I have nothing against black people but I saw that the guy, James howson, which was cast for heath cliff, is black.
When reading the book I didn't see him that way and I am really nervous about how it will turn out. He doesn't look edgy enough, he looks....... Sweet?
Hmmm I defiantly think that ed west wick would do better, GG doesn't do him justice.
There is canon support that Heathcliff may be black. And this isn't a new theory, it was discussed in my English classes more than 20 years ago.
This new film really looks interesting. I was a little annoyed that there was yet another repeat but this looks good.
Everything is open to interpretation. In one of my literature classes we discussed the possibility that Heathcliff is actually Cathy's half brother, that Cathy's father had an affair away from home and Heathcliff was actually his biological son. See, Bronte never states this as fact but it is open to interpretation to explain why Earnshaw would so easily adopt an orphan boy and bring him home and treat him nicely.
In the novel, Heathcliff is even called a Gypsy I believe. He is described as dark but, in all honesty, I never interpreted it as him being black. It's an interesting choice. Having said that, I do not agree with the casting of that part for this film. Watching the trailer, I was immediately struck by how not-Heathcliff like the actor was.
Just my opinion however.
Yes, it is open to interpretation. But the text leans heavily toward Heathcliff being non-white or of mixed race. He definitely isn't European.
Considering the time period it was written when Abolitionism was at its height, he most likely was black.
When I read the book I never got the impression he was of African descent. I thought Gypsy probably would have made sense. He was described as being possibly part Asian, Indian, or Lascar but nobody knew. I think if Heathcliff was meant to be black then it would have been explicitly stated since that would not be a natural assumption any reader would make given the location and period where the novel takes place.
As a sidenote, being called "dark" in a primarily caucasian country does not mean that you non-white. In Ireland they have Black-Irish, who are just dark haired. In Poland my family calls anyone with black hair "black" and it's just a descriptor of coloring. I don't know for sure what Bronte intended and I suppose it's up for interpretation.
To address the question of "what's wrong with casting someone black as Heathcliff?" I have two perspectives on this.
On one hand I think if we took classics like The Color Purple or The Bluest Eye and changed races around from black to white or hispanic or native american then there would be an outcry, and rightly so. These novels represent specific cultures in a specific time and place, and I can see how all of a sudden changing something like this could be jarring and disingenuous.
On the other hand I think there is such a thing as artistic license and if done well then I probably wouldn't care if Heathcliff was reinterpreted as a black character. The issue with this particular actor though is that he doesn't really seem to have any edge and it was a bit of a fail. Oh well.
Happy birthday to the ground!
[deleted]
You just described that he could be black. If it is said he is dark it could mean a lot of things including someone white as you say with dark hair and features as well as a very dark African you can't have it both ways, it is ones own interpretation yours is yours and others are there's. Just let it go. Meanwhile how did you like the performance. I would like to know.
shareOn one hand I think if we took classics like The Color Purple or The Bluest Eye and changed races around from black to white or hispanic or native american then there would be an outcry, and rightly so. These novels represent specific cultures in a specific time and place, and I can see how all of a sudden changing something like this could be jarring and disingenuous.
"On one hand I think if we took classics like The Color Purple or The Bluest Eye and changed races around from black to white or hispanic or native american then there would be an outcry, and rightly so. These novels represent specific cultures in a specific time and place, and I can see how all of a sudden changing something like this could be jarring and disingenuous."
On one hand, Hollywood (though this is not a Hollywood film, apparently) has done exactly that many times. The Good Earth was cast with all Caucasian actors, and indeed it was the custom at the time to use white actors to play non-white characters; early in her career Myrna Loy played Oriental seductresses. Though Ursula LeGuin specified that the main characters in A Wizard of Earthsea were not white, the recent TV adaptation whitened them. But that's kinda different.
A Color Purple or The Bluest Eye would make no sense if they were recast with all white actors, given their cultural/racial specificity. Still, it is legitimate to do that sort of thing for a variety of reasons, like the all-black production of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest from the 80s, which I have only heard about but would love to see. To do an all-white Color Purple would require major rethinking of the story.
But this case is different. Did Emily Bronte get out much? Did she ever see even a "gypsy," let alone a person of African descent? It's clear from the careful listing of passages relating to Heathcliff's appearance, compiled by another commenter, that Bronte's descriptions were more impressionistic than clinical or anthropometric. It doesn't seem to me that casting a black actor as Heathcliff is any more a violation of the purity of the text than casting a clearly Caucasian actor as Heathcliff, which has been done and doesn't seem to have gotten white people's pants in a bunch. Casting a black actor accentuates Heathcliff's 'racial' otherness, which is clearly in the book; casting a white actor eliminates it.
*No* film version of WH could be Bronte's. It'll be interesting to see this one.
She did get as far as Brussels, (12th Feb 1842), but left before the end of the year (8th Nov 1842)(her aunt, who had cared for the children since their mother had died, died 29th Oct 1842). She also spent three months as a student at Roe Head school (Aug-Oct 1835, near Leeds) and six as a teacher at Law Hill school(last half of 1838, near Halifax), in England. And in 1824 she was the youngest Bronte sent to Cowan Bridge School (the model for Lowood in Jane Eyre, where her two oldest sisters contracted their fatal illnesses). And her first two years were spent at Bradford.
All in all, about four years away from Haworth.
But...remember that Wuthering Heights is not set contemporaneously. Emily is not writing about the world as it was in her own time. The 'present' of the novel is set eighteen years before she was born, when Emily's father was a young man, and Catherine Linton (the elder) had died twenty years before that - Cathy and Heathcliff are born around the time Emily's grandparents met and married.
Also remember that Wuthering Heights is based on Haworth, the place that Emily knew and loved best in the world, where she spent 26 of her thirty years. Emily is a stickler for detail- not one instance of unseasonable weather, or a moon out of phase for the date, or odd agricultural pursuits (eg. lambing in autumn), or a moth or a lark where they shouldn't be.
The historic detail is accurate too - from a close study of the era, possibly augmented by her father's stories of Luddites and Methodists and the abolition when he was a young evangelist preacher, and back issues of 'The Gentleman's Magazine' or similar periodicals.
Heathcliff might also have been a story from her father - about his (adopted) great-grand-uncle, Welsh (or Walsh) Brunty. You can find a version of his story at http://wuthering-heights.co.uk/inspirations.htm if you are interested.
So the short answer to your question would be, not much, just enough.
Heathcliff may have been Anglo Indian-child of a Lascar sailor and a local woman or possibly an affair between his 'adopted' father and an Anglo Indian woman (the result of the first possibility)-a fairly common occurrence in port towns at the time of the book's writing but in the world of the remote Yorkshire moors extremely exotic-he would look like a 'gypsy' as they originated in northern India before migrating into Europe during the middle ages.
'What is an Oprah?'-Teal'c.
Yes, that is a possibility as well considering the history at the time.
Whatever the case, Heathcliff is distinctly not caucasian.
You really don't know the meaning of that word. Look it up. People from India are more Caucasian than English people, and they are preponderantly darker-skinned.
"The value of an idea has nothing to do with the honesty of the man expressing it."--Oscar Wilde
At the time the novel was written, they wouldn't be recognized as such. They were considered something called Dravidian mixed with various caucasion and mongoloid features.
The British and the rest of Europe were extremely racist societies at the time and anyone with dark skin was considered alien.
Exactly, kaskait. You've explained it perfectly.
