3.1.1.3 Feminized Female Gothic hero
Although the hero Heathcliff is depicted to be a typical devilish character in Gothic novel, he is not the same as those in traditional ones. His nature is softened by his endless love to Catherine and his giving in at last.
Heathcliff comes back to avenge himself on Hindley and then kills himself after three years disappearance. However, having seen her again, he knows he can do nothing to hurt Catherine and is abandoning his vow of revenge. Encounts Catherine he becomes full of tenderness. In particular on the spot of Catherine’s deathbed, though still a monster-like man, his affection to Catherine is engraved on his bones and heart.
“On my approaching hurriedly to ascertain if she had fainted, he gnashed at me, and foamed like a mad dog, and gathered her to him with greedy jealousy. I did not feel as if I were in the company of a creature of my own species: it appears that he would not understand, though I spoke to him; so I stood off, and held my tongue, in great perplexity.”[25] Here Emily uses the rhetoric of hyperbole to describe the soul-stirring scene, displaying the crazy, brutal, mysterious, and terrifying love between the hero and heroine.
At the end of the story, on the surface it would appear that the old tragedy might be reenacted by the young people of the second generation at Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. However, while Cathy, Linton, and Hareton show some of the characteristics of their parents, these traits have been modified, and there is hope for a happier solution to the problems presented. Emily has ingeniously designed Hareton, another Heathcliff, whose life is much luckier than Heathcliff; and the same relationship that existed between Heathcliff, Catherine, and Edgar is being repeated between Hareton, Cathy, and Linton. However, the new generation receives a much better ending, and to some extent, a happy one.
Heathcliff is a feminized Female Gothic hero who deserves our sympathy. He has a gloomy childhood, spends most of his life in the dark of revenge, and thus never leads a relaxed life, especially after Catherine’s death. He has been obsessed by the feelings of Catherine’s presence night and day. He feels haunted and thaws himself. His revenge has turned to ashes. After his death, there are changes at Wuthering Heights. The gate is open and flowers fill the yard. The sun is setting and the moon rising symbols of a new regime. The flowers that Cathy and Hareton plant after uprooting Joseph’s blackcurrant bushes are blooming. The old order of vengeance and retribution as represented by Heathcliff and old Joseph, has passed and has been replaced by the spirit of love. All these are the bright sides of this novel and evidently embody Emily’s making use of Female Gothic.
3.1.2 Catherine Earnshaw’s split personality
Another key character in Wuthering Heights is the heroine, Catherine Earnshaw. The free spirit of Emily Brontë is epitomized in Catherine, who, as a child, could ride any horse in the stable, and in later years rides roughshod over everyone who tries to stand in her way. Beautiful, wild, arrogant, and willful, Catherine is a fitting companion for the arrogant and vindictive Heathcliff. Her love for him and the moors is the ruling passion of her life. While she may appear heartless when she chooses to marry Edgar Linton, she is naïve enough to think that by so doing she will be able to lift him from the degradation into which he has been thrust by Hindley.
There is one occasion showing Catherine’s wildness. When Nelly refuses to leave her and Edgar in the room alone, Catherine tries to push her out of the room and pinches her arm, leaving an ugly mark. When the baby Hareton complains about “wicked Aunt Cathy”,[26] she shakes him until his teeth rattle, and Edgar tries to intervene. She denies she pinched Nelly, but Nelly shows Edgar the mark. Livid with fury, Catherine boxes Edgar’ ears. Edgar is horrified to see this other side of Catherine, capable of telling lies and becoming violent. Emily uses the description of Female Gothic to show that the nature of human beings has two sides. No one is perfect and one is bound to have his or her ugly side. Although she is married to Edgar, she is clear that her love for Heathcliff is remembered with deep gratitude. “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.”[27] Here Emily employs the image of the Nature to symbolize the differences between Heathcliff, Catherine, and Edgar’s nature. In the world of Emily, there is no distinction between the good and the evil. Catherine’s love for Heathcliff is unparalleled. “My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”[28] The extraordinary love hardly appears in any Gothic novels, in which the love is always condensed or mentioned casually. Compared with the ordinary Gothic characters, the hero and heroine in Emily’s Wuthering Heights own more true feelings and fresh vigor. Catherine’s mixed and conflicted attitude towards her marriage splits and tears her. The anguish verging on collapse and the ravings in morbid state differ from the old Gothic tradition and pave the way for Gothic novels. Emily Brontë observes people from the angle of the feminist portrays her characters from the aspects of Female Gothic, and therefore brings us the shock of supernatural strength as well as the vivid portrayal of the hero and the heroines. The further research for the psychology of the Gothic characters develops the shallow horror-making technique in the old Gothic novels and so softens the primitive, pure terror to some extent. It leaves the readers more room to develop their own thought and enhances the depth of thought and the aesthetic awareness in Gothic novels.
