East Riddlesden Hall

Chameleon building
Cobwebs and faux giant spiders, as well as a red floodlight or two, added a spooky Halloween atmosphere to the Great Barn at East Riddlesden Hall, not far from where I live. A building has been on the site since the 7th Century so an Anglo-Saxon owner seems to have been forced to give the land over to the Norman de Montalt family and traces of manor buildings from the medieval period can still be detected. The Paslew family are known to have built extensions in 1466 and over the next hundred years the place doubled in size. The Rishworth family sold the Hall to James Murgatroyd in 1638 and a visit today shows all the weird alterations and quirky features resulting from the changing ownership. I understand it’s one of the most popular sites in the National Trust for wedding parties today and has appeared in a number of TV programmes and movies, most memorably for me in the Charlotte Riley/Tom Hardy Wuthering Heights (not to mention the Juliette Binoche/Ralph Fiennes Wuthering Heights and the Kit Harington Gunpowder.)

Andrew Lincoln, Charlotte Riley, Tom Hardy at East Riddlesden Hall for Wuthering Heights

Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee

Mother's Day at the Bronte Parsonage Museum

Mother's Day 2019
We chose to be in Haworth on Mother’s Day. It may seem counterintuitive since the Brontë Parsonage was a home bereft of a mother. Mother Maria died soon after the famous family moved to the town of Haworth from Thornton in Bradford. Therefore, the Parsonage (during the years 1820 to 1861) relied for maternal influences on Aunt Branwell for 21 years, on home helps Tabby Aykroyd and Martha Brown and the sisterly love and mutual support of Charlotte, Emily and Anne.

When imagination once runs riot
Every time I walk round the Brontë Parsonage Museum (and I have done it over 20 times now, including the times I took students there) I spot something new or feel something different. This time I found myself imagining the love, rivalry and intensity of the sibling relationships; how they must have been constantly aware of where each other was in the house, the changing dynamics when each of them left for a time, the circumstances that brought each of them back. And the changing atmosphere when, one by one, they died.

Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee
The extra incentive to visit on Mother’s Day was the opportunity to enjoy a unique audio-hiking experience. The Parsonage Museum have commissioned composer Adrian McNally to set to music a selection of Emily Brontë’s poems. Adrian composed by day at Ponden Hall (historically a place that sheltered Branwell, Emily and Anne along with servant Sarah Garrs during the Crow Hill Bog Burst, a thunderstorm and mudslide in 1824.) Adrian then practised and performed the music on the piano you can see today in Mr Brontë’s study (played by Emily during her lifetime, also by Anne.) Rachel and Becky Unthank (folk group, The Unthanks) have performed and recorded the poems and the Parsonage have devised a walk up onto Penistone Hill so you can listen to the songs/poems as you follow a 45-minute climb and descent onto the nearby moor.

Song Cycle in order of audio experience in Haworth
1. Deep deep down in the silent grave
With no-one to mourn above
Here with my knee upon thy stone
I bid adieu to feelings gone
I leave with thee my tears and pain
And rush into the world again

O come again what chains withhold
The steps that used so fleet to be
Come leave thy dwelling dark and cold
Once more to visit me

Was it with the fields of green
Blowing flower and budding tree
With the summer heaven serene
That thou didst visit me?

No ‘t was not the flowery plain
No ‘t was not the fragrant air
Summer skies will come again
But thou wilt not be there

2. She dried her tears and they did smile
To see her cheeks' returning glow
How little dreaming all the while
That full heart throbbed to overflow.

With that sweet look and lively tone
And bright eye shining all the day
They could not guess at midnight lone
How she would weep the time away.

3. I’m happiest when most away
I can bear my soul from its home of clay
On a windy night when the moon is bright
And the eye can wander through worlds of light—

When I am not and none beside—
Nor earth nor sea nor cloudless sky—
But only spirit wandering wide
Through infinite immensity.

4. Shall Earth no more inspire thee,
Thou lonely dreamer now?
Since passion may not fire thee
Shall nature cease to bow?

Thy mind is ever moving
In regions dark to thee;
Recall its useless roving -
Come back and dwell with me.