Those who are here advising people to "look up a word" need to look up a bit of history themselves. Europe didn't have Google back then (I sure wish they did), so it appears they were uninformed about Indians being caucasian. As far as they were concerned, dark-skinned people were completely separate from themselves.
http://i.imgur.com/Tx58L.gif
http://hellyeahletstumble.tumblr.com
I agree with you as well. Indians and Europeans actually belong to the same ethnic group known as Indo-Aryans. In fact, if you look at Indians, they have pretty much the same facial features as Europeans, except with a darker skin tone.
Now the term 'black' is used to describe someone who is swarthy, not necessarily a person of African origin. To the Northerners, South Europeans were black. To Europeans in general, 'black' people were Arabs, Turks, Indians etc (basically people with a darker skin tone as the majority of Europeans during the period did not see black African people so this was the darkest they knew).
If you watch the British series 'The Jewel in the Crown', which is about India as a British colony, the English constantly refer to Indians as blacks.
Heathcliff was described to have sallow skin, which means yellowish from a fading tan. People from South Europe tend to have this skin tone - I'm from South East Europe and my skin looks like that in winter as my tan starts to fade. This completely contradicts the idea that Heathcliff is black.
The referral to the sallow skin refers to Heathcliff already being of mixed race (half black/half white or Half Indian/Half White).
Whatever the case may be, Heathcliff is clearly very different and hard to categorize to the people around him.
Is not the actor who plays Healthcliff mix? As well, the slavery depiction of healthcliff brings back the notion of slavery that exist during that time period. The author says he is roman but he may very well been a roman slave, who knows. But either way, I have no problem with a black Healthcliff. He is much better than the usual white one so it is a step in the right direction.
share
"People from India are more Caucasian than English people"
You do realize that the British Empire colonized India and maintained a system of apartheid between the British who lived there and the Indians. They were called coolies, darkies, black devils. They used Indians only as servants.
Gandhi helped drive them out of India after which India divided up into two countries--India & Pakistan.
East Indians are included in the diaspora of colored peoples--just like black people of African descent, Indians present in an array of colors and other characteristics. Even Africans present in an array of colors and other characteristics. There are difference in colors and physical characteristics among North Africans like Egyptians, Ethiopians, West Africans like those from the Cameroon, & East Africans like Kenyans & Tanzanians.
This history is available.
I don't understand your point. Nothing in your post refutes mine. The group of humans called Caucasians were so named because of their origin in and around the Caucasus Mountains in Asia. Of course there are color differences like you describe. No group of humans has exactly the same skin color. Skin color doesn't determine ethnicity.
"The value of an idea has nothing to do with the honesty of the man expressing it."--Oscar Wilde
The group of humans called Caucasians were so named because of their origin in and around the Caucasus Mountains in Asia.
Well, yes and no. First, that "origin" was pretty fanciful, like the corresponding category "Semite." It was based on theories about human history and culture that were dubious in their day and are not considered correct now. If you look at nineteenth-century racial theories, you'll see that hardly anyone takes them seriously nowadays, and probably no anthropologists, historians, or linguists do.
Second, and maybe more important, the term "Caucasian" gets applied nowadays to just about every "white" person, regardless of their ancestry. I've seen reference to the Irish, Welsh, and Scots as "Anglo-Saxon" even though that equally dubious term was developed to exclude the Irish, Welsh, and Scots. Ditto for "WASP" (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) -- I've read writers who referred to Irish Catholics as WASPs, to say nothing of the Normans. So it's a mistake to put too much weight on the term "Caucasian" on an IMDB message board; people just mean by it "a vaguely white person of indeterminate ancestry." Because race is not a viable scientific classification, you're not going to get any exactness in racial terms. Even in academic writing, from what I've read.
My last line was "No group of humans has exactly the same skin color. Skin color doesn't determine ethnicity," so clearly I agree with you. It's hard to recall after a two-year hiatus, but I think I was making a different point.
"The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it."
Andrea Arnold cast Howson as he was the best actor, in her opinion, for the role having conducted numerous castings in the UK.
Heathcliff's ethnicity in the book is implied to be non-Anglo Saxon. What is significant about this is that Heathcliff represents the 'other'. As such the actual ethnicity of the actor doesn't matter. What matters is that he continues to represent the 'other' in the film. I appreciate that fans of the novel will have constructed their image of Heathcliff and that this will not fit with the film images, but that's all there is to it and to open yourself to the film means letting go of these individual internal images.
Why problem make? When you no problem have, you don't want to make ...share
Darren Aronofsky is doing a Noah's ark adaptation right now. Most of the actors are white, which is clearly historically inaccurate. But while we're at it, let's go through the list of films in which historical inaccuracy was used to benefit whites and no one batted an eye. Oh, nevermind, we'd be here all day.
It's people like some of you that make me so sick.
What is bothersome is why some people feel the need to mischaracterize classic literature instead of writing their own. Write your own black, Hispanic, Oriental Heathcliff and leave Emily's alone.
Darren Aronofsky is doing a Noah's ark adaptation right now. Most of the actors are white, which is clearly historically inaccurate.
Perhaps a bad example, but the point I was making still stands. No one gets bent out of shape when white actors are put in place where "ethnic" ones should be. But all of a sudden there's this big uproar about being "PC" because a black person for once gets casted as an important character in a major motion picture.
Wuthering Heights is also a story. So why is it so impossible that Heathcliff be black if he was described as everything but lily white? Because many people unfortunately still have this idea that the only people that matter/do interesting things/have colorful lives/have lives that should be chronicled are white people.
And Jews are not always white. Just another tic on the "everybody should be white" board.
No one gets bent out of shape when white actors are put in place where "ethnic" ones should be.
why is it so impossible that Heathcliff be black
As a key slave triangle port, Liverpool had a black community from the 1730s. The Somersett ruling, around the time Earnshaw found Heathcliffe, stated that no-one in England could be deemed a slave. This ruling affected around 14,000 people. Did Emily Bronte randomly select Liverpool, over any number of northern English towns, for Earnshaw's trip?
opening up his great coat..."I was never so beaten with anything in my life: but you must e'en take it as a gift from God; though it's as dark almost as if it came from the devil"
To be an Aristocrat in England, you must be eligible to be a member of the House of Lords (ie. At least a baron), or a member of the Royal family. You and your family will have titles and modes of address to go with your qualification (ie. if you are a duke, people will call you 'Your Grace', or 'Your majesty' if a royal duke. Your eldest son will have the courtesy title of Marquess and be addressed 'your Lord', your daughters will be known as 'Lady Firstname' addressed as 'Madam' or 'My Lady', any younger sons, grandsons and great-grandsons will be addressed as 'Lord Firstname' or 'My Lord') The honorifics are less extravagant and extensive the lower down the pecking order you go, but even a Baron's child has the right to be called 'The honorable Mr Firstname Surname'.
I cannot recall any aristocratic characters in Wuthering Heights. The Earnshaws are certainly not aristocrats.
It is not even certain that the Earnshaws are gentry - there are clues that suggest they once were, that Wuthering Heights is an ancestral home of significance (eg. the late Gothic/ early Tudor architectural features and date above the front door, and the amount of unenclosed land around it in 1801, and the uninhabited church at Gimmerton), and might have once held the family of the local squire, but Mr Linton in Thrushcross Grange is explicitly referred to as 'the squire' (and Heathcliff is described as looking like a squire after he has inherited both Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights).
