Love, Hate and Vengeance in Emily Brontë’s Novel “Wuthering Heights”

Manana Aslanishvili, Georgian Technical University, Georgia, manana.58@mail.ru 

IRCEELT 2025: 15th International Research Conference on Education, Language and Literature

Emily Bronte was a prominent English novelist and poet of the 19th century, best known for her only novel, “Wuthering Heights”, now regarded as a classic of English literature. The novel was published under masculine pen name, Ellis Bell, in 1847. “Wuthering Heights” is a story of revenge and doomed love. It features harsh moments of cruelty and sexual passion. Although published during the Victorian period, “Wuthering Heights” deviated from the literary norms of the time as it exceptionally represented different aspects, raised diverse questions and addressed more serious issues than those that concerned Victorian era. Instead of celebrating the spirit of the Victorian age, the novel skillfully portrays and reflects more practical and vitally important aspects of people’s lives such as love, hate, revenge, personal relationships, and friendship. The novel depicts the power and passion of intense love as well as the dark and evil side of human nature. It revolves around the love relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff, the climax of which is a tragedy since the love ends up in revenge. The reunion in death of the two lovers constitutes their achievement of complete freedom and love. Though, Emily Bronte published only one novel, “Wuthering Heights” (1847), but that single work has its place among the masterpieces of English literature.

   

If you were confused by all the bondage and masturbation in Emerald Fennell’s controversial Wuthering Heights film released earlier this year, look no further for explanations than this quietly punchy biography of the 19th-century masterpiece’s author, Emily Brontë.

In The Dark Night, we see her scribbling violent pornographic sketches in the middle of Latin translations, while her brother Branwell draws men seemingly participating in acts of group self-pleasure. The Brontës, biographer and Victorian scholar Deborah Lutz shows us, were racier than they looked.

Unlike Fennell’s protagonists though, this book suggests that Emily’s interest in all this was not really erotic but more a kind of existentialist exploration of what bodies are, where they begin and end. She was obsessed with the transience of the flesh, following the early loss of her mother Maria, who died when she was just three. “These seven months with her mother in a liminal state – almost dead but still with the living – would stay with Emily,” writes Lutz. “Where did life end and death begin?” [...]

“Thoughts of leaving the body behind occupied Emily,” Lutz continues. Later Emily would write in one of her best poems: “I’m happiest when most away, I can bear my soul from its home of clay.” The prospect of a soul freeing itself from its corporeal home sparks in her a sort of literary ecstasy, that is surely at the root of Heathcliff’s obsession with Catherine’s ghost and corpse in Wuthering Heights.

The book is not solely focused, however, on how Emily’s experiences shaped her one and only novel. Lutz’s patient prose does not rush to a reductive affinity between her life and her life’s work. It is more interested in the siblings’ lives, how they convened and diverged. Their parents were unusually keen, for the time, on educating girls, and the house was always full of reading and writing. The young girls invented a fantasy land called Gondal ruled mostly by women, where they honed their female-centred storytelling skills. [...]

Lutz writes: “The fact that these novels were all hammered out in fellowship, one mixed with competition and love would make [the idea that they strongly influenced one another] not at all surprising.”

Although Lutz acknowledges the much-written-about “tussle” between the “usually reserved Emily” and her more sociable sister Charlotte (a teacher wrote that Emily exercised “a kind of unconscious tyranny” over Charlotte), she is also at pains to emphasise this “fellowship”. So often Emily Brontë is painted as singular and isolated, but what Lutz makes clear is that Wuthering Heights was written in anything but a vacuum.

Lutz is intermittently hampered by a lack of actual evidence. As was common at the time, Emily’s letters were burned by her family following her death (mere months after the publication of Wuthering Heights) to protect her privacy, and there are moments where the speculations feel far-reaching: “Emily’s feelings about her time abroad remain unknown. But the experience had to have been momentous.”

Still, we get a good sense of her personality, even if it is often gleaned from piecemeal sources. Yes, she is introverted, but also “intensely loveable”, writes Ellen, Charlotte’s best friend. Passionate about nature and animals, she is “a night-sky obsessive” who adopts a falcon and carries her books up to the moors, bestowing on plants an anthropomorphic sensibility (a bluebell is “a sacred whatcher”).

She is ferociously intellectual but a skilled housekeeper and keen observer too of the domestic in her writing. In the end, Lutz finds, Emily Brontë was both as reserved and eccentric as she has typically been painted, but more complex too. Charlotte perhaps put it best when she wrote of her sister: “Emily loved the moors… She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best loved was… liberty. Liberty was the breath of Emily’s nostrils. Without it she perished.” (Francesca Steele)

   

This piece brings together Jane Eyre and a modern-day fan convention. What first sparked that idea for you?

Several years ago I became aware of several new film adaptations of Jane Eyre and even though I’d read it at school I wondered why it was so enduringly popular. Going back and re-reading made it clear that the rags to riches narrative was very compelling as is the complex central character of Jane Eyre, a plain and humble heroine. I discovered that Jane Eyre is the second most produced and adapted novel, after Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. It was then a natural leap to imagine obsessive fans/readers wanting to have their own convention where they could actually be the character they loved and follow her difficult path to happiness. [...]

Jane Eyre continues to inspire such passionate audiences. What do you think keeps people returning to it?

I think people just love the idea of an underdog being successful. Ordinary people can relate to Jane’s humble beginnings and be inspired by her extraordinary character and determination in the face of adversity. It’s also a story about women and class so we can appreciate the inequalities of her time and how she navigates that.

Inviting audiences to bring “bonnets and emotions” creates a very particular atmosphere. What kind of experience are you hoping people step into?

The wearing of bonnets is of course entirely optional and there are also imaginary bonnets beneath each seat. It’s a way of bringing the re-enactment convention to life and allowing the audience to feel part of the story and the convention. They are addressed as if they are fellow attendees and invited at various points to join in with the various strong  emotions being expressed. The majority of the team are also drama therapists so they are used to facilitating emotional release. This is not therapeutic theatre per se but it may have a mildly therapeutic effect.

Beneath the comedy, the show explores the dilemmas and emotions within Jane Eyre. What conversations are you hoping to open up through that?

The piece is of it’s time but the plot device of a first wife and black woman locked in the attic feels like it should be explored so we attempt to rehabilitate Bertha and give her a voice. We also explore Charlotte Brontë’s early feminism as expressed through Jane. We know that originally the novel was published under a male pseudonym as women were not considered capable. The play then looks at how male voices are still louder and more powerful via the characters at the convention and the arguments/conversations they have. One character has a boyfriend who we learn is fairly abusive and controlling which echos some of the characters in the novel.