'Hearken, shoo's cursing on 'em!'
What the Devil is Going on in Wuthering Heights?
The read-along of Wuthering Heights begins on 20 March, and while finishing up my character profiles, I laughed to myself, thinking the Devil might possibly require a profile—as he appears quite frequently throughout the novel. “Go to the Deuce!” or, “Go to the Devil,” appears on the first page of Wuthering Heights.
Eleven pages or so later, Joseph croaks at young Cathy Linton, “Yah’ll niver mend uh yer ill ways; bud goa raight tuh t’ divil, like yer mother afore ye!” The pretty seventeen-year-old counters with a threat, claiming she has progressed in her study of the Black Arts and asks, “Are you not afraid of being carried off bodily, whenever you mention the devil’s name? I warn you to refrain from provoking me, or I’ll ask your abduction as a special favour.”
When Lockwood—trapped by a snowstorm at Wuthering Heights—requires someone to help him navigate the moors, Hareton Earnshaw offers to guide him:
“I’ll go with him as far as the park,” he says. “You’ll go with him to hell!” exclaims Heathcliff.
Devil-related slang also makes an appearance in Catherine Earnshaw’s diary…
When Hindley Earnshaw tosses his sister and Heathcliff into the back-kitchen for misbehaving on the Sabbath, old Joseph threatens, ‘owd Nick will fetch them up!
Well, you know I love writing about folk beliefs and superstition. And, I love writing about Wuthering Heights. So, in this essay I thought I might consider 18th and 19th century dialogue associated with ‘owd Nick, or, as most of us know him: the Devil.1
‘Go to the Deuce!’
Thanks to editors of annotated editions of Wuthering Heights, Lockwood’s translation of Heathcliff’s ‘go to hell,’ or ‘go to the devil’ utterance is clarified for modern readers.
But—I wondered—why did the deuce replace the devil in polite conversation?
The deuce is practically synonymous with the devil, the word being derived from Dusins, the ancient name given by the Gauls to a sort of demon or devil.2
Silvani and Pans, commonly called incubi, have often appeared to women as wicked men, trying to sleep with them and succeeding. These same demons, whom the Gauls name Dusii, are relentlessly committed to this defilement…
Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei
Heathcliff—we learn—certainly does not refer to the devil as the deuce! So…why doesn’t Lockwood accurately quote Heathcliff? Lockwood considers himself a gentleman.
‘Owd Nick would fetch us as sure as we were living.’
When Catherine and Heathcliff, frustrated after spending three hours listening to Joseph preach, destroy their copies of The Helmet of Salvation and The Broad Way to Destruction, Cathy’s brother Hindley banishes them to the back-kitchen. Catherine scribbles the incident in the margins of a book:
Hindley hurried up from his paradise on the hearth, and seizing one of us by the collar, and the other by the arm, hurled us both into the back-kitchen, where Joseph asservated, ‘owd Nick would fetch us as sure as we were living; and, so comforted, we each sought a separate nook to await his advent.
When Heathcliff suggests, instead of waiting for the Devil to ferry them away to hell, they take a ramble under the shelter of the moors, Cathy agrees; noting in her diary:
A pleasant suggestion—and then, if the surly old man come in, he may believe his prophesy verified—we cannot be damper, or colder, in the rain than we are here.
Ah, yes! The fearful idea of devils, demons or evil spirits taking possession of us; it’s not such a foreign concept to me. I grew up among the Pennsylvania Germans and, my Aunt Mame refused to name the devil, for fear of conjuring him.
But, is this why Joseph refers to Satan as ‘owd Nick (or, Old Nick?)
