and Cathy become each other; Hareton and the younger Cathy merge, reuniting the family.
I might say Wuthering Heights is a story of joy and anguish - the joy of the united soul and the anguish of the split soul. Wuthering Heights is the story of Emily Bronte's very soul. It is a book written by a woman and about a woman. Cathy is the hero of Wuthering Heights. It is all about her. It is about her united self, born and bred on the moors, "a wicked , wild slip" of a girl who lords it over her family and her home. She is nourished by the sky, the wind, the rocks, the heather, the solitude, the freedom. It is about that same girl grown up and trapped by decisions forced on her by the realities of life. She must marry. She must marry money to be secure and to be respectable. She must give up her name, her home, herself and become a wife; a nobody, a face in the mirror, changed.
When Cathy says " I am Heathcliff" she could also have said, " Heathcliff is me". Here are personified, the two parts of Emily Bronte's soul. Cathy is the wicked wild joy of wholeness and Heathcliff, the faithful agony of the fractured spirit. Emily Bronte was both of these. At home, with her household duties, her rambles on the moors, her pets, her writing, her solitude and privacy, she was whole. Away from home, that broken agony of longing erupted with so much force as to threaten her life.
Like Cathy, Emily protested. She refused to eat and refused to talk to anyone away from home. Cathy rampages, has tantrums, gets sick and even dies to get her wish - to return to her original whole self. And that self is rooted in rock, in earth, in the place of her birth.
Heathcliff sees evidence of Cathy's existence everywhere, evidence that she existed and that he has lost her. Cathy infuses everything, even the flagstones on the floor tell of her existence. Heathcliff struggles to find her in a long and terrible fight. Here stands Emily Bronte revealed. Here stands her vision of life on this earth; a life that has full knowledge of the united source and a life that suffers the full agony of the outcast soul struggling to regain oneness.
Wuthering Heights is a story of a lover - of a woman. No man could love like that; with his entire body and his very soul. Wuthering Heights reflects in mirrors after mirrors, the Double Soul of Emily Bronte- celebrated in solitudes and exclusiveness - in the soul's chosen place and with the soul's chosen person.
( Rosi ) Postscript.." Nelly' I am Heathcliff!" Emily says she is heath and cliff...she is the earth of her home. To take her away from herself is death......for Emily in life....for Cathy in the book. Heathcliff.....the heath and cliff of the Haworth moors.
Note: I am reading "Sunset Song" by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. The mother says to her daughter, " Oh, Chris, my lass, there are better things than your books or studies or loving or bedding, there's the countryside your own, you its, in the days when you're neither bairn nor woman".
Emily, the moors, her own and she, theirs.........the heath and the cliff.......the eternal rocks, the bones of life itself.
"The cover had a black-and-white portrait of a woman, claimed to be Emily Brontë. The artist is stated to be T Grimshaw, and painted in 1845, and the painting is ina private collection.
In its favour is the hairstyle, which is the same as the 1845 diary paper sketch by Emily, in her room; the aquiline nose and the large, prominent mouth, described by Ellen Nussey in her reminiscences. Above all, she is very plain. If anyone is looking for an image of Emily to have in their mind’s eye, then this portrait has everything to recommend it. She will not have looked much different (if it is not her). This compelling gaze never fails to hold me. " Book Owner
Did the illustrators of these see the portrait above....similar strong and plain features invoke the remembrance of Emily Bronte for me.
Byronic Hero
There are at least four distinguishing factors in the Byronic Hero's philosophy of life: revolt against society, pursuit of individual goals, romantic expression and the constant experience of strong emotion. The result of these qualities is an anti-social being who lives emotional adventures according to his own desire.Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights, is a perfect example of the Byronic Hero. He is a larger than life Byronic Hero because he never wavers from his purpose .. to possess and to be possessed by his love.
The Byronic Hero has some specific personal qualities. He is exotically handsome, dark and rather wild. Trelawny, a friend of Lord Byron's, was recognized as the Byronic hero type. He was described as, " a curious being, a savage in some respects. His face was as dark as a Moor's with a wild, strange look about the eyes and forehead ... his whole appearance giving one an idea of toil, hardship, peril and wild adventure." How like Heathcliff!