A gentleman was originally a man who had enough property to be eligible to become a knight, but had not applied to be knighted. It became a description for men who earnt enough rent as landlords of rural property, to live comfortably without having to work their own property or have to lease land from someone else to farm , nor get a job or go into trade.
The squire was, in medieval times, the local lord that housed and agisted the knights and their horses for the local area. It devolved into a semi-official title for the biggest land-lord in the parish/ inheritor of the title (some squires would become the sheriff, or magistrate, or JP of the local area, needing no other qualification or training. Most would at least judge the pig show at the local fair. But there were some who just collected their rents and minded their own business.)
So, Mr Linton is certainly a gentleman, and very probably the squire of the parish. Mr Earnshaw might be a gentleman farmer (although he does not appear to have any rent-producing properties, and he does appear to need to farm his estate in order to earn income) and might be a squire, if Wuthering Heights is in a different parish to Thrushcross Grange, and has parishioners that pay rent to Wuthering Heights - Gimmerton kirk and village seem to be historically attached to Wuthering Heights, there is a curate living in the kirk in old Mr Earnshaw's time, but it is not certain that he or anyone else lives there by the favor of Mr Earnshaw. By Hindley's time, the house has lost whatever status it had, and when Heathcliff owns it, he also owns the Grange so it is hard to tell.
The Somerset case (that made it impossible for a slave owner in England to reclaim an escaped slave as property - it didn't actually end slavery, although people thought it did, and that made all the difference) took place when Heathcliff was about seven years old. Until then, there was not only a thriving slave trade in England, there were advertisements in the paper selling slaves, describing runaway slaves, it was fashionable for ladies (and some gentlemen) to have a little black page-boy dressed in livery as a human accessory, and of course common to employ slaves in agriculture. The Somerset case quite explicitly did not stop the slave trade in Liverpool - that continued until 1811, when slave trading was made a felony offense (slave trading was abolished in Britain in 1807, but the punishment was a fine of £120 for the captain of any vessel engaged in slave trading that was caught by the Royal Navy / in British waters, so some traders found it worth the risk). Heathcliff died in June 1802, five years before the abolition, and was born in 1764, eight years before the Somerset case. The transatlantic slave trade was at its peak when the story was set. The idea that there was "barely any black people in England during this period (as there was no slavery in Europe)" is simply not true, and even after slavery was abolished, the expansion of the British Empire and the British Merchant Navy (and, during the war, the Royal Navy) brought increasing numbers of people of color to England, British subjects from the colonies. The increase in Britons of color in the late Georgian was not equaled until the 1960's, when Jamaica became independent. (Remember Britain was an Empire then, with colonies on every continent except Antartica, and every person born in the British Empire was British or British owned, free to travel or obliged to travel to England). The black diaspora in London was between 2 and 4% of the population, and the black diaspora in Liverpool was an even higher percentage of the population (although, the data on this matter is not very good - the first English census was not until 1800, counted households not persons and asked no questions about color or ethnicity. The surveys that did consider color or ethnicity at the time were done for public interest or commercial reasons, and this is before George Boole and Florence Nightingale showed the world what could validly be done with statistics for the public good. So the validity of the data is arguable, but the fact that there were people of color in England, and that people believed their numbers were increasing, is not. Most historians believe the numerical data from the time underestimates the real size of the black and colored populations.)
In other parts of Europe, France attempted to abolish slavery in the first republican directory, in 1794, but Napoleon brought slavery back in 1802, for the Caribbean colonies (apparently he was influenced by Josephine, who came from Martinique, and understood the economic and social disruption banning slavery would cause, being from a formerly plantation owning and therefore slave owning family) Hence Haiti. Partly because of the Napoleonic wars causing most of Europe to change governments, and all the associated colonies of the European powers (Portugal, Netherlands, Spain especially) to be affected by power vacuums, slavery was practiced in Portugal, Spain, the German states, the Italian states, and all their associated colonies until around 1815, when the victorious 7th coalition (of UK, Netherlands, Prussia, and the German states of Brunswick, Hanover and Nassau) lead by the UK, declared their opposition to slavery. Even then, the South Americas were fighting for independence and the abolition of slavery until the mid 1830's, and the North Americas until the mid 1860's and later.
In any case, Heathcliff died in 1802, when France did its back-flip and started supporting the slave trade, which the rest of Europe still practiced.
To lumosnight, Wow, there was no slavery in England? Wow. Sorry, I thought I was having a discussion with someone educated for a second. My mistake.
share''Because there were barely any black people in England during this period (as there was no slavery in Europe) and it is higly unlikely that an aristocratic white family would adopt a black person into their fold. The English may have made slavery illegal but they are pretty racist themselves, even to this day.''
*beep* There were many black people in English ports (especially Liverpool were they were often mixed with Irish...and still are as Irish are the majority and black-Irish a big minority to this day), London, even places like York and Hull. There were enough black people to be referenced during the time of Shakespeare (often positively but sometime as simply foreigners stealing jobs...I kid you not). In the 1680s, long before 'Wuthering Heights', King James argued that intolerance to Catholics would be as wrong as locking people up for being black; racism was certainly not common or advanced till the 1840s, even if it had been growing throughout the Georigian era.
All the claims that Heathcliff cannot be black because there were not enough black people in England are laughable, based on error, or deplorable, based on racist distortions of the truth.
---------------------
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
[deleted]
Doesn't matter if you didn't see him that way. Like someone said people didn't see Rue or Cinna as black in The Hunger Games and flipped out when they found out. Not everyone has to be white. If someone is described as dark they might just be black, or anything other than white. Because I sincerely doubt everyone in England was fair skinned and pale. Maybe some were brunette and a bit tanner. So I think when they described someone as dark they probably genuinely met they were dark. biracial/brown/black.
I'm a rare combination of French film buff and thug.
It's fashionable to interpret any even remotely dark-skinned character as black nowadays, like in "300," for example. How weird was that... Blacks with pale white girls is just "cool." Or retch-inducing.
--
"Den Gleichen Gleiches, den Ungleichen Ungleiches."
its been ages since I read this but if I recall correctly they used black and dark skinned as descriptive for heathcliff in the book multiple times. I had no problem with this heathcliff actually being black. That being said I dont think he did a good acting job at all, same with the actress that played catherine. I found this to be a very odd adaptation of WH overall.
share[deleted]
[deleted]
It's a long time since I read the book but as I recall Heathcliff went away and made a successful life for himself accruing some wealth. I'm not sure what the business was or whether it was stated. Anyhow given the racism in Europe at the time, would it have been possible for a Negro to be successful in the business world and become wealthy? The chances would be close to zero.
I think the housekeeper Nelly Dean is key here - someone likely to have never left her locality. The story is told through her eyes, she wouldn't be expected to be able to define Heathcliff's ethnicity, only a worldly educated person could do that, hence the vagueness. So given Nelly Dean's limited knowledge of races Heathcliff could have been from South of the Sahara, but why then - through her retelling - did not the Lintons call him a Negro? Nelly Dean's initial description is corroborated throughout the book by other characters.
Reading the whole thread I have come out in favour of Heathcliff being non- Negro.
''Anyhow given the racism in Europe at the time, would it have been possible for a Negro to be successful in the business world and become wealthy? The chances would be close to zero.''
