The Heart of Reading

[Peripatetics]

In a resent post, a student in an English class, assigned to read Wuthering Heights, asked for help - struggling to give a good analysis. I'll assume that it was high school English and the usual sophomoric advice was given. I was flabbergasted! Not at the advice, but that an English teacher would ask a teen to read and understand Wuthering Heights.

Apropos reading and understanding:
Beyond Decoding Words, by Maryanne Wolf, (1)

“In brief, this brain learns to access and integrate within 300 milliseconds a vast array of visual, semantic, sound (or phonological), and conceptual processes, which allows us to decode and begin to comprehend a word. At that point, for most of us our circuit is automatic enough to allocate an additional precious 100 to 200 milliseconds to an even more sophisticated set of comprehension processes that allow us to connect the decoded words to inference, analogical reasoning, critical analysis, contextual knowledge, and finally, the apex of reading: our own thoughts that go beyond the text.
This is what Proust called the heart of reading — when we go beyond the author’s wisdom and enter the beginning of our own.”

And here is the catch phrase: wisdom. How can you ask a young person lacking life's experience go “beyond the author’s wisdom and enter the beginning of our own.” Or even to comprehend the “the author’s wisdom” when scholars can give but a partial answer.
In the following essay I would like to explore some of the views of Wuthering Heights - first from an aesthetic view point and then from an ethical, whether the question, 'is Heathcliff evil', has any meaning beyond the reflection of the reader's own personality.

References
1. Does the Brain Like E-Books?(New York Times, October 15, 2009)

related interest:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1015141500.htm
New Light On Nature Of Broca's Area: Rare Procedure Documents How Human Brain Computes Language

[kiki1982]

Without practice, one cannot make perfect. Keep on going, you'll get there some time.

[Dirtbag]

Everyone has a unique sort of wisdom that books can reveal.

[Peripatetics]

dithyrambs - a Greek choral song or chant of vehement or wild character and of usually irregular form, originally in honor of Dionysus or Bacchus. The definition is quite appropriate to Wuthering Heights. H. Bloom in his Introduction to Modem Critical Interpretations, says: "The transcendental element of the book cannot be evaded or ignored. It makes, Emily Bronte's great narrative an anomaly; it is of no clear genre."

A related question is whether Wuthering Heights is a Novel (a development of a tale or character that fundamentally is congruent with reality.) or is it a Romance (a fiction grounded in a transformation of a tale or a character that is unrealistic.) In Introduction to Modem Critical Interpretations: Jane Eyre, he writes: "The Brontes can be said to have invented a relative new genre, a kind of Northern Romance deeply influenced by both Byron's poetry and his myth and personality, but going back also, more remotely yet definitely to the Gothic novel and Elizabethan drama." Stylistics aside what is fascinating is the personality of Emily, a minister's daughter of very limited formal education. Unlike her sister, she did not take to Hagger's methods of instructions in French and the classics of style. V.S. Prichett in On Unity with Nature, described Emily as: "She is pre-Christian. Her vision of the union of man and nature is natural to her. Her spirit is naturally pagan and she appears to own nothing at all to the general tradition of our novel which has fed upon the sociability of men and women and the preaching of reform."
The early reviews of Wuthering Heights, were polarizing - Edwin P. Whipple, in On Depravity of Wuthering Heights (1848), writes: "The truth is, that the whole firm of Bell & Co. seems to have a sense of depravity of human nature peculiarly their own. It is the yahoo not the daemon that they select to representation; their Pandemonium is of mud rather than of fire.
This is especially the case with Acton Bell, the author of Wuthering Heights ...
and if we mistake not, of certain offensive but powerful portions of Jane Eyre. Acton when left altogether to his own imaginations, seems to take a morose satisfaction in developing a full complete science of human brutality. His attempt at originality does not stop with the conception of Heatcotte but aims further to exhibit the action of the sentiment of love on the nature of the being whom his morbid imagination has created.
This is by far the ablest and the most subtle portion of his labors, and indicates that strong hold upon the elements of character and that decision of touch in delineation of the most evanescent qualities of emotion, which distinguish the mind of the whole family." (1)
As a contrast to the moralistic argument of E. P. Whipple, Sydney Dobell, a poet and occasional critic, in 1850 writes: " we repeat, that there are passages in this book of Wuthering Heights of which any novelist, past or present might be proud. Open the first volume at the fourteenth page and read to the sixty-first. There are few things in modem prose to surpass the pages for native power. We cannot praise too warmly the brave simplicity, the unaffected air of intense belief, the admirable combination of extreme likelihood with the rarest originality, the nice provision of the possible even in the highest effects of the supernatural, the easy strength and instinct of keeping which the accessory circumstances are grouped, the exquisite but unconscious art with which the chiaro-scuro of the whole is managed, and the ungenial frigidity of the place, time, weather, and persons, is made to heighten the unspeakable pathos of one ungovernable outburst." (2)

The ethically relativistic shift from the Victorian view point is illustrated in Dorothy VanGhent's essay: Heathcliff as Archetypal Demon.
"Heathcliff is no more ethically relevant than is flood or earthquake or whirlwind. It is as impossible to speak of him in terms of 'sin' and guilt' as it is to speak in this way of natural elements or the creatures of the animal world. In him, the type reverts to a more current mythology and to earlier symbolism. Wuthering Heights so baffles and confounds the ethical sense because it is not informed with that sense at all: it is profoundly informed with attitudes of animism by which the natural world - that world which is 'other' than 'outside of the consciously individualized human - appears to act with energy similar to the energy of the soul." (3)

In a similar vein Robert M. Polhemus, in Love and Death in Wuthering Heights (4), argues: “The urge to free the spirit from social conventions, the world, and the galling limitations of the body. That dispersed eroticism, shocking as it is, connects with an underlying drive for breaking of boundaries – transgression as a means to transcendence.”

If we view Wuthering Heights through the lens of “that world which is 'other' than 'outside of the consciously individualized human” or of “transgression as a means to transcendence.”, we have to conclude that Charlotte, the person who was closest to Emily, and assuming knew her best, evades the questions raised by the ethical criticism in her time of Wuthering Heights. Her preface to Wuthering Heights, after Emily's death, is an apologia that obscures rather than illuminates Emily's character and the aesthetic impulse in creation. Whether one views the work as 'one of the canonical works' as H. Bloom terms it or as Algernon Charles Swinburne in 1883, “A graver and perhaps a somewhat more plausible charge is brought against the author of Wuthering Heights by those who find here and there in her book the savage note or the sickly symptom of a morbid ferocity.” Charlotte's On Some Criticisms of Wuthering Heights does not answer the question.


References

1. Edwin P. Whipple, “Novels of the Season, North American Review (October 1848): 357- 59.
2. Sydney Dobell, “Currer Bell” (1850), The Life and Times of Sydney Dobell, ed. Emilly Jolly (1878), Vol. 1, pp 169-71.
3. Dorothy Van Ghent, “On Wuthering Heights”, The English Novel:Form and Function (New York: Rhinehart &Co., 1953) pp.163-65
4. Robert M. Polhemus, “The Passionate Calling:Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847), Erotic Faith:Being in Love from Jane Austen to D.H. Lawrence (Chicago Univ. Press 1990), pp. 81-83

[wessexgirl]

I was flabbergasted! Not at the advice, but that an English teacher would ask a teen to read and understand Wuthering Heights.

Why? I know it is a unique and strange book, but I have no problem with a teenager reading it. In fact, I'm absolutely delighted that I have had 4 young teens come up to my Library in the last few weeks and ask for it, (and one was a boy). They may not all finish it, but some may, and good luck to them. If they don't get it now, they may at a later stage in their lives. Give them a chance.

[kiki1982]

Firstly, it is absurd to even suggest that teenagers would not be able to understand it. It is the teachers who are usually the problem, asking stupid questions. If they would leave it up to the teens, some of them would come up with better essays than the teachers would be able to comprehend. I guess that's the problem.

Secondly, do you honestly hang your argument on the sayings and scribbles of a Christian journalist who was not even educated in this matter? The pagan idea about Emily has LONG been discredited. I have told you before, but you do not seem to take it in.

Thirdly, you quote a person Edwin Percy Whipple who discredited this work, the same as others did with Jane Eyre, for ‘depravity’. It says more about his views than about the work.

Fourthly Sydney Dobell is also a Christian of the deprived sort who thinks that there is nothing right to find in Wuthering Heights because it discredits the hypocrisy of people like Joseph. Sadly, there is someone else to find in the plot who is more Christian than anyone could ever be.

Actually the only satisfactory source is Polhemus, who was Professor of English at Stanford University, but who might eb a little dated in his views.

Furthermore Dorothy Van Ghent’s argument about demons is not exactly right, as demons do not do good things and certainly do not change course. That is profoundly wrong. Demons cannot find piece, they cannot go to heaven, they cannot be moved by kindness. So Van Ghent’s argument does not hold up from a first glimpse already.

I cannot see what is better about these critics than about teenagers, to be honest.

And, anyhow, more answers about this whole work might be found in Eglish folk lore rather than in religin unlike with Jane Eyre.

[Peripatetics]

Thank you all for your interest. And willingness to discuss W.H.

Dirtbag, Today, 09:58 AM
Everyone has a unique sort of wisdom that books can reveal.

It would depend on what meaning you give to 'wisdom'. My understanding is that it is trans generational and acquired by experience. Yes it is in 'books' but there has to be a resonance in the mind of the reader, whether old or young, and as an example of 'wisdom' how many books of wisdom do you know written by teens?

Wessexgirl, Today, 12:10 PM
Give them a chance.

“Give them a chance.”, by all means! When they choose to read on their own initiative, and as you say “If they don't get it now, they may at a later stage in their lives.”. But when the teacher assigns the book, forces the youngster to read, to get a grade, then the results is not understanding or aesthetic appreciation but simple compulsion leading to a feeling of failure. The results are evident in the number of posts asking for help with the assignment , with the questions that do not exhibit any understanding of the intent of the author's meaning.
And then there is the exception, a glorious exception:

L.M. The Third, 04-20-2009,
Is "Wuthering' "sexless"?
Ever heard the theory that the main characters in "Wuthering Heights" while some of the most passionate in English literature are devoid of sexual passion for each other? (I'm talking Catherine and Heathcliff) What do you think?
I've heard their love described as the ultimate of self-love (ie, "I am Heathcliff!" and "I cannot live without my soul!"). Therefore, their love is considered rather unsexual.
Then too, one reviewer after Emily's death spoke of not doubting Catherine's purity in the arm's of her lover. But you know how strange some reviews were...
I've also read that their may be something sexual deeply hidden, because after Heathcliff returns the babies start coming. (And something to do with architecture... Rather wierd.)

The posting by the way received no replies.

[wessexgirl]

Wessexgirl, Today, 12:10 PM
Give them a chance.

“Give them a chance.”, by all means! When they choose to read on their own initiative, and as you say “If they don't get it now, they may at a later stage in their lives.”. But when the teacher assigns the book, forces the youngster to read, to get a grade, then the results is not understanding or aesthetic appreciation but simple compulsion leading to a feeling of failure. The results are evident in the number of posts asking for help with the assignment , with the questions that do not exhibit any understanding of the intent of the author's meaning.

The teens I'm referring to all chose to read the book themselves, they weren't sent by teachers. That's a very positive thing in my view.

[Peripatetics]

The teens I'm referring to all chose to read the book themselves, they weren't sent by teachers. That's a very positive thing in my view.

Agreed.

[Lokasenna]

The teens I'm referring to all chose to read the book themselves, they weren't sent by teachers. That's a very positive thing in my view.

I read (and understood) it completely of my own inclination when I was fourteen. Quite a few of my friends, even those without a real interest in literature, read it around the same time.

Thematically, I think it resonates rather well with people in their mid-teens.

[Peripatetics]

I read (and understood) it completely of my own inclination when I was fourteen. Quite a few of my friends, even those without a real interest in literature, read it around the same time.

Thematically, I think it resonates rather well with people in their mid-teens.

