Was Heathcliff black?

Posted November 12, 2011 by argumentativeoldgit in Films, literature. Tagged: Books, emily bronte, literature. 28 Comments The latest film adaptation of Wuthering Heights casts a black actor as Heathcliff, and I, for one, cant help wondering why this hasnt been tried out before. In the novel, Heathcliffs racial origins are not specified, but the indications that he is different, possibly racially different, can hardly be missed. He is referred to throughout as dark: admittedly, that does not tell us much, as many white Anglo-Saxons can also be described as having a dark complexion, but Mr Earnshaws description of him as dark almost as if it came from the devil does suggest that his skin colour was conspicuously different from that of the others. When the child is first brought into Wuthering Heights, he is described as speaking gibberish. This could, indeed, be Romany (Heathcliff is taken b y many readers to be of gypsy origin), or it could be a foreign language: we cannot be sure. But, rather interestingly, the child is initially referred to as it: Nelly only starts referring to Heathcliff by the pronoun he after he, it, is christened. That Heathcliff, right from the start, was seen very much as an other, as not one of our kind, seems inescapable. Later in the novel, Nelly Dean says to him: Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen? Nelly may not have known how Chinese people differ from Indian people physically: if she had, she would not have suggested that Heathcliff could be of Chinese or of Indian descent. But her speculation does seem to suggest that she saw Heathcliff as physically different, very different, from the others. Of course, it may be objected that if Emily Bront had intended Heathcliff to be black, she would have told us so openly, but I dont think this holds. In the first place, Emily Bront tells the story through voices other than her own; and in the second place, this is a novel in which large gaps are quite deliberately left in the narrative: if Emily Bront is happy to leave unspecified even so important an aspect of the plot as the source of Heathcliffs wealth, why should we expect her to be specific about such matters as Heathcliffs race? We shouldnt really be surprised that Heathcliffs racial origins are not made specific in the novel. The characters living in this isolated part of the country, and in that age, would not have been familiar with anyone outside their own racial stock, and would have been unlikely to have had the vocabulary to describe people of different races to any degree of accuracy. I dont know that we can expect even Mr Lockwood to describe racial differences accurately. But in any case, Heathcliffs exact racial origin gypsy, Indian, or black isnt really so important: what is important is that he should be different from the others, and be seen as such, both physically and in other respects. In a film, of course, there is no room for vagueness in the matter of Heathcliffs race: some decision must be made on this point, and casting him as black seems to me a perfectly reasonable decision, and quite consistent with whats in the text. Why shouldnt Heathcliff be black? He was, after all, picked up in Liverpool, which was at the time a major centre of the slave trade:

there were many black people in Liverpool at the time. He could have been of Indian origin as well, for that matter, given that Liverpool was a major port, and given further the large number of Lascars working on the ships. (Heathcliff is, indeed, referred to at one point quite specifically as a little Lascar i.e. an Indian, or, more generally, someone from South-East Asia: once again, we shouldnt expect precision on this point.) I havent yet seen the latest film. Of all the classic 19th century English novels, Wuthering Heights has, perhaps, fared the worst in adaptations: even the famous William Wyler film featuring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, fine though it is in its own right, hardly reflects the intensely violent and disturbing nature of Emily Bronts work. Whether this latest version will succeed better than its predecessors, I do not know. What worries me is not that a black actor has been cast as Heathcliff, but that theyd make too much of the racial difference, and make it a drama specifically about race: but I hope Im wrong. For, despite the countless adaptations that have been made to date, there is a good film perhaps even a great film still to be made from Wuthering Heights. But such a film will have to forgo romanceand look unblinkingly into the dark, demented heart of this extraordinary work.

Response questions: What claim is the author of this blog post making? (What is his or her thesis or argument?)

According to this post, why does it make sense that Heathcliffs race in the novel is so vague?

According to this post, what other races could Heathcliff possibly be?

In your opinion, how much does race effect Heathcliffs character and his interactions with other characters?