The Unviersal Mental Language in Bronte's Wuthering Heights
Texts: Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights; Janice Radway, Reading the Romance; comments from members of Bookchatz@onelist.com

Despite its undeniable failure to be truly “successful” within the romance genre, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has remained a cherished novel to this day, not because of an adherence to any particular category, but its use of elements from a number of categories. It refuses to stick to any regular pattern of Proppian functions; rather, the wide spectrum it covers allow the book to retain a huge audience, satisfying almost every person’s specific psychological needs for reading. When surveying a group of Wuthering Heights fans, I found a variety of responses as to why they enjoyed it, no especial one of which embodies the essence of the novel. Using techniques similar to Janice Radway’s in Reading the Romance, my closely personal research served to support my claim of what kind of novel Wuthering Heights really is: it breaks the boundaries of a typical romance to offer more to a larger group of readers.

At first, Wuthering Heights may seem like any romance that one of Janice Radway’s Smithton readers might enjoy. The novel’s status as, essentially, a story of love, is hardly ever disputed. It can feasibly be argued that one of the principle functions, or elements (term coined by Vladimir Propp), of the plot present in the story is the act of “falling in love” - whatever that may mean. One woman, in responding to my survey, admitted that she did not remember the details, but recalled enjoying it. “It was good,” said Kitt, forty-five, “but I don’t remember enough about it to comment on the story, other than it was a good love story.” Since the element of love is, obviously, the most vital element within the genre of romance, Wuthering Heights would thus seem worthy of this categorization, focusing (at least initially) on a deep attachment formed between two characters, Catherine and Heathcliff. This relationships is stated outright a good way into the book through Catherine’s lamenting: “My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself... Nelly, I am Heathcliff,” she finally confesses. “He’s always, always in my mind... “ (60). A complete devotion such as this one has the unmistakable mark of a romance, and would thus satisfy a reader’s need to experience such an undying love vicariously.

The love story does not stand alone, however. Bonnie, a fifty-two year old woman, expressed her need to identify with the heroine: “I guess I was identifying with Cathy,” she said. What she expounds upon further addresses the issue of Catherine’s husband - not Heathcliff, as a romance novel would have it, but her neighbour Edgar Linton. Bonnie resolved then that it was a different type of romance, but still a love story, nonetheless. “Not only do two men love Cathy, but she loves two men! ...A lot of people believe you can’t love two men or two women, but I know you can! When I read it, I was myself madly in love with two men!” wrote Bonnie. Although this type of love story is decidedly atypical, Bonnie categorized the book in regards to what she needed at the time - something to relate to, a woman who perhaps felt exactly what she felt. Perceiving Wuthering Heights as a romance is the most apparent way to have it fulfill romantic desires, whether they be those of the Smithton women in Radway’s study, or Bonnie’s desire to feel the heroine’s plight.

And yet, one cannot simply stop at the romance factor of the book. In Reading the Romance, romance readers make a point of what they like to see in a romance novel: “In all of their comments about the nature of the romance, the Smithton women placed heavy emphasis on the importance of development in the romance’s portrayal of love” (65). Taking this into consideration, one must begin to reevaluate Wuthering Heights’ nature as a romance, seeing as though the development of Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is, at the very most, hinted at, much less eloquently described. Brontë prefers to focus on states of being rather than their leadup: “[Catherine] was much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him” (30). In addition, it is automatically assumed that in a love story, the hero and heroine will go through many trials and hardships but eventually end up together. How, then, would a romance reader be satisfied by Catherine’s marriage to Edgar? Catherine never “wakes up” and marries Heathcliff, so there can supposedly be no “happily ever after” ending for them.

One cannot deny also that the book paints pictures of Heathcliff and Catherine that seem to be a far cry from any ideal hero or heroine. Kat, forty, commented on this at great length in her response to my survey. “Catherine seemed to command more love and loyalty than I felt she deserved,” Kat wrote. “She looked for comfort and security rather than following her true feelings and taking her chances with Heathcliff.” Assuming that in a romance, everything is expected to turn out for the best, it is naturally customary for heroines to follow their “true feelings.” The plot function of marriage is often present in romance, but marriage simply for security or money is almost entirely nonexistent.

