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Introduction

The Bronts have proved to be some of the most popular English novelists

because of the mysterious and harmonious blending between human feelings and non-

human elements of creation that are illustrated into the fictional story of their lonely and

tragic lives. The theme of death was familiar in the writings of the children as they had

access to the same spring of experiences, growing up near the church and the cemetery

always mourning for a member of the family. The children were used to read romantic

literature which was overwhelmed by the themes of the ruins and of the graves.

The present work illustrates the way in which the three Bront sisters explored

their lives and inner feelings and created novels, using their own experiences and the

stories they have heard, depicting the degradation of the human being, the aspects of

thwarted love and justice, the humiliation of the lower class by the burgeois, and other

fundamental problems of the nineteenth century Victorian society. The oppressive social

ideas and practices of the Victorian society are presented through the dark sides and the

diabolical aspects revealed by the actions of the characters.

The first chapter tackles the presence of evil in society. The social, religious,

economical and familial barriers depicted in the works of the sisters concern mostly the

degrading of the human being in the burgeois society. Hypocrisy, deceit, selfishness,

physical and moral violence, gossip are only some of the flaws of the society in which the

young and naive men with no experience of life fall into debauchery and embrace a life

full of vices.

Chapter two, entitled Superstitions, illustrates how the sisters used the sources

of their stories, that came from their aunt who spoke about faithful knights, princesses

locked up in towers and fights between good and evil and from their father and family

servant Tabby, who used to tell them horrible and scary stories from the Irish and local

folklore that was full of weirdness, witches, elves and ghosts that came to life in front of

the children who listened intensely while the wind blew wildly outside their windows.

These sources represented a strong frame that sustained the eerie backgrounds of the

stories. The presence of the ghosts, the superstitions related to dreams and the influences

of a dark activity like sorcery give the novels a mysterious atmosphere.

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In chapter three, entitled Sickness, the moral and physical degradation of a

person is presented along with the whole process of it, the loss of mental and physical

health and the influences that this has upon the lives of those around. Patrick Branwell

used to sit all day long in a tavern, drinking all his fathers and sisters money out and

then returned home with his eyes injected by the quantity of alcohol that he had

consumed. He became a decrepit, a mad-man, a real burden and source of sufferings for

his family and inspired the creation of his sisters male characters Heathcliff, Hindley

Earnshaw, Edward Rochester, and Arthur Huntingdon.

Chapters four and five, entitled The Halls and Characters, deal with spaces

and their occupants. Charlotte described in her novel desolate landscapes, ruins,

supernatural entities and some pieces of phenomenon which contributed to the creation of

a sense of psychological suspense and tension. The succession of steps that Jane Eyre

takes in order to know herself in her quest for love and kinship are placed in different

locations that reiterate the motif of the horrible events of the red room. The traditional

Gothic is present in Jane Eyre and has been noted along the novel from the terror the

main character suffered in childhood at Gateshead and Lowood School to the

mysteriously threatening sights and acts along with the sounds that reveal the presence of

a malevolent spirit.

Wuthering Heights is a place created in such a way that it could sustain the titanic

force of Heathcliff, being submerged in darkness, breathing hatred, fear and horror. The

house and its cold and piercing atmosphere is set in contrast with the wild moors that

surround it. The characters that interested the work are Heathcliff, Edward Rochester,

Bertha Mason and Arthur Huntingdon.

Charlotte Bronts novels contain a certain delicacy intermingled with passion

and the subtle essence of originality which is diffused through the substance of the

emotions1. Under her own strict discipline, Charlotte turned instinctively to an

expression that revealed herself. Charlottes favorite motifs are presented throughout her

novels in a way that bears the mark of her own experiences: the situation of the woman

who has no property, the dreary prospect of becoming a governess and the yearning for

love. Her anguish came from a too deep introspective view.

1 An Anthology of Critical Approaches to the Victorian Novel, Galea Ioana, Craciun Mircea, Cluj-Napoca,

1987. p.85.

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Anne Bront also used her own experiences at home, with her brother and

sisters, and as a governess. Everyday detail was presented in her writings mingled with

the feelings and reactions of the characters towards it, and this created the plot of her

stories. Her eyes are always upon the story itself, upon the relations that were created

between the characters. As she said in the preface of the second edition of The Tenant of

Wildfell Hall, she is interested in rendering the truth, although the story has to deal with

vicious characters:

But when we have to do with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to

depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear.1

Emily Bront seemed to have been the target of a malicious prerogative as her

short life was mostly unhappy. Her moral purity stayed intact but her perspectives upon

life and destiny gave her a profound view to the abyss of Evil.

As she rarely left the Yorkshire vicarage which was set at the countryside, in the land of

the heath, her novel depicts the solitary and wild moors as a background for the outbursts

of her titanic characters. It is known that the three Bront sisters, in the austerity of the

vicarage, lived in a frenzy of literary creativity. Although the sisters were close to each

other, Emily kept her moral solitude in which developed the ghosts of her imagination.

One can imagine her like a ticking bomb that only exploded in literature. Her writings

were the instruments through which she released the darkness and the sorrow from the

depths of her soul and from the abyss from which all her inner feelings burst out in all the

forms of evil and sickness.

The marriages at the end of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of

Wildfell Hall represent the victory of felling and love over the tragic: The Bronts

tremendous displacement of the domestic values toward the tragic and mythical, gives

their work a margin of superiority over that of other Victorian novelists.2

Chapter 1

1 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bront, Penguin Popular Classics edition, England, 1994, p. 13-14.2 An Anthology of Critical Approaches to the Victorian Novel, Galea Ioana, Craciun Mircea, Cluj-Napoca,

1987. p.103.

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Evil in society

The Bront family is seen as a social unity with tight bounds between its

members, to which others have no access and which was strongly marked by religiousand social tensions as well as by personal discordances.

As Charlotte Bront and her sisters lived in the austere rectory at Haworth, her

characters had limited occupations and were not that diverse as those of Jane Austens

characters which had many facets and complex personalities. Charlottes novels present

pictures of everyday life, whose spirit is contaminated by stings and which pleads for

truth, no matter how unpleasant it was. Anne Bront shared the same preferences in this

matter and this is best seen, along her novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, in the preface of

the second edition: I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to

those who are able to receive it. () Let it not be imagined, however, that I consider

myself competent to reform the errors and abuses of society, but only that I would fain

contribute my humble quota towards so good an aim () But when we have to do with

vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as

they would wish to appear () and when I feel it my duty to speak an unpalatable truth,

with the help of God, I will speak it.1 Charlotte Bront is concerned with revealing the

truth about her own feelings, which are never questioned for this very motif. She can

handle irony whenever she pleases; she constructed a satirical image of the society from

the continent. Like in a recipe, Charlotte adds a tumult of agitated, desolated and feverish

feelings that gives the novel the scent of a secret and mysterious life and makes it appeal

to our senses.

Emily Bront, on the other hand, succeeded in presenting through her characters

the freedom of the spirit and the independence of the thought, of the need to speak ones

mind. She finds a way to escape from the sorrows of daily life and from her solitary

thoughts by walking through her beloved wild moors. The moors are the place where all

her mysterious inner thoughts burst out and reshape themselves in the process of a kind

of revenge against the forms of evil from the society, from her family and from religion

as well.Emily often ran away from those around her into the wild moors or on the top of

1 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bront, Penguin Popular Classics edition, England, 1994, p. 13-14.

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from the human form, will be free to walk over earth and complete each other wherever

they please.

The values that ruled the society of that time sustained the possibility that a man

can do almost everything he pleases whereas for the women was almost impossible to do

so. From the moment Isabella Linton eloped with Heathcliff, she became bound to him

and to his estate, and finding herself in a desperate and unbearable situation, she made

her way out of the novel by running away from the Heights. Tyrannized by Heathcliff

and rejected by her own brother she finds a place for herself to live the rest of her life and

to give birth to her child. She is remarkable for her courage and strength to run away

from the demonic husband she had and from the world in which she blindly had thrown

herself.