In Wuthering Heights, Mr. Lockwood describes Heathcliff as, " a dark-skinned gypsy, in aspect, in dress and manners, a gentleman ... rather slovenly, ... with an erect and handsome figure; and rather morose." Heathcliff, our exotic gentleman.
Later in the story, Nellie describes Heathcliff upon his return after a three year's absence - " He had grown a tall, athletic, well-formed man ... (with) upright carriage ... and intelligent (face). A half-civilized ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, .... but his manner was dignified."
And so there he stands, Heathcliff, the Byronic hero, tall, dark, fiercely handsome, half wild with a suppressed rage flaming blackly in his eyes, yet composed and with a dignified strength.
The Byronic hero was always a gentleman, as the Devil himself is a gentleman, and a very melancholy one. Heathcliff was constantly referred to as both gentleman and devil. Mr Earnshaw brought him home, a ragged orphan and told his wife to " take it as a gift of God; though it's as dark almost as if it came from the devil." When Nelly tries to check on Hareton's life at the Heights, Heathcliff makes Nelly run away, " feeling as scared as if (she) had raised a goblin" When Heathcliff mourn's Cathy's death, he howled, " like a savage beast."
Heathcliff, both man and devil, both gentleman and beast, is as powerful in his emotion and his emanations of evil, as any Byronic hero ever invented.
Of course, the Byronic hero is a romantic hero, and therefore, an individualist. In the best melancholy style he claims for himself the freedom to be as wide and as wild as he pleases. He claims his rights as a gentleman, as a property owner, as a master over servants, wives and children, but he cares nothing for society, its conventions or rules. He oversteps them all and lives, through his passion. He loves what he loves and what he cannot help loving. Heathcliff does all of these things, and never wavers from his own passions.
The Byronic hero is proud. Heathcliff and Catherine run wild on the moors, growing up there, almost becoming the moors, the sky, the rocks and the wind. Heathcliff takes pride in his freedom, even the freedom to be dirty in his degradation by Hindley. In his pride he declares. " I shall not....I shall not stand to be laughed at, I shall not bear it. ...I shall be as dirty as I please."
Yet, the Byronic hero is also a gentleman and strives to be so. Heathcliff leaves and struggles to improve himself. He returns, rich, mannered and educated, though mysterious, wild and proud. He " fought a bitter life (he tells Cathy) for I struggled only for you."
THE BYRONIC HERO HAS ONE ALL CONSUMING PASSION, AND IN HEATHCLIFF'S CASE, IT IS HIS LOVE FOR CATHY, THAT DRIVES HIM ON AND HOLDS HIM ALWAYS.
It is said that the Byronic hero holds the " ordinary people " of the world in contempt. He hates the vulgar commonplace, the artificial niceties, the stupid and insipid feelings of all he holds weak, and therefore, inferior. Heathcliff certainly shows contempt for the ordinary, the silly and the weak. He sneers at Hindley and Frances who were " like two babies, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour - foolish palaver that we should be ashamed of. "
When Heathcliff and Cathy look through the Linton's window to see Edgar and his sister quarrelling over a small dog, he says, " We laughed outright at the petted things; we did despise them."
When Heathcliff and Edgar clash in the kitchen of the Grange, Heathcliff shows his contempt for Edgar by saying, " I'm mortally sorry that you are not worth knocking down." To Cathy, he sneers, "...And that is the slavering, shivering thing that you preferred to me."
Of Isabella, he says he would blacken the eyes on her " mawkish, waxen face" and on the drunken Hindley, " .. he kicked and trampled on him .. then bound up the wounds with brutal roughness. "
Not even his own son, Linton, escaped the contempt that Heathcliff felt he deserved. His first sight of Linton and Heathcliff sneers, " God! what a beauty!....Oh damn my soul but that's worse than I expected ..."
And Cathy, his great love is not receives Heathcliff's contempt in full measure. He hold her to task, crying, " Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this....... My ( tears will ) damn you. You loved me-then what right had you to leave Me? ..... nothing .... would have parted us.... you, of your own will, did it".
For the Byronic hero, who is forever true to his own heart, Cathy's betrayal is the most contemptuous crime of all.
