Race and its Impact in Wuthering Heights: From Page to Screen
AnnaKate Burleson
AnnaKate Burleson is a senior at the University of Mobile majoring in English Literature and Secondary Education, as well as minoring in French. Her focus throughout her educational career has been on modernist poetry, but she was captivated by Wuthering Heights during a Romantic literature course and was compelled to further her research through writing about the novel. Her ultimate goal is to be an English teacher and foster a love of literature in research in future generations.
Abstract
The race of Heathcliff in Brontë’s classic novel Wuthering Heights is highly contested and has been for several decades. The 2011 film adaptation of the novel in which Heathcliff is played by a Black actor only exacerbated this contention. While many film critics have analyzed the impact of a Black Heathcliff on the screen, few have explored what the source material has to say on the matter. Through analyzing Brontë’s own words, it is possible to determine her perspective on the matter. Combining Brontë’s writing with its historical context paints a picture of Heathcliff as a man of color scorned by his cruel white family. This puts Heathcliff’s cruelty throughout the novel into a new perspective - one that centers his racial identity, rather than leaves it on the outskirts of the reader’s understanding. Andrea Arnold’s Black Heathcliff expands on Brontë’s man of color in a vibrant and meaningful way through her intentional inclusion of his intersectional identities, and both works have a distinct social commentary that directly correlates to Britain’s racial tensions in their respective time periods.
Race and its Impact in Wuthering Heights: From Page to Screen
Heathcliff’s race in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has been a subject of discussion since the novel’s debut in the late nineteenth century, and this conversation was accelerated greatly by Andrea Arnold’s 2011 film in which Heathcliff is played by Black actor, James Howson. This decision was met with a mixed reaction from audiences, but Arnold’s choice in casting adds an intriguing new avenue of analysis to the original text. Brontë’s original depiction of Heathcliff is racially ambiguous while still establishing him as not Caucasian. Arnold goes a step further and forces the color of his skin into a clear light, which makes some of the implicit aspects of the novel become increasingly and jarringly explicit. Through analyzing Brontë’s initial descriptions of Heathcliff, as well as the conversations among the novel’s characters, and comparing them against Arnold’s depiction of Heathcliff, one gains a more holistic understanding of the power dynamics within the novel, along with those of nineteenth-century England as a whole. While Heathcliff’s ambiguous racial identity provided in the novel is not a puzzle to solve, in order to understand the meaning of the text in the most complete way possible, it is crucial to recognize the racism included in Brontë’s original writing, and through understanding this aspect of the novel, one may also engage with Arnold’s film adaptation in a more meaningful way. Both Brontë’s novel and Arnold’s film paint a clear image of Heathcliff as a person of color who is victimized by racial stereotypes through their historical contexts, their portrayals of Heathcliff’s physical body, and their individual focuses on class consciousness and racial disparity.
In order to fully understand the impact of Andrea Arnold’s film adaptation, the original context and content of Wuthering Heights must first be explored. Brontë published this novel in 1847, just years after the abolition of slavery in England. The conversation surrounding race at this time was at the forefront of the people’s minds, but the subject was also very controversial. Slavery had been fully abolished in the United Kingdom in 1833, though the slave trade itself ended several years prior. For several years after the abolition of slavery, British slave owners retained some of their former slaves as unpaid apprentices (Henry 8), and this practice ended a mere seven years before the publishing of Wuthering Heights. Formerly enslaved people in Britain were now facing challenges concerning their citizenship, their finances, and their housing, while former slave owners and their supporters were opposed to instating any rights to the formerly enslaved (Henry 8). Many aspects of Wuthering Heights embody the popular trains of thought concerning race, slavery, and civilization in England during this time, and Brontë’s choice of setting is an example of this. In a brief literary analysis, British colonialism historian Corrine Fowler discusses the impact of the novel’s setting on its subtle racial themes, stating, “[t]he novel is set in 1801, when Liverpool handled most of Britain’s transatlantic trade in enslaved people” (Fowler 4). The year in which the story is set is significant in part due to the location of much of the novel’s action — the moorlands surrounding Yorkshire. Moors are “traditionally associated with uncivilized regions” (Fowler 3), and Yorkshire is in Northern England. The moors are, therefore, relatively close to Liverpool, the nation’s capital for slave trade. The novel’s proximity to slave trade in both time and space sets the stage for race to play a significant, meaningful role within the story itself. With this historical context in mind, one can meaningfully engage with the text to explore some of the more subtle and nuanced discussions of race that it contains.