Racism was still not as strong as slightly later on, actually; and Great Britain would never be as racist and anti-black as the United States was for many, many years after the British empire had already banned slavery. Since at least the Elizabethan era, there had been plenty of wealthy ''negroes''. Even when racism was much stronger you still had the likes of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who was quite wealthy for someone of his profession and background. He is a famous (and great) English composer, most famous for the ' Hiawatha's Wedding-feast'. You also had Olaudah Equiano, who died in 1797 (thus he would have been a contemporary of Heathcliff), he was a former slave who was permitted to buy his freedom by King, who, being a Quaker, actually helped him do this himself. Equiano became a great man of business, an anti-slavery activist, a renowned author, and was worth (worth over £80,000 in today's money.
Another contemporary of Heathcliff was Ignatius Sancho (who died in 1780), the first Black Englishman to vote in an election (only the wealthy were allowed to vote at the time). He was a writer, composer and actor.
Francis Williams (who died in the 1770s) was born into a wealthy ''free black'' family in Jamaica. Due to his wealthy father, John Francis, he and his brother gained good educations, and Francis became a poet.
I can list many more example of people of African descent, who managed to fight any forms of intolerance and become wealthy close to when this novel was set, or a little before or after.
---------------------
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
Alexandre Dumas was part Black.
"It's not about money.... It's about sending a Message..... Everything Burns!!!"
''Alexandre Dumas was part Black.''
And? It still means he is of African descent. Heathcliff could be part black too.
---------------------
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
I was adding another example, there where people of African decent in 19th Century Europe.
"It's not about money.... It's about sending a Message..... Everything Burns!!!"
Okay so a black African odds of being successful in the world of commerce were slightly better in the 18th century than the 19th century.
I'm looking at it on the balance of probabilities of a black African especially with the sort of upbringing Heathcliff had - he would first need an education, difficult enough for a penniless white person. How would this weigh against him being successful in a world of strict class structure and yes very racist order?
Also I just can't concede that even Nelly could confuse a "gypsy" with an African.
I know this conversation and been gone over thoroughly before - gypsy being an derivation of Egyptian and some Egyptians are black etc etc - but that is really stretching things very thinly to fit the argument indeed.
As I said before, on balance I don't believe EB conceived Heathcliff as a Negro.
Equally, portraying him as White is wrong as well. One day someone will do it right, but I think the story needs to be rested for a while, that and Jayne Eyre, productions have become too frequent now.
''he would first need an education, difficult enough for a penniless white person. How would this weigh against him being successful in a world of strict class structure and yes very racist order? ''
Well, his chances were arguably better than the former slaves I have mentioned. You could argue that his need for revenge/Cathy made him more driven. Anyway, I think he made his fortune more as an adventure than a great intellectual or artist.
''As I said before, on balance I don't believe EB conceived Heathcliff as a Negro.
Equally, portraying him as White is wrong as well.''
Fair enough.
''One day someone will do it right, but I think the story needs to be rested for a while, that and Jayne Eyre, productions have become too frequent now.''
Agreed. There are a lot of great gothic novels that have never been adapted or have only been rarely adapted.
---------------------
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
Paul Feval's Vampire City was a parody of Gothic Novels, but a pretty damn awesome one, it would make a fantastic movie, and I'd cast Anna Popplewell to play Ann.
"It's not about money.... It's about sending a Message..... Everything Burns!!!"
I never read Heathcliff as black, always as he is described - 'Moorish'. Sort of like my Mum actually, her mother was pale skinned and blue eyed and my mum is Olive skinned and with very dark eyes like her dad, when my mum got angry my nan would say her eyes were black like coal and shoo her away..!
For those who are saying Moor = black,but generally no, it doesn't - Blackamoor = black, Moor/Moorish refers to an actual group of people from southern spain, and therefore someone more of olive/swarthy skin. Also, I always saw the term 'black' in this novel as 'blackguard' or 'black hearted'.
Also, Mulatto was a perfectly normal term in those days for a mixed race person, and there are numerous contemporary accounts in newspapers at this time (that I have found in my own research for a novel about an inter-racial relationship at this time) that talk about how attractive mulatto children are - far from the description Emily gives us of Heathcliff. However the same newspapers are full of stories of thieving gypsies (The name, btw, comes from the misconception of the British that they came from Egypt).
However some of the comments on here are unreal. Black people have been living in Britain for hundreds of years, there is one confirmed example of skeleton of a black man born in tunisia found in Ipswich from the 13th C. Also, many freed slaves and black men brought to the country as merchant sailors through overseas trading had successful businesses. There were stories of inter-racial marriages, but unless you were of the very lower classes this would not be merely impractical, but forbidden in the case of the female being white.
Then again, The fact that someone of Romani gypsy origin was first choice says it all really.(although it is hard to find genuine Romani gypsies these days, have only seen a small group once myself in cornwall, complete with bow top caravan and pony).
However - I have no problem whatsoever what race or nationality the actor cast as Heathcliff is if he's right for the part.
What I do object to, however, is a wooden, almost sulky/petulant performance lacking the emotional intensity that is so crucial to a story primarily about revenge and unhealthy obssesive love. I didn't care for either character at all, and usually I always cry at Wuthering heights!
I can only assume the long repeated rainy windy moor scenes were supposed to create this atmosphere, but it doesn't make up for the lack of dialogue/chemistry that is so crucial in the book, and in any story such as this.
Personally the only Heathcliff I've seen that did have the brooding intensity imagined of Heathcliff is Tom Hardy, but then of course his performance may have been enhanced by the fact that he and Charlotte genuinely fancied each other in real life! :p
Still, that's my opinion, anyways!
Heathcliff should not be black. Totally unrealistic for the time and place. End of discussion
share''Heathcliff should not be black. Totally unrealistic for the time and place. End of discussion''
*Yawn* I have already discredited this view on this very page. Read at least a few comments previous before making this tired claim. Black people have existed in the British isle for centuries upon centuries. I even listed a few that became successful around the time 'Wuthering Heights' is set.
---------------------
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
"I have already discredited this view on this very page."
Wow, you think a lot of yourself!
Perhaps I have made it clear in my post - that whilst black people could be successful and intermarriages did happen, these were limited and centred around cities, and if he was black, Emily would have said he was, not make numerous references to gypsies and only referncing black as in 'blackness/darkness of heart and personality' Plus, why would her sister Charlotte explicitly say Bertha Mason's Mother is a 'creole', which at the time in Jamaica refers to a mixed race person who is accepted as white due to European heritage, but then Emily shy away from it?
Yet, like mine, I am afraid yours is just another opinion/theory; if you were right, then people who have studied the Bronte sisters would not still be debating... ;p
After a close reading and a good knowledge of the historical period, I think it is more realistic that he was a gypsy, who, as we all know by now, originated in India, and would have been very dark by most English people's standards at the time, when it was still taboo for an English MAN to marry an Indian woman, even if she was wealthy or high ranking, despite all our empire antics.
