Fairytale Patterns in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights [PDF]

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Fairytale patterns in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

In this essay, I want to talk about fairytale patterns in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, as already announced in the title, by making a comparison between this novel and Villeneuve’s Beauty and the Beast. For the first part of my essay, I want to focus on the relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff and for the second part on the relation between Catherine Linton and Hareton. To begin with, as many critics have said, the love story between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff resembles the one lived by Beauty and the Beast. Both in the novel and in the fairytale everything begins when the father goes in a trip and asks his children what gifts they wish him to bring them. In the fairytale, the ruined merchant who his Beauty’s father finds out that “one of his ships, which he has believed lost, has come safely into port with a rich cargo” (Villeneuve, 3). The Beauty’s brothers and sisters think that this means an end to their poverty and ask their father to bring them expensive gifts. Beauty is the only one who wishes nothing except the fact that she wants her father to come back safely, but at her father’s insistence she asks for a rose. The father fails in getting anything good out of this journey and not only does he return as poor as he leaves, but he also comes back home with bad news regarding Beauty. He brings her the rose she has asked for, but tells her that he has taken it from a beast’s garden and now “she has to leave her home and go to live with that beast in order to save her father’s life” (Popkin, 117). In Emily Brontë’s novel Catherine and Hindley’s father leaves for Liverpool and asks the children what to bring them. Catherine wants a whip and Hindley a fiddle. However, neither of them receives what they have wanted, but instead, the father brings home a boy called Heathcliff who is “as dark almost as if it came from the devil” (Brontë, 42). Therefore, both in the fairytale and in the novel, as the critic Bruno Bettelheim said, “it is the father who causes the heroine to join the Beast” (183) and it is the task of both Catherine and Beauty to see beyond appearances and to “love the beast for his inner qualities” (Popkin, 118). However, Catherine Earnshaw likes Heathcliff from the beginning and they even fall deeply in love with each other. She is different from her daughter, Catherine Linton, who resembles Beauty more because of her innocence and

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good heart. Catherine Earnshaw is somehow wild and that is why she falls for Heathcliff from the beginning, I think. Anyway “Heathcliff has the potential of turning into a hand-some prince”, but “by choosing Edgar Linton, Cathy fails the test, and leaves Heathcliff behind, untransformed”, as the critic Elliott Gose claimed (Gose, 5). Catherine is selfish. She does love Heathcliff and cannot think of their separation as she says “Nelly, I am Heathcliff” (Brontë, 100), but even so she does not want to join to his poverty and wants to marry Edgar Linton for his wealth (“And he will be rich, and I shall like to be the greatest woman of the neighbourhood, and I shall be proud of having such a husband” – Brontë, 94). But this marriage does not bring happiness either to Catherine or to Heathcliff for Catherine says that she wants to marry Linton to help Heathcliff prosper and get rid of her brother’s tyranny. Therefore, they cannot be together in this world and the ghosts that people claim to see at the end of the novel show us that they are together and continue their love but in another world. For the second part of my essay, I am focusing on the relation between Catherine Linton and Hareton, relation which seems to resemble more the story of Beauty and the Beast. Like Beauty, Catherine is captive in the beast’s house and she runs away to be with her father. In the novel, Heathcliff conditions her that if she wants to be set free and to go to her dying father she must marry Linton. In the fairytale, the Beast lets Beauty go to her father under the condition that she promises she would come back to him (after two months). Such is Catherine’s love for her father that she accepts to marry Linton. This love was interpreted by the critic Bruno Bettelheim as an oedipal love. She loves her father so much that she wants him to die in peace and lies to him telling that she is happy with Linton even if the situation is different. After her father’s death, Catherine returns to Wuthering Heights where she takes care of Linton until he dies. But the beast is embodied by Hareton this time who “has been raised in bestial ignorance by Heathcliff” (Popkin, 118). He shows his admiration towards her and tries to please her, but “she rebuffs him as Beauty refuses the Beast’s early first offers of marriage” (Williams, 124). Anyway, they start spending time together and both Catherine and Beauty begin to see the inner qualities of the beast. And as Bruno Bettelheim said, “Beauty saves the Beast by transferring her attachment from father to lover” (135). Therefore, Beauty returns to the Beast and “finds the Beast nearly dying of a broken heart” (194) because he has thought she would never come back. Beauty realizes then that she really loves the Beast and when he asks her again if she wants to marry him her answer this time is “yes”. On the other hand, Catherine teaches Hareton how to

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write and read and turns him into a prince. Meanwhile they fall in love and in the end the beast will turn into a prince in both cases and this happens because of the true love of Catherine for Hareton on one hand and on the other hand because of the true love of Beauty for the Beast (“the beast will be disenchanted only if the princess comes to love him truly”- Bettelheim, 184). The two couples marry at the end. Moreover, there are other resemblances between the novel and the fairytale: 

In both the novel and in the fairytale we see the dream motif. In the fairytale, while being captive in the Beast’s castle she dreams a handsome prince who tells her not to let herself be misled by appearances and to please the beast and when she comes back home and hesitates whether to return to the beast or not she dreams the prince again and he almost dies. When she wakes up she decides to go to him immediately because she loves him. In the novel, Catherine dreams that she was in heaven, but she cried she wanted back on earth and the angels got angry with her and they flung her out, but she was happy because Heathcliff was there. (Brontë, 97).



