What's Joseph for?

[Anselm]

All of the other main characters except Lockwood advance the action in some way - the plot wouldn't be the same without them. But Joseph doesn't do nowt, as he might say. The nearest he comes is threatening to report Heathcliff's kicking the stuffing out of Hindley to Edgar the magistrate, a threat he is persuaded not to carry out. But he certainly has enough to say for himself throughout the novel - far more, you might think, than his actual narrative importance warrants, and some of it barely intelligible. What was Emily playing at?

My wife has suggested that it has to do with the impotence of religion. There are three religious strands running through this novel.


"Conventional" (i.e. Anglican) religion. This is conspicuous by its absence. It isn't mentioned very much, and when it is, it's off-stage. We don't see any of the weddings (Hindley=Frances, Cathy=Edgar, Catherine=Linton, Catherine=Hareton, Heathcliff=Isabella). The vicar ceases to come to the Heights after Hindley's degeneration folloiwng his wife's death, and the attendance of Edgar's household at church at Gimmerton merely serves as an excuse for Heathcliff to visit his wife. No one prays or invokes God, as far as I can remember - quite unlike her sisters' novels. The characters' fates are entirely in their own hands. The church building is somewhat dilapidated, and has become more so when Lockwood returns in 1802. God and conventional morality are mentioned by characters, especially Nelly, as irrelevant responses to the "real" psychic and spiritual action of the novel - that between Cathy and Heathcliff.
Joseph's ranting takes up much more space than this. His brand of religion seems to represent the other extreme from the insitutionalised sort: the personal, emotionally committed type. But it has absolutely no effect on the novel per se. Basically, Joseph is your Shakespearean "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing", a quite deliberate strategy by Emily.
The only "religion" that matters in this novel is the one involved in the union of Cathy and Heathcliff. You could, I suppose, read the novel on one level as the creation of religious vaccums which are then filled. Conventional religion is an off-stage cipher and personal, evangelical religion, while onstage in the person of Joseph, is meaningless and empty rhetoric. The novel fills this space with a new, amorphous "religion", a mystical union of two people in a "heaven" and "hell" that have nothing to do with their orthodox counterparts, being as they are entirely of their own making.


What do people think?

[kiki1982]

The idea that Wuthering Heights evokes no religion at all apart from the non-religious stuff I don't think holds true. What is Heathcliffe's strange look about at the end? his strange mood? and the open window through which Cathy probably came to get him? At the beginning of the story, she can't get in, not even if Lockwood opens the window, yet at the end she can.

Joseph is your typical bible-bashing Christian: all mouth and trousers. Knows the rules, knows all the stories (even the most obscure ones), reads his bible every night, has his mouth full of sin and that it should be rooted out, but he does not live the Christian life himself. Maybe on the surface, but his spirit is less than Christian. Emily also thought so herself about most people in her congregation. She believed in a Rousseau-esk metaphysical God who is in all of us and in everything we see. Therefore, love thyself as thy neighbour is pretty important. The bible not so much. No-one is ever lost. As God is in man, there are no such cases as desperate and lost ones.
Charlottte did say that 'she [saw] Christians as wretches,' but despite her intelligence she got it wrong there.

To me, the real Christian spirit (who does no bible bashing) is Nellie who labours endlessly to bring Heathcliffe back to the straight and narrow. She sees he is unhappy. Of course she knows that he was hurt, but is being hurt a reason to destroy those around you and yourself into the bargain? He did not even listen to the end of Chaty's speech, so he doesn't know half of it. Strangely, Nellie is the only one he trusts enough to talk to, because she will not judge him, she will not tell him what to do. She hopes at some point he will see the light (as he does), but she can guide him there.

Brontë does not overtly declare it (as she never did in life), but the Rousseau-esk idea of a metaphysical God is a stronger belief than Joseph has. It is less apparent to others, but it is much deeper than what they have.

I think where Heathcliffe goes off the rails (possibly like Faust in his tragedy), covets another's wife and drives Hindley to destruction (admittedly he helped himself there a little), he is saved in the end, but not after his due amount of heartache.

[Gladys]

My wife has suggested that it has to do with the impotence of religion.

Yes. The Anglican Church and its adherents reflect the ostensibly civilised society of Wuthering Heights, including Edgar, Linton, Isabella, Lockwood and Nellie - a society founded on half-truths and sham. Joseph represents the from-the-gut religious prejudice of the working class: crass, hypocritical and unkind.

The relationship between Catherine I and Heathcliff, particularly on Catherine's side, presents a radical contrast: something pure and eternal, unblemished by the taint of The Fall. Catherine is a hero of epic proportions (Catherine against the world), and Wuthering Heights truly shocking!

[kev67]

I like the character of Joseph. I think he serves several purposes:


He helps to set the location: he is the only character to speak who speaks the local dialect.
He adds some dark humour.
He stirs things up and adds to the oppressive atmosphere at the house.



I quite enjoy working out what he says, but it's just as well that Nelly doesn't speak in the same dialect or we'd never get through the book.