I know my mountain breezes
Enchant and soothe thee still -
I know my sunshine pleases
Despite thy wayward will.

When day with evening blending
Sinks from the summer sky,
I've seen thy spirit bending
In fond idolatry.

I've watched thee every hour;
I know my mighty sway,
I know my magic power
To drive thy griefs away.

Few hearts to mortals given
On earth so wildly pine;
Yet few would ask a Heaven
More like this Earth than thine.

Then let my winds caress thee;
Thy comrade let me be -
Since nought beside can bless thee
Return and dwell with me.

5. O evening, why is thy light so sad
Why is the sun's last ray so cold?
Hush our smile is as ever glad
But thy heart is growing old.

It's over now; I've known it all;
I'll hide it in my heart no more,
But back again that night recall,
And think the fearful vision o'er.

The evening sun in cloudless shine
Has passed from summer's heaven divine,
And dark the shades of twilight grew,
And stars were in the depth of blue,
And in the heath or mountains far
From human eye and human care,
With thoughtful heart and tearful eye,
I sadly watched that solemn sky.

6. High waving heather 'neath stormy blasts bending,
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars;
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,
Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,
Man's spirit away from its drear dungeon sending,
Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.

All down the mountain sides wild forests lending
One mighty voice to the life-giving wind;
Rivers their banks in their jubilee rending,
Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending,
Wider and deeper their waters extending,
Leaving a desolate desert behind.

Shining and lowering and swelling and dying,
Changing forever from midnight to noon;
Roaring like thunder, like soft music sighing,
Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,
Lightning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,
Coming as swiftly and fading as soon.

7. Lines
The soft unclouded blue of air,
The earth as golden, green, and fair,
And bright as Eden's used to be,
That air and earth have rested me,

Laid on the grass I lapsed away,
Sank back again to childhood's day;
All harsh thoughts perished, memory mild
Subdued both grief and passion wild.

But did the sunshine even now
That bathed his stern and swarthy brow,
Oh did it wake—I long to know—
One whisper, one sweet dream in him,
One lingering joy that years ago
Had faded—lost in distance dim?

That iron man was born like me,
⁠And he was once an ardent boy;
He must have felt in infancy
⁠The glory of a summer sky.

Though storms untold his mind has tossed,
He cannot utterly have lost
Remembrance of his early home—
So lost that not a gleam may come.

No vision of his mother's face
⁠When she so fondly mild set free
Her darling child from her embrace
⁠To roam till eve at liberty.

Nor of his haunts, nor of the flowers,
⁠His tiny hand would grateful bear,
Returning from the darkening bowers,
⁠To weave into her glossy hair.

I saw the light breeze kiss his cheek,
⁠His fingers 'mid the roses twined;
I watched to mark one transient streak
⁠Of pensive softness shade his mind.

The open window showed around
⁠A glowing park and glorious sky,
And thick woods swelling with the sound
⁠Of nature's mingled harmony.

Silent he sat. That stormy breast
At length I said has deigned to rest;
At length above that spirit flows
The waveless ocean of repose.

Let me draw near, 'twill soothe to view
His dark eyes dimmed with holy dew;
Remorse even now may wake within
And half unchain his soul from sin.

Perhaps this is the destined hour
When Hell shall lose its fatal power,
And Heaven itself shall bend above
To hail the soul redeemed by love.

Unmarked I gazed, my idle thought
Passed with the ray whose shine it caught;
One glance revealed how little care
He felt for all the beauty there.

Oh! crime can make the heart grow old
⁠Sooner than years of wearing woe,
Can turn the warmest bosom cold
⁠As winter wind or polar snow.

8. Remembrance
Cold in the earth - and the deep snow piled above thee.
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?

Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains on that northern shore;
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
That noble heart for ever, ever more?

Cold in the earth - and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills, have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!

Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee
While the world's tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure but cannot do thee wrong!

