This book review by Kristie De Garis was originally published on Mastodon.
*Content Warning: light cursing
A Mid-Read Review of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (pen name: Ellis Bell)
First time reader of Wuthering Heights here. Yes, Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” trailer finally forced my hand. Admittedly, I’m coming to all of this late.
I’d heard the rumours that Heathcliff was brown, and based on the tone of those discussions, I assumed this was one of those literary debates. Something implied, maybe intuited. Subtext argued over in seminars by white men.
Image Description: A book lies open on top of two other books.
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I am laughing so hard right now.
It is not ambiguous. It is not subtle. It is not subtext. Emily Brontë is doing everything short of stopping the novel and saying, ‘This man is brown as fuck. Please keep up.’
Heathcliff is described again and again as dark-skinned. Not as a metaphor, but dark in actual appearance, explicitly contrasted with the whiteness of the Earnshaws and the Lintons. He is found by Mr. Earnshaw in Liverpool, at the height of British imperial trade, including the slave trade. He is called a ‘dark-skinned gipsy’, a ‘Lascar’ (a sailor from India or south-east Asia). Nelly Dean tells him his father could be an Emperor of China and his mother an Indian queen. This is not vibes, this is exposition!
What interests me is not whether Heathcliff was meant to be brown, because the book answers that question very clearly, several times. What interests me is why so many British readers have insisted on treating this as debatable.
Yes, the novel is brilliant on class. Brontë clearly knows exactly how to write class cruelty. But what she is doing with Heathcliff is different, and it is racialised. His appearance is used, relentlessly, as evidence of moral corruption and social inferiority. We are extremely comfortable talking about the violence of class in Wuthering Heights, but the moment race enters the picture, everything gets oddly evasive. His ‘darkness’ becomes mood. Liverpool becomes just any old place, apparently famous only for docks, shipbuilding and a surprisingly great quality cotton. Any insistence on ambiguity does not come from the book. It comes from the reader.
In the UK, we like our outsiders gothic, tormented, and, crucially, white. But one of the most iconic, enduring characters in British literature is a brown man who refuses to be contained, or polite, and is bound obsessively to a blonde, upper-class white woman.
And this is a multi-generational effort! The conversation has always come back to ‘well, we can’t really be sure, can we?’. We can. Emily Brontë was sure. The characters are sure. The only uncertainty seems to appear in the hands of white readers.
About the Author
Kristie de Garis is the author of Drystone: A Life Rebuilt, available on Amazon.
Drystone: A Life Rebuilt Synopsis
Kristie De Garis spent years running – from places, people and parts of herself. But chaos always followed.
When she moved to rural Scotland, she hoped to find peace. Instead, in the space and silence, she was forced to confront everything she had tried to escape: racism, trauma, undiagnosed ADHD, addiction and the stark realities of motherhood.
Then, in the land around her – and in the slow, stubborn craft of drystone walling – she began to see a different life. One that was quiet, deliberate, and her own.
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