CRAFT ESSAY #14 -- Wuthering Heights

Description

Think of Wuthering Heights and what comes to mind? Craggy, fog-shrouded moors, most likely, plus shadowy estates and chilly sitting rooms heated by coal stoves. One would think that the novel was loaded with Updike-like description, page after page of atmosphere interrupted by the occasional scene and a few lines of dialogue. And yet Emily Bronte’s use of description in Wuthering Heights is remarkably economical, painted in quick, thick brush strokes that provide a vivid backdrop—both environmental and emotional—for the story of Heathcliff and Catherine’s doomed love.

The titular dwelling is described by the novel’s main narrator, Mr. Lockwood, in a few short paragraphs on page 5 (Signet Classic edition). It is this brief portrait that we mentally return to each time Lockwood or his co-narrator Nelly Dean approaches the estate. We see “the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house”; the “range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving the alms of the sun”; “the narrow windows…deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with their large jutting stones.” There are “grotesque carvings lavished over the front,” including “crumbling griffins and shameless little boys.” Inside, in the kitchen, where so much action takes place (as in most homes), we see above the chimney

sundry villainous old guns, and a couple of horse-pistols: and, by way of ornament, three gaudily painted canisters disposed along its ledge. The floor was of smooth, white stone; the chairs high-backed, primitive structures, painted green; one or two heavy black ones lurking in the shade. In an arch under the dresser reposed a huge, liver-coloured bitch pointer, surrounded by a swarm of squealing puppies; and other dogs haunted other recesses.

This is an adjectival goldmine: excessive, stunted, gaunt, narrow, jutting, grotesque, crumbling, shameless, villainous, primitive, haunted. The dark toxicity is so unforgettable that Bronte need not mention more than the minutest additional detail in subsequent scenes.

In addition to its brutal setting, Wuthering Heights of course brings to mind the brooding, primitive hero, Heathcliff, and the willful, beautiful Catherine. Again, Bronte employs maximally evocative description of these characters in minimal time. Upon first meeting him, Mr. Lockwood sketches Heathcliff as “a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman…rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome figure; and rather morose” (pp. 5-6). Here we have the contradictory nature of the man: dark-skinned gypsy/gentleman, erect and handsome/slovenly and morose. This is the mature Heathcliff, the bitter man haunted by his lost love. But here is the young Heathcliff as introduced by the maid, Nelly Dean, on page 35:

A dirty, ragged, black-haired child, big enough both to walk and talk; indeed its face looked older than Catherine’s; yet, when it was set on its feet, it only stared round and repeated over and over again some gibberish that nobody could understand.

Note the word “it,” as if the boy were a dog, indicating both Heathcliff’s “otherness” and the cruel attitude of even the most charitable around him. Contrast this with Nelly’s take on Catherine:

Her spirits were always at high-water mark, her tongue always going—singing, laughing, and plaguing everybody who would not do the same. A wild, wicked slip she was—but she had the bonniest eye, and sweetest smile, and lightest foot in the parish. (p. 40)

After Catherine’s five-week stay at Thrushcross Grange, during which the wild lass has been tamed by the civilizing influence of the Linton family, Nelly describes her as “a very dignified person, with brown ringlets falling from the cover of a feathered beaver, and a long cloth habit, which she was obliged to hold up with both hands that she might sail in” (p. 50). Heathcliff, on the other hand, has spent those five weeks toiling at Wuthering Heights and pining for Catherine: “his thick, uncombed hair, the surface of his face and hands…dismally beclouded” (p. 50).

Lesser characters are just as vividly portrayed. Here is Catherine’s cruel, widowed brother, Hindley, described by Heathcliff’s wife, Isabella, in a letter to Nelly:

A tall, gaunt man, without a neckerchief, and otherwise extremely slovenly; his features were lost in masses of shaggy hair that hung on his shoulders; and his eyes, too, were like a ghostly Catherine’s, with all their beauty annihilated. (p. 133).

The comparison of Hindley’s eyes to his sister’s is especially heartbreaking, and brings humanity to an otherwise unlikable character.

These precise, psychologically astute descriptions of character and setting, while brief, are just as integral as action and dialogue to the power of Wuthering Heights.