Supplemental Essay: "Gender Personas" in
Chapter 17 of Sexual Personae

Notes

[Note 1]

Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights was published in 1847, a little after the start of Decadent Late Romantic literature. But Paglia says that it was a bit of a throwback, a revival of Gothic style and High Romantic literature (pp. 444-445). As such, Paglia's analysis of Wuthering Heights harks back to the themes she developed for the earlier High Romantic authors in Chapters 8-14.

Passivity and effeminacy of the hero

In my notes for Chapters 8-14 I described how High Romantic male heroes were passive and effeminate. To reiterate: From classical antiquity right up through the Enlightenment an Apollonian mindset ruled the world. This was illustrated by the concept of the Great Chain of Being, which was a philosophy of a structured universe composed of hierarchies with God and angels at the top; monarchy, nobility, tradesmen, peasants, and slaves in descending order in the middle; and animals, plants, and minerals at the bottom. Wikipedia has an article on the subject.

But with the onset of modern times, Rousseau in particular rebelled against the entire Apollonian mindset and in its place he embraced Dionysianism. