Hello, dear Janeites. The series dedicated to Jane Austen and the Bronte Sisters has reached its conclusion. Throughout the last year, we have been treated to interesting lectures and presentations pertaining to the life and works of Jane Austen and the Bronte Sisters: Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. The final installment in this engaging discourse was entitled “Altering ‘the Colour of My Mind’: The Poetic Imagination in Wuthering Heights” and was presented on Wednesday, January 28th, 2025.
Dr. Deborah Denenholz Morse, an acclaimed professor and scholar at William and Mary College, began the lecture by speaking of Cathy’s dream, which she explained to Nelly in the text. By analyzing Cathy’s fantastical vision, readers may discover more about Cathy’s state of mind and her feelings for Heathcliff, as well as Emily Bronte’s allusion to Biblical works. In this example as well as many others, it becomes clear that Emily Bronte uses poetry and visual imagery liberally to propel the plot forward.
While discussing Bronte’s reliance on the concept of the ruptured conscious, Dr. Morse referenced how memory burst in during Cathy’s delirium, interrupting her reunion with Heathcliff. She points at this passage and shows how it illustrates the way Cathy’s mind inhabits a threshold between the past and present. When Cathy tells Nelly, “it is a rough journey,” her words may be interpreted in so many ways. The character might be referring to the way she has delved into her past or it might also reference her current state. Cathy then enters another temporal space while remembering the way Heathcliff behaved on the moors when he tried to capture the lapwing birds. She knows Heathcliff’s trap has killed the younglings and destroyed the nest which would have kept the older ones safe in winter. In Cathy’s feverish state, she pulls the feathers from her pillow with her teeth, symbolically tearing apart her marriage to Edgar Linton. She longs to be with Heathcliff because he understands her in a way that is unfathomable. She cannot separate herself from Heathcliff for he is just as much part of herself as she is attached to him.
In the second half of the lecture, Dr. Lydia Brown, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Virginia, speaks to the audience about the way Emily Bronte often pushed against the permanent, like wood, scripture, ink, and even oneself so that all those constancies might be turned to something more fluid, like water. She often references Charlotte Bronte’s perceptions of her sister’s works, especially when she called Emily an essayist and a philosopher, rather than a writer of fiction. Dr. Brown explores the poetry and illustrations created by Emily Bronte and seeks to understand the motivations and purposes for such rudimentary works.
Do you love Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and want to watch the presentation on your own time? Check out the Jane Austen Summer Program’s YouTube Channel to find this presentation as well as many others.
Please join us as we leave behind this study of the Bronte Sisters and embark upon a new series called “Music and the Regency”. The first livestream episode will be available on February 18th, 2025.
And for those of you who are eager to attend the 2025 Jane Austen Summer Program which will be an in-person event this year, registration for the event will begin on February 1st, 2025. Stay tuned for more information to follow.
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