The Brussels Brontë Group commemorated
Emily Brontë's bicentenary on Saturday, Oct. 13, 2018, with a talk on
Wuthering Heights by John Bowen,
professor of 19th-century literature at the University of York, followed by a
celebration of Emily's poetry.
 |
| Professor John Bowen |
The title of his
talk was bleak -- `Dividing the Desolation’, taken from the first paragraph of
the novel. But Prof. Bowen showed how that first paragraph highlights the
richness of Emily Brontë’s language right from the start. While focusing on the
depth of ideas in Lockwood’s declaration that
``Mr. Heathcliff
and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us,'' Professor
Bowen also touched on the multiple layers of meaning in phrases like ``solitary
neighbor’’ and ``be troubled with.’’
Then we were off
on an exploration of the characters in the novel and what they mean to
different readers and critics. Along the way, Prof. Bowen touched on the
importance of naming in Emily’s novel, Charlotte Brontë’s feelings about Heathcliff, and
Heathcliff’s feelings about himself. And throwing in an entertaining rendition
of Joseph’s colorful chidings in Yorkshire dialect.
Bowen, who is
president of the Dickens Fellowship, also mentioned Charles Dickens’ apparent
antipathy to the Brontës. There is only one recorded instance of Dickens
talking about the sisters from Haworth, and that is someone’s note about a
conversation with the novelist in which Dickens said he never read the Brontës but ``disapproved
of the whole school.’’ But reading Bleak
House, it's hard to think that Dickens hadn't read Jane Eyre, Prof. Bowen said.
On Wuthering Heights, the question he
wanted to ponder was: Who is the main character? And relatedly: what is central
to the novel? These may sound like straight-forward questions, and most of us
no doubt had our own straight-forward answers. But Prof. Bowen demonstrated the
complexity of the queries and how they go a long way to helping understand how
readers react to Emily’s book.