No later light has lightened up my heaven;
No second morn has ever shone for me:
All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee.

But when the days of golden dreams had perished
And even Despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.

Then did I check the tears of useless passion -
Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine.

And even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in Memory's rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?

9. The night is darkening round me
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

I'll come when thou art saddest,
Laid alone in the darkened room,
When the mad day's mirth has vanished,
And the smile of joy is banished
From evening's chilly gloom.

I'll come when the heart's real feeling
Has entire, unbiased sway,
And my influence o'er thee stealing,
Grief deepening, joy congealing,
Shall bear thy soul away.

Listen! 'tis just the hour,
The awful time for thee.
Dost thou not feel upon thy soul
A flood of strange sensations roll,
Forerunners of a sterner power,
Heralds of me?

I would have touched the heavenly key
That spoke alike of bliss and thee;
I would have woke the entrancing song,
But its words died upon my tongue.
And then I knew that hallowed strain
Would never speak of joy again,
And then I felt . . .

The night is darkening round me
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.
And I cannot, cannot go.
And I cannot, cannot go.

Little Germany

Bradford Literature Festival 2018, Juliet Barker (bottom right) talking about EB, tour of Little Germany

Bradford Literature Festival 2018
In the year of Emily Brontë’s (birth) bicentenary it was a treat at the Bradford Literature Festival to attend talks about the Haworth woman who published just one novel (and a raft of brilliant poems) but who, in my view, is a trailblazer and a genius. Our other highlight at the Festival was a tour of Bradford’s Little Germany. In the early part of the nineteenth century, Leeds had more worsted merchants than Bradford but by 1861 Bradford had 157 to Leeds’s 17. The massive success of the textile industry in Bradford was largely a result of the immigration of a group of German Jews.

Hall Ings and the rise of a citadel
These immigrants – Schuster (who led the way by building a warehouse in Hall Ings in 1836), Behrens (whose gates can still be seen – see pic in collage at top of this blog), Zossenheim, Semon, Moser and Julius Delius (whose son Frederick became known as a typically-English composer) – served the city and the region and built up its reputation and wealth over the central part of the 1800s. The Wool Exchange (now housing an awesome branch of Waterstone’s bookshop) was central to the economic bustle. Merchants from every country of the British Empire – as well as Iceland, America, Tibet and China – were known to haggle for the hundreds of types of wool and hair (including that of alpacas from Titus Salt of Saltaire fame.) And just up the hill, you can walk round the unique collection of imposing listed buildings known, probably forever, as Little Germany.

Here at the palace I will rest awhile

Afternoon tea and a shock for George III
En route to Salisbury Cathedral (see previous blog) and before the ecstasy of Stonehenge (following blog) we rested for afternoon tea at Blenheim Palace. As you do. Apart from the glory of the treat, we had a guided tour round the State Rooms, a virtual tour round a weird “Untold Story” with ghostly projections giving a flavour of Blenheim’s history (and in fact on the return journey we stopped again to peer into the Duke’s rooms.) At times like these, I usually feel like Heathcliff must have felt staring into the windows of Thrushcross Grange, expecting at any moment to be thrashed and sent back to Wuthering Heights. At Blenheim the guides were in fact very welcoming, impressively knowledgeable and were able to motormouth through the chequered history of battles, wars, loveless marriages, tragic events, bitter legal disputes and architect tiffs that went into the creating of the only building in England called a Palace that’s neither royal nor connected to the church. Although the construction began during Queen Anne’s time, it was George III who cemented Blenheim’s reputation as being too big for its non-royal boots by gasping “We have nothing to equal this!”

"Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail"
In John Donne’s poem of witty poetical advice To Sir Henry Wotton he remarks that “Life is a voyage,” “Cities are sepulchres,” “Courts are theatres” and “The country is a desert” unless you can look within and “Be then thine own home.” No amount of luxury or power will satisfy your soul if you fail “to thine own self be true” as Shakespeare had Polonius say in Hamlet. Donne admires the snail who carries “his own house still, still is at home” and the fish who glide by “leaving no print where they pass.” Seeking fame or fortune means nothing without loved ones. I’m sometimes puzzled by my own politics of liking big houses and estates (and supporting the Monarchy as an institution 100%) – when I’m instinctively liberal and hate entitlement and the unfair distribution/hoarding of wealth by the few. Could it be that my “view within” (as E M Forster put it in A Room With A View) recognises that the “gorgeous palaces” can be seen as prisons, trapping those inside whose souls can never truly be free?

God's Own Country

The four principals of Francis Lee's film: Josh O'Connor, Alec Secareanu, Gemma Jones, Ian Hart

Atop the Yorkshire moors
There have been several memorable films shot on Yorkshire locations: the TV Brontë biography by Sally Wainwright To Walk Invisible is a recent good example. I have vivid memories of the visceral 2011 Wuthering Heights directed by Andrea Arnold. From childhood there are of course The Railway Children and Kes. There are notable black and white films of This Sporting Life and Billy Liar as well as popular comedies like Brassed Off, Four Lions and The Full Monty. An American Werewolf in London famously started on the moors and A Month in the Country showed parts of North Yorkshire other than the famous rooflines of Castle Howard (Brideshead Revisited.) The moors are hard to capture but a recent cinema trip has done just that – in a stunningly-photographed tale of muddy love among farmers.

Filmed in Yorkshire: Brideshead Revisited, Billy Liar, The Railway Children, Wuthering Heights, An American Werewolf in London, Brassed Off, Four Lions, A Month in the Country, Kes, This Sporting Life, The Full Monty

God’s Own County….
Angry, miserable, tormented Johnny Saxby (Josh O’Connor) lives with his stroke-stricken Dad, farmer Martin (Ian Hart) and gritty grandmother, Deirdre (Gemma Jones). They struggle to “manage” even though Johnny shouts “I’ll manage” time and again. The family have a broken past and are clinging to their beasts and their land in the hope of making a living. Their lives endure, despite illness and scraping their pennies together. For one week only, Martin brings in the gentle, capable Romanian migrant, Gheorghe (Alex Secareanu) to help Johnny with the lambing – in the hope that Martin himself will be back on the farm before too long. You hope Martin will recover because it becomes obvious that not many people would want to graft such unsociable hours in such conditions; Gheorghe was “the only bugger who applied.” Thankfully, the film suggests, Gheorghe’s less rigid thinking might mean the farm will diversify after the credits roll and maybe survive Brexit.

Francis Lee, director, with cast and producer Manon Ardisson at the Edinburgh Film Festival and cinematographer Joshua James Richards on location in Yorkshire

Believable (grunting) masculinity
There was plenty to talk about after watching the film: in particular, how much sympathy does Johnny deserve given his frequent alcohol-induced vomiting, emotionless shagging and his thuggish refusal to say anything positive to the people who were making an effort to connect with him? (Patsy Ferran’s university friend, Robyn, gave a poignant hint of Johnny’s potential in the eyes of his old school friends)  I felt that Josh O’Connor’s performance was a pitch-perfect portrayal of an emotionally stunted man – and, for me, the film’s depiction of his agonising steps to a better way of being was one of the most moving things I’ve seen in cinema for ages. And all against the background of the Yorkshire moors!

He’s just going to be a runt
The rest of the actors were equally believable in their characterisations: Alex Secareanu played Gheorghe with integrity and magnetism. Gemma Jones and Ian Hart inhabited their steadfast roles with raw naturalism. I don’t want to include any spoilers but those who’ve seen it will know what I mean when I say Deirdre’s laundry/ironing scenes and Martin’s bath-time scene displayed acting skills of the highest order. The poster gives away that the film becomes a love story between Johnny and Gheorghe and their relationship drives the film’s plot, but the unfussy visual symbols (the white trail of an aeroplane, hands, gloves, jumpers/skin, clothes or lack of them, food, milk/cheese, spit, vomit, blood, mud, water, stone, walls, fences, doors, lambs, flowers, the fragility of living things) meant the film operated on a sweeping landscape bigger than two men in love. Sometimes you can’t let a runt fail…. people, like premature lambs, deserve a chance to live a life. They might only need a new coat (or jumper) –  I know this to be true, both from my years of teaching and from life’s bruises. Congratulations to the director, Francis Lee, local lad, for creating a celluloid work of art. And hats off to cinematographer, Joshua James Richards, for capturing the bleak beauty of what is, in my view, a universalised Yorkshire story with a beating heart.

