According to scholar Claire O’Callaghan in the article “Queerness, Quietness and Solitude,” Emily Bronte was extremely introverted and was frequently made fun of because she did not fit the standards for an ideal woman at the time she was alive. She kept many of her thoughts private and lacked social skills. In a tribute, Charlotte Bronte’s lifelong friend Ellen Nussey spoke about her younger sister in a positive way as opposed to several more jarring criticisms made toward her. Nussey said to one of Emily’s earliest biographers that her “reserve seemed impenetrable, yet she was intensely lovable; she invited confidence in her moral power. Few people have the gift of looking and smiling as she could look and smile.” Upon a closer examination of Bronte’s introverted nature, we determined that this behavior could also be seen in the characters of Wuthering Heights. For example, in Chapter 34 of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff became the ultimate introvert, remaining in the constraints of his own room due to growing tensions resulting from the exclusionary nature of Catherine’s new relationship with Hareton, the son of his nemesis. Bronte writes, “For some days after that evening Mr. Heathcliff shunned meeting us at meals; yet he would not consent formally to exclude Hareton and Cathy. He had an aversion to yielding so completely to his feelings, choosing rather to absent himself” (Bronte Paragraph 1). Similarly to Bronte, Heathcliff kept to himself in the novel’s final chapters. O’Callaghan’s paper discusses Lyndall Gordon’s work, who encouraged readers in his own writings to examine Emily and what little is known about her in a way that does not depend on comparing her to social norms and ‘appropriate ways of being.’ O’Callaghan says that Gordon has an “endeavor to recontextualize Emily’s character through a similar rehabilitative approach and suggests a more productive—even compassionate—way of understanding Emily’s “antisocial” behavior and her penchant for solitude.” This is ironic because Heathcliff himself never gets that acceptance for his behavior, whether aggressive or silent and standoffish. In the book, he remains an antihero or villain, and is talked down on by his neighbors during his funeral for the ways he departs from social norms.
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