Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:02]
A
The History of Literature podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hello. Today in the podcast, we look at the contents of Emily Bronte's desk drawer. In particular, the five reviews she clipped and kept after publishing her one and only novel, the masterpiece Wuthering Heights. The book was published in December of 1847. The the reviews came out in January of 1848. And Emily would die at the end of that year at the age of just 30. For barely a year of her life, she was a published novelist with reviews to show for it. What did those reviews say to her about her and her work? We'll clear away 150 years or so of subsequent readers and look at her very first ones, maybe giving us a glimpse inside the mind of the dying. Emily Bronte, today on the History of Literature. Okay, here we go. Happy New Year, everyone. I'm Jack Wilson. Let's. Let's just jump right in. Are you looking forward to 2026? I have to say that I am. No more doom and gloom for me. I'm going to seize the day or year, as the case may be. And why not? I might not have much more time here. I'm not sick or anything, but I'm aging as we all are. I am determined that no matter what else happens in this world, my destiny is going to be shaped by me. Emily Bronte did not have much time on the planet. What's fascinating about this topic for me is that she wrote a work of genius. It was on our list as number 15 on the list of greatest books of all time. The highest ranked book by a Bronte, by the way. And although it was accepted for publication before Jane Eyre, her older sister Charlotte's book, it came out after Jane Eyre, and so the comparisons were, were inevitable. Critics and the public had loved Jane Eyre. They saw that novel as signs of a great new promising talent on the scene. Charlotte Bronte. Except at that point, she was known as Currer Bell, whom nobody knew. Currer Bell had not been around the usual literary haunts in London, had not attended the posh schools one might expect for such a capable writer. Nobody knew who he was, if indeed he was even a man. Some suspected otherwise. And what about Acton Bell and Ellis Bell? Was this one person or three different people? All that the outside world had to go on was a single collection of poetry purporting to be poems written by all three of the Bells. And then Jane Eyre by Currer Bell. And now a pair of novels that came out by Acton and Ellis. Of course, we know that these were the Bronte sisters. They were real people. But in the mindset of these reviewers, In December of 1847 and January of 1848, it was all a mystery. And so, just as we sometimes hear of people who by some twist of fate, are believed to be dead and get to hear their obituary in advance. Well, let me, let me interrupt myself there. There's an odd literary history of this happening, by the way. You might recall that Mark Twain put this scenario into his book Tom Sawyer. When Tom and Huck and their friend Jim Harper are believed to be dead, they attend their own funeral and they hear the words that are spoken about them. And then years later, something similar actually happened to Mark Twain. The New York Times reported that he was lost at sea and ran an obituary which led to the famous cable in return, sometimes disputed, but which has come down through the ages. As Mark Twain saying in the cable. The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. I said first, I think, when I started talking about Mark Twain. But that wasn't the earliest example I've got. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the English romantic poet, was drinking some coffee one day when he overheard two men discussing his death by suicide. He asked the men if he could read the paper they were quoting from. It turned out that a man wearing a shirt with the initials S.T.C. had hanged himself. And the rumor had spread into print that the STC stood for Samuel Taylor Coleridge, famous poet. Coleridge did not actually die for another 18 years after that incident. And finally, there's the example of Ernest Hemingway, who read his own obituaries after surviving not one, but two plane crashes in Africa just one day apart. First, the plane that he and his wife Mary were in hit a bunch of ibises, had to crash land. The second day, their rescue plane caught on fire. Newspapers were convinced that a great writer, Papa, was dead and ran reports on it. Wikipedia picks up the tale from here. When the couple finally emerged after a 170 mile automobile ride, the AP reported that Mary was limping and Hemingway's head and arm were bandaged. But Hemingway was, quote, carrying a bunch of bananas and a bottle of gin and appeared to be in high spirits as he shrugged off the crashes. End quote. What we're going to talk about today with Emily Bronte is a little different. This is a woman who's written under a pseudonym. First poetry, then a novel, and suddenly she, as Ellis Bell, is appearing in the pages she's been reading for years. The literary world. Her connection to literature has now Come to her. What is it like to see yourself in this way, through your work, your poetry that gave some window into your soul, and the novel that you toiled on for months, expressions of yourself. You put yourself out there and here's what the world returns. There's a story about Picasso going to see his paintings at the Prado, I think, where they were hanging on the same walls that Goyas and Velasquez's and other old masters. And he said, they fit as in, my work belongs here. With these paintings. A painter lives his whole life in awe of these previous geniuses. And then you get the chance to join them and you realize that you belong or you don't. That's the frame of mind I imagine Emily being in. She's lived in this little house with her father, her brother and her sisters, who for years. It's kind of a dark, cramped place, very near a cemetery and a church that was constantly putting her father in charge of funerals, an average of one a day. Death was everywhere, light if it came, came from literature. And here she is joining the pages where people discussed Byron and other poets she admired, commented on the affairs of the world and the literary scene, saying to her, yes, you fit or no, we don't think you do. Here's what we think of you. She had her own opinion of her works, of course, every writer does. But every parent thinks their kid is a genius or funny or shy or whatever you think of your kid. But it's not until the child goes off to school and you attend a parent teacher conference that you hear from someone who is not as biased as you are, not only describing your little one, but comparing him or her to others who are the same age. That is an eye opening experience. You might hear, he's a hard worker. Really? I had no idea. There's a lot of reallys in those parent teacher conferences. You maybe saw that. You maybe thought your little one might be a hard worker or maybe you didn't. How could you possibly know? You might think, oh, look at that, he's willing to color in that book for 20 minutes. That seems like a long time. But you don't know if his peers only last 30 seconds or if they could color for hours. And so you hear from the teacher, oh, he's a hard worker. Wow. Or a leader or highly emotional. And you think, oh, aren't all kids highly emotional? He's the only one we have. We thought this was just part of it, just the average level of emotionality. I'm not talking about My kids, by the way, I'm just talking about the experience of parenting and perhaps publishing your poems and your novel is a bit like this. Oh, you thought my book was boring? Hmm. Or, oh, maybe that author was too preachy. Ah, I didn't see that about myself. But the reviewer, on the one hand, you might think, well, what does the reviewer know? On the other hand, the reviewer might read and review 50 books a year. You might read those reviews yourself and think, yeah, I agree. And then all of a sudden you have your own book there, the reviewer's taking a look, and you say, oh, this person thinks my book was the worst one they read all year, or the preachiest, or. Or maybe the most exciting or the best written. We know Emily waited for those reviews. We know when they came, she clipped them out and put them in her desk drawer. In the year after her death, these were the five. I'm sorry, in the year leading up to her death, these were the five that she used to define herself as a novelist in the eyes of the world. Did she agree with them? We don't know for sure. We. What we know is that she kept them. And we also know what the world thought of her in her book based on these five reviews. They thought she was a mystery. And partly this is because of her pseudonym and the three headed giant called the Belles, who had arrived all at once, seemingly out of nowhere. And we know the world thought that Emily's novel, her pride and joy, the little one that she'd sent off to school with its little, little backpack and a lunchbox and a sign on its chest with the teacher's name and the room number in case the little one gets lost. Well, the world reported back on what they thought of that little angel of hers. In a word, the world found that book to be strange. We will hear that word again and again today. What must that have done for Emily? To Emily, to receive that news that the world thought her book was strange. Let's take a quick break and then hear from some of these reviews. And by the way, if in 2026 you'd like to make these breaks go by a little more quickly, you can sign up for our Patreon account where you will receive a low ad version which will skip right over these breaks. That's patreon.com/literature. We appreciate all of your support. The first review we're going to look at is unsigned. It comes from the Periodical atlas published in January 1848. It begins with two paragraphs of speculation about whether currer Acton and Ellis Bell, those poets and now novelists, were pen names of people or real people, one author or three, all gentlemen, all ladies, or a mixed triad, and so on, on. Jane Eyre is then widely praised, and Currer Bell, that's Charlotte, the eldest surviving sister, is announced as being preeminently the best, both as poet and novelist. And then the review turns to Wuthering Heights, and here is what it says. Wuthering Heights is a strange, inartistic story. There are evidences in every chapter of a sort of rugged power, an unconscious strength which the possessor seems never to think of turning to the best advantage. The general effect is inexpressibly painful. We know nothing in the whole range of our fictitious literature which presents such shocking pictures of the worst forms of humanity. Jane Eyre is a book which affects the reader to tears. It touches the most hidden sources of emotion. Wuthering Heights casts a gloom over the mind and not easily to be dispelled. It does not soften, it harasses, it extenterates. We'll pause there. The editor of my copy in the Norton Critical Edition wrote sick after the word extenterates. The reviewer probably meant to say exenterates, which Dictionary.com defines as quote to remove the contents of disembowel eviscerate, end quote. From here, the reviewer goes on to compare Wuthering Heights to a couple of books, including a novel called the History of Matthew Wald, and then says it has not, however, the unity and concentration of that fiction, but is a sprawling story carrying us with no mitigation of anguish through two generations of sufferers. The though one presiding evil genius sheds a grim shadow over the whole and imparts a singleness of malignity to the somewhat disjointed tale, a more natural, unnatural story we do not remember to have read. I'm going to skip ahead a bit here to the part in the review which says when we lay aside the book, it is some time before we can persuade ourselves that we have held nothing more than imaginary intercourse with the ideal creations of the brain. The reality of unreality has never been so aptly illustrated as in the scenes of almost savage life which Ellis Bell has brought so vividly before us. End quote. What if you were Emily, reading that review? Here you are, the first news you get from the real world about what they think of Wuthering Heights. And this is what it says. The natural, unnatural, the reality of unreality. It's disemboweling, sprawling, no mitigation of anguish, grim shadow Singleness of malignity to the disjointed tail. It's. That was just the first paragraph. Second paragraph says the book wants relief. A few glimpses of sunshine would have increased the reality of the picture and given strength rather than weakness to the whole. There is not in the entire dramatis personae a single character which is not utterly hateful or thoroughly contemptible. If you do not detest the person, you despise him. And if you do not despise him, you detest him with your whole heart. Hindley, the brutal, degraded sot, strong in the desire to work all mischief, but impotent in his degradation. Linton, Heathcliff, the miserable, driveling coward in whom we see selfishness in its most abject form. And Heathcliff himself, the presiding evil genius of the piece, the tyrant father of an imbecile son, a creature in whom every evil passion seems to have reached a gigantic excess form. A group of deformities such as we have rarely seen, gathered together on the same canvas. The author seems to have designed to throw some redeeming touches into the character of the brutal Heathcliff by portraying him as one faithful to the idol of his boyhood, loving to the very last, long, long after death had divided them, the unhappy girl who had cheered and brightened up the early days of his wretched life. Here is the touch of nature which makes the whole world kin, but it fails of the intended effect. There is a selfishness, a ferocity in the love of Heathcliff which scarcely suffer it, in spite of its rugged constancy, to relieve the darker parts of his nature. Even the female characters excite something of loathing and much of contempt. Beautiful and lovable in their childhood, they all, to use a vulgar expression, turn out badly. Catherine the elder, wayward, impatient, impulsive, sacrifices herself and her lover to the pitiful ambition of becoming the wife of a gentleman of station. Hence her own misery or her early death, and something of a brutal wickedness of Heathcliff's character and conduct. Though we cannot persuade ourselves that even a happy love would have tamed down the natural ferocity of the tiger. Catherine the Younger is more sinned against than sinning, and in spite of her moral defects, we have some hope of her at the last. Imagine what this would be like for Emily, to work so hard at a novel, to put these characters, to breathe so much life into these characters, and to find that it had this kind of effect on the reader. You think, well, I thought I was writing a love story. This first reviewer here seems almost like treating the book as if it's got some kind of disease, as if he's enduring the experience of reading it. An unremitting, unrelenting darkness that the reviewer cannot believe he has endured. I may have told this story before, but I had the strange experience once of writing an essay for a class and then having the professor send my essay to the whole class at Christmas time, over Christmas break, with a note that said, every 10 years or so, I have to decide whether to give a student an A or an F. This is one of those essays. And then it had my essay. I had no idea why she said that. No idea. I didn't know what all the other students were doing so differently. I thought, well, I guess. I guess this is good. I'm singular in some