@kristiedegaris Hope you get more than 20p
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@kristiedegaris What’s the best way I can buy your book where you make the most money. I am going to be totally honest I am not promising to read it but I am passionate about supporting a world where creativity and art is valued and that is true regardless of if the creativity or art is to my taste.
@macdevnet I appreciate your honesty and your committment to that world! Maybe you'll like it though? Also, maybe not. You're right, not everything is for everyone.
Buy it anywhere it is full price basically, independent bookshops are best but much harder to do outside UK right now.
@kristiedegaris Hope you get more than 20p
@macdevnet Ah thank you so much!! I hope you get a lot out of it!
@kristiedegaris Yes, it's obvious, isn't it? And the book makes so much more sense when he's black or brown.
@anne_twain Completely agree.
@kristiedegaris Do you have an expansion of this thread that could be used as a short essay or blog post? I’d be interested in sharing it on my website if that’s something you’d be open to. Here’s the link to learn more about what I do there: https://www.underground-bookshelf.com/essays
@kristiedegaris
I hope you are enjoying the book! (Sounds like you are)
Yes, this debate is silly.
The book however... fantastic.
@artemis I am enjoying it hugely!
@kristiedegaris @artemis The thing I'm most surprised with is how it's referred to as the endearing romantic story for the ages. It's memorable, for sure.
@rojun YES! That too! So far, it's like an anti love story if anything. Destructive, obsessive etc.
@kristiedegaris @rojun These posts are intriguing...maybe I need to read the novel again (after almost or over 20 years), but I simply did not understand the fuss with it. I recall having no sympathy for the two main characters (I also recall despising Cathy more than Heathcliff, but don't ask me why?!). Anyway, I certainly didn't think it was a love story then...perhaps that's why I was so disappointed then, because I was told that it was.
@klas21CDT @rojun They are unlikeable but there's also a lot of background given to why they act like they do. And we have pretty unreliable narrators, as in, it's just their opinion, and we're hearing the story third hand (we're not even hearing it direct from Nelly, we're hearing her retelling through Lockwood). It's about gossip and mythology for me, how people are remembered, how violence and grievance echo across generations. Feels almost like folklore.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
7/7
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.
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