Opening the text

The Key to the Brontë Works: The Key to Charlotte Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights,' 'Jane Eyre,' and her other works.Malham-Dembleby, John

General

The Key to the Brontë Works: The Key to Charlotte Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights,' 'Jane Eyre,' and her other works.

Name: The Key to the Brontë Works: The Key to Charlotte Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights,' 'Jane Eyre,' and her other works.
Author: Malham-Dembleby, John

Malham-Dembleby, John

Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855; Brontë, Emily, 1818-1848

Having herself suffered thus, there was a temptation--at what I
elsewhere call the dark season of Charlotte Brontë's inner life, at the
season of the recoil--to present in her work _Wuthering Heights_ the
Yorkshire-Héger with the hypochondria of her Yorkshire model, and let
his demon be the original of her Catherine Earnshaw--be herself. To this
temptation Charlotte Brontë gave no opposition, much to her regret
later. Herewith we have the origin of Heathcliffe's miserable
hypochondria and monomania--his digging for Catherine in the grave till
his spade scraped the coffin, in _Wuthering Heights_, Chap. XXIX., and
his saying because his "preternatural horror" always haunted, but never
abided with him:--

    "She showed herself, ... a devil to me! And, since then ... I've
    been the sport of that intolerable torture! Infernal--keeping my
    nerves at such a stretch that, if they had not resembled catgut,
    they would long ago have relaxed.... It racked me! I've groaned
    aloud.... It was a strange way of killing! not by inches, but by
    fractions of hairbreadths, ... through eighteen years!" Mr.
    Heathcliffe paused, ... his hair wet with perspiration, ... the
    brows not contracted, but raised next the temples; diminishing the
    grim aspect of his countenance, but imparting a peculiar look of
    trouble, and a painful appearance of mental tension towards one
    absorbing subject.

In the light of the foregoing, therefore, we may understand the truth of
Charlotte Brontë's narration in _The Professor_, Chap. XXIII.:--

    My nerves ... jarred ... A horror of great darkness fell upon me;
    I felt my chamber invaded by one I had known formerly, ... I was
    ... a prey to hypochondria. She had been ... my guest ... before
    ... for a year.... I had her to myself in secret; she lay with me,
    she ate with me, showing me nooks in woods, hollows in hills,
    where we could sit together, and where she could drop her drear
    veil over me, and so hide sky and sun, grass and green tree;
    taking me entirely to her death-cold bosom and holding me with
    arms of bone. What tales she would tell me at such hours!... How
    she would discourse to me of her own country--the grave.... I was
    glad when ... I could ... sit ... freed from the dreadful tyranny
    of my demon.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

The Key to the Brontë Works: The Key to Charlotte Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights,' 'Jane Eyre,' and her other works.Malham-Dembleby, John

General

The Key to the Brontë Works: The Key to Charlotte Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights,' 'Jane Eyre,' and her other works.

Malham-Dembleby, John

Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855; Brontë, Emily, 1818-1848

Having herself suffered thus, there was a temptation--at what I
elsewhere call the dark season of Charlotte Brontë's inner life, at the
season of the recoil--to present in her work _Wuthering Heights_ the
Yorkshire-Héger with the hypochondria of her Yorkshire model, and let
his demon be the original of her Catherine Earnshaw--be herself. To this
temptation Charlotte Brontë gave no opposition, much to her regret
later. Herewith we have the origin of Heathcliffe's miserable
hypochondria and monomania--his digging for Catherine in the grave till
his spade scraped the coffin, in _Wuthering Heights_, Chap. XXIX., and
his saying because his "preternatural horror" always haunted, but never
abided with him:--

    "She showed herself, ... a devil to me! And, since then ... I've
    been the sport of that intolerable torture! Infernal--keeping my
    nerves at such a stretch that, if they had not resembled catgut,
    they would long ago have relaxed.... It racked me! I've groaned
    aloud.... It was a strange way of killing! not by inches, but by
    fractions of hairbreadths, ... through eighteen years!" Mr.
    Heathcliffe paused, ... his hair wet with perspiration, ... the
    brows not contracted, but raised next the temples; diminishing the
    grim aspect of his countenance, but imparting a peculiar look of
    trouble, and a painful appearance of mental tension towards one
    absorbing subject.

In the light of the foregoing, therefore, we may understand the truth of
Charlotte Brontë's narration in _The Professor_, Chap. XXIII.:--

    My nerves ... jarred ... A horror of great darkness fell upon me;
    I felt my chamber invaded by one I had known formerly, ... I was
    ... a prey to hypochondria. She had been ... my guest ... before
    ... for a year.... I had her to myself in secret; she lay with me,
    she ate with me, showing me nooks in woods, hollows in hills,
    where we could sit together, and where she could drop her drear
    veil over me, and so hide sky and sun, grass and green tree;
    taking me entirely to her death-cold bosom and holding me with
    arms of bone. What tales she would tell me at such hours!... How
    she would discourse to me of her own country--the grave.... I was
    glad when ... I could ... sit ... freed from the dreadful tyranny
    of my demon.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The Key to the Brontë Works: The Key to Charlotte Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights,' 'Jane Eyre,' and her other works.

The Key to the Brontë Works: The Key to Charlotte Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights,' 'Jane Eyre,' and her other works.

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