In what concerns Jane Eyre, it is noticeable the fact that she remained faithful to

her moral values, having a young inexperienced spirit, who relied on her own judgement

and her common sense, being exasperated by the injustice, humiliation and hypocrisy

from the Reed house and from Lowood. The character of Jane Eyre is used as a

raisonneuse because she has the spirit of a revolted slave who used her observation

abilities in order to illustrate the workings of a sick society using rationale and natural

arguments.

1.1 Church as a representative of evilSome of the most dark pages of Jane Eyre were written by Charlotte with an

intense fury towards the place run by reverend Carus Wilson, where so many human lives

were left there. This school was placed in a swamped valley surrounded by a dark and

thick forest. This appearance of the school did not matter as much as the way in which

the girls were treated there. The cold and inanition were used in order to implement a

pious education in the souls of the poor children. The Lowood Asylum that Charlotte

presented in Jane Eyre was mostly inspired by the Cowan Bridge School where she spent

a number of unhappy and miserable years. Her sisters, Maria and Elisabeth, contracted

there the consumption of which they died. This charity school was dreadful for its cruel

ways of teaching the girls, for its humiliating and destroying their bodies through

inhuman conditions of living.

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Throughout the novel, Jane tries to find a way to conceal both the needs of her

body and the necessities of her soul. In Lowood she encounters two of the three main

figures of religion: Mr. Brocklehurst and Helen Burns. Each of these two models of

religion Jane dismays as she develops her own idea regarding faith and religion. Charlotte

Bront created Mr. Brocklehurst in order to present the hypocrisies of the Evangelical

Movement. Thus he purges the girls of their pride through a rhetoric of Evangelicalism

and through privations (of food, clothes and other basic elements necessary for a girl-s

development) and humiliations, like in the episode when he unjustly punished Jane for

being a liar by leaving her on a stool an entire day without food, rest or a single word

from the rest of her mates:

This girl, this child, the native of a Christian land, worse than many a little

heathen who says its prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut this girl

is a liar!1

Also, the food was never sufficient for the girls to ease their hunger and even the

small amount of food they received was worse than that given to the pigs:

I perceived I had got in hand a nauseous mess - burned porridge is almost as

bad as rotten potatoes; famine itself soon sickens over it.2

Besides this hygiene of an almost exterminating diet, there were also the punishments

meant to educate the girls and form obedient characters out of the growing characters of

the little girls. For all these, the girls had to be very grateful, understanding that each

moment of their meaningless lives depended on the enormous sacrifice of Mr.

Brocklehurst who provided for their needs out of his own generosity. Along with the

lack of food there were no clothes and no heat to make that place more endurable for this

was the method that Brocklehust used in order to make the girls humble and submitted to

his principles of piety towards God:

A change had taken place in the weather the preceding night, and a keen north-

west wind, whistling through the crevices of our bedroom windows all night

long, had made us shiver in our beds, and turned the contents of the ewers into

ice.3

1 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, vol. 1, p 75.2 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, vol. 1, p. 50.3 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, vol. 1, p. 58.

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Thus the girls were never rested, nor healthy, but ever starving and shivering

behind corners. The money the school received from donations was never used in the

purpose they had but always served as a means of enriching Mr. Brocklehurst. His

proscriptions are difficult to follow and even some members of the teaching staff disobey

the rules and act in favor of the girls, as Miss Temple does. His hypocritical support of

his own wealthy family is best seen in the pompous scene where his wife and daughters

visit the school, all dressed in the most luxurious and finest dresses the girls have ever

seen. All these were at the expense of the Lowood pupils and this unjustness is

marvelously illustrated by Charlottes weariness of the Evangelical Movement. As he

was a stingyman and eager to have even more money, the children had poor and unfitted

clothes to protect them from the whirling chillness of that area:

Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold; we had no

boots, the snow got into our shoes and melted there; our ungloved hands

became numbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet () it was a

torture thrusting the swelled, raw and stiff toes into the shoes in the morning1 .

This contributed to the fact that many girls with dry and pale skin, thin ones, got sick and

soon died.

Emily rarely went to church for she was indifferent to religion and even refused to

teach in the Sunday School; this became a reason for the people of the parsonage to

gossip about the parsons daughter that refused to do these things. Emily perceived the

term of religion in matters that concerned a private relation between God and oneself, for

God hears ones pray not coming from inside a church but from inside ones soul. She

reflected this through Joseph, the spokesman of orthodoxy in the novel. His first portrait

is made by Nelly Dean, who was also one of the children whom he had thrown his curses

on:

He was, and is yet, most likely the wearisomest self-righteous Pharisee that

ever ranksacked a Bible to rake the promises to himself and fling the curses on

his neighbors.2

He is the one that always punishes the children for their misdeeds in the name if

his religion. He is sure that his strict punishments and sometimes harsh words will make

1 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, vol. 1, p. 67.2 Wuthering Heights, Emily Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1994, p. 36.

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the children fear not to go to hell. In fact his influence over them gets to such an extent

that they do not believe that heaven was made for them because all they hear from Joseph

is that they are doomed for ever for their mischief. Each time that he opens his mouth in

order to speak he does not say a thing without mentioning our holly Lord, or at least some

worthy saints. He considers himself better than any other around him and he even has no

doubt that he has his place reserved in heaven for he spreads the word from the Bible.

Lockwood amused himself by reading from one of Cathys filled blank pages of her

books, an excellent passage about Joseph, a rudely one but powerfully sketched:

All day had been flooding with rain; we could not go to church, so Joseph must

needs get up a congregation in the garret; and, while Hindley and his wife

basket downstairs before a comfortable fire doing nothing but reading the

Bible, Ill answer for it Heathcliff, myself and the unhappy ploughboy were

commanded to take our Prayer-books, and mount. We were ranged in a row, on

a sack of corn, groaning and shivering, and hoping that Joseph would shiver too,

so that he might give us a short homily for his own sake. A vain idea! The

service lasted precisely three hours.1

In his view you are either one of the church devoted people or you are damned to a

terrifying afterlife. For Heathcliff and Cathy religion does not have so much relevance.

They never learned parts of the Bible by heart because they had some sort of inclination

towards it but because they were obliged by Joseph and the parson that came once in a

while to the Heights. The reason why they subdued to such occupations it was because

they had no choice. But there were occasions when, sensing a new punishment coming

from Joseph for one of their mischief, they ran and wandered through the moors. The

terms of heaven and hell were defined in their conscience as states of ones spirit

regarding the separation from the other.

1.2 Hypocrisy

The bourgeois adopted an appearance of conformity and decency as Ileana

Galea writes in her History of English Literature The Victorian Novel, and this

appearance could be seen as a mask, a symbol of the double. The ugly soul and the

1 Wuthering Heights, Emily Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1994, p. 19.

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wickedness and evil that lie inside one, were veiled behind the most decent and soft

canvases. The violent moods of Emilys characters, along with the language she uses to

describe the terrifying events contribute to the process of revealing the problems caused

by the confusion of what one need in life and by the conflict and divided loyalty between

groups of people.

As Heathcliff is forced to leave Cathy at the Grange, she remains there for five

weeks during which she transforms into a lady and she learns how to control a part of her

anterior unfit behaviors and outbursts. This irreversible process is the starting point of

Heathcliff and Catherines drama. Hindley also senses the space that has formed between

the two previous best friends and does everything he can to make it even wider by using

every situation to humiliate him in comparison to his sister. Hindley stresses the fact that

Heathcliffs place is with the rest of the servants and does not allow him to make any

attempt to get closer to Cathy:

Keep the fellow out of the room send him into the garret till dinner is over.