Triggering Article 50

Dreaming of Heathcliff's dogs chasing Michael Gove

In the week that the (unelected) Prime Minister of the UK intends to trigger Article 50 that begins the country’s negotiations to separate from the European Union, I’m going to type whatever comes out in a stream of consciousness. My past few blogs have been about writing, Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights in particular. I wonder whether Heathcliff looking through the windows of Thrushcross Grange and despising the spoilt lives of privilege is a common experience. Is that why 52% (of the voters who bothered to vote) voted to Brexit? Would Heathcliff have voted to leave the European Union? (In truth, I don’t think he would have voted; he might have set his dogs on Michael Gove…. Or set fire to the polling booth….)

Do we want a return to the feudal system?
In the past it was easier to understand Britain’s/England’s/the UK’s social system:

• Before the Norman Conquest in 1066 there were serfs (slaves), cottars (cottagers), ceorls (freemen), thanes (landowners), earls and other nobles, royalty and the king
• In medieval times the feudal system dominated: serfs now had villeins below and peasants above; freemen came after yeomen came after servants; then came knights and vassals before the nobles and the king
• Both pre-1066 and post-1066 there was a parallel hierarchy in the Church too with the Monks after the Priests after the Dean after the Prior after the Abbot and then the ArchDeacon, Archbishop, Bishop, Cardinal and Pope (and then Henry VIII complicated everything by divorcing and beheading his spouses and inventing the Church of England)

It must have been comforting living in a feudal society. Do Brexiters want to return to this period of our history?

Knowing your place

The four seismic shifts since Medieval Times that have affected the UK’s class system are the Industrial Revolution, World War One, World War Two and Globalisation. Before the Industrial Revolution it was easy to know your place: your goods and lands were your own as long as you gave up a portion to the level above you (a portion either in cash, goods or a willingness to supply male bodies to fight in wars.) Apart from in times of famine – or catastrophic upheavals like the Black Death – people lived lives “sufficient unto themselves.” The sons of blacksmiths generally became blacksmiths; the youngest sons of nobles generally went into the church; the lives of non-religious women generally focused on giving birth. Occupation, social status and political influence were the anchors of society. You only broke the mould if someone on a higher plane of the structure conferred some favour upon you in terms of land or status. Do Brexiters want to return to this period of our history?

The Age of Reason

The Industrial Revolution brought wealth to unexpected people in unexpected ways. Suddenly ordinary people could make swift profits through inventions and hard word. Mass migration of people to factories in cities disrupted the equilibrium in the towns and villages. Ideas from the French and American revolutions trickled through the brains of thinkers and agitators and God was on trial for His/Her/Its very existence as the Church began to lose its influence over society. The Age of “Reason” or “Enlightenment” had arrived. The old ways were being disrupted. But the peasants/working class were still labouring in filthy conditions, underpaid, underfed, uncared for in terms of health, safety and welfare and likely to die from dysentery or diphtheria or cholera. Do Brexiters want to return to this period of our history?

The Années Folles

The Middle Classes (old cottagers and freemen) began to find political voices and by the time of the First World War the demand for women’s equality was a clarion call. There was no turning back and universal suffrage and meritocracy meant it was possible to use the capitalist system in most of the world (or, clandestinely, a corrupted version of the communist system in the USSR; or, strangely, a smoke and mirrors version of communism in China) to beat the system and rise to the top from wherever you started. You just needed to know how to play the system. So – just after the First World War – that seemed like a good time to be alive – the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, the French called it the Crazy Years (Années Folles).I could understand if Brexiters wanted to return to this period of our history (as long as what came next could be avoided.)

Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart

The 1930s, tragically, brought the financial crash (sound familiar?) that led to The Great Depression that led to the rise of Fascism that led to The Second World War, the holocaust and the atomic bomb. The peace at the end of World War One had clearly been an attempt to impose outdated terms on political systems in countries whose societies were going through convulsions. The Roaring Twenties may have been the period, after all, of the greatest ostrich-head-in-the-sand national-delusion. And after World War Two all the certainties about “isms” became uncertainties and the world had faced, as Ralph weeps at the end of Golding’s 1954 Lord of the Flies:

the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart

Surely Brexiters don’t want to return to the 1950s, or do they?

James Aubrey as Ralph in Peter Brook's 1963 film of Lord of the Flies with images of the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart

Taking back control or business as usual….?

Much good followed the Second World War – attempts to build global organisations to end poverty and improve health on an international scale. There was an upsurge in cultural sharing and tourism that improved understanding between nations. Great strides were made in treating all citizens equally with reforming legislation about gender, race, disability, sexuality, age and religion. It once again seemed possible that, with the age of the internet, we might all be able to work more efficiently for fewer hours and enjoy more leisure time. If everyone worked fewer hours more people could be employed. As computers and mechanization became more sophisticated the work could become less stressful. Why didn’t it happen? Greed for profits…. leading to the 2008 financial crash in not-dissimilar circumstances to the crash of the 1930s. And then a skillfully-managed Establishment and Media campaign managed to deflect the blame for the consequent political decisions to impose AUSTERITY and blame OTHERS in order to help the financial institutions return to business as usual.

Staring through the windows
I have some sympathy with the cries of Fake News these days, but I’m worried that the wrong news is being called fake news. In my opinion the last five years have seen a dreadful polarisation of stances in all the Media and our brains have not yet caught up with the bombardment of manipulation that comes our way in ever-increasingly sinister bits of brainwashing. The arguments on both sides of the EU referendum were not presented clearly or honestly and the claims of the “victors” (ie the Brexiters) are the ones that are now being strained. I blogged earlier that Time Will Tell but between that blog and now I am still waiting for the government to present certainty about what the post-Brexit world will be like. I hope clarity will start to emerge in the following weeks. What I am sure about is that much of what I think people thought they were voting for will not have changed. The rich will remain rich and will continue to get richer. The establishment will still protect itself and bolster itself. The only control that has been taken back will be the Haves controlling the Have-Nots. The disempowered and disenfranchised will still be staring through the windows of Thrushcross Grange wondering how it came to this.

Fake News has been with us longer than The Donald....

Wuthering Heights

Images from Andrea Arnold's 2011 film with Solomon Glave and James Howson as Heathcliff and Shannon Beer and Kaya Scodelario as Catherine

It’s NOT ONLY about Heathcliff and Cathy….

Having blogged about Emily Brontë’s life (here) and my favourite Emily poem (here) I can’t stop myself blogging a few thoughts on Wuthering Heights. I’ve read it for pleasure three times in my life (so far) and taught it to A Level classes twice. Each time I plummet into its amoral freakery I learn something new, though what struck me when I first read it is that the novel’s heart lies in the character arcs of Hareton and young Cathy and I’ve never changed my mind about that. Most dramatisations fall short by focusing on the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff and diminishing all else; whereas, I think, Emily Brontë has a more profound story to tell about young people yearning to make the world a better place. Heathcliff, Catherine, Hindley, Frances, Edgar and Isabella represent an old-fashioned world of primitive attitudes and Hareton and Cathy are the next generation, redeemed and able to break free from the sins and weaknesses of their parents. Linton is a necessary (and eventually welcome!) sacrifice that enables the promise of peace to reign.

Breaking free from the sins of the previous generation....

