Nightmares and Dreamscapes: Quality as a Function of Typicality
Texts: Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, The Wolf and the Dove; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights; Janice R. Radway, Reading the Romance; Arthur Heiserman, "Aphrodisian Chastity"; Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale; R.S. Crane, "The Idea of the Humanities"; Elder Olson, Tragedy and the Theory of Drama


Going purely on the basis of the text itself, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, as a novel, is superior to Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Wolf and the Dove due to the weight of its experiences. Determining this, however, cannot account for the level of personal enjoyment received from each. This is attributed to the fact that Woodiwiss’s book works within the confines of a specific genre, which will certainly please fans of that type, more so than Wuthering Heights, which breaks the rules of all formulas - offering an extremely different and sometimes frightening alternative. Still, it is in essence this very thing that raises Wuthering Heights above The Wolf and the Dove outside of the romance genre; its refusal to adhere to stereotypes stretches the experience from one expected, however pleasing, type to a richer, more expansive variety.

Before proving that Brontë has written a better book than Woodiwiss, it is necessary to define the criteria under which a book with more qualitative value will be placed. A “good novel” needs to contain a vast number of things, among them character development, engaging plot devices, and a sophisticated use of language. Looking at just these items, it seems that The Wolf and the Dove and Wuthering Heights are both good books, each creating a story that uses them abundantly and appropriately. Many of these criteria, however, are overwhelmingly subjective, particularly that of language, for in many instances, an author’s particular style is precisely what draws readers as a function of taste.

Objectively speaking, for the purposes of this essay, a good novel, or one of better quality, will be defined as a book that cannot, under any circumstances, be described as “typical.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines typical as: “1. constituting or having the nature of a type; 2a. combining or exhibiting the essential characteristics of a group, b. conforming to a type.” The key concepts associated with a “good book,” therefore, are a sense of innovation, originality, and rebellion from a “type,” or a novel that not only exhibits the qualities previously described but does so in a new and unusual way. A typical book is one that follows the aforementioned definition by residing within the confines of a specific, formulaic genre, and therefore limits the width of the reading experience it can give.

Thus, the genres of The Wolf and the Dove and Wuthering Heights must be examined. According to Janice Radway’s Smithton readers in Reading the Romance, a romance is “a love story whose gradually evolving course must be experienced from the heroine’s point of view” (70). Already it seems evident just how different Woodiwiss’s and Brontë’s novels are in respect to this genre, and that Woodiwiss has followed such stated “rules” while Brontë has not. None of the principal actions in Wuthering Heights are related by the heroine, Catherine, while almost all of them are experienced in some way by the heroine of The Wolf and the Dove, Aislinn. The Wolf and the Dove’s further classification as a romance can be observed in context with Arthur Heiserman’s extensive expounding on the subject: “In the stories we call romances, the triumphant victims suffer seriously, and their triumph gives us sometimes the additional high pleasure of inferring that virtue is rewarded...” (89). Aislinn and the hero, Wulfgar, endure countless trials of mind and body before finally coming home to happiness and reward. The final line of the book sums up this point nicely: “Darkenwald had found a place for all” (508). Using these initial findings, it can be assumed that The Wolf and the Dove works within the type category of romance. It is as yet not known where Wuthering Heights falls in respect to this.

The Wolf and the Dove’s adherence to the typical romance formula can be emphasized by comparing its pleasures and intentions with those that the Smithton romance readers associate with “good” books of the genre. In Reading the Romance, they identify the importance of an intelligent, feisty heroine. From The Wolf and the Dove: “’Oh, you swollen-headed buffoon!’ [Aislinn] cried, straining against him” (181). Countless comments like these make Aislinn the perfect candidate for a romance reader’s ideal heroine. The Smithton readers also describe the importance of a happy ending - already identified in Woodiwiss’s novel - and a “slowly but consistently developing love between hero and heroine” (67). Aislinn and Wulfgar meet at the beginning of the noel and yet are not truly in love until almost its close; still, there is no doubt that they are reluctantly falling for each other during the pages in between. Kathleen Woodiwiss seems to know what her romance readers want, and therefore has produced a novel with a particular set of intrigues that have pleased fans of the genre for years.