Thank you, a very interesting response, since I'm continually surprised by others understandings of ideas that I had found difficult. I would be grateful if you would answer some questions about WH, especially from the view point of a fourteen old boy.
If you so choose, you can reply in private using the Private Message option of the Forum.

1.Is Nelly Dean's accounts of Wuthering Heights credible as she is not above listening at doors and of reading private letters? Why does Emily Bronte use her as the principal narrator?
2.Does Wuthering Heights have an ethical perspective and is it moral, ie. religious or is it civil ie. reflecting the Heights and the Grange?
3.Do Catherine/Heathcliff understand and feel sexual love or is their obsession purely narcissistic? Related question: Did Emily understand sexual love?
4.Did you view Heathcliff as evil (in a religious sense) or as pathologically sadistic?

Addition
It has been 10 days waiting for some proof that “I read (and understood) it completely”.
Thus I have to conclude that this was just a teen's empty boast. But to be charitable, one could allow that the mind which claimed such an 'understanding' was yet incomplete.

[Peripatetics]

In this section I would like to examine the criticism of Wuthering Heights from an ethics perspective, that is not only of actions but also in motivation, whether religious or social, so that questions like 'is Heathcliff evil', can be addressed with some clarity.
If one is to take a moralistic view of Wuthering Heights, the question of Emily's religiosity is inescapable and here we face a dilemma since we lack documentation to hazard an intelligent guess.
All that survives of Emily's own words about herself is two brief letters, two diary papers written when she was thirteen and sixteen, and two birthday papers, written when she was twenty-three and twenty-seven. They don't give us a clue to her religiosity, but in an essay, "The Butterfly" (1), composed in Belgium, Emily Brontë wrote that "the entire creation is equally meaningless... the universe seemed to me a vast machine constructed solely to produce evil".

In such a universe neither redemption nor salvation has a place. This is not the universe of the Scriptures. But this universe has a resonance in the theme of Wuthering Heights.

An indirect source is Charlotte's novel, Shirley. Charlotte created Shirley, as she told her biographer and friend Elizabeth Gaskell, to be "what Emily Brontë would have been had she been placed in health and prosperity." In Shirley, Charlotte reverting to the authors voice has Shirley declare - 'Milton tried to see the first woman; but, Cary, he saw her not. ... 'I would beg to remind him that the first men of the earth were Titans, and that Eve was their mother: from her sprang Saturn, Hyperion, Oceanus; she bore Prometheus' ----
'Pagan that you are! what does that signify?'
'I say, there were giants on the earth in those days: giants that strove to scale heaven. The first woman's breast that heaved with life on this world yielded the daring which could contend with Omnipotence: the strength which could bear a thousand years of bondage, - the vitality which could feed that vulture death through uncounted ages, - the unexhausted life and uncorrupted excellence, sisters to immortality, which, after millenniums of crimes, struggles, and woes, could conceive and bring forth a Messiah. The first woman was heaven-born: vast was the heart whence gushed the well-spring of the blood of nations; and grand the undegenerate head where rested the consort-crown of creation.'
'I saw - I now see - a woman-Titan: her robe of blue air spreads to the outskirts of the heath, where yonder flock is grazing; a veil white as an avalanche sweeps from her head to her feet, and arabesques of lightning flame on its borders. Under her breast I see her zone, purple like that horizon: through its blush shines the star of evening. Her steady eyes I cannot picture; they are clear - they are deep as lakes - they are lifted and full of worship - they tremble with the softness of love and the lustre of prayer. Her forehead has the expanse of a cloud, and is paler than the early moon, risen long before dark gathers: she reclines her bosom on the ridge of Stilbro' Moor; her mighty hands are joined beneath it. So kneeling, face to face she speaks with God. That Eve is Jehovah's daughter, as Adam was His son.' (2)
“So kneeling, face to face she speaks with God.” A woman speaking directly with God when not until 1917 did ( The Church of England appoints female Bishop's Messengers to preach, teach and take missions in the absence of men.) Such thoughts would have been blasphemy to an Anglican.
“ The first woman's breast that heaved with life on this world yielded the daring which could contend with Omnipotence” - this is not the words of the Scriptures.