List of Occurrences of the Word 'BLACK' in Wuthering Heights
I.how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his _black_ eyes [colour]
I. the chairs, high-backed, primitive structures,painted green: one or two heavy _black_ ones lurking in the shade.[colour]
II.the earth was hard with a _black_ frost [internal freezing and death of vegetation when the dew point is too low for an external frost to form]
II. her neat _black_ frock [colour]
II. I'll show you how far I've progressed in the _Black_ Art [casting hexes]
IV. a dirty,ragged, _black_-haired child [colour]
IV. my arm, which is black to the shoulder [bruised]
V.humouring was rich nourishment to the child's pride and _black_ tempers [sullen:darkness of heart/personality]
VI. she began describing with hysterical emotion the effect it produced on her to see _black_; and started, and trembled, and, at last, fell a-weeping--and
when I asked what was the matter, answered, she didn't know; but she felt
so afraid of dying! [colour of mourning]
VII. a handsome black pony [colour]
VII. a forbidding young _black_guard [descriptor]
VII. how very _black_ and cross you look! [colour and/or sullen:darkness of heart/personality]
VII. couple of _black_ fiends [colour and evil:darkness of heart/personality]
VII. if you were a regular _black_ [descriptor]
IX. the _Black_-horse marsh [Place name]
IX. a neeght loike this--as _black_ as t' chimbley! [dark]
X. _black_ whiskers [colour]
X. eyes full of _black_ fire [sinister:darkness of heart/personality]
X. turning the blue eyes _black_ [bruise]
XI. the _black_ villain [colour and/or evil:darkness of heart/personality]
XI. that _black_guard [descriptor]
XII. there are two candles on the table making the _black_ press
shine like jet. [colour]
XII. As soon as ever I had barred the door, utter _black_ness overwhelmed me, and I fell on the floor. [fainting fit]
XII. a _black_smith's shop, two miles out of Gimmerton [descriptor]
XIII. hell shall have his soul! It will be ten times _blacker_ with that guest than ever it was before! [metaphor, evil:darkness of heart/personality?]
XVI. a _black_ lock of his own. [colour]
XVII. the young leaves of the early trees smitten and _black_ened. [colour]
XVII.God, when addressed, was curiously confounded with his own _black_ father![the devil, metaphor]
XVII.his _black_ countenance looked blightingly through [darkness of heart/personality and/or colour]
XVII.the longer he stood, the plainer his reflections revealed their _black_ness
through his features.[metaphor, darkness of heart/personality]
XVII. Hindley has exactly her eyes, if you had not tried to gouge them out, and made them black and red [bruise]
XVIII. deep into summer I have found snow under that _black_ hollow on the north-east side [dark]
XVIII. Hareton grew _black_ as a thunder-cloud at this childish speech [sullen: darkness of heart/personality]
XIX. A letter, edged with _black_, announced the day of my master's return [colour, of mourning]
XIX. attired in her new _black_ frock [colour, of mourning]
XX. he has _black_ hair and eyes [colour]
XXI. _blackness_ of spirit [darkness of heart/personality]
XXI. She emptied her _black_ened pieces into the flames [charred love-letters]
XXII. the rose-bushes and _black_-berry stragglers could yield no assistance in re-ascending [descriptor]
XXIII. (Joseph's) _black_, short pipe in his mouth [colour]
XXIV. not only larks, but throstles, and _black_birds, and linnets, and cuckoos pouring out music on every side [descriptor]
XXVII. her _black_ eyes flashing with passion and resolution.[colour]
XXVIII. a _black_ silk bonnet on her head [colour, mourning]
XXVIII. sunk in the _Black_horse marsh [place name]
XXX. donned in _black_ [colour, of mourning]
XXXII. He _black_ened and scowled like a thunder-cloud [sullen:darkness of heart/personality ]
XXXIII. the _black_-currant trees were the apple of Joseph's eye [descriptor]
XXXIII. Heathcliff's _black_ eyes flashed [colour]
XXXIII. till there is scarcely a _black_ hair on my head [colour]
XXXIV. appearance of joy under his _black_ brows[colour]
XXXIV. Those deep _black_ eyes! [colour]
XXXIV. I combed his _black_ long hair from his forehead [colour]
XXXIV. many a window showed black gaps deprived of glass [dark, void]
As you can see, at least half the time, 'black' clearly describes physical properties - items that are black in colour, an absence of light.
Some, like "his eyes full of black fire" (Ch.10) might be taken as literal or metaphorical, or both, but "he has black hair and eyes"(Ch.20) is hard to interpret as anything but a literal description. (Could you make a case for Heathcliff having, say, flaming red hair and flashing blue eyes, based on that description?) I am not sure about 'blackguard'- it is used to denounce him, not to describe his state of mind, but Edgar might mean 'foul mouthed' by it, and Hindley might be rejoicing in his menial appearance. I concede the 'black' in blackguard cannot be interpreted as a clue to his race, and if his courtship of Isabella isn't blackguardly, I don't know what is.
Most of the 'figurative' uses are also plain descriptors or common phrases, not referring to darkness of heart or personality (for example, blacksmith, blackbird, Blackhorse Marsh, black frost). Most uses of the word do not relate directly to Heathcliff - it is used to describe bruising, hexing, absence of light, a fainting fit, mourning clothes (which is symbolic as well as literal but not necessarily a state of mind, as we see in the start of Ch.XIX).
In fact, of the more than fifty occurrences of the word black, there are only a dozen that refer to darkness of heart or personality - and half of those have literal as well as figurative meanings, and half of the rest are used to describe Hareton Earnshaw's heart and personality, not Heathcliff's.
We have good reason to believe that Heathcliff has black hair, black eyes, and dark skin (as well as a black temper) because _Emily__Bronte__said__so_, _it__is__in__the__book_.
SIX Occurrences of the word 'GIPSY'
Ch. I (John Lockwood, giving his first impressions of his Landlord) "Mr.Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living. He is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman"
Ch. IV (Ellen recollecting Mrs Earnshaw's reaction on being presented with Heathcliff)Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors: she did fly up, asking how he could fashion to bring that gipsy brat into the house, when they had their own bairns to feed and fend for?
Ch. IV (Ellen recollecting old Earnshaw's favoritism and young Earnshaw's hatred of Heathcliff) "'Take my colt, Gipsy, then!' said young Earnshaw"
Ch. VI (Heathcliff recounting Mrs Linton's reaction when Cathy met the Lintons) "Nonsense!" cried the dame; "Miss Earnshaw scouring the country with a gipsy!"
Ch. IX (Joseph consoling Cathy after Heathcliff mysteriously disappears) "It's bonny behaviour, lurking amang t' fields, after twelve o' t' night, wi' that
fahl, flaysome divil of a gipsy, Heathcliff!"
Ch. X (Edgar Linton speaking, when told by Ellen that Heathcliff has returned) "'What! the gipsy--the ploughboy?' he cried. 'Why did you not say so to
Catherine?'
'Hush! you must not call him by those names, master,' I said"
By far the most common guess at Heathcliff's origin. But this does not mean he is a gypsy. We know for a fact he doesn't live as one. Half these coments are made by characters who having just laid eyes on him for the first time - John Lockwood, Mrs Earnshaw, Mr and Mrs Linton, - they are attempting to account for Heathcliff's strikingly exotic appearance. Those who have seen him before are not informing us better, either. Hindley and Joseph are using the word to insult and insinuate, Edgar to express his perception of class differences, and Ellen attempting to mollify his pride by pointing out that wealthy aristocrats from China and India outrank Yorkshire farmers.
At the time 'gipsy' did not necessarily mean people of a particular race. It was used in the press and in correspondence and in fiction to describe any unknown wastrel - and there were bands of itinerant Irish, Scottish Crofters and unemployed Londoners roaming the countryside, ostensibly seeking employment, being moved on from parish to parish by officials keen to avoid local trouble and expense, the trampers compliant lest they be incarcerated for vagrancy or put in the stocks. They were driven on to the road from a combination of depressed economic conditions, enclosure and the way the poor laws worked, and were not of any particular race or creed.
