Logo of British Library.
Moors around Haworth.
Professor John Bowen, University of York, speaks.
PROFESSOR JOHN BOWEN:
Who is Heathcliff? Well, it's a question the novel keeps asking, and I'm not sure, really, that it ever answers it.
Text — Professor John Bowen, University of York.
PROFESSOR JOHN BOWEN:
'Cause he has so many contradictory qualities, you know? At the beginning, he's the most poor, the most dejected, the whole family reject him. And when he comes back, he's like the landlord from hell.
Moors around Haworth.
PROFESSOR JOHN BOWEN:
He becomes this extraordinary powerful, charismatic character who usurps the place of the family that first took him in. And, you know, the novel gives you various clues. He's picked up in Liverpool. Well, Liverpool's a great port, so he could be from Ireland. So, the Bronte family come from Ireland — Patrick comes from Ireland — so he may have fled from the terrible famine that was there in the 1840s. But then again, Liverpool's a big colonial port, so, um, he's often called 'black', or Nelly says, 'You might be an Indian prince', so there may be some racial difference too that's there in Heathcliff. And the novel never really resolves that. And never really tells you more than the barest minimum — we don't know his name, we don't know who his parents are. He's only got a single name, that's Heathcliff, he doesn't have a surname — we don't know if it's a surname or a Christian name. And all we know is what he does, and they're often very violent things, very cruel things. It's a revenge story is Wuthering Heights, and people often remember the first half of the book, but the second half where Heathcliff is so cruelly vengeful to the family that initially took him in and so determined to be powerful, show you another, very different side of him.
Text — Heathcliff's literary influences.
Professor John Bowen speaks.
PROFESSOR JOHN BOWEN:
So, there are lots of literary antecedents for Heathcliff. In some ways he's a Byronic figure, he draws on that tradition of the mad, bad dangerous Lord Byron. He's also a bit like a Gothic character too in that he's a violent, sexual man who often imprisons younger women and is not somebody you'd want safely to be married to.
Professor John Bowen walks on moors around Haworth.
PROFESSOR JOHN BOWEN:
He's also got a supernatural air to him, of course. They call him a 'ghoul' and an 'afreet'. They worry if he's satanic or he's somehow in touch with supernatural kinds of powers. So, Charlotte Bronte, when she writes the preface to Emily's novel, She says, you know, 'Heathcliff never swerves once from his arrow-straight course to perdition.' Like, he's going to hell from the beginning, she said. And I think it's a more complex and subtle novel than that, but it shows what a disturbing figure Heathcliff is to Charlotte and to many later readers.
Text — Filmed on location on the moors around Haworth.
Text — Directed by Anna Lobbenberg, Cinematography by Joseph Turp, Edited by Joseph Turp.
Text — With special thanks to John Bowen.
Logo of British Library.