Hell be cramming his fingers in the tarts and stealing the fruit, if left alone with

them a minute. () Be gone, you vagabond!1

To make the gap between the even bigger, Hingley has deprived him of any means of

becoming educated. During one year, Heathcliff has become unsocialized and his only

value and sense of defining himself in opposition to the others, and even in opposition to

Catherine is his determination of remaining free from the boundaries imposed by civility.

Then personal appearance sympathized with mental deterioration; he acquired

a slouching gait and ignoble look; his naturally reserved disposition was

exaggerated into an almost idiotic excess of unsociable moroseness; and he took

a grim pleasure, apparently, in exciting the aversion rather than the esteem of

his few acquaintances.2

Catherine is such a hypocrite when she chooses to show this lady-like character of

hers around the Lintons, denying her real self, and her untamed personality with

Heathcliff, when she speaks to him or to anyone from inside the house:

In the place where she had heard Heathcliff termed a

and , she took care not to act like him; but at home she had

1 Wuthering Heights, Emily Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1994, p. 49.2 Wuthering Heights , Emily Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1994, p. 57.

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small inclination to practice politeness that would only be laughed at and

restrain an unruly nature when it would bring her neither credit nor praise.1

As Nelly relates to Lockwood, Catherine was very proud and that she tried many times to

vex her in order to bring down her arrogance and to make her choose between this double

standard in which she lived.

Charlotte also illustrates hypocrisy through the master of the Lowood School, Mr.

Brocklehurst who preaches a doctrine of privation while stealing from the schools

founds to support his luxurious lifestyle. This aspect is also treated by Charles Dickens in

Oliver Twist and is best seen in the scene where little Oliver is sent to ask from the

masters of the workhouse more food. These are presented by the author sitting at a table

and feasting themselves with the finest dishes and specialties, while in contrast with them

are the starving boys of the house. Mr. Brocklehurst adopts the attitude of a man of God

that preaches His word and who believes himself the one that guides the girls from the

school on the right path to the Garden of Eden by privation of some better conditions of

life for them. His plan is not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to

render them hardy, patient and self-denying(page 70). Meanwhile he does not apply the

same principles for himself and for his family as his wife and daughters for their

appearance mesmerized the poor girls of the school:

They ought to have come a little sooner to have heard his lecture on dress for

they were splendidly attired in velvet, silk and furs. The two younger of the trio

(fine girls of sixteen and seventeen) had gray beaver hats, then in fashion,

shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful headdress

fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled; the elder lady was enveloped

in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with ermine, and she wore a false front of

French curls.2

1.3 Violence

Among her sisters, Emily Bront was the one that illustrated and transmitted best

her feelings and beliefs, along with everything she perceived around her. Her only novel

is a through and through spring of evil and violence. The first terrifying scene from which

1 Wuthering Heights, Emily Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1994, p. 56.2 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, volume 1,Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, p. 72-73.

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violence is at its home and to which the reader is a witness is full of superstition elements

presented in contrast with a social and cultural background. It is referred to the first and

also last night that the tenant of Thrushcross Grange spends at the Heights. It was a

surprise and a shock for every reader the way in which Lockwood reacted to the visit of

Cathys ghost. His barbaric and violent treatment of the waif was a result of a primary

instinct: fear and self-defense.

The action is symbolic in the way in which society makes its point clear that it is

the one that holds tightly the grip of the course of a large ship that is sailing on dangerous

and deep waters. This ship represents our own life and its tumultuous situations that arise

within us complex debates upon the matter of self-esteem, priorities and rules that must

be obeyed. To balance the scale, society acts brutally on nature and on all it stands for: I

pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and

soaked the bed clothes.(p. 23). This treatment is echoed also in the scene where

Heathcliff comes at the Heights late in the night after his wanderings on the moors and

finds the doors locked by Hindley who planed to kill the fiend:

() he flung himself on Earnshaws weapon and wrenched it from his grasp.

The charge exploded. And the knife, in springing back, closed into its owners

wrist. Heathcliff pulled it away by main force, slitting up the flesh as it passed

on, and thrust it dripping into his pocket. () The ruffian kicked and trampled

on him, and dashed his head repeatedly against the flag. () 1

Heathcliff gained access in the house after slitting the flesh of Hindley and after knocking

down the window through which the two had the fight. The brutal force that was required

here is similar to that which Lockwood used to prevent the entrance of the wife in his

room through the window, similar to the ferociousness of culture and society over nature.

Violence is found as well in the cultivated milieu of the Grange although it is not

as well embodied in brute force like in the Heights. Violence is represented here through

veiled vocabulary and expressions that are deep cutters once spit out. Old Mr. and Mrs.

Linton were the first ones that attacked Heathcliff the night when the two children

ventured to the Linton estate. Although they commited the same deed, the attitude of the


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Lintons was taken under the prejudices imposed by their rank. The masters of the hall

discriminated the boy because of the color of his skin and because of his features:

Dont be afraid, it is but a boy yet the villain scowls so plainly in his face;

would it not be a kindness to the country to hand him at once, before he shows

his nature in acts as well as features?1

Another important key factor that determined the old Lintons to apply such a rough

treatment to Heathcliff was also his way of using language. He admitted to Nelly that he

vociferated curses enough to annihilate any fiend in Christendom (p. 42), and that after

Mrs. Linton considered him quite unfit for a decent house and told him that he is so

foul-mouthed he let his mind speak by grumbling execrations and vengeance. The

reader is aware of the situation in which Heathcliff found himself and justifies his actions

and his harsh directness because what he perceived there was the aggressiveness of the

Lintons language and he knew that the truth was on his side. They managed to transform

and induce all the violence they needed to achieve their purpose and follow their believes

through the sophisticated and socialized language they used.

This scene is echoed later in the novel when Heathcliff returns from his long and

mysterious wanderings through the world and pays a visit at the Grange to the new Mr.

and Mrs. Linton. The reader is impressed by the new status and condition of Heathcliff:

nobody knows how wealthy he is and he is dressed and acts just like a proper gentleman.

We are presented with the idea that culture and social influence has a positive, yet

dangerous, side. As Mengham Rod sustains in his critical outlook Emily Bront

Wuthering Heights, cultures advantage over nature is the ability to clothe in a moderate

form, what would be too extreme if expressed directly. (p. 41). In this way Heathcliffs

appearance at the Grange gives to the reader the false impression that his character is also

changed. But on the contrary, he is even more dangerous than before his departure

because he has learned all he could from the world outside the moors, he has learned to

think like Edgar does. The influence of society over nature is not a genuine one as

Heathcliff uses it to revenge on all those that made him suffer in a way or another. He is a

threat even when he speaks. The tension that rises from the discussion between the three


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persons is stressed also by the differences that arise from the way in which Linton and

Heathcliff use the language:

Your presence is a moral poison that would contaminate the most virtuous

for that cause, and to prevent worse consequences, I shall deny you, hereafter,

admission into this house, and give notice, now, that I require your instant

departure. Three minutes delay will render it involuntary and ignominious.1

The way in which Edgar uses language makes one believe that it is only veiled savagery

and violence. The words he uses are of reference to the fact that he is a member of

Justice, a magistrate and are spoken as a sentence to a criminal. Just as old Mr. and Mrs.

Linton used their socialized vocabulary to attack Heathcliff, so does Edgar, by adding a

hint at a possible involvement of a physical action (the threat of throwing the guest out by

force). Heathcliffs response to this affront is rather blunt but denotes a powerful desire

of defiance and a strong will and determination for getting whatever he wants:

Cathy, this lamb of yours threatens like a bull! It is in danger of splitting its

skull against my knuckles. By God, Mr. Linton, Im mortally sorry that you are

not worth knocking down!

The way in which Heathcliff uses language in here denotes the many aspects of it: he

mocks Edgar in his face by alluding to his weak character; he is sure of his own strength

and spiritual superiority; he knows perfectly well what are his priorities, what is that he

wants; he knows that the power of his words are enough to tame the little bull which is

trampled on figuratively by the two lovers who humiliate him:

2

Hindley is seen even from the beginning of the story as a social climber. When

old Mr. Earnshaw asks his children what is that they want him to buy for them, Hindleys

preference is shown toward a violin, a symbol of culture. He is sent to school and returns

home with a wife and with the prejudices of the society that formed him as a gentleman.

1 Wuthering Heights, Emily Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1994, p. 94.2 Wuthering Heights, Emily Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1994, p. 95.

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He was ambitious and wanted to be more than just a boy raised on a farm. But Wuthering

Heights does not become a place where culture dominates even he makes the necessary

arrangements in the hall so as to make it resemble a gentlemans house. His tyrannical

behavior and the loss of respect for every one else except his wife and sister takes him on

the path of degradation. After the death at birth of his wife he becomes even more like a

suppressor of his own family and employers, in special with Heathcliff to whom he

showed no mercy:

For himself, he grew desperate: his sorrow was of that kind that will not

lament. He neither wept nor prayed; he cursed and defied execrated God and

man and gave himself up to reckless dissipation. The servants could not bear his

tyrannical and evil conduct long. () His treatment of Heathcliff was enough to

make a fiend of a saint. And, truly, it appeared as if the lad were possessed of

something diabolical at that period. He delighted to witness Hindley degrading

himself past redemption, and became daily more notable for savage sullenness

and ferocity.1

Charlotte Bronts novel Jane Eyre shows a less predominant inclination towards

violence but the scenes where it is present are marvelously described emphasizing the

inner feelings and thoughts of the main character. At Gateshead, Jane was punished so

often by her aunt Reed and humiliated and hurt by her cousin John that she desperately

dreamed of living in one of those wild an wonderful places she saw in the pictures of the

books from the library:

He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in the week, nor once or

twice a day, but continually. Every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of

flesh on my bones shrank when he came near.2

This treatment of John and her mean aunt with appalling cruelty towards the young girl

made her feeling alienated, exiled and ostracized. As she developed a sense of self- worth

and dignity, it is of wonder how she can endure to stay in front of her cruel cousin

knowing that he will finally strike her for an imagined reason. But her need to express

herself when a unjustness was made to her makes its way out in a way or another:

1 Wuthering Heights, Emily Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1994, p. 55.2 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, volume 1, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, p. 8.

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The volume was flung, it hit me and I fell, striking my head against the door

and cutting it. The cut bleed, the pain was sharp and my terror had passed its

climax; other feelings succeeded. I said.

() I really saw in him a tyrant, a murderer.1

Later in the novel, when finding herself in the residence of Rochester, she senses the

mysterious and also threatening presence of a person, which she believes to be Grace

Poole. Bertha Mason, the one to whom all the misdeeds belong to, is violence is person.

All her acts have a destructive purpose as her rage is toward oppressive social and gender

norms. She is presented in contrast with Jane and can also be seen as the outward

manifestation of Janes inner fire and unexpressed feelings and fears. This is tackled in

the way in which Bertha sets on fire Rochesters bed and also burns to the ground the hall

representing a state of submission to which Jane doesnt want to fall under. Berthas

madness and probably her revolt against her family that threw her in a loveless marriage,

makes her attack even her brother, Richard when he attempts to see her.

< She bit me!> he murmured < She worried me like a tigress, when Rochester

got the knife from her. () She sucked the blood. She said shed drain my

heart!>2

This violent action towards someone so close to her can be explained by her untamed

nature and her need to revenge on those that put her into the situation of being imprisoned

both in the room of the third store and in the boundaries of her madness - and to

Rochester or to the institution of marriage.

Violence in Annes novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall springs out of jealousy and

hatred. Mr. Markham reacts aggressively to whoever speaks badly of his secretly loved

Helen even to his own brother which teases him from time to time. As the local gossip

started to make him question the status of his beloved and after a misinterpretation of her

relation with Frederick Lawrence, Gilbert becomes more and more sensitive to anything

1 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, volume 1, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, p. 9.2 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, volume 1, p. 246.

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that could remind him of Helens so called falseness and deception. As his own brother

protests, not understating the situation, Gilbert easily unleashes the rage that burns inside

of him on those around him: The other day he nearly fractured my skull for singing a

pretty inoffensive love song, on purpose to amuse him.(page 94) The broken hearted

man acted violently even against Lawrence for interfering between the relation he had

with Helen and barely hold his grip on himself.

I grasped my whip with more determined energy than before but still forbore to

raise it, and rode on in silence, waiting for some tangible cause of offence,

before I opened the flood-gates of my soul, and poured out the dammed up fury

that was foaming and swelling within.1

He consumed himself, as the author emphasizes his inner thoughts and feelings, and he

exploded like a bomb under pressure by striking his friend down his horse. This action

may be seen as a rightful and deserved one by the supposed false friend of his, but it must

be considered the fact that Gilbert knew nothing about the circumstances in which the

two deceivers knew themselves or the status of their relationship (which was one of

brother and sister) and also the fact that attacking Lawrence without notice was a

cowardly thing to do.

He said no more, for, impelled by some fiend at my elbow. I had seized my

whip by the small end, and swift and sudden as a flash of lightning, brought the

other down upon his head. It was not without a feeling of savage satisfaction

that I beheld the instant, deadly pallor that overspread his face ()2

1.4 Social classes

The hierarchy of the late eighteenth century British society had at its top the

royalty, followed by the aristocracy, then by the gentry and last by the lower classes who

consisted of the great majority of the population, as members of the gentry. The

Earnshaws and the Lintons have a fragile social position within this hierarchy because

they held no titles. A man was considered to be a gentleman if he had large estates, many

tenants and servants, horses and carriages and if his money came from land or from

commercial activities. In Wuthering Heights, the characters are often motivated by the

1 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bront, Penguin Popular Classics edition, England, 1994, p. 98.2 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bront, Penguin Popular Classics edition, England, 1994, p. 98.

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considerations of class status. The best example is given by Catherine and her decision to

marry Edgar Linton in order to become the greatest woman of the neighborhood. The

Earnshaws are a step behind the Lintons, for they are farmers, they have less land than

the Lintons and do not have a carriage.

The shifting nature of social status is best seen through Heathclifs path. From a

homeless waif on the streets of Liverpool he becomes a little gentleman as he is adopted

by Mr. Earnshaw. Then he becomes a common laborer under Hindleys domination and

then he mysteriously becomes extremely wealthy and educated. This last status of his as a

gentleman is, in terms of Lockwood only in dress and manners for Heathcliff changed

only his appearance and not his character as well. More than this, he came back prepared

to put his plan of revenge in action and was even more dangerous because he assimilated

the workings of society and used them in achieving his purposes. The reason of

Heathcliffs departure from the Heights was that that he wanted to be worthy of Cathy,

wealthy and educated, so that he wouldnt degrade her, but as she had already married

Edgar in order to be the greatest woman from the area, his fortune and knowledge

served him in darker plans of revenge.

Charlotte Bronts novel Jane Eyre tackles the strict social hierarchy of the

Victorian England. The complex situation of governesses represents best the workings of

such a mechanism. Like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Janes ambiguous class status

is a source of extreme tension for the characters around her, which react differently to her

position.

Mr. Eshton, observing me, seemed to propose that I should be asked to join

them, but Lady Ingram instantly negatived the notion. 1

In that time, governesses were expected to posses the knowledge of the higher classes

of the aristocracy because their job was to tutor children in academics as well as is wais

of manners. Janes manners, knowledge of etiquette, sophistication and education give

her an air of aristocrat but her place in the social scale is clearly pointed out by other

around her, like Blanche Ingram and other guests at Thornfield Hall, for example. More

than this, as she was paid for being a governess, her status remained equal with that of the

1 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, volume 1, p. 211.