When Shirley says “The first woman was heaven-born: vast was the heart whence gushed the well-spring of the blood of nations; and grand the undegenerate head where rested the consort-crown of creation.”, the fount of 'creation' is Nature. This passage is as definitive a summation of Charlotte's beliefs as we are to discover. And in Charlotte's vision Shirley was Emily "what Emily Brontë would have been had she been placed in health and prosperity." Thus by extension, Shirley's beliefs define Emily's religiosity.

Consequently when V.S. Pritchett states: “She is pre-Christian. The vision of union of man and nature is natural to her.” And the echo from Shirley “'Pagan that you are! what does that signify?” in describing Emily as “Her spirit is naturally pagan and she appears to own nothing at all to the general tradition of our novel which has fed upon the sociability of men and women and the preaching of reform.” (3), has rationality and documentary evidence.
“By some Mendelian accident, Emily Bronte seems to have reverted to the Irish strain in the Bronte family and to have slipped back, in the isolation and intense life of the Yorkshire moors, to an earlier civilisation. She is preChristian. The vision of the union of man and nature is natural to her. Or rather, as in many writers of split racial personality, one sees two countries, two civilisations, two social histories in conflict.”
“There is no other novel in the English language like Wuthering Heights. ... And that brings us to the more important difference between Wuthering Heights and the other English novels of the nineteenth century: Emily Bronte is not concerned with man and society, but with his unity with nature.”
In the thematic structure of Wuthering Heights such a question as “is Heathcliff evil” is meaningless. Heathcliff's persona is in what J.H. Miller describes: “This is the hell in which Heathcliff lives after her death: "I could almost see her, and yet I could not! I ought to have sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning, from the fervour of my supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! And, since then, sometimes more, and sometimes less, I've been the sport of that intolerable torture!" Heathcliff's sadistic tormenting of others only leads him to be the more tormented, tormented by a Cathy whose strongest weapon is her invisibility.” (4)

The question “Is Heathcliff sadistic?” is pregnant with questions, questions which have only partial answers.
“Why does Heathcliff spend so much of his time in an elaborate attempt to destroy Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights, with all their inhabitants? Why does he take delight in torturing Hindley, Isabella, Hareton, the second Cathy, his son Linton? Why does he, both before Cathy's death and after, enter on a violent career of sadistic destruction? Is it because he is, as Cathy says, a "fierce, pitiless, wolfish man," or does his sadism have some further meaning?

“Now he proposes to do this by getting control of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange in order to destroy them both. "I wish," says Heathcliff of his property, "I could annihilate it from the face of the earth." So he gives himself wholeheartedly to acts of sadistic destruction....The sadistic infliction of pain on other people, like the destruction of inanimate objects, is a way of breaking down the barriers between oneself and the world.
Heathcliff's effort to regain Cathy through sadistic destruction fails, just as does Augusta's attempt to achieve through sadistic love a fusion with something outside herself, and just as does Cathy's decision to will her own death. Heathcliff's sadism fails because, as things or people are annihilated under the blows of the sadist, he is left with nothing. He reaches only an exacerbated sense of the absence of the longed-for intimacy rather than the intimacy itself. ... "It is a poor conclusion, is it not," he asks. "An absurd termination to my violent exertions? I get levers, and mattocks to demolish the two houses, and train myself to be capable of working like Hercules, and when everything is ready, and in my power, I find the will to lift a slate off either roof has vanished! . . . I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction . . ."
“Heathcliff's sadism is more than an attempt to take revenge indirectly on Cathy. It is also a strange and paradoxical attempt to regain his lost intimacy with her.” (4)

The pervasive sadism in Wuthering Heights has a precedent in Emily's fantasy of the Gondal poems that Emily composed upon her return from Brussels and before she began Wuthering Heights.
“Heathcliff's violence against everyone but Cathy plays the same role in Wuthering Heights as does the theme of war in the poems. In both cases there is an implicit recognition that war or sadism is like love because love too is destructive, since it must break down the separateness of the loved one.” (4) The protagonist of the Gondal chronicle, Julius Brenzaida turns sadist when he has been betrayed by Augusta.
“In both cases there is an implicit recognition that war or sadism is like love because love too is destructive, since it must break down the separateness of the loved one. Augusta too is a sadist.” (4) The parallel leads to the uncomfortable conclusion, that sadism in Wuthering Heights does not have an artistic purpose but is a component of Emily's character. That in-spite of the poetic sensitivity of poems like A Day Dream:

On a sunny brae alone I lay
One summer afternoon;
It was the marriage-time of May,
With her young lover, June.