About four in five people lived outside the cities, and I have seen no evidence that black people were less inclined to seek employment as agricultural labours in the country, or to marry there. I have traced individual black people to Welsh mines, and as grooms in country stables, and to factories (prior to the invention of the steam engine, factories ran on water power, hence Blake's 'dark satanic mills' are located all over 'England's green and pleasant land' - wherever there was a suitable stream).
Gypsies in the form of Parvee, Travellers, Showmen, Kale and Romany tended to stay in the country where there was pasture and camping on the moors (probably more of these tribal travelers then than now), and the area between Bradford and Keighley was identified as a particular haunt, especially along the canal at Bradford. People like Joseph and Edgar Linton might be calling Heathcliff a gipsy because, from their point of view, anyone who didn't come from money or from around here, were gypsies. Heathcliff doesn't seem to recognize any kinship to anyone but Cathy.
The only thing we really know for sure from the book, is that Heathcliff is always identified as exotic, by his appearance. In spite of growing up in the area and living seventeen years there, owning two estates, knowing every knoll and nook, being known by all and having no other place to call home, he is still not seen as a local.
Reference to Lascar, Moorish or American origins:
Ch. VI (Mr Linton senior's reaction when Cathy met the Lintons) "Oho! I declare he is that strange acquisition my late neighbour made, in his journey to Liverpool--a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway."
References to Indian or Chinese origins:
Ch. VII (Ellen advising Heathcliff on keeping his dignity ) "Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen"
Indian is as good a guess as any - it is well supported by the text. Marriage is not a barrier. In the first place, there is no reason to suppose Heathcliff's parents are married - unmarried mothers were viciously discriminated against, but the baptismal records are full of their progeny. Marriage was about inheritance and entitlements, important for preserving the estate of the middle classes and the aristocracy. Men with money had to be careful in their choice of wife, but did not need to restrict themselves to that choice, and an extraordinary number of poor women were forced into supporting themselves by various forms of prostitution and being kept (as many as one in eight adult women in London, in the last quarter of the 18th century), partly because of the punitive laws against fornication and adultery.) While it was more common in the colonies for white men to take black partners outside of marriage, in England the most common black/white relationship was a black man with a white wife. Probably because women didn't get around as much?
The taboo against marrying Indian women came after Heathcliff was born, and in India, not England. It was largely promoted by 'the fishing fleet', ( British gentlewomen with no inheritance, whose hopes of escaping genteel poverty centered on marrying a rich white Nabob or company officer) and the political/racist machinations of the Earl of Cornwallis from 1786 to 1793 (utilizing and intensifying the caste system in order to establish the British as the ruling caste, and divide and conquer the subcontinent). One consequence of the British adopting the caste system was that it was no longer acceptable for East India Company employees and soldiers to marry or even associate with women outside their own caste, and strict rules were enforced to ensure that they didn't.
But at the time Heathcliff was born, the company had only recently won control of Bengal from the Nawab and the French in the battle of Plassey, there was no centralized British control of India, and many expansionist battles yet to be fought before the Raj could be established. British soldiers were marrying Nautch girls, breeding up a Eurasian caste (that still exists) much to the chagrin of both the Anglo-Indians and Cornwallis twenty years later.
When Charlotte describes Antoinetta Mason as a creole, her meaning is ambiguous - Rochester throws the word back at Richard Mason with 'idiots and maniacs through three generations' added to it, but madness was associated more closely with inbreeding than miscegenation, and he could be implying that the Mason's ancestors married each other rather than breed with the natives. If Charlotte had used a term like 'mulatto' (as Jane Austen did in Sanditon), there would have been no doubt that she was referring to a person of mixed race.
Nowadays, in Martinique a Creole would be a frankaphone of mixed race who is regarded as white, a Mulatto would be a person of mixed race (no precise mix) who is regarded as a person of colour. In Jamaica, Creole would be the language, in Louisiana probably a reference to a style of music, or cuisine.
But that is not how it was 200 years ago. For example: Joséphine de Beauharnais, first wife of Napoleon, was a creole born in Martinique. As far as we know none of Josephine's ancestors were black (and some of her bloodlines have be traced back six or more generations before her), and her portraits show her as a fair skinned woman, but then, the word 'creole' in the French Caribbean meant 'born in the colony' as opposed to 'born in France'.
On the other hand, in British Administered Jamaica in the same era, creoles _were_ of mixed race - in particular, I have seen the term used in references to the British Navy station at Jamaica where officers (eg.Admiral Sir John Lindsay) having children of mixed race, and the wealthy merchant class of the colony were typically of mixed race.
Josephine persuaded Napoleon to turn his back on the ex-slave republics he had previously supported, and restore the slave trade for the sake of (white)creole plantation owners in 1803. The chaotic French colonial administration tried to keep up with who owned whom and what by adopting a system similar to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies for precisely identifying the racial mix of an individual, and therefore the degree of franchise s/he was entitled to - they had precise words like mulatto, quadroon, octeroon, mustafee and mustifino (for degrees of whiteness) and casco, sambo, mango (for degrees of blackness), as well as less precise words like metis and zambo, to describe free people of colour.
Hence the word 'creole' is now one that means different things in different geographical places, historical eras, contexts and circumstances. Emily did not need it to delineate Heathcliff's madness, or to remove the reader's focus from his torment, or to cough a god out of the machine for his salvation.
A creole origin could be alluded to in Mr Linton's guesses of 'American' and 'Spanish' as Heathcliff's native land. But that would cover a Negro Heathcliff equally well.
Again, all Emily Bronte lets us know for certain, is that he is Not White.
''Wow, you think a lot of yourself! ''
Not particularly, I am merely the current in a long chain of posters who have discredited the nonsensical view that Heathcliff couldn't be black. My point was directly a refutation of the claim that black people couldn't make it big or intermarry.
Heathcliff is a fictional character and if you like he could be a fictional representative of one of the few black people who ''made it big''. And Heathcliff becomes wealthy away from Wuthering Heights so we can assume he was one of the few ''limited and centred around cities''. Heathcliff is described as black in the novel, and specifically not a ''regular black'', and I find this unlikely to be just about his personality.
''Yet, like mine, I am afraid yours is just another opinion/theory; if you were right, then people who have studied the Bronte sisters would not still be debating... ;p''
My theory is not that Heathcliff is black, it is that he could be black and that nothing specifically implies that he isn't.
''I think it is more realistic that he was a gypsy, who, as we all know by now, originated in India''
Yes, the Romani and Sindhi people did come from Indian and are descended from the ancestors of the Rajputs and other groups in the area of Rajastan, I believe. But ''Gypsy'' was used loosely in those days for the Romani (etc.), Irish ''tinkers'', travels and man of all hue and colour. So the use of gypsy is not really evidence that Heathcliff is a Romani, though I think it is a perfectly acceptable view and one in which the maker of this film actually subscribed too.
Of course, Heathcliff is really only dark ''ruddy'' and exotic because the author is subtly making him ''vampiric''. His ethnicity is not actually as important as his actions or personality.
---------------------
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
"Heathcliff is a fictional character and if you like he could be a fictional representative of one of the few black people who ''made it big'"
The implication is he got his money through non-respectable means (gambling and take advantage of foolish people), and that he has his new, upright bearing from time in the army.
The fact is, there is no reason for her not to say outright if Heathcliff was black.
If he was, she would have said it, and she didn't.