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servants of that house and did not gave her the independency she was looking for and did

not gave her the power she was dreaming of having over her life and actions. She

becomes aware of the fact that she is Rochesters intellectual equal but not his social

equal as she has no fortune and that through marriage, Rochester would need to

condescend to her level. In the end, Jane is opened a door through the inheritance from

her uncle and is able to marry Edward as his social equal.

1.5 Evil and meanness

The relationship between Heathcliff and Hindley is from the beginning described

as one of hatred. The first of them would probably turn out right if it werent for

Hindleys jealousy and fear that his position might be taken away from him. He saw

Heathcliff as a thief that stole away the love of his father and the money he possessed.

From there on, the treatment of Hindley to Heathcliff was one of an oppressor towards

his slave, for this is what he made of the waif: a servant around the house. Heathcliff

did not complained to such harsh treatment for his first motivation has seeing and

spending his free time with Cathy and second his conviction that he will take his revenge

sometime. The first significant scene between the two lads from which the hatred of one

and the patience and dealing of the matter of the other is best seen is the one of the

exchange of horses initiated by Heathcliff: said young Earnshaw. 1

Later on, after the death of old Mr. Earnshaw, as Hindley returned home from school

with his wife and became the master of the Heights, he immediately acted against

Heathcliff and treated him worse than the other servants of the house. His old hatred

came out with even more strength than when he was a boy and Heathcliffs too

developed another side which made him plan his revenge for not one but two generations

of the family.


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() Hindley became tyrannical. A few words from her [Hindleys wife],

evincing a dislike to Heathcliff, were enough to rouse in him all his old hatred

of the boy. He drove him off their company to the servants, deprived him of the

instructions of the curate, and insisted that he should labour out of doors instead,

compelling him to do so as hard as any other lad on the farm. 1

Later in the novel the reader witnesses an exchange of the social positions of the two

enemies: Heathcliff managed to subdue Hindley by lending him money for his debts at

gambles, money for which Hindley guaranteed with the hall. Thus, Hindleys social

position was equal to zero not only because he has lost his right to his estate but also

because of his degrading, loss of his wife, alcoholism and bad temper. He does become

useless but his hatred for the one because of which his life has no sense, reaches a climax

with his vain attempt in killing the ruffian. This becomes his only goal in his miserable

life along with a small hope that through the killing of Heathcliff, his estate will be

returned to him and later to his son mainly that it will all remain into the family and not

into the hands of an impostor and thief. One might consider Hindley to be right when

thinking things through his perspective; who wouldnt condemn and try to push aside an

intruder in the harmonious circle of a happy family? Emily Bront emphasized here also

the inner feelings and thoughts of the characters and it is clear that Hindley became

desperate and mentally and physically consumed by the loss of his family, wife and

estate.

he replied, pulling from his waistcoat a curiously constructed

pistol, having a double-edged spring knife attached to the barrel.


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this period bear the mark of his brutality and the violence with which he treats those

around him are either verbal or physical or both. As Hindley received most of his part of

revenge through the fact that he had no land or house to claim to be his own, nor had he

the son he wanted because Heathcliff instructed the little child to be a little devil himself

and vociferated curses each time he opened his mouth. The only major violent scene that

occurred between the two presented the strength of Heathcliff which apparently was

coming from an ardent murderous desire to knock out Hindley but not to kill him.

The ruffian kicked and trampled on him, and dashed his head repeatedly

against the flag. () There he tore off the sleeve of Earnshaws coat, and bound

up the wound with brutal roughness, spitting and cursing during the operation as

energetically as he had kicked before.1

Also the wild and proud young Catherine Linton gets her part from Heathcliffs overflow

of malignity and evil. Young, stubborn, nave and spoiled, Cathy listens to her heart

rather than to her fathers advice and gets herself trapped in a cob web from which she

can no longer escape. She learns on her own how to respond evil and meanness and often

stands Heathcliff up driving him mad with her hysterical:

Catherine was too intent on his fingers to notice his face. He opened them

suddenly and resigned the object of dispute; but ere she had well secured it, he

seized her with the liberated hand and pulling her on his knee, administered

with the other a shower of terrific slaps on both sides of her head, each

sufficient to have fulfilled his threat, had she been able to fall.2

Charlotte Bront created a bildungsroman and focused on the psychological

development and the construction of beliefs and principles in Jane Eyres inner self. This

leads to the fact that violence is not that much tackled here like in Emilys Wuthering

Heights. Jane becomes almost alienated from the world of Gateshead where she receives

a bad treatment from her aunt despite the fact that the letter made a death-bed promise to

raise Jane as her own child. After the tormenting and terrible episode with the red room

the reader can draw some lines regarding the character of Aunt Reed but the real deep

hatred she felt for the girl is seen only in the scenes of her last days. Jane is capable of


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forgiveness and breaks her promise of never returning to Gateshead in order to comply

with the wish of her sick aunt and tries to patch things up with her. Though through

delirium, the old woman is still full of hostility toward her late husbands favorite:

1

Also her cousins, with their never-ending spring of evil and meanness treat her with

appalling cruelty. The partiality of the servants is mostly in the favor of the lady of the

house but there are also cases when she receives a kind word from Bessie Lee who is

kind to her and tells her stories and sings her songs. The hardest thing for Jane is to

endure the everyday punishments of her cousin knowing that she has no one on this

world to care for her and that she is dependent on her cruel aunt.

All John Reeds violent tyrannies, all his sisters proud indifference, all his

mothers aversion, all the servants partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind

like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always suffering, always

browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned?2

Thus Jane feels like she does not have a place to call home or a feeling of true home and

flees Gateshead in a search of kindred spirits, autonomy and freedom. Later in the

novel, after Janes dreadful experience at Lowood, it is pointed out that there are

repercussions to this bad treatment she received during her life and that she is rather

accustomed to be treated rudely and with no consideration than with courtesy and warm

embraces. She shows herself timid and ashamed when meeting for the first time Mrs.

Fairfax who treats her like an honorable guest and finds herself at ease meeting the rider

and his black dog, who speaks coldly and dismisses her urgently.

If even this stranger gad smiled and been good humored to me when I

addressed him, if he had put off my offer of assistance gaily and with thanks, I

1 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, volume 2, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, p. 18.2 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, volume 1, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, p. 14.

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should have gone on my way and not felt any vocation to renew enquiries. But

the frown, the roughness of the traveler set me at my ease.1

The episode in which Jane recounts the visit of a group of friends of the master illustrates

the inner mechanisms and the deceitful shade that the upper classes possess. The position

of a governess in a house was seen as equal to that of the rest of the attendants and

servants. Charlotte explored and wrote from a critical perspective about the strict social

hierarchy of the Victorian England. Some of the guests Blanche Ingram and her mother

to be more precise- treat Jane with disdain and cruelty and amuse themselves and the

audience by mocking the position and fade character of all the governesses, making a

strong allusion to Jane herself.

() 2

As the entire society is bathing itself in evil and meanness through the behavior

and dirty thoughts and deeds of its inhabitants it is of no wonder that the entire novel is

dealing with Janes quest for a balance between her moral duty and the needs of her

body. The society in the middle of which she found herself rejected her and did not

recognized her qualities for it was driven by strict rules based on the principle of owning

money, power and a social position. After fleeing Thornfield, she finds herself bound to

the nature around her as to a mother and if it werent for the needs of her body meaning

hunger and thirst she would have overflowed with joy in the middle of this freedom,

fresh air, outside the vicious and full of evil circle of society:

Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I

was. And I who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung

to her with filial fondness.3

1 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, volume 1, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, p. 131.2 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, volume 1, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, p. 204-205.3 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, volume 2, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, p. 123.