3.2 Terrifying nightmares
The terrifying and mysterious atmosphere forms in the nightmare of Mr. Lockwood. Nowhere else in the book is Emily Brontë’s genius so vividly revealed as in this part. Here, past and present, dream and reality, are melded into a coherent whole. All references tie in together: the books Lockwood finds and reads in the bedroom, the names that are mentioned, and finally, Lockwood’s unbelievably vivid dreams.
“I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch; instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to drawback my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in-Let me in!’ … Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its waist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes; still it wailed, ‘Let me in!’ and maintained its tenacious grip, almost maddening me with fear.”[29] It is here that Emily introduces the supernatural into the story. Catherine is the only ghost in Mr. Lockwood’s nightmare. The nightmare is a masterpiece of suspense.
Nightmare is the common vehicle used in Gothic novels. Most Gothic novels are inspired by dreams. This is particularly true of Emily’s Wuthering Heights. There is one occasion when Edgar confronts Catherine and tells her she must choose between him and Heathcliff, she flies into a rage, locks the door and for two days she remains there, touching no food. Her psychic conflicts rise to the climax. “Tossing about, she increased her feverish bewilderment to madness, and tore the pillow with her teeth … ‘That’s a turkey’s,’ she murmured to herself; ‘and this is a wild duck’s; and this is a pigeon’s’…Bonny bird; wheeling ever our heads in the middle of the moor …This feather was picked up from the heath, the bird was not shot; we saw its nest in the winter, full of little skeletons. Heathcliff set a trap over it, and the old one dare not come.”[30] Catherine’s appalling hysteria and these ravings seem to show that she is in the state of delirium. Actually, the daydream-like surrealistic description unfolds her psychic state of struggle against anguish and fantasy. Her heart has drifted away to the old good days when she and Heathcliff are together. This passage of Catherine’s disordered ravings suggests the heroine has suffered severely from the anguish just right for the occasion. By applying this vehicle, what Emily Brontë feels like expressing is not only to create an atmosphere of terror but also to establish the emotion suspense, and then set up a unique structure for the whole story, which embodies the color of Female Gothic at the same time.
4. Conclusion
It is common that many critics take Gothic novels as black novels. In particular, they hold high prejudice to those who write in this style. There is no doubt that Emily Brontë is regarded as a writer out of the mainstream of the novels in the 19th century. Her style is clear and simple but charged with tremendous vitality. She does not write for moral and social effect as Charles Dickens does. She writes for the rhythm of her sentences and the exact choice of word conveys her meaning explicitly. The style is so condensed, like that of a poet that every word must be read, or some vital point will be missed. The smaller object or snatch of conversation has some part in the whole structure. For her, the use of Gothic is not just to produce a terrifying atmosphere and make readers sick like the Gothic novels, but set up a more perfect structure and then show us the complicated psychology of the characters. By portraying the devilish characters and the terrifying nightmare, Emily Brontë finds a new way to express feelings—Female Gothic. She pays more attention to the nature of protagonists and holds that there is no definite borderline between the good and the evil. Her boundless imagination and realistic depiction serve better for the portrayal of the characters. Inheriting Gothic tradition in her writing, she develops it from her own angle. Her only novel Wuthering Heights is a good embodiment of her Female Gothic technique. The novel may be considered as a great lyric poem for it abounds in imagery. Emily Brontë’s writing is also most effective when depicting the passionate and violent characters of Heathcliff and Catherine, for she has uncanny ability to translate feelings into words. In her descriptive passages she paints a vivid picture of the wild bleakness of the Heights, and the cloying ease and luxury of Thrushcross Grange. Emily Brontë has input the lively energy into the English Gothic novel and therefore speeded the development of the English novels.
References
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[18]Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights[M]. Columbus: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2000 P1
[19]同[18]P21
[20]同[18]P81
[21]同[18]P85
[22]同[18]P100
[23]同[18]P112
[24]同[18]P198
[25]同[18]P119
[26]同[18]P52
[27]同[18]P59
[28]同[18]P60
[29]同[18]P18
[30]同[18]P90-91
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