On Heathcliff's skin colour (again)

The Telegraph reports that the Brontë Society thinks that 'Heathcliff ‘may have been black’'.

The Brontë museum has suggested that Heathcliff may have been black.

Heathcliff features as the brooding anti-hero in Wuthering Heights, a tale of passion that shocked the Victorian public when it was published in 1847.

Emily Brontë described him as darker than other characters in the novel but not explicitly black, with comparisons to a “dark-skinned gypsy” or a Lascar – a south Asian sailor. However, Heathcliff is also described at times as “pale” and possibly “Spanish”.

On screen, the character has been played principally by white actors, including Laurence Olivier in 1939, but in 2011 the roles of the old and young Heathcliff went to the black British performers James Howson and Solomon Glave.

The debate over ethnicity of the character has been reignited following the decision to cast the white actor Jacob Elordi in the role for a forthcoming film.

The Brontë Parsonage in Haworth, once the Yorkshire home of Emily, Anne and Charlotte Brontë and now a museum dedicated to the authors, has set out the case for Heathcliff being a man of “black African descent”.

The argument has been advanced by the Brontë Society, which controls the Parsonage museum, following a commitment to diversity and inclusion. Information on its website suggests Heathcliff may have been inspired by a black abolitionist and former slave.

It states that while the character’s ethnicity remains a mystery, there are clues “linking him to the transatlantic slave trade”.

A resource on the official Parsonage website, titled Black History, states: “The fact that Heathcliff is found in Liverpool, described as an orphan with no ‘owner’ or ‘belonging’ to anybody, opens up the possibility that Heathcliff could have black African descent, having been brought to Liverpool through the slave trade.”

It also adds that Brontë may have based Heathcliff’s appearance on that of Frederick Douglass, the black American abolitionist, who was a renowned figure at the time the novel was written.

To further support the idea, parallels are drawn between Heathcliff’s brutal upbringing in the eponymous home, Wuthering Heights, and the treatment of slaves.

It states: “This forced endurance of misery and beatings is an experience that can be compared to that of enslaved people across the colonies… Heathcliff is ‘flogged’ like an enslaved person by Hindley, and the entire family contributes to this prejudice.”

The society added that “it’s interesting that Emily chose to set Wuthering Heights in a time when the transatlantic slave trade was a large part of the economy in Britain”. [...]

The Parsonage’s intervention in the debate over Heathcliff’s race comes ahead of a conference, set for autumn, that will address how the Brontë sisters are linked to “Empire and Western colonialism”. Research will tackle issues including “racialisation” and “whiteness” in the works of the literary family.

The Brontë Society said that the theme was chosen at a time when “continued efforts to decolonise the curriculum and museums are being made”.

The links to the colonial world in the works of the Brontës include Heathcliff’s debated race, and the character of Bertha Mason, who hails from Jamaica, in Charlotte’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre.

A spokesman said: “The subject of colonial connections often comes up in our work at the Brontë Parsonage Museum and in discourse with our audiences. It’s a topic that we regularly address in our learning programme and will be a focus of this year’s Brontë Society Conference for the first time.”

The conference will also debate the character Quashia Quamina, a black figure who featured in the imaginary world of Angria, which Charlotte devised. (Craig Simpson)

The resource in question states clearly that,

While we can never know exactly how Emily Brontë imagined Heathcliff, descriptions in the novel - and its historical context - open up a number of possibilities about Heathcliff’s racial identity.

There are many different theories about Heathcliff’s origins. One suggestion is that Heathcliff has Black African heritage, with interpretations linking him to the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Black figures who might have inspired Emily.

Which is hardly a definite answer to the long-debated riddle of Heathcliff's identity. It is and has always been interesting to debate about this kind of question in books and it's getting quite tiring that this black-or-white vision imposed on society will no longer allow for debates that have been natural and not-so-political up until now. Just as we defended Emerald Fennell's right to her own vision of the novel we will defend the Brontë Society's right to take a point of a Brontë novel and discuss it, never claiming that it is the only possible interpretation. Even more so when it is hardly a new point, but one which has been debated peacefully for decades with no sensationalising interventions from the press.

Colorado Boulevard reviews A Noise Within's Jane Eyre.

The Gothic cadence of the story spills its thrills and chills through Jane’s voice (Jeanne Syquia), inviting us along on her quest as a humble 18-year-old orphan with dreams of making her way without family or exciting prospects. She accepts a professional position as a governess for the ward of the pensive Edward Rochester (Frederick Stuart) at Thornfield Hall, with its broodingly ominous and gloomy atmosphere and semi-buried secrets and dangers.

The two-hour play is evenly paced at the beginning, exposing the people and situations and developing the relationship between Jane and Mr. Rochester with its foggy possibilities and ominous underlying dangers. Jane matures a bit and takes charge of her destiny, leaving Thornfield Hall after refusing to compromise her values and goals. She eventually returns, after gaining complete control of her life and means, and after Mr. Rochester’s mad wife wreaks the ultimate havoc on the premises. This all funnels to a unique “happily ever after” for the aging and disabled Mr. Rochester and the mature and focused Jane. The sliding partitions which change the scene are brilliant, and the actors who play several roles are impressive. (Carol Germain)

School Library Journal discusses the change in perspective in new generations approaching the Brontë novels.

I’ve been teaching college students for 40 years (yikes), and the last ten or fifteen years I’ve seen a radical shift in the way young people think, especially compared to the views I absorbed when I was growing up in the 1970s. As a teenager, I read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and found them mesmerizing and romantic. My first clue that things had changed was around 2010, when I taught a class on the Bronte sisters.

We all loved Jane Eyre, but my students were put off by Rochester. They thought he was manipulative, a “player.” They did not root for Jane to end up with him. Nor did they connect, as I once had, to the youthful intensity of Wuthering Heights. And we were all even more horrified by Heathcliff. I couldn’t remember why I ever found him at all romantic. He was clearly abusive, toxic. He and Cathy had an obviously co-dependent relationship without appropriate boundaries. (Amanda MacGregor)

The Eyre Guide shares some behind-the-scenes pictures of Jane Eyre 1973. On the Brussels Brontë Blog, Marina Saegerman writes about visiting the Brontë birthplace. Finally, yesterday's edition of BBC's The One Show had a brief glimpse of the refurbished Brontë Birthplace in Thornton: