On the Dark Side
by Clare Dunkle
I’ve been attracted to dark fiction all my life. While the other children in my elementary school were reading The Four Story Mistake, I was poring over an illustrated edition of Dante’s Inferno. It’s no surprise that my writing now is full of ghosts, goblins, and werewolves. They’ve been my lifelong companions.
Emily Brontë is one of the masters of dark fiction who inspired me in childhood and still inspires me today. My latest book, The House of Dead Maids, functions as a prequel to her Wuthering Heights: it’s the “volume one” to her “volume two.” I chose to write my prequel because Wuthering Heights is so full of mysteries that it’s like a literary cold case begging to be solved. Just where does Heathcliff come from? How does he transform himself from a ragged ploughboy into a wealthy gentleman? Why does Cathy have almost no qualms about marrying another man but then become frantic at the idea of lying in her grave without Heathcliff? “I’ll not lie there by myself,” she says (Brontë 128); “they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me; but I won’t rest till you are with me … I never will!”
Critics still argue over whether Emily’s classic novel is fantasy or realistic fiction, but her ability to portray the dark side of human nature is unchallenged. Emily’s taste for darkness put her out of step with the leading writers of her day and dismayed her sister Charlotte, who felt obliged to put forth a number of excuses for Emily in print. (For an exploration of those excuses and their lack of merit, please see my webpage, Brontë Myths.) Emily’s personal writings reveal that she was cheerful although unsentimental, and there is evidence to suggest that she saw herself not as a misanthrope but as a realist. Living for decades in the house of a popular clergyman who did what he could to help those trapped in the commonplace tragedies of early industrialized Britain, Emily must have seen firsthand enough sadness and nastiness to fill a dozen novels like Wuthering Heights. Charlotte Brontë remarks, in her famous “Editor’s Preface” to Wuthering Heights, that “if it was complained that the mere hearing of certain vivid and fearful scenes [from Emily’s writing] banished sleep by night, and disturbed mental peace by day, [Emily] would … suspect the complainant of affectation.”
I, too, frequently find myself writing about the dark side of human nature. I write monster tales: stories of hideous goblins, werewolves, and deformed ghosts. But no matter how dark my monsters seem, when it comes to violence and cruelty, the humans in my stories gleefully outdo them. Whether it’s eliminating imperfect children, as my lab technicians do in The Sky Inside, or burning the possessions of a helpless old woman, as my townspeople do in By These Ten Bones, regular people in my books often end up committing horrible crimes. I suppose that I see this as simple human nature, just as Emily probably did. I’m not afraid of ghosts. I’m afraid of the neighbors.
This fear certainly surfaces in my Wuthering Heights prequel, The House of Dead Maids. The protagonist, Tabby, is only eleven when she is brought to Seldom House to be a maid, but she quickly learns that she can trust no one there. On the journey, she overhears a threat made to a traveling companion that sets the tone for her new life:
“Just you try it,” I thought I heard Arnby say, and his voice was as soft as silk. “I’ll grab you before you take two steps and smash your skull like pie crust. Why else do you think I brought my staff? We don’t need you, you know. Not the maids.”
I sat up in a great fright at this, sure I’d fallen in with robbers, but the two of them were silent, sitting side by side on the cart bench the same as they always did.
Arnby heard me move and smiled over his shoulder. “The little maidie’s been winking,” he said. “Did you have good dreams? Take care you don’t catch cold.” And he reached back to tuck me up warm in some sacking. (7-8)
This conversation echoes many in Wuthering Heights in which physical violence is threatened or meted out in the most matter-of-fact manner. For instance, after Hindley has beaten young Heathcliff so severely that the boy becomes physically ill, the housekeeper records this conversation with the boy:
“I’m trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don’t care how long I wait, if I can only do it, at last. I hope he will not die before I do!”
“For shame, Heathcliff!” said I. “It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.”
“No, God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall.” (Brontë, 62)
There’s a world of darkness in that last quiet sentence alone.
But why write dark? What’s the point of it? If we need to learn that human beings are cruel, why don’t we just watch the news? I won’t presume to answer for Emily, but for myself, I find that dark writing can be cathartic. It can teach useful habits of mind, too, because if there’s darkness in a book, then there are characters fighting against that darkness, and we can learn to imitate them. For instance, I first read Wuthering Heights as a geeky, unhappy, unpopular fourth-grader, and the courage with which Heathcliff fought against his bullies encouraged me not to let myself be bullied either.
But that isn’t the reason I write dark books. I write them not to dwell on the dark but to dwell on the occasional surprising lack of darkness. What thrills me to the core isn’t meaningless violence, it’s that one unlooked-for spark of compassion when all hope seems lost.
I’ve worked that spark into The House of Dead Maids as often as my characters will allow it. They’re a rough crew, but friendships spring up among them nonetheless, like Tabby’s concern for “Himself,” the little savage in her care:
I was frantic with fear, and for an instant I thought of leaving him behind. But I couldn’t do that to the motherless child. I knelt before him and drew him close.
“I’ll help you,” I promised. “Wrap your arms tight around me. Then it’ll be just as you said—we won’t be scared, and we’ll take on these ghouls together.” (129)
Emily’s writing contains that spark, too, but you have to search almost the whole length of Wuthering Heights for it. And, despite the fact that Emily is known (mistakenly, in my opinion) as a romantic writer, the compassion doesn’t occur between a man and a woman. It surfaces in the complicated relationship Heathcliff has with Hareton, the son of Hindley, his bitterest enemy. When Heathcliff becomes Hareton’s guardian (Brontë, 190), he fully intends to make the young boy pay for what he has suffered: “Now, my bonny lad, you are mine! And we’ll see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!” But Hareton adores Heathcliff, and as the years pass, Heathcliff grows to love him like a son. He doesn’t want to. He tries to hate the boy. But he just can’t help himself.
At last, when Hareton falls in love, Heathcliff abandons his decades-long plan for revenge. He sits by and watches while the two children of his hated rivals turn the gloom of Wuthering Heights into a paradise. Right before his eyes, they have the happy courtship he and Cathy were denied, and not only does he not stop them, he goes so far as to encourage them: “He bid me be off to you,” Hareton tells his sweetheart (Brontë, 224); “he wondered how I could want the company of any body [sic] else.” Heathcliff laughs at himself for his weakness (Brontë, 329), remarking, “It is an absurd termination, is it not?” But I don’t think it is. It’s the one glimmer of humanity in Heathcliff’s dark, brutal spirit. In his final days, he overcomes his miserable upbringing and becomes his own master at last.
Light and darkness belong together. They define and complete each other. Without darkness, the light would be nothing but sentimentality. Without light, the darkness would be unbearable.
Notes:
Brontë, Emily. 2009. Wuthering Heights. Penguin Classics deluxe ed. New York: Penguin.
Dunkle, Clare. 2010. The House of Dead Maids. New York: Holt.
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I love this post and now feel less alone. As a child, I would always act out the darkest side of any TV show, movie, or play I’d seen, and as a teen was drawn to tense books that made me cry. Now as a writer, I find myself telling tales of murder, heartache, and troubled families. What’d I pick for my debut? Falling for Hamlet, a retelling of Hamlet. Shakespeare was a genius at balancing darkness and light. Hamlet makes me laugh and cry as much as Wuthering Heights made me swoon and hate. You gotta have dark to appreciate the light, right?