This is even without taking into consideration the nature of the characters themselves. At the start of the novel, Catherine is described as being an ill-tempered child with bad manners - which is perhaps why she got along with Heathcliff so well whom, despite inspiring initial sympathy, quickly degenerates into a revolting persona. “I guess part of Heathcliff’s actions came from his brutal treatment at the hands of Hindley Earnshaw,” wrote Kat, attempting to justify his character. For Kat, justification must have been necessary, because someone expecting a romance would have need of molding his personality into something halfway likable. Smithton readers in Radway’s study made significant note of the fact that one of the worst things possible to find in a romance would be the presence of “a cruel hero” (74). Many of Heathcliff’s words and actions can only be described as cruel. After slapping Catherine’s daughter (also christened Catherine) upside the head many times for trying to escape his captivity, Heathcliff exclaims, “’I know how to chastise children, you see... cry at your ease! I shall be your father to-morrow... and you shall have plenty of that - you can bear plenty - you’re no weakling - you shall have a daily taste” (199). If this were not enough for a romance reader, Brontë even goes so far as to kill the heroine, the original Cathy, halfway through the novel, making it seemingly impossible for any happy ending to rise out of all such turbulence.

These deviations from the norm of a romance novel may alienate some romance readers, having not found satisfaction for their psychological wishes. However, an important point is that in Wuthering Heights, it seems that one person’s loss is another’s gain. The variations on the typical romance novel serve to expand the reading base - drawing in people who may not typically get their wishes fulfilled through romance. Dennis, twenty-one, apparently enjoyed the novel for completely different reasons than those of Bonnie and Kitt: “What I really liked in the story was the sense of dread that hung through it all the time,” he said. He went on to describe elements of the setting that contributed to his vision of the book: “The isolated moors, the destructive atmosphere in the manor, the English weather, they all gave rise to that feeling of cosmic isolation.” Dennis named certain functions of this aspect of the book - Heathcliff gradually going mad, the overwhelming number of deaths, the element of revenge, and so on. And of course, the supernatural things in the story must not be overlooked as something that gives satisfaction to even more readers. When Heathcliff’s tenant Mr. Lockwood spends the night at Wuthering Heights, he has nothing less than a “spiritual experience” during which he perceives Catherine’s ghost outside the window. “I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window... almost maddening me with fear” (18). Lockwood’s subsequent action, of bloodying the ghost’s arm to shake it off, is disgusting enough to satiate the most demanding of gore fans. It is evident from Dennis’s comments that these elements of the book are really what caught his attention, as opposed to the identity Bonnie felt with Catherine, or the love story element remembered by Kitt.

What influenced my personal enjoyment of the book more directly due to its change from a typical romance were my opinions of the two main characters and a particular scene they shared. In all truth, one of my major psychological wishes when reading a book is the (perhaps cliché) presence of an enourmously emotionally cathartic scene. This did indeed occur (at least according to my criteria) in Wuthering Heights, when Heathcliff visited Catherine again just before she died. However, my needs are not only those of a hopeless romantic. While a Smithton romance reader might have found the love story satisfying but the hero and heroine despicable, I reveled in the imperfection of Cathy and Heathcliff. During the first few days of reading the novel, my most strongly voiced opinion went something like, “I think it’s awesome how the hero and heroine are bad-asses instead of being perfect ideals!” Unlike Radway’s readers, I tend to find satisfaction in reading about people who are as real as anyone I might meet on an ordinary day - wrought with problems and conflicting emotions. Although supposedly impossible, the book seems to fulfill all of the needs of Bonnie, Kitt, Kat, Smithton readers, Dennis, and myself.

If the different viewpoints of the novel seem extremely contradictory, perhaps the goal of Wuthering Heights has been met. As Dennis proclaimed in his response, “When Heathcliff becomes less and less involved in the household, and you see that the inhabitants are beginning to breathe again - from that point begins the final beauty and horror. The beauty of happiness and youth blooming up again, and the horror of Heathcliff and Catherine’s spirits roaming the moors on rainy days. I didn’t know what to do then - cry or shudder.” Dennis has perfectly relayed the most important aspect of the book - its ability to speak to everyone about everything. Without a fixed purpose for a certain audience such as a contemporary romance novel might have, Wuthering Heights instead chooses to roam between the genres of literature, and thus produces a positive effect on many more people’s psyche. Perhaps this capacity pins on it the contested title of “classic” that, many would argue, it so justly deserves.


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