Is Heathcliff Irish? An Interpretation of Wuthering Heights at Mount Holyoke College

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/english/

In Class and Gender in Victorian Literature (English 323), students discuss Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Is it valid to interpret Heathcliff as Irish? How does Heathcliff seize power denied him on the basis of his racial indeterminacy? Professor Amy Martin leads students on an exciting academic ride as they look deeply at such novels as Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte), North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell), Great Expectations (Charles Dickens), and Dracula (Bram Stoker).

Category:

Education

Tags:

• educational
• mount holyoke college
• women's colleges
• higher education
• heathcliff
• wuthering heights
• victorian liturature
• analysis
• emily bronte

[Rosamorrable]

i wonder why Nelly said Heathcliff's father could have been a Chinese Emperor and his mother, an Indian queen (or something like that). Kind of hard to imagine Heathcliff as a mixture of these two but i guess Emily Bronte was simply attracted to the mysteries provoked by the image of an exotic outcast, in the same way that what is alien or forbidden still attracts today.

[keksc]

@bernardevans Bernard, I was thinking the same! Not irish, just love the country and given the period of the book, turmoils back then, how Heathcliff is described and the prejudice everyone seems to have against him, it never occurred to me that he was anything but irish. I never thought of this as something so important, I always thought it was really obvious, not something people actually discussed at college. But hey, I never STUDIED the book in school, read it because I was interested in it.

[bernardevans]

Hi All, nothing new here. Suggest you are leaning too much metaphorical than literal! When Heathcliff was first picked up as a child in Liverpool (then and now the direct physical connection between Dublin and Britain) and brought to the moors, he was described as speaking Jibberish. No doubt he was speaking the Irish Language, which would not have been understood by the English people. The rest therefore falls into place! Cheers, Bernard (Irish) in Dublin.