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Annes almost overly polite and innocent novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,

treats the aspect of evil and meanness through the means of the gossip that arises and

spreads itself among the so called elite groups of society. These are mostly lies with a

malicious content made up in order to have something to talk about, something to amuse

oneself or just to find some excuse in order to prevent the access of one or another to

different opportunities. As Mrs. Graham took the tenancy of Wildfell Hall and gave no

details about the life she had before this, the ladies in special of the vicarage and of the

town began to plot in their minds about a possible scenario upon which they could

discuss and entertain themselves as their lives gave nothing special of the sort. As the

story is told from the perspective of young Mr. Markham, who is attached by the new

lady, it is no surprise the way in which he reacted hearing these pieces of gossip.

Meantime, my brain was on fire with indignation and my heart seemed ready

to burst from its prison with conflicting passions. I regarded my two fair

neighbors with a feeling of abhorrence and loathing I scarcely endeavored to

conceal.1

The meanness of the ladies, or at least the evil that comes from the one lady from

which all the gossip seems to spring, is generated by envy, jealousy and her inner bad and

filthy character. Miss Eliza turns out to provoke a series of stories that make Helen the

talk of the town. The many parties and dinners that were given from time to time by one

family or another served as a means to exchange new information and gossip as much as

it could, until the problem or matter was turned and analyzed from each angle. This

process had as a result a fierce look, some harsh words, indifference, rejection and even

humiliation, all being practiced including the vile slander and circulated throughout

the company of the circle, in the very presence of the victim.

Had the poison of detracting tongues already spread through all? And had they

all turned their backs upon her? I now recollected having seen Mrs. Wilson

edging her chair close up to my mother, and bending forward, evidently in the

delivery of some important, confidential intelligence. And from the incessant

wagging of her head, the frequent distortions of her wrinkled physiognomy, and

winking a malicious twinkle of her little ugly eye, I judged it was some spicy

1 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bront, Penguin Popular Classics edition, England, 1994, p. 72.

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piece of scandal that engaged her powers and from the cautious privacy of the

communication I supposed some person then present was the luckless object of

her calumnies.1

Self-possessed, surrounded by secrecy and having her small son with her, it is not

long before Helen finds herself the victim of the local slander. Stories about her arise as

fantasies, scenarios with different criminal shades, condemns of depravity and even

stories related to her religion. As even the priest of the town listens to these calumnies, it

is of no wonder that gossip has a major power in that society. Thus Helen receives an

unjust preach from Mr. Wilson after which she felt even more rejected and stressed out

than when she only perceived what happened behind her back. She is confining the story

of her secret life and confessing her inner feelings and her convictions to Gilbert, who is

one of the too few people that believe in her innocence:

() it is not pleasant to be looked upon as a liar and a hypocrite, to be thought

to practice what you abhor, and to encourage the vices you would

discountenance, to find your good intentions frustrated, and your hands crippled

by your supposed unworthiness, and to bring disgrace on the principles you

profess.2

There is one more remark to be done here and that is referred to the fact that one

needs to posses a natural skill or a very good aptitude in dissimulation in order to spread

an interesting and yet disturbing piece of gossip without the victim to get to know it.

The falseness that emanates from Miss Elizas chattering and the sidelong glance -

intended to be playfully mischievous really brimful and running over with malice

( page 95), is perceived by the male narrator who becomes really disgusted by all the

poisonous tongues that unjustly and with no evidence for the matter tackled the need of

Mrs. Graham to be a decayed woman.

said she, with a shocked expression and voice subdued

almost to a whisper, < What do you think of these shocking reports about Mrs.

Graham? Can you encourage us to disbelieve them?> 3

1 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bront, Penguin Popular Classics edition, England, 1994, p. 73.2 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bront, Penguin Popular Classics edition, England, 1994, p. 88.3 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bront, Penguin Popular Classics edition, England, 1994, p. 68.

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There seems also that there might be a shade of hope to this situation of spreading gossip

and participating to the talk of the town in the fact that there are some characters who are

completely against this activity and who rely on their own knowledge and contact in what

regards Mrs. Graham, until the opposite is demonstrated to them through facts.

Chapter 2

Superstitions

The six brothers were united pretty soon by an uncommon imaginative ability.

They imagined and told stories and amused themselves greatly when these stories opened

new horizons beyond and far away from the walls of the parish. Other sources for their

stories were those that came from their aunt who spoke about faithful knights, princesses

locked up in towers and fights between good and evil. Also their father used to tell them

horrible and scary stories from his native places. The Irish folklore was full of weirdness,

witches, elves and ghosts that came to life in front of the children who listened intenselywhile the wind blew wildly outside their windows. Tabitha Aykroyd, or Tabby, as the

children called her, was the family servant who often told reverend Bronts children

local stories and ballads. She developed in the children a special taste for a supernatural

world dominated by fairies and elves. Certain of Tabbys stories seem to have been

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echoed in the circumstances of Wuthering Heights1 as she seems to have been the one

that influenced the creation of the fictional character Nelly Dean, the main narrator of the

happenings of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The similarity between the

two lies in the fact that both posses the ability of capturing the audience with stories and

local knowledge that occurred long before the time of the narration. This gave the novel

an air of mysticism that was made even more concentrated by the addition of supernatural

elements.

2.1 Superstitions

The events from the red-room marked Jane profoundly and this scene is

remembered many times along the novel as she finds herself in the need of taking an

important decision for her life. Once locked in the room Jane starts to think about the

reason for which she was imprisoned, both physically and mentally. Thus, she remembers

her Uncle Reeds last wish that she would be raised by his wife with the same love and

attention that she gave to her own children. Her thoughts take her further in rememberingsome sayings from Bessie according to which dead people, whose death-bed wishes were

not accomplished, use to wake up from their graves in order to punish the perjured and

avenge the oppressed. Janes belief that her uncle would rise before her in the room is

nothing but the result of believing in such superstitions like the rising of dead people

from the graves. The folklore and the local stories had a major influence on her and she

proves herself to be superstitious along the novel.

After she endures terrible and harsh conditions of living at Lowood Asylum and

the cruelty of Mr. Brocklehurst, Jane begins her career as a governess at Thornfield Hall.

Another moment in which she recalls some of the stories told by Bessie Lee was in the

scene of her first encounter with Rochester, not knowing that he was her master. As the

night and darkness was falling quick she immediately made the connection between some

1 Emily Bront- Wuthering Heights, Mengham Rod, Penguin Critical Studies, 1988, England, p. 3.

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Gothic and evil figure of the North of the country and the horse-rider that was

approaching her on the solitary path.

I remembered certain of Bessies tales, wherein figured a North-of-England

spirit, called a which, in the form of a horse, mule, or large dog,

haunted solitary ways, and sometimes came upon belated travelers, as this horse

was now coming upon me.1

During the engagement period while at Thornfield, different events signal to the

reader that the tension in the Hall rises, and that the moment when the mystery is to be

revealed is approaching. The thunder that splits the chestnut tree into two is a warning for

the reader to know or to suspect that the couple will not last and that they must be set

apart. The same thing is signaled by the tarring of the veil into two by Rochesters wife.

This is an act of bad omen and it stands as a proof that the first marriage of Rochester is

still valid and that a second one cannot take place. More than this, Jane dreams of little

children crying in her arms several nights in a row and she remembers that this is also a

bad omen for her as it was for Bessie too when she dreamed of babies and then her sister

died. Thus, she is certain of the fact that something is wrong or is going to be wrong as

there are so many signs and symbols of the mistake she is about to do.

The relation Jane has with her cousin serves for her as a model of another way to

be subdued by the power of men and religion. As St. John is ambitious and a model of

Christian glorified behavior Jane is urged by him to marry him in order for her to fulfill

her moral duty towards God. Just when she was on the point of saying Yes, a phantom-

like voice is heard by Jane, calling her desperately out, in the dark night. As an electric

shock went through her body in recognizing her beloved Rochesters voice, she runs into

the garden crying back to him:

I cried 2

She believes something fateful has occurred and as there is no reply to this, she

realizes it was part of a superstition and the hand of Mother Nature: Down superstition!

() this is not thy deception, not thy witchcraft, it is the work of nature. (page 234).

This voice that she heard in the middle of the night may be considered as well as a sweet

dream of our Jane, a need for a wish to come true or maybe it would be better to say that

1 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, vol. 1, p. 129.2 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, volume 2, p. 233-234.

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one terrible dream in which Thornfield is a dreary ruin. She does not know how to

interpret this and it only makes her wonder if this is really the home she wanted. Other

dreams come but these are different because she sees herself carrying a baby each time.

This makes her believe this to be premonitory of bad things, as she believes in some

superstitions told by the servant of Gateshead when she was little:

When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Bessie Leaven say

to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about a little child; and that to

dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either to oneself or ones kin ()

the next day Bessie was send for home to the death bed of her little sister. Of

late I had often recalled this saying and this incident; for during the past week

scarcely a night had gone over my couch that had not brought with it a dream of

an infant ().1

When trying to have some rest under the roof of the Heights, Lockwood has two

dreams. The first one is easy to recover from and the guest has no difficulties in believing

himself awake from it. But the second dream on the other hand, shakes Lockwood to the

very core of his being. This episode of the novel is symbolic because it reveals the

useless power of the imposed belief that the world of instincts and natural forces has been

shut out from his life. It is much more than this revelation; it is about the fact that such

forces exist deep down in every human beings nature. This is also the reason why Emily

has chosen Lockwood to have this dream and not other character; he is the least likely

one to have it; as he comes from another social background where such events are

considered a subject of amusement, when in fact here, the irrational has overcome his

wall of resistance.

The brusque and terrifying event with Cathys appearance also shows us that the

least civilized and well mannered part from a man can be annihilated by one of the most

primary instinct, that is fear. He is an outsider invaded by the irrational, by the world of

the moors and what it stands for. The physical effects of his experience with that form of

existence that made its presence strongly felt are a sign or an example of how ferocious

1 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, vol. 2, p. 5.

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culture can be (here represented by Lockwood) with nature, in order to regain control

over the conscience.

> I muttered, knocking my knuckles through

the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch, instead of

which my fingers closed on the fingers of a little ice cold hand! The intense

horror of nightmare came over me; I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand

clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed:


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the dream and interprets its meaning, not knowing that Heathcliff is listening hidden

behind the back door of the kitchen.

I was superstitious about dreams then, and am still, and Catherine had an

unusual gloom in her aspect that made me dread something from which I might

shape a prophecy, and foresee a fearful prophecy.1

The passionate note that Cathy adopted frightens Nelly in the first instance but after

listening to her she gathers herself and helps Cathy, through objective and direct

questions to find out what is that she really need and want from her life. This is the

moment in which Cathy becomes conscious of the oneness that she and Heathcliff

represent and that their love is possible in a timeless space, an unearthly one.

2.3 Ghosts

() if ghosts have been mentioned, if the country people swear that Heathcliff

walks, we can, with Lockwood at the end, affirm our skepticism as to 2

The first encounter that the reader has with a so called ghost in Wuthering Heights

is through the lost tenant of the Grange during a stormy night when he was obliged to

shelter himself under the roof of the Heights. Catherines ghost appears to Lockwood atthe window and scares him in such a way that he screams in terror. This ghost might as

well be seen as part of a nightmare the stranger has had as we are not able to determine

where his dream stopped and when he was awake. But Heathcliffs response to this event

is a clear illustration of his belief in such entities like ghosts; he begs for Cathy to return

to him and to come inside the house but, as always, the ghost showed herself to be

playing around and did not answered to his desperate call. Having a cultural background,

Mr. Lockwood tried to find an explanation for this occurrence and finding none, he

passed to accuse the lack of hospitality of his master and his servants and his way of

entertaining himself on the expense of his guest.

1 Wuthering Heights, Emily Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1994, p. 67.2 In An Anthology of Critical Approaches to the Victorian Novel, Galea Ioana, Craciun Mircea, Cluj-

Napoca, 1987, p. 110.

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I suppose that she wanted to get another proof that the place was haunted, at

my expense. Well, it is swarming with ghosts and goblins! You have reasons in

shutting it up, I assure you. No one will thank you for a doze in such a den. ()

If the little fiend had got in at the window, she probably would have strangled

me! Im not going to endure the persecution of your hospitable ancestors

again!1

Whether or not the ghost is real, it symbolizes a presence of the past in the

present, a way in which memories regarding the lost person linger near people and

involve in their day by day life. As Lockwood refers to it, the ancestor is present at the

Heights as expecting something or somebody. One may question why the spirit of

Catherine appeared as a young girl and not as a woman all in all. This can be explained

through the fact that Cathy was really happy only in those times when she was a wild,

untamed and free girl who could wander through the moors with Heathcliff, unrestrained

by social, religious and family boundaries.

mourned the voice 2

The urgent and desperate need of the ghost to get inside the house is explained

through the anguish and longing of the tormented soul of hers to return to the house of

her childhood. When still alive and on her death bed, Cathy wanted to feel the wind that

was coming down from the moors, from Wuthering Heights and wanted so bad to find

herself in her room, and in her own bed, that she began hallucinating that she was already

there, looking at the light of her window. Emily Bront described and analyzed the inner

thoughts and torments of the souls of these two titanic characters in a wonderfully and

deep bound of their strings attached to them.

Emily Bront believed in the immortality of the soul not only in the way

Christians do, but also on earth, in this world. As Galea Ileana mentioned about this

aspect in An Anthology of Critical Approaches of the Victorian Novel, the spiritual

principle of which the soul is a manifestation is active in this life: the disembodied soul

continues to be active in this life.(p. 124). In Emilys view, death is not a full stop, an


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end of the road, but a custom, a filter that allows the soul or spirit to continue its previous

preoccupations under another form of existence. Catherine Earnshaw dreams that her

spirit goes to heaven but there she realizes that she isnt happy and begs the angels to

send her back to her beloved Wuthering Heights. This may be seen as a kind of prophecy

because when Cathy actually dies her spirit does not go to heaven but returns to the

grounds of the Heights.

The memorable scene between the dying Cathy and Heathcliff reveals to the

reader the unnatural feature of these two characters through the fact that both believe in

the existence of ghosts and trust themselves to be united for ever in another world.

Cathys statement I shall not be at peace! (p.130) leaves a mark on Heathcliffs mind

and after her death, he prays a non-orthodox prayer that she may not rest until he will join

her. The severe pain makes him look like an animal, like a demon, and this may be seen

as mirroring of his torn-apart soul. He feels himself so hollowed that he is presented in

connection to a living corpse: I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my

soul! (p. 136). For eighteen years he derived his strength from his memories of her and

making patiently plans of destroying his enemies. He becomes strangely happy and

absent of any other human activities from the moment he believes he had an encounter

with a specter of hope. He yearns to be with his beloved Catherine and he only opens

his soul to Nelly who listens to him frightened:

I have a single wish and my whole being and faculties are yearning to attain it.

They have yearned toward it so long and so unwaveringly that Im convinced it

will be reached and soon because it has devoured my existence, I am

swallowed in the anticipation of its fulfillment. () O, God! Its a long fight. I

wish it were over!1

As it has been said before, it seems that Catherines spirit is effectively active,

passionately haunts Heathcliff and influences him in all his actions and his physical state

of being as she herself has predicted that she would: I shall not be at peace! (page 130).