The Byronic Hero knows how to love with his whole being and ridicules the pathetic attempts at love that others make. His love is a high romantic expression that scorns sentiment and romantic foolishness, Heathcliff ridicules Isabella.s romantic ideas of love. " The first thing she saw me do ... was to hang up her little dog,,, Now was it not absurdity ... to dream that I could love her?"
He mocks Edgar's ability to love, saying, " If he loved her with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in one day."
The Byronic hero is an emotional being and his emotions bear the strength of constancy. Heathcliff loves Cathy and hates all who interfere with him. Through his love he suffers, and his pain and his hatred grow in intensity. " I have no pity! ... The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails!"
The Byronic hero has other strengths, the strength of control, the strength to endure. He is no murderer, and keeps a rough household going. And he does give his admiration where it is deserved, for in spite of Hareton being the son of his old enemy, Hindley, he knows Hareton is worthy of love. He would have loved him " had he been someone else".
The Byronic hero fights on until the end, until he reaches his own goal, his own " heaven ". Worn out with his long struggle to be reunited with Cathy, Heathcliff nears his goal, and looks, " almost bright and cheerful, ... very much excited, and wild and glad!" Remaining true to his personal journey, for he has nothing to do with the reality of others, Heathcliff, the Byronic hero triumphs in death. he is reunited with his love ... he is the single-minded Byronic hero to the end.
A certain disdain for the Byronic hero in history simplified the code of qualifications to two great commandments - to hate your neighbour and to love your neighbour's wife. You might hate any number of neighbours and love any number of their wives. But Heathcliff is single-minded. He loves Cathy and it makes no difference that she is a neighbour's wife, no difference, that is to his love. For the Byronic hero, marriage and love have nothing to do with each other. He tells Nelly that she was " a fool to fancy for a moment that ( Cathy) valued Edgar Linton's attachment more that mine."
Byronic love obsesses on the idea of a man and a woman so similar in character and in spirit, as to be almost one individual.
Byron, who loved his sister, wrote
" She is like me in lineaments - her eyes,
Her hair, her features, all to the very tone
Even of her voice, they said were like to mine ...
She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings,
Her faults were mine - her virtues were her own -
I lov'd her, and destroy'd her!"
Cathy and Heathcliff are one. Brought up as brother and sister, they roam the moors, sharing all of their dreams and sufferings. Catherine declares, " Nelly, I am Heathcliff - ( he is ) as my own being." As Cathy dies, Heathcliff cries out, " God, would you like to live with your soul in the grave?" And as Heathcliff plans his burial beside Cathy, he says that by the time Edgar gets to them he won't know ' which is which ....... ( for he will be) dissolve(d )with her."
Byron himself, referred to Napoleon as a typical Byronic hero - a man of destiny, of dark and enormous powers; but overcome at last by the united forces of ordinary people. It is true that Heathcliff fails to destroy the Earnshaws and the Lintons, for the younger Catherine and Hareton marry. But his hatred was only secondary to his love, so unlike Napoleon, he triumphs. He rests in the quiet earth with his cheek " frozen against hers."
Lady Caroline Lamb was supposed to have said of Byron, He was mad, bad and dangerous to know." Cathy said of Heathcliff, " he is a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man." Byron might have said the same thing about Heathcliff as he said about Napoleon, " he was a grand creature."
But Charlotte Bronte, while trying to apologize for Emily's grand hero, said it all ... for there he stands. Heathcliff, " colossal, dark, and frowning, half statue, half rock: in the former sense, terrible and goblin-like; in the latter, almost beautiful ..."
Emily Brontë herself, I think, was a Byronic Hero. The Double Soul of Emily Bronte made her a great thinker and writer.
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| Anonymous | Brontes | 1 | Jan 26 2010, 8:06 PM EST by blackriverrosi | ||
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Thread started: Jan 25 2010, 6:46 AM EST
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Hello, I have not been convinced about my relationship to the NB Lawtons, although I hoped one existed. But I remember my mother saying (when I was about 12) that a branch of my father's family was from Yorkshire and had known the Bronte sisters. I have never been to Yorkshire, but would love to go. Also loved Wuthering Heights and poetry from that period.
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