From her mother's heart seemed loath to part
That queen of bridal charms,
But her father smiled on the fairest child
He ever held in his arms.

for as Dorothy Van Ghent,'On Wuthering Heights,' put it: “Even in the weakest of these souls there is an intimation of the dark Otherness, by which the soul is related psychologically to the inhuman world of pure energy, for it carries within itself an "otherness" of its own, that inhabits below consciousness.”


References

1. http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/en...s.html#letters
2. Charlotte Bronte, Shirley, chp. 18
3. V.S.Pritchett, On Unity in Nature, "Books in General," New Statesman, June 1946
4. J. Hillis Miller, "Emily Bronte," The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century Writers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 194-97

[Peripatetics]

Love and Sex in Wuthering Heights.

If one would ask the reader of Wuthering Heights whether Heathcliff was in love with Catherine , the majority would reply yes. If one would ask whether the love was like that of Romeo and Juliet, the majority would hesitate. It is a difficult distinction to make and not only for the general reader. Sidney Dobell, in 1840 thought that this love, even when Catherine is clasped to Heathcliff's breast "we dare not doubt her purity" Swinburne agrees with Dobell because theirs is a "passionate and ardent chastity." Hence they thought that Heathcliff''s/Catherine's love would fall into the broad definition of love.
They were wrong. That is not what Emily means, when she said: “"the entire creation is equally meaningless... the universe seemed to me a vast machine constructed solely to produce evil". In a universe solely constructed to produce evil, love can not be defined in societal terms, of compassion, sharing, physical attraction, sexual desire. Emily's universe is a vacuity, it's only common connection with the normative universe is death. Death? But what does Emily mean by death? “A small boy tells Lockwood that he has seen Heathcliff and a woman walking on the moors together.”(1) For Emily death is not a termination, heaven not a resurrection, but an Elysian Moors the final resting place of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous.

Some critics attempt to approach sexuality in Wuthering Heights indirectly, as Stevie Davies does in Emily Bronte: Heretic, by attempting to relate the novel's sexuality to Emily Bronte's - “ She makes the important point that it is not (as many have assumed) a miracle that a virgin should have been able to write about sexual passion. “ However this is another dead end since it takes us out of the frame of the novel and introduces inappropriately twentieth century concepts.
The gap between the Victorian sexuality and the treatment of sex in Hardy or D.H. Lawrence is greater than a generational gap, and it is compounded by the idiosyncratic allusions, evasions and metaphors used by the Brontes. Thus to try to get our mind set around sexuality in Wuthering Heights, we have to stick to the novel, and hazard a judicious guess what Emily meant. Some clues:

The challenge of Love.
Lockwood, “a city man, a refined society man, a man of means. … His usual vacation choice is 'a month of fine weather at the seacoast.' His choice of the desolate isolation of Thruscross Grange is, however not accidental: it grows from the 'peculiar constitution' that led his mother to predict that he 'should never have a comfortable home'. This constitution is shortly revealed as an inability to accept the reciprocation of love” (1)
'While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-cost, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature, a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I “never told my love” vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears; she understood me at last, and looked a return – the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame – shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till, finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mama to decamp.
By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness, how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.' (2)
Bronte's universe solely constructed to produce evil, will not permit the expression of innocent love. In this universe “Envy and retribution dominate the novel, in scene after scene of brutal and uncontrolled physical violence in which every character partakes.” (1) Sexuality has to be sublimated, and love through sex can't be expressed. “Heathcliff holds the dying Cathy's arm so fiercely that Ellen sees “four distinct impressions left blue in the colorless skin.” Cathy dashes her own head against the sofa until she lies as if dead, with 'blood on her lips' “ (1)