After her death, the one thing that makes the reader believe the ghost to be real is

Heathcliffs unorthodox prayer that she may not rest. He curses her for the pain she has

caused him and, in the fever of her last words that marked him and that were burned deep


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into his mind, e pleads with her soul to haunt him all the rest of his days. When little, the

greatest punishment for one of them was to be separated from the other, so now, it is of

no wonder that the death of Catherine caused an unearthly pain to Heathcliff for she has

removed herself from him and his being can no longer be considered a whole. The doom

and despair that dominate Heathcliff in the moment after Cathys death makes his

features distorted and his appearance wild, like that of an unearthly creature. He curses

her soul to wander the earth after her death so that she can be with him, this contrasting

the claim of Nelly that Cathy rests with God.

Where is she? Not there, not in heaven, not perished, where? Oh! You said you

cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer. I repeat it till my

tongue stiffens: Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living!

You said I killed you. Haunt me then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I

believe, I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always, take

any form, drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find

you! Oh God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live

without my soul!1

We have no information about the ghost of Catherine as the time of the narration

skips eighteen years. After Heathcliff becomes the owner of the two mannors and after

his enemies death, his revenge is almost fulfilled (the end of it being making Cathys and

Haretons lives miserable). He starts acting strange as sometimes he suddenly appears to

focus upon an empty spot around the house or outside the window as if there would be

someone waiting for him. Later on he confesses to Nelly that the strange appearance that

he feels near him belongs to his beloved Cathy. Heathcliff feels both happiness and

despair as the ghost does not show itself but only makes its presence felt.

2

His love and yearning for Catherine eroded his lust for revenge and ceased in oppressing

the two, and instead he occupied his time by wondering through the moors searching for


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Cathys spirit and even opening her grave in his despair in order to see her. The entire

period of time in which the two have been separated, Heathcliff only entered in a state of

being in which his titanic energy began to fade, little by little, until he consumed the last

fuel burning up in a state of blissful euphoria.

Heathcliff stood at the open door; he was pale and he trembled; yet, certainly,

he had a strange joyful glitter in his eyes that altered the aspect of his whole

face.1

The process of separation of the world in which he lives is accelerated by the fact that

Heathcliff became alien to any human habit: he does not need to eat or sleep and he has

lost track of time and of those in whose presence he finds himself. It is clearly, from

Nellys perception of him that his body may be found there but his spirit and mind are far

away, searching for the entrance in the world in which Cathy is:

Last night, I was on the threshold of hell. Today I am within sight of my

heaven. I have my eyes in it, hardly three feet to sever me! 2

This apparition that seems to communicate with Heathcliff and which Nelly or

anyone else is not able to see, is acting in a reverse way than when the reader and

Lockwood first encountered it. The ghost only showed herself to Lockwood thus driving

Heathcliff mad or just tormenting him, but is showed herself later only to him as he was

surely heading towards the sight of heaven. The main characters in Wuthering Heights

regret the fact that they die only in the aspect of temporal separation from those whom

they love. Emily Bront was a genius, an artist in presenting this supernatural world that

was in fact, for her, a very natural one. For her, happiness and the feeling of fulfillment

could only be gained through a bound between man and nature. The last mentioning of

the presence of a ghost was reported by some villagers who claim to have seen Heathcliff

and Catherines ghosts walking through the moors. These are seen by the narrator as

mere superstitions as the earth above their tombs looks so peaceful and quiet.

But the country folks, if you asked them, would swear on their Bible that he

walks. There are those who speak to having met him near the church, and on the

moor, and even within this house. Idle tales, youll say and so say I. yet that old


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man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen two on em looking out of his

chamber window, on every rainy night since his death.1

Charlotte Bront also developed the presence of such supernatural entities in her

novel Jane Eyre. The character only believes in the existence of ghosts in childhood as

she is influenced by the local and of folklore inspirited stories that the servant Bessie Lee

told her. The narrator, a grown up woman at the time of the telling of the story of her life,

recounts every detail of the terrible scene from the Red Room and is able to see the

supernatural things that she believed to be the features of her late uncles ghost, in a

different perspective. Though at that time she was overwhelmed by the amount on

sensations, her mint troubled in tumult and her heart in insurrection Jane is capable of

finding a simple explanation for the phantom as being, in all likelihood, a gleam from a

lantern carried by someone across the lawn (page 17).

As the Gothic genre became popular in England, more and more novels adopted it

and this novel is no exception. Charlotte described supernatural experiences and

mysterious occurrences that create suspense atmospheres and fearful situations. The

mystery of the novel is given by Janes encounter with ghosts and dark secrets. The

factors that contributed to her fainting with fear were the recalling of some stories about

dead men who were troubled in their graves for the breaking of their last wishes and who

used to rise from their resting places in order to revenge the wrongs, and, of course, the

darkness of the Red Room itself.

() prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by

agitation, I thought the swift-darting beam was a herald of some coming vision

from another world. My heart beat thick, my head grew hot, a sound filled my

ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings. Something seemed near me. I was

oppressed, suffocatedendurance broke down.2

2.4 Sorcery

1 Wuthering Heights, Emily Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1994, p. 270.2 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, vol. 1, p. 16.

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As Jane first only hears the approaching of a horse she suddenly thinks of the

Gytrash spirit that takes the form of a horse or a huge dog in order to scare solitary

travelers like her. As the night is approaching, she distinguishes the form of a dog but

immediately her fears vanish and the uncanny moment ceases as the horse she has heard

earlier seems to have a rider. This riders identity is revealed as Jane arrives at the Hall

and finds that her master has returned and that he is the same man that sprinkled his ankle

earlier on the hill. Mr. Rochester is abrupt and cold towards Jane and little Adele and

even accuses Jane of being a witch that put a spell on his horse and made him fall off

him.

1

He might have thought of Jane to be a witch because of her small stature and her

mysterious appearance as her eyes were very expressive and in that moment still in a

possible on guard look for the attack of the northern spirit. Even later in the novel,

Rochester does not renounce his assertion that Jane is little witch or a vanishing and

vaporous spirit.

Mr. Rochester, as a mysterious and well equipped man in matters of knowledge

about how to entertain his guests, disguises himself into a Gypsy fortune-teller and makes

his entrance at the Hall by requesting the presence of all the ladies, wooing them into a

deceitful arrangement. He combines pleasure with necessity and utility as he need to

make sure that Blanche only wanted his money and to find out the true feelings of Jane

towards him. The presence of such a figure at the hall stirs debates upon whether to

receive it or not:

enquired the Misses Eshton, in a breath.

2

. Curiosity and a need of amusement make the guests to react differently: some remained

silent, some looked a little frightened, some didnt dare to venture in the game and

1 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, vol. 1, p. 141.2 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront, Books Friends, Bucharest, 1993, vol. 1, p. 222.

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some, like Blanche Ingram rose firmly and faced the provocative challenge launched by

the gypsy. When Janes turn comes, she is rather calm, skeptic and is not that impressed

by the gypsy like the other ladies from the hall. She finds ways to reveal the sources from

which the witch might found things about her. This is one of the scenes that reveal Janes

character in which there is a fight between passion and reason, as Rochester in disguise

tells to her:

The forehead declares: Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let

the feelings burst and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage

furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts

of vain things; but judgement shall still have the last word in every argument,

and the casting vote in every decision.1

Rochester saw deep inside her soul the same fight that is taking place in his own soul,

saw the same struggle and anguish in her eyes, the gates of the spirit. The differences

between them are considerable as he lacks Janes determination and self-awareness in

doing what is right and thus to become free. The differences between genders are also

relevant because the status of the woman in society was not valued and Jane needed to be

an independent woman with an equal status as Rochesters.

Emily Bront did not used sorcery in her novel as much as to constitute an

important aspect but the scene referred to can be relevant in the way in which it shows

how religion is seen by the new generation. Through the eyes of the tenant of the Grange

the reader is presented with a tense situation inside the Heights. Young Catherine seems

to have found her own weapons against the preaches of Joseph and also re

l . c1 - evil in society

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