In fact,in the novel Nelly says to him his father could be "Emporer of China", or his mother "an Indian queen" and even says "if you were a regular black" - IF!!! :p
The whole point that he is not and they cannot pigeon-hole him into being an ex-slave, a mulatto, an Indian, etc. is what makes him so perplexing to a mid-victorian reader.
But yes it is definitely agreed that "His ethnicity is not actually as important as his actions or personality"
And this particular actor managed sulky and petulant, at best. Plus the extensive outdoor scenes annoyed me. In the narrative of the book, Cathy and Heathcliff are never 'shown' outdoors together.
Ellen Dean (the original unreliable narrator) is the principle story-teller, and she doesn't know and isn't telling.
In Ch.4 John Lockwood first asks her about her master
"Do you know anything of his history?'
'It's a cuckoo's, sir--I know all about it: except where he was born, and who were his parents, and how he got his money at first."
Never in the book does Lockwood come across a better source, never in her narrative does Ellen lead us to a better information.
This is one of the gothic master-strokes of Emily Bronte. It keeps us guessing, anticipating a wealthy uncle from the colonies, or an accidental falling in with family, or some other clunky Victorian plot device. But it never happens, and while the characters in the book and the readers look for money, race and legitimacy, it turns out these things are really irrelevant to the story.
The not-telling is not only more believable than a John Eyre or a Mr Brownlow offstage in the West Indies, waiting to make anyone who ever gave the main character succour, kin; it also assists in the suspension of disbelief when supernatural forces are at work. (Case in point, there is no 'Is Cathy's ghost real' thread - all the readers speculative energy gets drawn into 'Who is Heathcliff')
In the narrative of the book (and consequently in nearly every film and tv adaption of the book) Heathcliff and Cathy are 'shown' together on the moors in Ch.2 (Cathy's diary)"I have got the time on with writing for twenty minutes; but my companion is impatient, and proposes that we should appropriate the dairywoman's cloak, and have a scamper on the moors, under its shelter."
Ch.5 (Ellen's account to Lockwood)"it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day"
(Heathcliff to Ellen)"We ran from the top of the Heights to the park, without stopping"
Ellen doesn't name a particular daylight excursion to the moors (she does specify three -or four, midnight ones)in her retelling twenty-three years later, nor does she 'show' any of the marriages. It is fair enough to depict at least one of them, though, because
a)They are the images that Bronte evokes in Cathy's "I am Heathcliff" speech, and in most attempts to describe their relationship. For example
(Cathy to Ellen): "'I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and 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.'"
b)For a woman who has been dead 'these twenty years', Cathy does a pretty good job of hanging out with Heathcliff on the moors in the present of the novel.
Depicting the teenage Cathy and Heathcliff frolicking on the moor not only explains their eternal, naturalistic, relationship succinctly, it is foreshadowed in Lockwood's ghostly encounter, and it foreshadows the younger generations meetings, and Heathcliff's torment.
It is crucial context for the plot, and gives it connection to the title, and as most of the excursions that are specifically mentioned take place in the dark, natural enemy of the camera, it is understandable that most adaptions show at least one diurnal excursion to the moors, even if Ellen didn't particularise.
I can remember one adaption that had just the moor, wuthering atmospherically, to represent the eternal spirit of Heathcliff and Cathy. It didn't really create the bleak, haunting presence. This adaption, I think, really did.
"In the narrative of the book (and consequently in nearly every film and tv adaption of the book) Heathcliff and Cathy are 'shown' together on the moors in Ch.2 (Cathy's diary)"I have got the time on with writing for twenty minutes; but my companion is impatient, and proposes that we should appropriate the dairywoman's cloak, and have a scamper on the moors, under its shelter."
Ch.5 (Ellen's account to Lockwood)"it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day"
(Heathcliff to Ellen)"We ran from the top of the Heights to the park, without stopping""
Yet we never see them on it together.
The person who spends the most time outside in the book is Linton, with young Cathy - who hates the outdoors.
You expounded upon a point but you misunderstood mine - I don't think they should not be on the moor together in film or TV adaptions, I just don't think it should be used INSTEAD of some important parts of speech between the two of them, as their words to each other are all important.
Your point re moors instead of dialouge - fair enough.
Linton spending the most time outside in the book: I don't think so - Young Catherine spends more time on the moors than Linton Heathcliff, and she has no dislike for the outdoors, although her father limits her range to the moors around Thrushcross Grange to keep her out of Heathcliff's territory:
"Till she reached the age of thirteen she had not once been beyond the range of the park by herself. Mr. Linton would take her with him a mile or so outside, on rare occasions; but he trusted her to no one else.
Gimmerton was an unsubstantial name in her ears; the chapel, the only building she had approached or entered, except her own home. Wuthering Heights and Mr. Heathcliff did not exist for her: she was a perfect recluse; and, apparently, perfectly contented.
Sometimes, indeed, while surveying the country from her nursery window, she would observe--
'Ellen, how long will it be before I can walk to the top of those hills? I wonder what lies on the other side--is it the sea?'
'No, Miss Cathy,' I would answer; 'it is hills again, just like these.'
'And what are those golden rocks like when you stand under them?' she once asked.
The abrupt descent of Penistone Crags particularly attracted her notice; especially when the setting sun shone on it and the topmost heights, and the whole extent of landscape besides lay in shadow. I explained that they were bare masses of stone, with hardly enough earth in their clefts to nourish a stunted tree.
'And why are they bright so long after it is evening here?' she pursued.
'Because they are a great deal higher up than we are,' replied I; 'you could not climb them, they are too high and steep. In winter the frost is always there before it comes to us; and deep into summer I have found snow under that black hollow on the north-east side!'
'Oh, you have been on them!' she cried gleefully. 'Then I can go, too, when I am a woman. Has papa been, Ellen?'
'Papa would tell you, Miss,' I answered, hastily, 'that they are not worth the trouble of visiting. The moors, where you ramble with him, are much nicer; and Thrushcross Park is the finest place in the world.'
'But I know the park, and I don't know those,' she murmured to herself. 'And I should delight to look round me from the brow of that tallest point: my little pony Minny shall take me some time.'
One of the maids mentioning the Fairy Cave, quite turned her head with a desire to fulfil this project: she teased Mr. Linton about it; and he promised she should have the journey when she got older. But Miss Catherine measured her age by months, and, 'Now, am I old enough to go to Penistone Crags?' was the constant question in her mouth. The road thither wound close by Wuthering Heights. Edgar had not the heart to pass it; so she received as constantly the answer, 'Not yet, love: not yet.'"
I wouldn't say Linton Heathcliff hates the outdoors - but he is dying from tuberculosis and would rather lie still by a warm fire and catch his breath. From the first it is clear that his few visits outdoors are choreographed by his father.
At his first reunion with his cousin: "Linton stood on the hearth. He had been out walking in the fields, for his cap was on, and he was calling to Joseph to bring him dry shoes."
His father then attempts to persuade him to show Catherine around the outside of the house, but Linton's focus remains on dry shoes and warm hearth, and it is Hareton that shows her around.
When Catherine suggests that Linton should return her visits to his beloved hearth: "'It will be too far for me,' murmured her cousin: 'to walk four miles would kill me. No, come here, Miss Catherine, now and then: not every
morning, but once or twice a week.'"