Catherine knows love and betrays it - “When Cathy announces her plan to marry Edgar, Ellen Dean asks her where the obstacle is: 'Here! And here!' replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and the other on her breast, I'm convinced I'm wrong' “(ch. 9) ”
For the Linton world, Heathcliff's dark looks and lower class manners must keep him apart from Cathy who is thought that to marry him would “degrade” her. ..The good Christians are too prompt, to baptize Heathcliff as a fiend and devil; it is an all too convenient way of repudiating a look that they do not like, a sexuality that frightens them. From the perspective of Christian piety, Cathy sees Heathcliff as terribly unlike herself, his love unworthy. From the perspective of her love, these distinctions of rank vanish, and he is “more myself than I am.”(1) This is where the betrayal is.
“ The real question of the novel, we must now see, is not why Heathcliff cannot have Cathy. That is a material and social and political question, and in the end a superficial one. The deeper question is why Cathy cannot accept Heathcliff, why she must be false to him, and to her own soul. Why she is driven to choose someone who cannot truly love her over someone who sees and loves and is her, a civilized but superficial sexual flirtation, over a profound passion of the body and spirit, the conventions of a stable married life over a life that contains and acknowledges her real self.” (1)

“The marriage of Heathcliff and Isabella contains, it appears, both physical violence and sexual sadomasochism. ..This aspect is veiled in obscurity. Isabella breaks off – 'But I'll not repeat his language, nor describe his habitual conduct: he is ingenious on seeking to gain my abhorrent! I sometimes wonder at him with an intensity that deadens my fear: yet, I assure you, a tiger or a venomous serpent could not rouse terror in me equal to that which he wakens.' It is compatible with these lines that Heathcliff's sadism consist in mockery and humiliation, rather in physical sexual cruelty. But the intent to cause suffering and humiliation of some painful sort is central to Heathcliff's plan: 'he told me … that I should be Edgar's proxy in suffering, till he could get hold of him.' Isabella's narration of marriage does not acknowledge any pleasure in Heathcliff's cruelty; but Heathcliff sees it: 'But no brutality disgusted her:I suppose she has an innate admiration of it .' ”(1)

“Love, Bronte suggest – including and especially true Christian love – requires us to be in our insufficiency, given to the world and to others. Christianity, however reacts to our shame by telling us to cover ourselves – with a fig leaf, with a snail's shell, with the hope of heaven, the submission to authority, the flame chastity. It tells us that yes, we should be ashamed of our nakedness, we should shrink from the powerful gaze of love.”(1)

Martha Nussbaum's argument is complex and esoteric, but Wuthering Heights allows a multiplicity of interpretations. An alternative reading of the meaning of love in Wuthering heights is Carolyn G Heilbrun's On Androgyny in Wuthering Heights. The androgynous view of the novel is not meant to supplant but to accompany other interpretations of Wuthering Heights.

“Indeed, the androgynous interpretation is simple enough.
Catherine and Heathcliff, whose love represents the ultimate, apparently undefined, androgynous ideal, betray that love, or are betrayed by the world into deserting it. Nor is it insignificant that it is Catherine who at the same time articulates her oneness with Heathcliff and is tempted to betray the masculine half of her soul. Catherine refutes heaven, which is not her home: "I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth," she tells Nelly, "and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire." Heathcliff, who has overheard her say it would degrade her to marry him, leaves the room and does not hear the final, the true, declaration. Yet whether he had heard it or not, he was correct in assuming that Catherine had betrayed their love because she was seduced by the offers the world makes to women to renounce their selves: adornment, "respect," protection, elegance, and the separation, except in giving birth, from the hardness of life.

Catherine, with such a love, chooses the conventional path, and the androgynous ideal achieves only a ghostly realization.
Its only possible home being earth, this pair, who threw away their chance, must haunt the moors in eternal search for the ideal love, each in quest of the other half of himself which has been denied. For it is Cathy's masculine side which she has denied in marrying Linton and moving to Thrushcross Grange.
Confined there, she sinks into death. ''I'm wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there; not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it, and in it. Nelly, you think you are better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength.
You are sorry for me-very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for you." Nelly will still be in "this shattered prison" where Cathy is "tired of being enclosed." She has recognized that she will take Heathcliff with her into death because "he's in my soul."