way. Is this how Emily Bronte felt when she read that review? Okay, I guess this is something new. I've given this reviewer a new experience. Too bad he found it so painful. Must be a good sign that I had such a strong effect on the reviewer, I guess. Although one suspects she didn't know it was going to be quite so strong. The reviewer didn't exactly seem happy about the strength, but, hmm, maybe she thought, well, that's just one reviewer. So let's hear the second one. This one comes from Douglas Jerrold's weekly newspaper, also came out in January 1848. Another unsigned review. It begins with two paragraphs on the bells, who are they? Blah blah, blah. It says that the book under review is equal in merit to Jane Eyre. That's a nice little feather for Emily's cap, right? She maybe thinks she's. She's found her reviewer, found a sympathetic reader, found someone who, who will appreciate Wuthering Heights for being on a par with Jane Eyre at least. And then the. And then the review says, quote, wuthering Heights is a strange sort of book. That word again. Strange. We will not escape it today. Maybe we'll see. We'll see if we go five for five. Wuthering Heights is a strange sort of book, baffling all regular criticism, yet it is impossible to begin and not finish it, and quite as impossible to lay it aside afterwards and say nothing about it. In the midst of the reader's perplexity, the ideas predominant in his mind concerning this book are likely to be brutal cruelty and semi savage love. What may be the moral which the author wishes the reader to deduce from his work? It is difficult to say, and we refrain from assigning any because, to speak honestly, we have discovered none but mere glimpses of hidden morals or secondary meanings. There seems to us great power in this book, but a purposeless power, which we feel a great desire to see turned to better account. We are quite confident that the writer of Wuthering Heights wants but the practiced skill to make a great artist, perhaps a great dramatic artist. His qualities are at present excessive, a far more promising fault, let it be remembered, than if they were deficient. He may tone down, whereas the weak and inefficient writer, however carefully he may write by rule and line, will never work up his productions to the point of beauty in art. In Wuthering Heights the reader is shocked, disgusted, almost sickened by details of cruelty, inhumanity, and the most diabolical hate and vengeance. And anon come passages of powerful testimony to the supreme power of love, even over demons in the human form. The women in the book are of a strange, fiendish, angelic nature, tantalizing and. And terrible, and the men are indescribable out of the book itself. Yet towards the close of the story occurs the following pretty soft picture which comes like the rainbow after a storm. At this point he quotes a passage of one character teaching another character to read. Then the review goes on. We strongly recommend all our readers who love novelty to get this story, for we can promise them that they never have read anything like it before. It is very puzzling and very interesting, and if we had but space, we would willingly devote a little more time to the analysis of this remarkable story. But we must leave it to our readers to decide what sort of a book it is. End quote. Do you think these reviews made Emily's final days somewhat pleasant? She's written a love story. Did she know just how powerful it was or how disturbing? Was she pleased by this view of her as a kind of dark genius, a mad scientist, a person of extremes, someone who puts strangeness out there? Much of what we know of Emily comes from others. Charlotte called her a giant and a baby God. She seems to have been in awe of Emily's genius, but also wary of her, distrustful of her, shocked by her regarding her as possibly being insane. Charlotte, the survivor of both Emily and Anne, became the biographer or mythographer. And some scholars have viewed the portraits that Charlotte left us of her younger sisters as being unreliable, A smoke screen, one biographer calls them. Charlotte's portrayal of Emily is of a noble savage of the Moors, stronger than a man, simpler than a child. We have a few comments from others about Emily. A fellow student once said, I simply disliked her from the first. Her tallish ungainly, ill dressed figure. When other students mocked Emily, Emily replied, I wish to be as God made me. The head of the school said of Emily, she should have been a man, a great navigator. Her powerful reason would have deduced new spheres of discovery from the knowledge of the old, and her strong, imperious will would never have been daunted by opposition or difficulty, never have given way but with life. She had a head for logic and a capability of argument unusual in a man and rarer indeed in a woman. Impairing this gift was her stubborn tenacity of will, which rendered her obtuse to all reasoning where her own wishes or her own sense of right was concerned. We hear that Emily Bronte wore purple, that she loved the solemnity of the moors, that she loved wild creatures. In the vacuum of biographical detail, nature rushes in with stories that sound fanciful. She carried a gun, says one