And when his 'courtship' has progress so far as to make a visit out of doors necessary, (because Linton's written pleas to her father have obtained Edgar Linton's consent to allow them to meet at the crossroads):
"On arriving there, however, a little herd-boy, despatched as a messenger, told us that,--'Maister Linton wer just o' this side th' Heights: and he'd be mitch obleeged to us to gang on a bit further.'"..."and that was scarcely a quarter of a mile from his own door, we found he had no horse; and we were forced to dismount, and leave ours to graze. He lay on the heath, awaiting our approach, and did not rise till we came within a few yards. Then he walked so feebly, and looked so pale, that I immediately exclaimed,--'Why, Master Heathcliff, you are not fit for enjoying a ramble this morning. How ill you do look!'"
This is followed by a still more tortured meeting at the same place, with Linton writhing on the ground in fear of his father, and sobbing out his marriage proposal: "'I cannot bear it! Catherine, Catherine, I'm a traitor,too, and I dare not tell you! But leave me, and I shall be killed!". Then Heathcliff arrives and carries him (accompanied by Ellen and Catherine) back to the hearth of Wuthering Heights, where he is the only one that does not have to be locked up.
Those are his only excursions out of doors in the entire novel (unless you count his going from the Grange to the Heights when he first returns). Hareton has met with Catherine twice outside the house before Linton sees her once, like Heathcliff, he lives outside except when there is need to eat, sleep or overhear things. They both spend their time hunting, or 'lounging among the moors' as Ellen puts it. Linton never does get to lie "from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors" - that was just a dream of paradise.
''The implication is he got his money through non-respectable means (gambling and take advantage of foolish people), and that he has his new, upright bearing from time in the army.''
My point exactly. There is no reason being black could stop him from gaining wealth by these means.
''...and even says "if you were a regular black"''
Implying that he can be described as a non-regular black. In other words, she is really calling him black. She is not saying ''if you were black'' but ''if you were a REGULAR black''. The emphasize in the sentence is on him being irregular rather than him not being black.
''The whole point that he is not and they cannot pigeon-hole him into being an ex-slave, a mulatto, an Indian, etc. is what makes him so perplexing to a mid-victorian person''
Wuthering Heights starts in the Georgian era (around the 1770s) and ends in the Regency (1802, I believe), so this is no way set in the middle of the Victorian age.
I'll still stand by the view that there is no reason he cannot be black. He is dark and of at least a partially different ethnicity to the main characters, so I'd say that that makes him more likely to be at least part black than your usual Yorkshirian or Irish person (and I am only saying this because the Brontes (originally the Bruntys) were, of course, mostly Irish which is why I imagine the Earnshaws to be this too).
---------------------
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
The Regency properly began 5 February 1811 and ended 29 January 1820.
All the Brontes were born in the regency era (Anne, the youngest, only just - b. 17 Jan 1820, Maria, the oldest, b. April 1814)
However, the Regency Crisis (a political (but not parliamentary) debate that took place when George III became too mad to officially open parliament, that increased the power of parliament and reduced the influence of the throne) took place in 20 November 1788.
Because the French revolution (starting 1789), and its consequential wars (1793-1802,1803-1815) were so dominant an influence on the English political climate, some historians talk about "the Long Regency", meaning 1788-1820, so its not too far wrong to claim the novel was set in the Regency, although it would be more accurate to say 'late Georgian'.
I am not sure if atableofgreenfields was calling the characters, or the novel's first readers 'mid-victorian'. If the latter, fair enough, the novel is absolutely Victorian (although mid-Victorian would be the 1870's, and the early critics were horrified by Heathcliff's 'diabolical hate and vengence', describing him as 'a creature in whom every evil passion seems to have reached a gigantic excess','an incarnation of evil qualities; implacable hate, ingratitude, cruelty, falsehood, selfishness, and revenge.', dismissing him as an improbable and melodramatic character, inartistically drawn, or admitting such men 'have their warrent in the real annals of crime and suffering - but the contemplation of which true taste rejects' (that last review, from The Athenaeum Christmas 1847, implies that Ellis and Currer Bell are the same author (Newby only published Wuthering Heights after Jane Eyre had become a best seller), and a reference to 'the eccentricities of 'woman's fantasy' makes me suspect the critic might have found the 'power and cleverness' and 'truth to life' more commendable in a writer that was known to be categorically male.
None of the Victorian critics seemed to be bothered about Heathcliff's origins at all - the closest any come to even mentioning it, is by comparing him to the hero of Byron's Corsair. Of course, none of them were challenged with an image contrary to their own imagination. Their lack of curiosity might simply come down to that.
The earliest illustrated editions I have found were from the 1930's (Claire Leigh and Lee Balthus) - both of these have dark, but not unambiguously black Heathcliffs, with thick lips but thin noses - Ethiopian more than Indian, but possibly a thick-lipped, olive skinned European appearance. After 1939 the illustrations all start looking like Laurence and Merle (The chiseled jawline, cleft chin, barrel chest on Heathcliff, the pale oval face, low necklines and fine, dark, immaculately curled tresses for Cathy), but these two early illustrators (and Leigh in particular) might have inspired Gregg Toland's Oscar winning cinematography.
I like the idea that Heathcliff is being represented as a vampire - is that your own idea? (and if not, could you give me the source?)
''The Regency properly began 5 February 1811 and ended 29 January 1820.
All the Brontes were born in the regency era (Anne, the youngest, only just - b. 17 Jan 1820, Maria, the oldest, b. April 1814). However, the Regency Crisis (a political (but not parliamentary) debate that took place when George III became too mad to officially open parliament, that increased the power of parliament and reduced the influence of the throne) took place in 20 November 1788.
Because the French revolution (starting 1789), and its consequential wars (1793-1802,1803-1815) were so dominant an influence on the English political climate, some historians talk about "the Long Regency", meaning 1788-1820, so its not too far wrong to claim the novel was set in the Regency, although it would be more accurate to say 'late Georgian'. ''
Your history is very sound, and with the complexities of history probably correct, but many people date the longer ''Regency era''from around 1795 to 1837, a lot longer than the Regency proper and the model you have also used, obviously. The setting of the last part of the novel is 1802, I believe, which is what would be called the Regency period using the 1790s-1830s idea (which I'd argue to be based on cultural, fashion, architecture trends etc. though the fashion, roughly, last through the 1840s in the case of things like dress coats). I prefer the use of ''Regency'' for the 1790s and 1800s myself as opposed to late Georgian as the trends of the 1790s to the 1830s was more alike in many ways than that of the 1770s to the 1790s, though, as is natural, there is a transition from the 1780s to 1795, and the Regency was, of course, very much formed by the spirit of the American and French Revolutions. Of course, I am speaking of British history mostly as France was a bit ahead of the curb, and so was the United States in many ways, such as fashion, which was closer aligned to France... hence both had the ''Directoire'' fashion earlier than the UK. The directoire is, to many eyes, pretty much the same as the ''Empire style'' fashion of Beau Brummell and the Prince Regent (usually called ''Regency style'' in the UK and ''Federal style'' in the US), though it does have some marked differences (especially for women). You obviously take an interest in this era, tam seiche, so I probably would not have to do say all that, but directoire and empire fashion are hobbies of mine.
As for Heathcliff being represented as vampire... I did become aware of the similarities independently (well, with a group of friends) but I cannot take credit for being the originator of that view as I am sure it has been a suggestion for some time, though maybe not as mainstream as other views. If you do not find the sources before I do, I'll try to post them by tonight. Of course, in the novel, Heathcliff is actually suspected of being a vampire by Nelly, I believe.
---------------------
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
[deleted]