Yes, it was ugly enough

“The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were… No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of their being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages—could comprehend.”

This is how Marlow describes to his companions on the Thames his experience on the Congo, when his steamer would come upon a native village and its inhabitants.

I had been re-reading Heart of Darkness earlier this year, shortly before the Wuthering Heights movie came out and everyone was talking about that novel. I re-read it, too, after the Conrad. I seemed to find a surprising number of connections between them. But why should it have been surprising.

It seemed popular to say of Wuthering Heights that the characters are crazy, psychotic even. I’ve never thought that. Would it be crazy to say they seem reasonable? Take Hindley Earnshaw. One day, his father returns from a trip with a little kid, whose presence caused the gift intended for Hindley to break, and who immediately becomes a petted favorite of said father. This happens when he is a child of about 12 or 13. You might say he is ill-natured for not taking this turn of events better (I might say he simply isn’t a saint), but mad it certainly does not seem to turn against Heathcliff and his own father and ultimately to strike out away from Wuthering Heights. Later, he has his opportunity for revenge, which is soured when his beloved wife dies and he turns to alcohol. Certainly, he gives in to despair and addiction. But where is the madness? No, he was not inhuman. That was the worst of it!

The basic geography and situation of Wuthering Heights are important to the novel of the same name. The Heights is a very old house, still perfectly respectable at the earliest events depicted but in a depopulated rural landscape. It’s high up on the moors; it’s alone; it’s easily cut off by snow; and there aren’t many people there, especially at what we may call the lower points of the story. It’s not fully within bounds of civilization. Young Cathy and Heathcliff visit Thrushcross Grange for the first time and literally watch from outdoors as the nice gentry family sits in their sumptuous living room. The encounter results in Cathy being confined in this civilized space for a long period, and emerging different—with a new side to herself, if not fully transformed. Then she goes home, which is at a low point with respect to civilization.

Catherine had kept up her acquaintance with the Lintons since her five weeks’ residence among them; and as she had no temptation to show her rough side in their company, and had the sense to be ashamed of being rude where she experienced such invariable courtesy, she imposed unwittingly on the old lady and gentleman, by her ingenious cordiality; gained the admiration of Isabella, and the heart and soul of her brother: acquisitions that flattered her from the first, for she was full of ambition, and led her to adopt a double character without exactly intending to deceive any one. In the place where she had heard Heathcliff termed a ‘vulgar young ruffian,’ and ‘worse than a brute,’ she took care not to act like him; but at home she had small inclination to practise politeness that would only be laughed at, and restrain an unruly nature when it would bring her neither credit nor praise.

Good manners would not only not be appreciated at the Heights, they would actually result in ill-treatment, because it is ill-mannered savages who are ascendant at the Heights; this is true of Hindley when Catherine Linton is a young girl and of Heathcliff when Catherine Heathcliff is a betrayed young bride. The Catherines are not inhuman. That was the worst of it!

Marlow’s companions on the Thames apparently joke that Marlow should have joined the natives, since he seems to speak so fondly of their “fiendish row.”

“I had no time. I had to mess about with white lead and strips of woollen blanket helping to put bandages on those leaky steampipes—I tell you. I had to watch the steering, and circumvent those snags, and get the tin-pot along by hook or by crook. There was surface-truth enough in these things to save a wiser man.”

This is true enough on Marlow’s way up the river. But once he reaches Kurtz? Nelly Dean, also, is too busy with her life in service to fall completely in with the savagery of Wuthering Heights, but she certainly has her role to play in the action, as Marlow too involves himself extremely on the side of Kurtz.