biographer, and once, when bitten by a dog, she cauterized the wound herself with a hot iron. She was unusually tall and slim. She may have had an eating disorder. She violently punished her dog for getting muddy paw prints on the bed, then bathed and comforted him, exercised unconscious tyranny over her sisters, who called her the major, courageous, intrepid, and in 1848, slowly dying. Receiving these reviews, absorbing them, keeping them in her desk drawer. Here's review number three, which comes from examiner, an unsigned review from January 1848. This is a strange book. It's our third review in a row where it's the the first adjective out of the reviewer's mouth, or out of the reviewer's pen is the word strange. This is a strange book. It is not without evidences of considerable power, but as a whole it is wild, confused, disjointed, and improbable. And the people who make up the drama, which is tragic enough in its consequences, are savages rather ruder than those who lived before the days of Homer. Then the review has a few sentences about traveling through Yorkshire and the weather there, winds and rain, and a quote from the book about the landscape. And then it continues as this Heathcliff may be considered the hero of the book, if a hero there be. He is an incarnation of evil qualities, implacable hate, ingratitude, cruelty, falsehood, selfishness, and revenge. He exhibits, moreover, a certain stoical endurance in early life, which enables him to bide his time and nurse up his wrath till it becomes mature and terrible. And there is one portion of his nature, one only, wherein he appears to approximate to humanity, like the corsair that's a character from Byron and other such melodramatic heroes. He is linked to one virtue and a thousand crimes. And it is with difficulty that we can prevail upon ourselves to believe in the appearance of such a phenomenon so near our own dwellings as the summit of a Lancashire or Yorkshire moor. The reviewer notes that the tale is confusing chronologically, which makes it hard to follow, even though it mostly takes place in a single house. Then the reviewer says, we are not disposed to ascribe any particular intention to the author in drawing the character of Heathcliff, nor can we perceive any very obvious moral in the story. There are certain good rough dashes at character. And here they quote some passages describing Catherine and Heathcliff. And then the review says, if this book be, as we apprehend it, is the first work of the author, we hope that he will produce a second, giving himself more time in his composition than in the present case, developing his incidents more carefully, eschewing exaggeration and obscurity, and looking steadily at human life under all its moods for those pictures of the passions that he may desire to sketch for our public benefit. It may be well also to be sparing of certain oaths and phrases which do not materially contribute to any character and are by no means to be reckoned among the evidences of a writer's genius. We detest the affectation and effeminate frippery which is but too frequent in the modern novel, and willingly trust ourselves with an author who goes at once fearlessly into the moors and desolate places for his heroes. But we must at the same time stipulate with him that he shall not drag into light all that he discovers of coarse and loathsome in his wanderings, but simply so much good and ill as he may find necessary to elucidate his history, so much only as may be interwoven inextricably with the persons whom he professes to paint. I hope by now that you're feeling as I do that this is how the reviews of a masterpiece should be. It should strike reviewers as strange and unusual. It should shock them out of complacency. They should wrestle with what it means. Ulysses was like that. Proust was like that. Lawrence Nabokov, Dostoevsky. They should have their critics who say, hey, this is affecting me in a weird way like no other book has done. Maybe that's a problem for the book. Maybe it's just something new and unusual, something that pushes the world forward. Innovation will do that. Charlotte backed off from Emily's position She would have tamed herself. Charlotte said after Emily died, she would have made character. She would have made her characters more likable. She got it. She heard the critics. She was going to change. I don't know if there's evidence for that other than Charlotte just telling us that maybe Emily didn't think that maybe Emily the major was going to double down, make the next one even more extreme. Remember the girl who told her classmates, this is the me that God made? Can't we imagine her saying, these are the characters that I'm making? Deal with it, world. Let's take one last break and hear the final two reviews. Are these going to give us a different picture of the book? Surely someone was on Emily's side. Someone was not outraged and estranged by this strange book. Did they give Emily a different picture of herself to think about during these last months of Emily's life? Let's find out after this. Our fourth review is from the periodical Britannia, January 1848. Another unsigned review quote There are scenes of savage wildness in nature which, though they inspire no