Those Alluring Brontës

I recently came across a book called H: The Story of Heathcliff’s Journey Back to Wuthering Heights by Lin Haire-Sargeant. It is a great deal of fun to read if you are a Brontë fan and, what she did was so diabolically clever that I found myself grinning as I read.

Basically she used the tale-within-a-tale technique to describe a train trip that a fictional Emily Brontë was taking back from France when an ill-fated love affair ended. On the train she encounters a man who tells her about a trip he is taking to visit an old friend on her death bed. Soon he persuades Miss Brontë to read a series of letters sent him by this lady and the fun begins. Of course using such a construct for a novel is extremely clever because you can cover any gaps in credibility with missing pages to letters or letters to another party or simple human error but this story doesn’t really rely on this at all.

All lovers of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights know the story --- Catherine Earnshaw has become enthralled by Edgar Linton and, while talking with their housekeeper Nellie, complains that while she loves Heathcliff, it would “degrade her” to marry him. Heathcliff overhears this and flees. Some years later Cathy is now married to Edgar and Heathcliff returns --- wealthy and a gentleman (though sort of in the sense that Tony Soprano can act like a gentleman at times) --- but it is too late. Everything goes downhill from there.

Well, Haire-Sargeant picks up the story at the moment Heathcliff flees, ragged, filthy and furious, and finds his way to London where he is discovered outside an insane asylum by the mysterious “Mister R”. Mister R takes a liking to Heathcliff and invites him back to his home where he sets about the process of making a gentleman of him. The rest of the story is genuinely enjoyable.

What makes it so clever is that any devoted Brontë fan will, in short order, begin to recognize names and places and, grinning madly as you read, say “Ahhhhhh, ‘R’ for Rochester!” The magnanimous Mister R lives in Thornfield Hall and has a dog named Pilot and pretty soon Mrs. Fairfax shows up followed by Blanche Inghram. So now Emily Brontë’s story has merged with her sister, Charlotte’s story Jane Eyre. Great fun! I wish I had thought of it! As the story progresses there are a lot of things that are perhaps wild and improbably but then both stories are wild and improbable so who cares. My favorite part was once Rochester hired the “governess” that he falls in love with and she and Heathcliff do NOT get along. Frankly, the only two people who ever got along with Heathcliff were Cathy and now Mister R.

Anyway, I loved the book because, having read both of the books from which it grew many times, it was like spending a weekend with old friends and discovering all kinds of astonishing new things about them!

The Brontë sisters had clever imaginations and, in keeping with the times in which they lived and wrote, a deliciously gothic sensibility. I realize now, reading their work and Haire-Sargeant’s work that evolved from it, that those gothic shivers are something I really love and want to weave into work of my own. In a sense I always have. Recently a reader who read The Old Mermaid’s Tale said she became somewhat obsessed by the tavern, the Old Mermaid Inn, that is the focal point of the tale. She said it looms large in her imagination, much like Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre and The Grange in Wuthering Heights, and she wanted to know more about where it was and if there were any pictures of it left. It’s always hard to tell a fan that the product of your imagination lives only in your imagination. Saint Gabriel’s Abbey in Each Angel Burns is shaping up the same way.

Since my recent purchase of a DVD player I’ve been watching a lot of favorite movies that also have that brooding sense of the slightly mad and slightly supernatural with an over-arching sensuality and sense of place. I think my next project, which is shaping itself in the back of my mind, is going to play with all of that. I have the characters and the place... the plot is evolving but that always works best when you are actually on the page.

So I thank Lin Haire-Sargeant for her delicious book. It gave me a new appreciation of two classic favorites and an idea of how the lessons I learned from them can be used in the future. Those Brontë girls were clever and readers have been loving their work for years and years, I know they shaped much of my work.

This entry marks the 500th post on this blog. Since its beginning, this blog has had close to 60,000 visits. Thanks to all my wonderful readers for coming back to see what is new here!!! Thanks for reading.