The Beast, Heathcliff and Hareton want to change for their Beauty. The Beast wants to look more friendly so that she will be less afraid of him, Heathcliff wants to change to please Catherine and for this Nelly helps him wash and dress so that he would look better for Catherine and could integrate among her guests on Christmas day (Brontë, 66-67). And finally Hareton wants to learn how to write and read so that he will not be an illiterate anymore and Cathy could enjoy his companionship.



Wuthering Heights seems to resemble The Beast’s castle. It is more deserted, the appearance is not so hospitable, cold appearance and it has an ominous air.

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Both Catherine’s mother and Beauty’s mother were fearless women.

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The father of the Beast brought him up in that way as Heathcliff brought Hareton up as an illiterate.

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Both Heathcliff and the Beast ask their Beauty to run away together because they are so different from the rest of the people.

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In conclusion, Wuthering Heights resembles Beauty and the Beast through two generations, the second generation being the one that meets the happy ending of the fairytale. Bibliography:

 Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment. Vintage Books. 2010  Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Wordsworth Classics. 1993  Gose, Elliott B. “Wuthering Heights: The Heath and the Hearth.” Nineteenth-Century

Fiction, vol. 21, no. 1, 1966, pp. 1–19. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2932695  Popkin, Michael. “‘Wuthering Heights’ and Its ‘Spirit.’” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol.

15, no. 2, 1987, pp. 116–122. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43796302  Villeneuve Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot. Madame De Villeneuve's The Story of the Beauty and the Beast. Blackdown Publications, 2014  Williams, Anne. “Natural Supernaturalism in ‘Wuthering Heights.’” Studies in Philology,

vol. 82, no. 1, 1985, pp. 104–127. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4174198

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Bibliography:

 Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment. Vintage Books. 2010  Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Wordsworth Classics. 1993  Gose, Elliott B. “Wuthering Heights: The Heath and the Hearth.” Nineteenth-Century

Fiction,

vol.

21,

no.

1,

1966,

pp.

1–19.

JSTOR,

JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/2932695  Menken, Alan, and Howard Ashman. Walt Disney Pictures Presents Beauty and the Beast. Milwaukee, WI: H. Leonard Pub. Corp, 1991. Musical score  Popkin, Michael. “‘Wuthering Heights’ and Its ‘Spirit.’” Literature/Film Quarterly,

vol. 15, no. 2, 1987, pp. 116–122. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43796302  Villeneuve Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot. Madame De Villeneuve's The Story of the Beauty and the Beast. Blackdown Publications, 2014  Williams, Anne. “Natural Supernaturalism in ‘Wuthering Heights.’” Studies in

Philology,

vol.

82,

no.

www.jstor.org/stable/4174198

1,

1985,

pp.

104–127.

JSTOR,

JSTOR,

Popa Bianca-Elena 2 Year, Series 1, Group 1 nd

Fairytale patterns in Wuthering Heights Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff:  the love story between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff resembles  the love story between Beauty and the Beast  everything begins when the father goes in a trip  Beauty asks for a rose Catherine asks for a whip and Hindley a fiddle  Bettelheim: “it is the father who causes the heroine to join the Beast”  Beauty has to leave her home and go to live with that beast in order to save her father’s life  Catherine Earnshaw likes Heathcliff from the beginning and they even fall deeply in love with each other  “Heathcliff has the potential of turning into a hand-some prince”, but “by choosing Edgar Linton, Cathy fails the test, and leaves Heathcliff behind, untransformed”  Elliott Gose => Catherine is selfish  they cannot be together in this world  the ghosts  they are together and continue their love but in another world

Catherine Linton and Hareton:  like Beauty, Catherine is captive in the beast’s house  she runs away to be with her father (oedipal love)  Heathcliff conditions her that if she wants to be set free and to go to her dying father she must marry Linton  the Beast lets Beauty go to her father under the condition that she promises she would come back to him  the beast is embodied by Hareton this time who “has been raised in bestial ignorance by Heathcliff”  Popkin

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 He shows his admiration towards her and tries to please her, but “she rebuffs him as Beauty refuses the Beast’s early first offers of marriage”  Williams  both Catherine and Beauty begin to see the inner qualities of the beast  “Beauty saves the Beast by transferring her attachment from father to lover”  Bettelheim  the beast will turn into a prince in both cases  “the beast will be disenchanted only if the princess comes to love him truly”  Bettelheim  the two couples marry at the end.   Conclusion: Wuthering Heights resembles Beauty and the Beast through two generations, the second generation being the one that meets the happy ending of the fairytale.