These specific plot devices, which are essential to a romance, are Proppian functions for similar stories in repetition, much like the folktales Propp studied in his Morphology of the Folktale. Functions, according to Propp, “constitute the basic elements of a tale, those elements upon which the course of the action is built” (71). These plot elements are essentially the same in all books that the Smithton readers deem “good”; Radway comments that “In fact, a sequence of thirteen narrative functions does recur in the Smithton readers’ favourite books” (120). Radway defines these in terms of the relationship between the heroine and hero, such as “The heroine responds to the hero’s behavior with anger...” and “The hero openly declares his love for the heroine...” (134). Even without following Radway’s exact scheme, recurrent plot elements can be found in any number of romances: the hero and heroine meet, experience conflict, etc., eventually leading up to the ultimate joining of the two and the obligatory happy ending. These functions occur in The Wolf and the Dove as in any other romance: Aislinn confronts Wulfgar, she resents him, etc., until they marry and live happily ever after in Darkenwald together. Such a scheme apparently “conforms to a type,” which has earlier been identified as a trait of typical novels.

Having determined that The Wolf and the Dove is, at least for my purposes, a typical novel, it must be explored what about Wuthering Heights makes it atypical. For in his essay “The Idea of the Humanities,” R.S. Crane makes it clear that in his view, “[the humanities] are the things which we cannot predict” (7). The sheer predictability of the functions and stereotypes in a typical novel such as The Wolf and the Dove places it, in Crane’s opinion, on a lower scale than even the humanities themselves. This is an extreme way of looking at it, however, and I will permit more credit for Woodiwiss’s book. The question, therefore, is not what makes The Wolf and the Dove so “bad” (for cases can by made to the contrary, at least within the lines of the romance genre), but what, in comparison, makes Wuthering Heights so “good.” The answer arrives in Emily Brontë’s absolute refusal to be a typical romance in any way.

At first glance, Wuthering Heights is a romance; the description on the back of the Dover Thrift Edition calls it the “turbulent and tempestuous love story of Cathy and Heathcliff.” However, a closer look throws this theory out the window, especially in consideration with the Smithton readers’ wishes. A happy ending? Hardly; the heroine dies halfway into the novel. A feisty heroine? An ideal romantic heroine would not marry a man other than the hero for financial and practical reasons, as Catherine does. A kind, strong, brave hero? Heathcliff is perhaps the most perplexing character ever written into the world of literature. It seems impossible to “root for” anyone who speaks like this: “’If Hareton does not turn you out of the room, I’ll strike him to Hell!’ thundered Heathcliff. ‘Damnable witch! dare you pretend to rouse him against me?’” (235) Nearly everything in the novel bucks the trend perpetuated by Woodiwiss.

It is telling that no Wuthering Heights formula has been developed for amateur authors to follow. Perhaps the chore seems daunting. There is no doubt a series of plot events, as the foundations of any novel; however, these events have not been perpetrated consistently b any other author attempting to create a genre with them. Since Wuthering Heights apparently does not belong in the category into which it is so often placed, authors attempting to emulate the formula may have faded into obscurity by using what is now its nightmarish “cliché.” Although formula romance can now be identified as typical, the first writers of romance were no doubt innovative, although the origin of the genre is so far removed from its state now, such reflection seems almost ridiculous in this context. Nevertheless, as Arthur Heiserman puts it, “...romance is an entity unlike any other... the origin must therefore have been a single human being, the man who first committed what no self-respecting literary man in antiquity would have dared write - the bastard prose medley of drama, epic, and history that is romance” (92). Brontë, likewise, created something daring and quite shocking for the time in which it was released. Romance, however, is the single entity here, and Woodiwiss’s novel is only part of this entity. Wuthering Heights is an entity all of itself.