Brontë’s own descriptions of Heathcliff throughout the novel make it clear that he is not a white man. One of the most compelling examples of this comes from Nelly, the novel’s primary storyteller. During one of Nelly’s many conversations with Heathcliff, he notes that he wishes he had Edgar’s blue eyes and smooth forehead, which is itself a hint that Heathcliff has dark eyes and skin. Nelly replies, “A good heart would help you to a bonny face, if you were a regular black” (34). She tries to reassure him that he is, in fact, handsome when she elaborates, “You’re fit to be a prince in disguise. Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen…and you were kidnapped by wicked soldiers and brought to England. Were I in your place, I would frame high notions of my birth” (34). It is clear at this moment that Heathcliff is, at the very least, an immigrant. He is undoubtedly foreign, but Nelly is unsure of his origins. Heathcliff, too, seems to be unsure of his ethnic background since he was brought to Wuthering Heights by his adoptive father. Heathcliff is also described as a “black villain” (66) with “a colt’s mane” (45) and “dusky fingers” (37). Cathy, Heathcliff’s primary love interest, also wonders with concern if her fine white dresses would be soiled by contact with Heathcliff’s dark hands (Brontë 37). These descriptions paired with both Nelly’s speculations of Heathcliff’s ethnic background and Heathcliff’s own desire to have the same fair features as Edgar Linton paint a clear picture of Heathcliff as a person of color.
Despite Brontë’s decision to portray Heathcliff as a person of color, she leaves his specific race ambiguous. Some instances make it seem as though Heathcliff could be Black, while other times it sounds like he could be Asian. Nelly’s assertion that his parents could come from China or India (Brontë 34) are an example of this, but the story of Heathcliff’s adoption leaves some clues that he could potentially be African. Mr. Earnshaw states that he found “it…in the streets of Liverpool where he acquired it for its owner. Not a soul knew to whom it belonged” (24). Liverpool at this point in history was the center of the European slave trade, and the majority of those enslaved people were from the African continent. Heathcliff being found here as a child implies that he may have escaped or been lost during an attempted slave trade. Mr. Linton later speculates whether Heathcliff could be “a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway” (30). A lascar is someone from India or the nearby regions, and the idea that Heathcliff could be from America or Spain could be due to the fact that Heathcliff’s skin is not as dark as a British person at this time would assume a Black person’s skin should be. He is undeniably darker than the white characters around him, but his peers, as well as the reader, are unable to determine what, specifically, Heathcliff’s race is. There is no definitive answer as to Heathcliff’s origin to be found within the text. Readers, like Nelly, are left to imagine any and all possible origin stories for him, but all trains of thought inevitably lead back to the truth that Heathcliff is ethnically different from those around him. This sets the stage for the 2011 film adaptation of the novel, and brings validity to the decision to portray Heathcliff as a Black man.
Similarly to the novel, Arnold’s film adaptation has a necessary social and historical context that must be discussed before it can be meaningfully examined. The context of Wuthering Heights as a novel seems fairly obvious after a moment of thought. It is only natural that the institution of slavery would have an impact on the plot of a story set while slavery was commonplace, especially considering the physical locationing of the plot’s main action. The importance of a dialogue about slavery in a film released in the past decade proves to be a bit less obvious. Because of this, it is worth noting that 2011 was a crucially important year in British history in regards to racism. In August of that year, a Black English citizen named Mark Duggan was shot by police after being stopped for suspected possession of a firearm. He died on the scene from gunshot wounds to the chest. Initial statements from police claimed that Duggan fired a gun at police before he was shot, but this statement was later recanted after British news outlets reported that Duggan’s firearm “was recovered ten to fourteen feet away, on the other side of a low fence from his body” (Dodd 2). The implication of this new forensic knowledge was that Duggan discarded his firearm before or while he was approached by the police, and was shot after the fact. This incident was met with public outrage, resulting in widespread riots throughout England. Protesters lit buildings and buses ablaze, claiming they were challenging a racist police force that regularly and purposefully targets Black citizens with unwarranted violence. Arnold’s Wuthering Heights first aired a mere four months after these riots began and just a few days after the news reported for the first time that Duggan was unarmed at the time of his death. Racial tensions in England were incredibly high, and this is the social stage that was set for Arnold’s Black Heathcliff. English audiences were more acutely aware of racial inequality than they had been in the past several years, making Wuthering Heights gain new meaning in both Arnold’s film and in the responses of its viewers.
In almost every film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is played by a white man. The only film in which Heathcliff is portrayed as a person of color is in Andrea Arnold’s 2011 version, which is surprising considering the descriptions in the source material. Arnold’s casting decision is interesting because it had never been done before, and also because of how it paints many of the story’s plot points in a different light. Film critic Sophie Mayer said it best in her critique of the film, stating that “[i]n Arnold's film, Heathcliff's blackness is neither decorative diversity nor affirmative action: we are shown him being cussed, beaten and forced to break rocks – a startling image that locates the impact of slavery at the centre of the English literary canon” (4). In the novel, Brontë makes it clear that Heathcliff does suffer harm at the hands of his adoptive family, but the film makes the power dynamics much more obvious and deeply sinister. Viewers see a white family adopt a brown child only to dehumanize and humiliate him. Heathcliff becomes an instantly sympathetic character, as the audience’s discomfort stems from their historical understanding of slavery and racism, as well as the recent social wounds caused by English police brutality in the year of the film’s release. Heathcliff’s misfortunes transform from being unimaginable and bizarre to unsettlingly familiar. Arnold also portrays Heathcliff as the main focus of the story, and the entire film utilizes a 4:3 ratio rather than the typical widescreen formatting seen in major motion pictures (Mayer 6). The 4:3 ratio in particular creates a certain level of intimacy between the characters and the audience. Andrea Arnold consistently utilizes the 4:3 aspect ratio in her films for this exact purpose. In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine concerning her adaptation of Wuthering Heights, she defends her use of 4:3 by saying, “I think it’s a very respectful frame .. [t]hat’s what it feels like to me when I look at somebody framed in a 4:3 frame. It makes them really important. The landscape doesn’t take it from them. They’re not small in the middle of something. It gives them real respect and importance. It’s a very human frame” (Arnold). With less opportunity for visual background noise, the audience is forced to see the people onscreen for the majority of their viewing experience. By keeping Heathcliff centered in a “respectful” frame, as Arnold puts it, she allows the audience to see him as a fully-formed individual, rather than just an included piece in a larger scene. These choices center Heathcliff’s humanity, as well as the color of his skin, and transform the original text to draw attention to its subtle racial nuances.
There are a few crucial scenes in this film that make the racial disparity depicted in Brontë’s novel come into a new light. The film’s opening shot is one such example. Film analyst Jonathan Murray describes this scene as “a shaky, hand-held close-up of a weathered gray wooden surface that bears a child's rude sketch of the eponymous hilltop homestead and a farmyard animal tethered outside” (57). The drawing is almost eerie in the dark light of the film, with harsh, jagged pen marks carving an image of the Heights into the old wood. The animal in the drawing hangs its head and keeps its tail tucked between its legs. It is difficult to tell what kind of animal it is, but it appears most similar to a dog, a potential nod to Brontë’s many references to Heathcliff being treated as an animal throughout the novel (Murray 58). The film keeps an aesthetic focus on animals throughout: a chained dog, a tethered horse, or a caged bird. As the camera follows Heathcliff’s eyes for the majority of the story, it often lingers on things that Heathcliff finds important or interesting. Throughout his point of view segments, Heathcliff often stares for just a little too long at animals being restrained. This serves to reveal some of Heathcliff’s own inner turmoil. He, too, feels like a dog chained to a post or a bird left in a cage. Seeing through Heathcliff’s eyes allows the audience to genuinely empathize with him. Compared with Heathcliff’s visions of Cathy riding a horse with her hair flowing through the wind, one can clearly see that he feels trapped and isolated in comparison to his white peers. The social context of the film makes this feeling of entrapment and isolation in the face of completely free peers makes room for an understandable subtext of racism. Drawing on Heathcliff’s internal feelings connects the film with its source material in a unique way, as well. While the novel does not dwell on Heathcliff’s thoughts or feelings, Arnold’s film keeps them at center stage, which allows viewers to “contemplate the self-inflicted wounds of a divided society within which, as Nelly says, we don't in general take to foreigners...unless they take to us first” (Murray 58). Heathcliff does not have to directly state how he feels to be understood in this way. Arnold’s Heathcliff is stoic and speaks little, like Brontë’s, but the audience is able to feel the pain of both as they watch the world through his eyes.
Scenes such as the child’s drawing of a tethered animal and the bird locked in its cage are often accompanied by scenes in which Heathcliff faces brutality at the hands of white adults and peers, which makes the ambiguous feelings mentioned previously gain a firm foothold in Heathcliff’s reality. Shortly after seeing Heathcliff’s unsettling drawing in the wood, there is a scene in which “Heathcliff is racially insulted by his adoptive brother, who also beats him” (Mayer 5). Racial insults are not seen in Brontë’s novel, which could be a contributing factor to Heathcliff’s ethnic background being ignored by many readers. Arnold chooses to make white characters actively engage in racist behaviors towards the film’s only Black character, which transforms their cruelty entirely. Brontë’s Lintons and Earnshaws are harsh towards Heathcliff in a way that seems to escape all meaning. Their motives for ostracizing him as both a child and an adult are never explained in detail, and the reader is left to infer what their inner thoughts could be. In the film, however, Heathcliff’s family members make it clear that their disdain for him comes directly from the color of his skin, and “[b]rutally pejorative reactions to his ethnicity come to define his character, ‘degrading’ him as Catherine says” (Mayer 5). After facing racial insults, Heathcliff’s attentiveness towards the caged bird gains a new layer of meaning. He feels completely trapped and isolated in his own home for reasons that are entirely out of his control. Later scenes depict white characters swearing at Heathcliff, physically harming him, and forcing him to do intensive manual labor. His family is not the same distant, cold-hearted family found in Brontë’s novel. In Arnold’s film, they begin to look like nothing more than slaveholders. Heathcliff’s own cruelty towards others later on in the film begins to feel almost justified, whereas in the novel, it is abhorrent. Heathcliff becomes one who challenges racist oppression, rather than one who retaliates against others out of sheer pettiness.
Within Brontë’s novel, Heathcliff’s race is received in two very distinct ways by two different groups of people. For characters with higher social status, Heathcliff is perceived negatively because of his race. On the other hand, less wealthy or less powerful characters tend to view Heathcliff as exotic or intriguing. Literary analyst and historian Elsie Michie discusses this phenomenon at great length in her research on racist tropes in Victorian and Elizabethan literature. She explains that “[f]rom the point of view of a member of the gentry, Mr. Linton, Heathcliff's blackness makes him a threat; he is a potential thief come to rob the landlord on rent-day. From the point of view of a servant, Nelly, it makes him a potential prince” (Michie 133). Each character in the story has a set of preconceived notions about Heathcliff based on the color of his skin, but it is his relative status to them that determines what these notions are. Those that have power hold prejudices that are clearly cruel in nature, but even Nelly’s fantasies of princehood stem from a place of racism. Nelly “can fantasize that Heathcliff has elevated origins only after she has conceived of him as of a different race” (Michie 134). More importantly, Nelly can only imagine Heathcliff as royalty after she imagines him as a “regular black” (Brontë 34). Even her lofty imaginings of Heathcliff’s origins are steeped in prejudices. Heathcliff’s racial differences bar him from having relationships with those around him where he can be considered an equal. A surface-level reading of the text allows the reader to understand that Heathcliff is ostracized from everyone around him, but understanding the role of race in the story makes the reasons for Heathcliff’s loneliness and suffering more apparent.
Because of the rampant racial stereotypes found in people who are both above and below Heathcliff, socially and economically speaking, it is important to analyze why he is able to have his intense relationship with Cathy. Heathcliff makes it clear through several conversations that he is aware of his differences to Cathy, but that he still feels as though there is an even playing field between them. One such instance is during one of their many disagreements, in which Heathcliff states, “The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him, they crush those beneath them. You are welcome to torture me to death for your amusement, only allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style” (87). Through this comparison, Heathcliff places Cathy in the role of tyrant and himself in the role of slave, which is a potential nod to the different colors of their skin. However, there is a unique relationship here where Heathcliff is able to occasionally ask to take the role of tyrant for himself. Despite his ability to play the tyrant when he asks, the fact still remains that he must ask in the first place. Cathy does hold power over Heathcliff, and their relationship is one of a “mistress and bondsman, rooted in his complete submission to her will, rather than a mutual affection or sympathy of feeling. His service is the social and material extension of her identity” (von Sneidern 178). Heathcliff and Cathy have several barriers between them in terms of their romance. Cathy marries Edgar, Heathcliff marries Isabella, and they ultimately operate in different social castes regardless of how they feel towards each other. Cathy has an elevated socioeconomic status, and she is white. These two aspects of her role in society allow Cathy to operate from a place of ownership in her relationship with Heathcliff, and she does this without hesitation. Heathcliff becomes Cathy’s “ultimate possession,” (van Sneidern 178), and she continues to own him even after her death. This ownership is spelled out clearly in the novel, and Heathcliff himself compares their relationship to slavery (Brontë 53). Heathcliff’s lower status contributes directly to this feeling of being enslaved, and his lower status is attributed largely to his skin color. In both the novel and the film, Heathcliff’s race contributes to his socioeconomic status, which ultimately keeps him from having a fulfilling romance with Cathy in each stage of their relationship.
The racial power dynamic in the relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy becomes even clearer in Arnold’s film adaptation. The visual representation of their differences on-screen paints Cathy as a rich white woman who wants what she cannot have, tainting the idea of real love between her and Heathcliff (Mayer 6). Heathcliff’s point of view reveals clear differences in his perception of both Cathy and of himself. A recurring image of Cathy is that of her riding a horse. He lingers on her hair flowing through the wind, and then returns to watching the horse’s mane billow alongside hers. Just before this sequence, a tight shot focuses on “Cathy’s new horse accepting a bit into its mouth” (Johnson 58). Heathcliff’s eyes often linger over scenes of animals being held captive, and this shot is no different. It is uncomfortably long, and is unsettling in comparison to the freedom Heathcliff sees in Cathy as she rides the new horse through the fields. Cathy steers the horse with no regard for its well-being, only caring about her enjoyment of the event. She functions within her relationship with Heathcliff in a similar way. Heathcliff identifies with the chained dog and the caged bird, and it stands to reason that he would also identify with the horse that cannot run freely, especially with the descriptions in the novel of Heathcliff’s “colt’s mane” (Brontë 45) as a reference to his foreign ethnic background. Cathy is the one holding the reins, both literally and figuratively. Even as she rides this horse, she is in complete control of the destination. Heathcliff has no input in where she will direct the horse to go. He can only watch as her hair flows freely in the wind. These silent, visual moments paint a deeply emotional picture of the disconnect in his relationship with Cathy. He cannot have a fulfilling romance with her throughout the novel because she holds the reins independently, and he has no chance to offer respected feedback. His inability to have control stems directly from his lower social status, which Arnold effectively attributes to his different race. After facing racial violence at the hands of Cathy’s brother, it is understandable that he will never be seen as her equal in any relationship, much less a romantic one.
Despite the fact that Brontë does not directly tell the readers Heathcliff’s race, she still successfully depicts him as a victim of racism and stereotyping. This may not have been her goal, but from the moment of Heathcliff’s adoption, he is ostracized due to his skin color. Comments made by other characters show that they do not relate to him because of his foreignness, the setting of the story harkens to times of slavery, and even Cathy cannot look past the way Heathcliff’s skin impacts his social class. Andrea Arnold noticed all this in the text and chose to have a Black actor portray Heathcliff, and this transforms the text’s meaning in a drastic way. As the audience watches the story unfold through his eyes, Heathcliff becomes a vastly more sympathetic character, and each white character becomes more coldhearted and cruel. Heathcliff finds solace in gazing at restrained animals, identifying with their inability to roam freely in their less-than-human state, and the white members of his family take every opportunity to instigate racialized violence towards him. Both works together tell the tale of racism in England during the nineteenth century, exposing its harsh power dynamics and social injustices.
Works Cited
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Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. The Project Gutenberg, 1996.
Dodd, Vikram. “New Questions Raised over Duggan Shooting.” The Guardian, 18 November 20112.
Fowler, Corrine. “Was Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff Black?” The Conversation, University of Leicester Press, 25 October 2017.
Henry, Natasha L. "Slavery Abolition Act". The Canadian Encyclopedia, 4 Oct. 2022.
Mayer, Sophie. “The New Wuthering Heights Does Not Ignore Racism: It Tackles It Full-On.” The Guardian, 8 December 2011.
Michie, Elsie. “From Simianized Irish to Oriental Despots: Heathcliff, Rochester and Racial Difference.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 25, no. 2, Duke University Press, 1992, pp. 125–40, https://doi.org/10.2307/1346001. Accessed 4 March 2022.
Murray, Jonathan. “Wuthering Heights: Review.” Cinéaste, vol. 38, no. 1, 2012, pp. 57–59, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43501000. Accessed 4 May 2022.
von Sneidern, Maja-Lisa. “Wuthering Heights and the Liverpool Slave Trade.” ELH, vol. 62, no. 1, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, pp. 171–96, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30030265. Accessed 4 March 2022.