Storm and Calm

Some critics interpret the book as portraying the oppositional forces of storm and calm as represented by the two houses of the Earnshaws and Lintons: Wuthering Heights versus Thrushcross Grange. But careful reading reveals an underlying primitive beauty in the descriptions of the physical objects at the remote farm and a disturbingly aggressive tension at the posh house.
Contrasts
Contrasts do riddle the narrative: young and old, children and parents, female and male, powerful and weak, outdoor and indoor, tenderness and savagery, wealth and poverty, education and ignorance, love and hate – all these contrasts play alongside and amongst the calm and storm.
Symbols
And symbols also play a subconscious role in worming into the reader’s imagination: doors and windows, plants and rocks, the elements (air, earth, fire and water), nature and weather, landscapes and horizons, the flesh and the spirit, the living and the dead, dreams and the supernatural. Like all great novels, no single interpretation is possible because Wuthering Heights has a bottomless pit of variables depending on the reader’s context.

Can it be categorised?

People who have only seen the 1939 William Wyler film with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon as Heathcliff and Catherine think the novel is a Romance. Readers know different. The explicit violence and unbearable cruelty are more extreme than you would expect in a conventional romantic novel.

• Is Wuthering Heights therefore a novel of male revenge?
• Or a deeply-subversive feminist text about the futility of male revenge?
• A Marxist novel about the oppression of the rich?
• A Psychoanalytic novel about the battle between the id (Heathcliff), the ego (Catherine) and the superego (Edgar)?
• A Formalist novel where everything is taken at face value and everything happens because it happens because that’s how it is (and how it was written)?
• Or a Structuralist novel where the the patterns of repetition, destruction and resurrection are meant to be taken as a whole so Catherine’s dealings with Heathcliff and Edgar are meant to be seen in relation to young Cathy’s dealings with Linton and Hareton?
• Or is it all these things? Unique in itself? Like nothing else?
• Just a story, for heaven’s sake!?

A fop at sixes and sevens

The biggest surprise when reading the novel rather than watching a dramatisation are the two main narrators, both of whom are potentially biased and unreliable. In 1801, the foppish Lockwood arrives from the south to pay a call on his neighbour, Mr Heathcliff. Lockwood is instantly muddled, distressed and befuddled about who and what he finds at the lonely farmhouse on the moors and on a second snow-bound visit, horrifically, has a dream in which he confronts a ghost begging to be let in at a (broken) window.

And a gossiping housekeeper

Lockwood’s misunderstandings start to make sense when Mrs Ellen Dean the housekeeper at Thrushcross Grange begins to tell him a tale from about 30 years before when Mr Earnshaw, a previous owner of Wuthering Heights, returned from a trip to Liverpool with a young homeless boy, Heathcliff. Over the next two years (1801–1803) on his return visits to the area, Lockwood recounts more of the story, narrating what he learns from Mrs Dean, or Nelly as we come to know her, and also what he or Nelly learn from Isabella, Heathcliff, Zillah the maid, Dr Kenneth and young Cathy. As a reader we start the story as confused as Lockwood and the questions he asks help us become drawn into the tangled web.

Bold narrative device
It is a story of three generations living in two houses in a small geographical part of Yorkshire. Nelly’s narration eventually dominates our minds almost to the point of forgetting that Lockwood exists and even Nelly sometimes seems to become invisible as the semi-mythic characters take on their own monstrous lives. The narrative structure is audacious, original for its time and, in my opinion, quite quite brilliant.

Questions abound

• How much of the violence and drunkenness in the novel had Emily Brontë witnessed in life?
• Was Emily Brontë imagining Tabitha Aykroyd (Tabby), a servant who stayed at the Haworth Parsonage for the best part of 31 years, when she created Nelly Dean?
• Do we believe everything Lockwood and Nelly tell us?
• Was Heathcliff based on the “mad, bad and dangerous to know” poet, Lord Byron?
• Is Heathcliff more sinned against than sinning?
• Why does Hindley resent Heathcliff so much?
• Why is Edgar attracted to Catherine, rather than to a more “peaceful” personality?
• Why does Isabella fall for Heathcliff, given what she knows about him?
• How much sympathy should the reader have with Catherine?
• With Heathcliff? Isabella? Edgar? Hindley? Frances?
• With Linton? Young Cathy? Hareton?

