'I Twisted the Two, and Enclosed Them Together'
Seasonal Shifts, Duality & Symmetry
“These are the earliest flowers at the Heights!” she exclaimed. “They remind me of soft thaw winds, and warm sunshine, and nearly melted snow…”1
Writing this morning, with sunshine streaming in the windows, the neighborhood dominated by our resident crows’ caws, rattles and clicks and our honeysuckle vine greening up every day, meteorological spring has certainly arrived in Pennsylvania.
In April, it will have been one year since I began this Substack. It was in June I re-discovered Wuthering Heights and in nine months, I’ve read it nine times. After nine readings, tears came to my eyes as I read the final chapters. Brontë’s novel is such a prickly read the first time—the second—even, a third—ideally, it should be read a number of times throughout one’s life if you have even the most remote interest in understanding the story’s centuries-spanning appeal.
If you’ve read Wuthering Heights, you understand why soft thaw winds, warm sunshine and nearly melted snow conjure heavy emotion. Springtime—with all its new life—is sometimes brutal. If you’re like me, and you pay attention to seasonal shifts, you know what I mean. Autumn is equally brutal—and beautiful, at the same time.
Spring and Autumn—one is associated with rebirth and the other, with death. Yet, I witness far more death and destruction in springtime. Plants and animals battle the elements far more so during March, April and May than September, November and October. Nests are destroyed. Eggs are shattered. Infanticide, committed.
Every year, here in Penn’s Woods, the brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater) deposits her eggs into the nest of some unsuspecting bird. The victim of such deceit sits on the mother cowbird’s eggs until they hatch among her own. Sometimes the hatchlings of the devious cowbird behave just as vindictively as their mother, they roll a host bird’s eggs out of her nest—killing them, and reaping the benefits.
This morning, while finishing Chapter XX (34), I decided to review previous chapters to identify Emily Brontë’s most favored seasonal setting(s). I also consulted A. Stuart Daley’s research and it seems major episodes in Wuthering Heights are set in autumn and springtime most, with autumn taking the lead. These transitional periods in the year are most emotive, don’t you think?
When A. Stuart Daley decided to investigate Brontë’s use of moons and almanacs in Wuthering Heights he used Monday, March 20, 1784 as the central date around which the whole chronological system could be organized. Around midnight on March 20, Catherine Linton prematurely came into the world; her mother, Catherine, died.
According to Daley’s research, the Vernal Equinox was Tuesday, March 21; the day when Heathcliff removes a lock of Edgar’s hair from Catherine’s locket, replacing it with his own. Ellen “Nelly” Dean discovers this and rectifies the situation :
I shouldn’t have discovered that he had been there, except for the disarrangement of the drapery about the corpse’s face, and for observing on the floor a curl of light hair, fastened with a silver thread, which, on examination, I ascertained to have been taken from a locket hung round Catherine’s neck. Heathcliff had opened the trinket and cast out its contents, replacing them by a black lock of his own. I twisted the two, and enclosed them together.
Volume II: Chapter II
Whenever I read this episode I’m struck by Brontë’s brilliance—using a seasonal shift to represent dualities. Heathcliff is rustic, Edgar is refined. Heathcliff is Catherine in her ‘wild and free’ youth and Edgar confined her to adulthood. Heathcliff is darkness and Edgar, light.
In Spring, the northern hemisphere awakens and opens the latticework wide, just as the southern hemisphere pulls the blinds and slips into Autumn’s dormancy. Liminal intervals—life and death—spring ephemeral wildflowers and the seeds and fruits of autumn. I think Brontë had all of these concepts in mind when she decided to set her characters’ lives against the seasons. What do you think?
Do you remember when Mrs. Dean characterizes Heathcliff as a cuckoo? Cuckoos, like brown-headed cowbirds, lay eggs in other birds’ nests.
A cuckoo, he is not. Heathcliff’s mother did not force him into Mr. Earnshaw’s care. Earnshaw took him—found him in the streets of Liverpool and feeling some sort of savior syndrome, scooped him up and carried him home. How utterly terrifying that must have been for a six-year-old child!
Did Heathcliff push Hindley out of the nest? Yes, I suppose he did. I’m not certain he would have, if the family had welcomed and embraced him, rather than scorned him. Calling him ‘it,’ and physically assaulting him again and again is likely what turned Heathcliff from interloper into usurper.2
Hareton—orphaned at six-years-old and raised primarily by Heathcliff—is, “honest, warm, and intelligent,” before young Cathy offers him, her “sincere commendations.” While sure, he is permitted to swear as a wee little boy, the habit is acquired while his father (Hindley) still lives; it is Hareton himself who tells Nelly that Heathcliff defends him against Hindley—you might remember, Heathcliff saved Hareton’s life when his drunken father dropped him from a balcony when he was an infant.
When Hindley refused Heathcliff an education, Catherine taught him using her own books and lessons. When Heathcliff denies Hareton an education, young Cathy uses her own books to teach Hareton to read. Adolescents Catherine and Heathcliff, left in the care of a hopeless drunk, exchange education in favor of rambling wild and free. Young adults Hareton and Cathy, boarding under the roof of their moribund master, elect to mature together into adulthood.
Brontë’s dualities and her mastery of fictive symmetry fascinate me—Catherine’s love for Edgar (like deciduous foliage) and her simultaneous love of Heathcliff (eternal like the rocks below ground); Catherine’s ability to manipulate the foundling Heathcliff (against her father) mirrored in her daughter Cathy manipulating the orphan Hareton (against his father, Heathcliff). As a reader and as a writer…I will never stop reading Wuthering Heights, it is simply too enchanting.
I’ll be starting Wuthering Heights again soon—if you’d like to read-along with me, visit my Read with Me page or…if you’ve not yet subscribed, join the Community below:
Volume I: Chapter XIII
I wrote about Hindley’s abuse of Heathcliff in my essay, ‘Night Walking Amuses Him.’
Cover Image: Crocuses, 1890, Laurence Scott | The Wilson
Thank you for your beautiful reminders of the symmetry and dualities to be found in this great work.