A Dictionary of English Folklore suggests the nickname, Nick, relates to German and Scandinavian words. I did a little digging and discovered this passage in one of my Pennsylvania German braucherei texts:
During later Christian times the original forms of [old heathen] spirits were no longer recognized, and were lumped under the title of “the Devil.” Our English monikers of the Devil reflect this pre-Christian background: Old Scratch (from scrat or schrat meaning a hairy wood sprite), and Old Nick (from hnikkar meaning “slayer” - a title of Woden).3
If you’ve read Wuthering Heights, you know Joseph is the only character choosing to use the nickname, Old Nick, and this fits with his age and station, don’t you agree?
‘How the devil could it be otherwise?"‘
When sitting down to write this essay, I did a quick search in my Norton 3rd edition of Wuthering Heights and found nearly thirty instances of characters referring to being possessed with or going to: the devil.
Reviewing all instances, it seems the devil is being used primarily as a conversational replacement for hell (or, Hell). Phrases such as, “What the devil?” “How the devil…” and “Who the devil?” replace, “What the hell?” “How the hell?” and “Who the hell?”
My Gram used ‘the devil’ in this way. She was essentially saying, ‘only through forces of evil could this situation be taking place.’ She’d say, “How the devil did I get that on my pants?” as if only demonic forces could be responsible for a dime-sized stain on her slacks. I miss her.
When Heathcliff is awoken by Lockwood in Chapter III—after Lockwood’s terrifying interaction with a ghost—Heathcliff remarks he cannot now possibly sleep, as it (his rest) has been sent to the devil (Hell). Attempting to relax and fall into deep slumber is likened to eternal damnation—tossing and turning, writhing and awake.
It all seems rather dramatic, doesn’t it?
I think the most romantic use of ‘how the devil’ is uttered in Volume I: Chapter XIV. Heathcliff learns Catherine is convalescing in the care of Edgar Linton—she is weak, distressed and mentally fragile. He exclaims:
You talk of her mind being unsettled. How the devil could it be otherwise, in her frightful isolation…He might as well plant an oak in a flowerpot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares!
Anything but rambling together (‘wild and free’) on the moors constitutes damnation for both Catherine and Heathcliff. Heathcliff’s oak-in-a-flowerpot analogy illustrates this, too!4
‘Are you possessed with a devil?’
Heathcliff, who yearns only for walks on the moors with his beloved, is often labeled a devil in Wuthering Heights. Quite literally. If he’s not being damned to hell, characters are inquiring of one another: Is Mr. Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil? Only he—Heathcliff—asks another if she is possessed? When Catherine asks if one day he will simply forget he ever loved her, he goes mad. Are you possessed with a devil? he cries, asking, Do you reflect that all those words will be branded in my memory?
‘The devil knows I was not sanguine!’
As I studied the passages and episodes in which Heathcliff is referred to as a devil, I found one in which he, himself, has essentially resigned himself to the association.
Oh damn my soul! he cries, upon meeting frail, feeble, flaxen-haired, Linton, but that’s worse than I expected—and the devil knows I was not sanguine! Rather than using more familiar phrasing, “God knows,” Brontë’s tortured hero chooses to clarify that only, “the devil knows,” his innermost thoughts.
Perhaps Heathcliff feels no kinship with a god who has allowed him to suffer such loss, grief and heartache? His heaven, after-all, is not with God. ♡
Wuthering Heights Read-Along
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This humorous nickname for the Devil is first recorded in the 17th century. Its origins are uncertain, but it may be related to certain German and Scandinavian words beginning in nik-, used for various dangerous supernatural creatures (A Dictionary of English Folklore. Eds. Simpson, Jacqueline, and Steve Roud. : Oxford University Press, , 2003. Oxford Reference.
Spence, Lewis. An Encyclopaedia of Occultism: a compendium of information on the occult sciences, occult personalities, psychic science, magic, demonology, spiritism & mysticism. London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd. 1920.
Bilardi, C. R. The Red Church or the Art of Pennsylvania German Braucherei. Pendraig Publishing, 2009.
Although, if I recall,
is raising a lovely oak tree in a flower pot in her studio!Cover Image: The Temptation in the Wilderness, 1824, John St. John Long | Tate