Come for The Dragons, Stay For The Hugs

“come again?”

“spring will come again”

it's time for spring. we'll try again next fall.

Having read the book, it’s completely baffling now to see otherwise-good analyses of Wuthering Heights continue to assert that Heathcliff could be white. I mean, I respect ambiguity, and I respect coming at a character from different angles, but… he simply isn’t. He’s not. The book repeatedly slaps you in the face with the fact that he’s not. Indeed, I was quite shocked by how unambiguous Heathcliff’s nonwhiteness is. For example:

In his introductory scene, he’s described as a “dark-skinned gipsy.”

When he is first brought into the Earnshaw family after Mr. Earnshaw picks him up off the street, the man says of him, “it’s as dark almost as if it came from the devil,” and it’s noted that he doesn’t speak English, but instead “some gibberish that nobody could understand.”

Speculating about Heathcliff’s origins, Nelly, a servant and the narrator for the majority of the book, says to him, “Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen.” Later, another character identifies him as “a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway.”

Heathcliff himself contrasts his appearance to that of Edgar Linton, saying, “I wish I had light hair and a fair skin, and was dressed and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will be! […] In other words, I must wish for Edgar Linton’s great blue eyes and even forehead. I do—and that won’t help me to them.”

One of the things that alienates Heathcliff from his son, Linton (names in this book are complicated), is the boy’s lack of resemblance to him (paleness). When Heathcliff sees that he has offended Linton, he says, “Now, don’t wince and colour up! Though it is something to see you have not white blood.”

There are many other examples — Heathcliff’s dark coloring, black eyes, and black hair are constantly referenced, and he’s described as a “gipsy” many times.

The most striking instance in the book relating to Heathcliff’s race, though, is his introduction to the Lintons. In this scene, he and Cathy, still children, are watching the Linton children through a window. When they hear them laughing, the Lintons let their dog out of the house, and it bites Cathy. Heathcliff follows as a servant carries her into the house. The servant instantly assumes he is a thief: “’And there’s a lad here,’ he added, making a clutch at me, ‘who looks an out-and-outer! […] Hold your tongue, you foul-mouthed thief, you! you shall go to the gallows for this. Mr. Linton, sir, don’t lay by your gun.’” Mr. Linton, a magistrate, goes on to say, “Don’t be afraid, it is but a boy—yet the villain scowls so plainly in his face; would it not be a kindness to the country to hang him at once, before he shows his nature in acts as well as features?” (emphasis mine), and his daughter, Isabella, says, “Frightful thing! Put him in the cellar, papa. He’s exactly like the son of the fortune-teller that stole my tame pheasant.”

They do not know who Heathcliff is, or whose family he comes from, or that he was found as an orphan. These comments are based solely upon their first impression. Sure, he and Cathy were spying — but the Lintons’ instant leap to assumptions of criminality and threats of hanging, which they themselves tie explicitly to Heathcliff’s appearance, makes it clear, especially in context of previous descriptions of Heathcliff, that this interaction is colored by his, well, color.

I want to emphasize this again: Would it not be a kindness to the country to hang him at once, before he shows his nature in acts as well as features?

Heathcliff’s race is not incidental, not a passing detail, nor an isolated point of intrigue. It is central to his character, central to his interactions, and central to the thematic underpinnings of the book. The prejudice Heathcliff faces actively transforms him from the stoic, inoffensive boy Mr. Earnshaw brought home to the violent, vengeful patriarch who dominates later years. There is no other word for what Heathcliff faces but racialization; removing the idea of race from all of the above excerpts, and from Heathcliff’s character arc, render them nonsensical. He is othered, scorned, and abused on the basis of his skin color. This is text.

you’re no prince. you’re reek, just reek, it rhymes with freak

That the Fates might not be real.

Like, if you think about it a sec- Hades is unarguably real in the world of Hadestown. The story makes no sense if he's "just" a metaphor for death. He has to be a person that you can argue with and plead with and struggle against and maybe- just maybe- melt his heart. Same with Persephone- she has to be a real person who takes pity on Orpheus and Eurydice, goes to bat for them against her husband, has feelings and motivations about this whole mess.

But the thing the Fates do, within the story, is give voice to the characters' doubts, fears, guilt, and spite. When The Chips Are Down is as much Eurydice arguing with herself as it is the Fates bullying her with an accordion. Word to the Wise is as much Hades remembering that Orpheus is dangerous for his rule and he can't afford to be kind when he's been so cruel for so long. Nothing Ever Changes is Orpheus' despair. And of course, Doubt Comes In is exactly that.

The Fates do other stuff, but it's all stuff that could easily be read as a metaphor. It's bad luck that Eurydice's candle gets blown out, that the wind steals her jacket, and so on. There's a few points where they serve as a Greek chorus- Gone, I'm Gone being the big one. But there's no point where they talk to the other characters or have a human role to play in the story. There's no point at which Orpheus has to convince the Fates of anything.

And if you pick that apart, oh my god, does it play into the themes of the show so well.

In the world of Hadestown, Fate is your own blinkered worldview. It's your doubts, your fears, your petty human cruelty, your guilt, and your despair. If you can rise above that fear and that despair, you can change your fate. And Orpheus was able to, for a time.

The thing that makes this story a tragedy is that the characters weren't able to. Hades let his fear for the state of his kingdom take control of him, and Orpheus let his fear that Eurydice wouldn't be there make him look back. And there's a level on which this tragedy was inevitable. People are the products of their circumstances, and fear is a natural part of ~the human condition~- people are always gonna be scared of things and mess up because of it.

But if you can overcome that fear, if you can form a union!! connect with the people around you and grow stronger together, if you can believe in the people you love and the world that could be--

papyr.com: freely accessible and summarized classroom materials in rhetoric, composition, grammar, and linguistics from a retired english professor

typelit.io: practice writing speed and accuracy by copying entire classical books

wordhippo: thesaurus where synonyms are separated by specific meaning and connotation, making it very easy to find a variety of words

adjectives for: get a selection of adjectives matching to any word you need them for

Heraldicon: create your own coat of arms

A Soft Murmur: make your own personalized ambience music

dmnes.org: database of names found in historical sources all across Europe from the middle ages

foodtimeline.org: timeline of the development of human foods and from when the first evidence we have of a food being consumed

Google News Newspaper Archive: archive of old newspaper pages, some dating back to the 19th century

Green’s Dictionary of Slang: a history of slang and insults in the english language

HathiTrust: digital library and archive with an extremely wide variety of topics and archived books and articles - eg. Fashion Periodicals: an archive of fashion magazines dating back to the 19th century