pleasurable sensation, we are yet well satisfied to have seen in the rugged rock the gnarled roots which cling to it, the dark screen of overhanging vegetation, the dank moist ground and tangled network of weeds and bushes. Even in the harsh cry of solitary birds, the cries of wild animals, and the startling motion of the snake as it springs away, scared by the intruder's foot, there is an image of primeval rudeness which has much to fascinate, though nothing to charm the mind. The elements of beauty are found in the midst of gloom and danger, and some forms are the more picturesque from their distorted growth amid so many obstacles. A tree clinging to the side of a precipice may more attract the eye than the pride of a plantation. The principle may to some extent beyond be applied to life. The uncultured freedom of native character presents more rugged aspects than we meet with in educated society. Its manners are not only more rough, but its passions are more violent. It knows nothing of those breakwaters to the fury of tempest which civilized training establishes to subdue the harsher workings of the soul. Its wrath is unrestrained by reflection. The lips curse, and the hand strikes with the first impulse of anger. The it is more subject to brutal instinct than to divine reason. It is humanity in this wild state that the author of Wuthering Heights essays to depict his work is strangely original, didn't have strange this time head. Strangely, it bears a resemblance to some of those irregular German tales in which the writers, giving the reins to their fancy, represent personages as swayed and impelled to evil by supernatural influences. But they give spiritual identity to evil impulses. While Mr. Bell more naturally shows them as the natural offspring of the unregulated heart. He displays a considerable power in his creations. They have all the angularity of misshapen growth and form. In this respect, a striking contrast to. To those regular forms we are accustomed to meet with in English fiction. They exhibit nothing of the composite character. There is in them no trace of ideal models. They are so new, so wildly grotesque, so entirely without art, that they strike us as proceeding from a mind of limited experience, but of original energy and of a singular and distinctive cast. In saying this, we indicate both the merits and faults of the tale. It is, in parts, very unskillfully constructed. Many passages in it display neither the grace of art nor the truth of nature, but only the vigor of one positive idea, that of passionate ferocity. It blazes forth in the most unsuitable circumstances and from persons the least likely to be animated by it. The author is a Salvator Rosa. With his pen he delineates forms of savage grandeur when he wishes to represent sylvan beauty. His griseldas are furies and his swains polyphemi. For this reason, his narrative leaves an unpleasant effect on the mind. There are no green spots in it on which the mind can linger with satisfaction. The story rushes onwards with impetuous force, but it is the force of a dark and sullen torrent flowing between high and rugged rocks. It is permitted to painting to seize one single aspect of nature. And as the pleasure arising from its contemplation proceeds partly from love of imitation. Objects unattractive in themselves may be made interesting on canvas, but in fiction this kind of isolation is not allowed. The exhibition of one quality or passion is not sufficient for it, so far as the design extends. It must present a true image of life. And if it takes in many characters, it must show them animated by many motives. There may be a predominant influence of one strong emotion, perhaps that is necessary to unity of effect, but it should be relieved by contrasts and set off by accessories. Wuthering Heights would have been a far better romance if Heathcliff alone had been a being of stormy passions, instead of all the other characters being nearly as violent and destructive as himself. In fiction, too, as the imitation of nature can never be so vivid and exact as in painting, that imitation is insufficient of itself to afford pleasure. And when it deals with brutal subjects, it becomes positively disgusting. It is, of course, Impossible to prescribe rules for either the admission or the rejection of what is shocking and dreadful. It is nothing to say that reality is faithfully followed. The aim of fiction is to afford some sensation of delight. We admit we cannot rejoice in the triumph of goodness, that triumph which consists in the superiority of spirit to body without knowing its trials and sufferings. But the end of fictitious writings should always be kept in view. And that end is not merely mental excitement. For a very bad book may be very exciting. Generally, we are satisfied there is some radical defect in those fictions which leave behind them an impression of pain and horror. It would not be difficult to show why this is and must be the case, but it would lead us into deeper considerations than are appropriate to this article. Mr. Ellis Bell's romance is illuminated by some gleams of sunshine towards the end. Which serve to cast a grateful light on the dreary path we have traveled. Flowers rise over the