Heathcliff's temptation, or inevitable fall into the antiandrogynous world, comes after Cathy's death, not before. The betrayal was hers, because of her sex and her background, and Heathcliff tells her so before she dies: "Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself.
Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears. They'll blight you-they'll damn you. You love me-then what right had you to leave me? What right-answer me-for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart-you have broken it-and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me, that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you-oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?"

With his soul in the grave, Heathcliff follows the "masculine" pattern of self-expression. Devoted wholly to his own aggrandizement, whether in desire for revenge or in anger for deprivation, he treats his "wife," Linton's sister, in the manner of a cruel rake; he contrives to cheat and scheme to-as we would say today-make it. He grows rich and powerful. He uses the law to enrich himself, and deprive others. Utterly manly, he despises his "feminine" son, and tries to brutalize young Hareton. Heathcliff has followed the conventional pattern of his sex, into violence, brutality, and the feverish acquisition of wealth as Cathy had followed the conventional pattern of her sex into weakness, passivity, and luxury. They sank into their "proper sexual roles." “(3)


References.

1. Martha Nussbaum, Wuthering Heights: the Romantic Ascent, from Philosophy and Literature 20, Hopkins University Press (1996)
2. Wuthering Heights, Ch 1.
3. Carolyn G. Heilbrun, "The Woman as Hero," Toward a Recognition of Androgyny (New York: Knopf, 1973), pp. 80-82

[ugudka]

In a resent post, a student in an English class, assigned to read Wuthering Heights, asked for help - struggling to give a good analysis. I'll assume that it was high school English and the usual sophomoric advice was given. I was flabbergasted! Not at the advice, but that an English teacher would ask a teen to read and understand Wuthering Heights.

What do you expect a high school English Literature teacher to do then, if not to ask students to 'read and understand' a novel? I'd love to hear what you think they should be asking their students to do?

We all have wisdom. But some people's wisdom is more profound and articulate than others. Wisdom is something we are born with, and gain more of as we grow up. There are always some things that we know intuitively, as if from birth - and this is a type of wisdom! So to say that children have no wisdom is completely misleading.

Furthermore, every human experience gives us wisdom. None so much as reading, because a good book allows us to go through a whole host of experiences, to interact with a number of characters in a relatively short time while remaining at an objective distance, from which we can make fair judgements and formulate unbiased opinions. A book is always what you make of it, so the simple act of reading is that of understanding which is that of gaining wisdom.

I think you've been slightly carried away by the interpretation of the words 'read' 'understand' and 'wisdom' and over complicated the question completely. I fail to understand why on earth you have been so shocked by such a perfectly normal and acceptable (not to mention do-able) homework assignment.

[Wilde woman]

Jumping in a bit late here, but I (somewhat) agree with Perpatetics that WH is not necessarily high school material. It can be a difficult read and the criticism on this book is far beyond high school level. However, that could be said for nearly every piece of "literature" out there. I'm glad WH is part of some high schools' curricula because it means some students will discover a great piece of literature, which they otherwise would not have picked up on their own.

“...this brain learns to access and integrate within 300 milliseconds a vast array of visual, semantic, sound (or phonological), and conceptual processes, which allows us to decode and begin to comprehend a word. At that point, for most of us our circuit is automatic enough to allocate an additional precious 100 to 200 milliseconds to an even more sophisticated set of comprehension processes that allow us to connect the decoded words to inference, analogical reasoning, critical analysis, contextual knowledge, and finally, the apex of reading: our own thoughts that go beyond the text.

Interesting numbers. Are these statistics from adult-level readers? Because my high school students definitely do not read (or comprehend what they read) at anything near these speeds. (Milliseconds?) When my students read aloud to me, their voices are monotone, they take no notice of punctuation, and struggle to pronounce words over three-syllables long. Yikes! And these are native English speakers! They read as if they were just starting to learn a foreign language! (I've been there...my first year out of Italian language classes was brutal....reading just a few pages of Italian prose took me hours.)

I hope my students are not a reflection of the average high school reader.