Tips how to read Wuthering Heights: 2

Another attempted murder? (The first two pages of chapter IX, pp. 61-3, Everyman, 1907)

When Heathcliff is 16 and Hareton 2, Hindley, Hareton’s father, nearly kills his son, and Heathcliff saves him. However, in Nelly’s telling of the story, in chapter IX, as in her telling of the story of the two ponies, in chapter IV, Hindley is the innocent and Heathcliff the guilty party. In the earlier chapter, Hindley, according to Nelly, is as little responsible for nearly killing Heathcliff as anybody who nearly kills someone could be, and in the later chapter, Heathcliff is as little responsible for saving Hareton’s life as someone who does save someone’s life could be.

Hindley has been holding Hareton over the banister upstairs when, leaning forward “to listen to a noise below” and “almost forgetting what he had in his hands . . . [Hareton] gave a sudden spring, delivered himself from the careless grasp that held him, and fell.”

What could be more purely accidental? Or less blameworthy?

Heathcliff, happening to pass underneath, “by a natural impulse” catches Hareton but

A miser who has parted with a lucky lottery ticket for five shillings, and finds next day he has lost in the bargain five thousand pounds, could not show a blanker countenance than he did . . . It expressed plainer than words could do, the intense anguish at having made himself the instrument of thwarting his own revenge. Had it been dark, I dare say, he would have tried to remedy the mistake by smashing Hareton’s skull on the steps; but we witnessed his salvation . . .

What could be more purely accidental in Hindley’s case or less praiseworthy in Heathcliff’s? The one who nearly kills the child could not be more innocent of intending his death, the one who saves his life could not be more guilty of intending it. But Nelly’s interpretation of this incident is no more warranted by what she relates than her interpretation of that of the two ponies.

When, immediately before the incident, she learns that Hindley is coming in, she hurries to do two things: to take the shot out of his gun, in case, “in his insane excitement”, he shoot “any who provoked, or even attracted his notice too much” and to hide Hareton from him in the kitchen cupboard. Hareton has such “a wholesome terror of encountering either his wild beast’s fondness or his madman’s rage” that he remains perfectly quiet wherever Nelly chooses to put him. This is not very surprising because in the one case he is likely to be “squeezed and kissed to death”, in the other to be “flung into the fire, or dashed against the wall.”

Then Hindley comes in, “vociferating oaths dreadful to hear” (amongst them, “I want to kill some of you”). Catching Nelly hiding his son from him, he pulls her back “by the skin of [her] neck, like a dog” and pretends he’s going to make her swallow a carving knife. But then Hareton’s fear attracts his attention:

“Oh! I see that hideous little villain is not Hareton: I beg your pardon, Nell. If it be, he deserves flaying alive for not running to welcome me, and for screaming as if I were a goblin. Unnatural cub, come hither! I’ll teach thee to impose on a good-hearted, deluded father.”

After some pantomime-villain threats to cut off Hareton’s hair and ears, his mood changes and he wants to pet him: “Hush, child, hush! Well then, it is my darling! wisht, dry thy eyes — there’s a joy; kiss me.” But when Hareton, understandably, won’t, his mood swings back: “What! it won’t? Kiss me, Hareton! Damn thee, kiss me! By God, as if I would rear such a monster! As sure as I’m living, I’ll break the brat’s neck!” At which, he carries the child “squalling and kicking” upstairs, lifts him over the banisters, and drops him . . . by accident, or not.

Now, Nelly both reports things she sees and hears and ‘reports’, as things she has seen and heard, things she hasn’t seen or heard at all. When she says that Hindley’s motive for leaning forward over the banister was “to listen to a noise below” (rather than, say, ‘to break a brat’s neck’) and that, he did so, “almost forgetting” he had a squalling, kicking two year-old in his arms, she isn’t reporting things anyone could see or hear. Not only can she not know what was going on in Hindley’s mind, what she ‘reports’ as going on there isn’t — given everything else she says about Hindley’s anger and violence — easy to believe, as that “almost” tacitly concedes. Furthermore, although she says, as if she had seen it, that Hareton jumped out of his father’s arms — “gave a sudden spring” and “delivered himself from the careless grasp that held him” — she, in fact, saw no such thing for, as she also says, Hareton jumped “at the instant when my eye quitted” him! The most she can truthfully say on Hindley’s behalf is that, although it looked as if he had dropped Hareton on purpose, he may not have done so. He may have been distracted by Heathcliff’s arrival below. Anything more is just invention, partial to Hindley, malicious to Heathcliff.

And she denies Heathcliff the credit that would ordinarily be thought due for saving someone’s life on no better grounds. When she says he did it “by a natural impulse” she means “instinctively” or “automatically”, without thinking and without meaning to. But that’s something else she hasn’t seen and says without warrant. And if, on understanding what has happened, Heathcliff’s countenance was blank, then blank is what it was: it didn’t express anything, plain or not, and certainly nothing as definite as what Nelly “dares say”, that, if there hadn’t been witnesses, he would have smashed the two-year-old’s skull on the steps.

Nelly has every reason to think not only that Hindley is capable of murder but that she has just witnessed him, in “his madman’s rage”, try to murder his own son. And she has no reason to think the 16 year-old Heathcliff likely to murder anyone. But Hindley she calls nothing worse than the “author of an accident”, Heathcliff she accuses of being held back from murdering a two-year-old only by the presence of witnesses.

Emily Brontë is, one can see, even from as little as these two scenes, a very clever woman. Fancy being able to make so dishonest a narrator so plausible. Fancy having such an understanding of how you are likely to be read. I won’t, and don’t, say that her readers have to be as clever but — goodness me! — don’t you have to be alert?