The benefits of creating a single entity as opposed to genre literature are numerous. The stereotypes associated with the latter are limiting on the reader’s end. Beauty in revealing discovery can be appreciated in a book that takes its own path. When working with stereotypes, there is nothing new to know. Radway claims in Reading the Romance that “the Smithton women are less interested in the particularities of their heroes as individuals than in the roles most desirable among them to perform” (83). Such “roles” reduce these romantic characters entirely, from human to cardboard. Crane makes the argument that this kills the whole point of the field: “The sciences are most successful when they seek to move from the diversity... toward as high a degree of unity... as their materials permit. The humanities... are most alive when they reverse this process, and look for... variety, the uniqueness, the unexpectedness, the complexity, the originality...” (12). Woodiwiss has forfeited life for reliable predictability that gives her readers precisely what they want in a romance. By building her novel around Proppian functions, even Propp would anticipate various alterations in character: “The nomenclature and attributes of characters are variable quantities of the tale... these attributes provide the tale with its brilliance, charm and beauty” (87). Instead, The Wolf and the Dove uses roles combined with functions - a method that, in effect, tells the same tale over and over.

In contrast, Wuthering Heights provides the richness of discovery through characters and actions that a reader many well have never encountered before. Before even finishing the first page of The Wolf and the Dove, we know several things. We know Aislinn is an intelligent, beautiful, feisty woman; we know she will eventually meet a dashing, strong, and brave man. We know they will highly dislike one another at first, but we also know that they will eventually reconcile their differences and fall in love. We know the story as well as the characters. The beauty in the Wuthering Heights story comes from revealing things about people and events, the truth about them: “The two, to a cool spectator, made a strange and fearful picture... [Catherine]’s present countenance had a wild vindictiveness in its white cheek, and a bloodless lip, and scintillating eye... as to her companion, while raising himself with one hand, he had taken her arm with the other; and so inadequate was his stock of gentleness to the requirements of her condition, that on his letting go, I saw four distinct impressions left blue in the colourless skin” (117-118). Tenderness combined with aggression - an unlikely combination. Plot devices are used in much the same way, for who would expect Catherine to die halfway through a love story as this, or Heathcliff to become so bent on revenge he almost destroys an entire family? Thus Catherine and Heathcliff, and the plot, are revealed to us. Stereotypes leave little room for truth or revelation.

Having said all this, however, there are still no doubt certain individuals who would prefer The Wolf and the Dove to Wuthering Heights. Not, in this case, because it is a better novel, but because it caters to what specific readers want out of a reading experience. The experience of Brontë’s novel is unusual, dark, and sometimes unpleasant, and therefore, in some readers’ eyes, “worse” than the experience Woodiwiss gives. To many, as Heiserman says is typical of romance, “the plot is like a daydream” (91). In a romance such as The Wolf and the Dove, the dream is such, leaving an outside entity such as Woodiwiss to know the dreams of her readers and write in a way that fulfills them. The difference between a romantic fantasy and any other dream is that of knowing - in a romance, the characters are already created and have been countless times, the plot is already known and will be to the end.

To the dreamer, Wuthering Heights may be a nightmare. It is stormy, unpredictable, and unreliable. But the experience is a deeper one: dreamers have no idea what lurks behind the doors, and wake up sweating and shaking when they find out, full of adrenaline and life. Which dream will be remembered more clearly? Elder Olson writes, “The sensational forms give us the experience; the superior forms give us significant experience; and they are superior in the degree that they significance is a superior one.” Personal preference may very well be of the confined, limited type, being well aware of what lies ahead and taking more pleasure in The Wolf and the Dove. But Wuthering Heights reveals unknown truths, exhibits unusual terrors in a nightmare that may not be as pleasant, but will certainly make more of a mark on the mind of the unsuspecting dreamer.


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