grave of buried horrors. The violent passions of two generations are closed in death. Yet in the vision of peace with which the tale closes, we almost fear their revival in the warped nature of the young survivors. Here the review outlines the characters and the story, and then it says. It is difficult to pronounce any decisive judgment on a work in which there is so much rude ability displayed, yet in which there is so much matter for blame. The scenes of brutality are unnecessarily long and unnecessarily frequent. And as an imaginative writer, the author has to learn the first principle principles of his art. But there is singular power in his portraiture of strong passion. He exhibits it as convulsing the whole frame of nature, distracting the intellect to madness and snapping the heartstrings. The anguish of Heathcliff on the death of Catherine approaches to sublimity. We do not know whether the author writes with any purpose, but we can speak of one effect of his production. It strongly shows the brutalizing influence of unchecked passion. His characters are a commentary on the truth that there is no tyranny in the world. Like that which thoughts of evil exercise in the daring and reckless breast. Another reflection springing from the narrative is that temper is often spoiled in the years of childhood. The child is father of the man. The pains and crosses of his youthful years are engrafted in its blood and form. A sullen and a violent disposition grooms know how often the tempers of horses are irremediably spoiled in training. But some parents are less wise regarding their children. The intellect in its growth has the faculty of accommodating itself to adverse circumstances, to violence. It sometimes opposes violence, sometimes dogged obstinacy. The consequence in either case is fatal to the tranquility of life. Young Catherine Linton is represented as a naturally sensitive, high spirited, amiable girl, subjected to the cruel usage of her brutal stepfather. She is roused to resistance and answers his curses with taunts and his stripes with threatenings. Released from his tyranny, a more gracious spirit comes over her, and she is gentle and peaceful. There are some fine passages scattered throughout the pages. They give some quotes from the book, then some discussion of Agnes Grey, Anne's book, which it says is nothing special. Then it says the volumes abound in provincialisms. In many respects they remind us of the recent novel of Jane Eyre. We presume they proceed from one family, if not from one pen. The tale to which we have more particularly alluded is but a fragment, yet of colossal proportion and bearing evidence of some great design with all its power and originality. It is so rude, so unfinished and so careless that we are perplexed to pronounce an opinion on it or to hazard a conjecture on the future career of the author. As yet it belongs to the future to decide the whether he will remain a rough hewer of marble or become a great and noble sculptor. This reviewer, writing this unsigned review, did not write a book that landed at number 15 on the list of the greatest books of all time. Maybe the rough hewer of marble knew that rough hewing could sometimes be great and noble, that there's nothing inconsistent with that. Polish and refinement do not necessarily equate to greatness, after all. And the act of polishing, the act of refining, might in fact destroy what was good and essential about the artwork. You can hear these reviewers. We've heard four of them now. All four have been begging, pleading with the author. Come back to the shore where it's safe. Give us some lightness. Stop. Give us some morals, some goodness. Don't swim into those deep and treacherous waters. Well, one hundred and seventy five years of readers, 175 years worth of readers have said, wow. Well, give us those waters. We'll swim out there with you. You take us out there on your back, you crazy swimmer. We have a million books that hug the shore. Only one of them takes us into this part of the sea where the creatures are this wild and we're not sure we'll survive the trip. One man's cavils are another man's exhilarations. Let's hear our final review. We'll see if someone, anyone, can write a review of Wuthering Heights without using the word strange. Did Emily get a reviewer who got her? Who said, this isn't strange. It's fantastic. It's pow. It's wonderful. Yes, it's powerful. It's humanity in its deepest, darkest sense. And that is powerful. Powerful, too, to read and to experience. Or did they all say powerful but puzzling? Perplex. The reviewer is perplexed. Hmm. Let's see. This fifth review has not been identified. We don't even know where it was published. All we know is that it was published somewhere. It's in typescript, and it was clipped. Found in Emily's desk drawer. This is a work of great ability and contains many chapters to the production of which talent of no common order has contributed. At the same time, the materials which the author has placed at his own disposal have been but few. In the resources of his own mind and in his own manifestly vivid perceptions of the people, peculiarities of character, in short, in his knowledge of human nature, has he found them all. An antiquated farmhouse, a neighboring residence of a somewhat more pretending description, together with their respective inmates, amounting to some half a dozen souls in each, constitute the material and the personal components of one of the most interesting stories we have read for many a long day. The comfortable cheerfulness of the one abode and the cheerless discomfort of the other, the latter being less the result of a cold and bleak situation, old and damp rooms, and, if we may use the term, of a sort of haunted house appearance, than of the strange and mysterious character of its inhabitants. The loves and marriages, separations and hatreds, hopes and disappointments of two or three generations of the gentle occupants of the one establishment, and the ruder tenets of the other are brought before us at a moment with a tenderness, at another with a fearfulness which appeals to our sympathies with the truest tones of the voice of nature. And it is quite impossible to read the book, and this is no slight testimony to the merits of a work of the kind, without feeling that if placed in the same position as any one of the characters in any page of it, the chances would be 20 to 1 in favor, our conduct in that position being precisely such as the author has assigned to the personages he has introduced into his domestic drama. But we must at once impose upon ourselves a task, and we confess it is a hard one. We must abstain from a regard to the space at our disposal, from yielding to the temptation by which we are beset to enter into that minute description of the plot of this very dramatic production to which such a work has an undoubted claim. It is not every day that so good a novel makes its appearance, and to give its contents in detail would be depriving many a reader of half the delight he would experience from the perusal of the work itself to its pages. We must refer him then there will he have ample opportunity of sympathizing. If he has one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin with the feelings of childhood, youth, manhood, and age, and all the emotions and passions which agitate the restless bosom of humanity, may he derive from it the delight we have ourselves experienced and be equally grateful to its author for the genuine pleasure he has afforded him. End quote. That's a pretty good review. It does mention strange making it making us go five for five with the word strange. But I think Emily would not mind the word strange so much in this review. The strange and mysterious characters. And I actually, I think she probably wouldn't mind the word strange in any of the reviews. Strange can be insulting. This is a strange book. It's not a comment that I would like to receive on a book that I had written. I don't think kind of like that. Saa I got back. This is a str. She didn't say strange, but she said it was something she got once every 10 years and had to decide if she would give the author of it an A or an F. I didn't love getting that comment. Made me feel like I was, I don't know, uncertain about myself, like I had been out of control without really realizing that I thought I was just doing a good job. But these saying these characters are strange in Wuthering Heights. I have a feeling that Emily Bronte would not object to that. And if it means original and if it means powerful and it means you must read this book to read these characters, to experience them, to spend time with them. Well, what author would object to that? But I am not Emily. When kids laughed at me when I was at school, I responded the way Charlotte did. I'd get new clothes. That's what Charlotte did. Everyone, they went off to school. Everyone laughed at their clothes. Charlotte went out and got new clothes. Emily said, I prefer to be as God made me. I am as God wished me to be. I was more in the Charlotte camp. I'd get new clothes to insist on them. I'd adjust my way of thinking. If it didn't conform, I'd try to make friends by acting the way that they wanted me to act and expected me to act. Emily did not. She said, I am as God wished me to be. I'm not changing for you. I'm just not. So my guess, and it's just a guess and maybe a little bit of a hope, is that Emily read these reviews and said, strange. I like strange. I love strange. And I don't care if that means I'll have 10 readers or 10 million, because we know the answer to that. She's had 10 million at least and counting. Which means that there must be something about strange that we love, too. Okay, there we go. That's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. I hope you found that a little inspiring. Let's be Emily's this year. Embrace the strange and embrace yourself. If that's who you are. Be yourself proudly and defiantly. Give us that creativity that can only come from you. And when you need a little breather, will be here for you, rooting for you, hoping that you can make 2026 wonderful and fulfilling as only you can. We'll be back soon with 2000 years of Roman history, a new look at Gertrude Stein, the history of aphorisms, Chekhov on writing, the Cherokee novelist who also wrote poetry, Sherlock Holmes and more. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening. Happy New Year and we'll see you next time. Sa.