How Byronic is Heathcliff? Devil or Hero? Abuser or victim of abuse?

Shakespeare’s King Lear and Wuthering Heights

Given that Lockwood specifically compares himself to King Lear being imprisoned and maltreated by servants, I’ve wondered how aware Emily Brontë was of the parallels between her novel and Shakespeare’s grim tragedy:

• the sudden and brutal acts of violence
• the familial jealousy
• the accelerating onset of behaviour that could be perceived as insane
• the suffering of a character named Edgar
• the wild landscape of the heath/moors
• the geographical movement between contrasting houses
• neither Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights nor Edmund in King Lear are accepted as fully-fledged members of their adoptive families and wreak havoc in the stories

Whatever Emily Brontë consciously thought she was creating in writing Wuthering Heights there is no doubt that it has “stood the test of time” and the main characters and their wild setting are imprinted in the common cultural knowledge, not least because of Kate Bush’s famous song. It is 170 years since Wuthering Heights first hit the bookshelves of the UK – and I expect it will be around for a great deal longer.

A text open to interpretation: images from 1939 and 2011 movies

Too many words?

How long does it take to write a novel?

Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights is a one-off. It is a unique achievement, experimental and audacious, surprising when you take time to read it more than once, and is in my opinion, without doubt, a masterpiece of literary fiction. Being about a third of the way through completing the first draft of my first novel (almost a year in terms of thinking about it and seven months after starting to commit words to paper) it is salutary that Emily Brontë took only nine months from start to finish to create Wuthering Heights (October 1845 to June 1846.) My only excuse is that Emily had fewer options in daily living to distract her, and it is clear from her biography that many elements of Wuthering Heights had their seeds sown earlier in childhood games and popular reading (see my blog about her life here.)

Who should see draft novels?

I’ve reached 55,232 words in Rhenium Tales Book One: Raydan Wakes and my personal target word-count before anyone reads the full story is 85,000. Daughter Emily has given me astute and friendly critical feedback on Chapter One and that experience was valuable but provoked plenty of minor and major revisions so I know there’ll be a lot to do after draft one is complete. I’m also determined to have Book Two and most of Book Three finished before I try to get an agent or a publisher or a self-publisher. If I never get there I will simply see it as an absorbing retirement activity and carry on regardless. Did Emily Brontë ever show Wuthering Heights to anyone other than her sisters? They famously read aloud in the Parsonage lounge whilst walking round the central table.

How long should a novel be?

Emily Brontë’ wrote Wuthering Heights in 107,945 words.
Number of words in selected novels shorter than Wuthering Heights:

• Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird: 100,388
• JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit: 95,022
• JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: 77,325
• Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: 63,766 (the nearest thing in this list to my novel)
• William Golding’s Lord of the Flies: 59,900
• Tony Johnson’s Raydan Wakes (!so far): 55,232

Too many notes?

In Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus the Emperor Josef famously (and amusingly) tells Mozart that The Marriage of Figaro has “too many notes.” This apparently was a contemporary complaint about Mozart shared by more than just the Emperor; other quotations from the time reveal many critics thought Mozart was overdoing it: "too strongly spiced"; "impenetrable labyrinths"; "bizarre flights of the soul"; "overloaded and overstuffed". Can a novel have too many words? Yes, indeed. Some novels do indeed have too many words – it’s possible you could direct that accusation at Wuthering Heights but only with a 21st Century lens because tastes for prose have changed. We’re keener on leaner now, so the redrafting and editing process now is usually about taking stuff out, not adding stuff in. I for one, though, am glad that Emily Brontë never had a serious editor because they would have probably done what most film versions of Wuthering Heights do and stop the story at the half way point, missing what I think is the heart of Wuthering Heights…. (the subject of my next blog.)

For me the heart of Wuthering Heights is the oft-neglected Hareton Earnshaw....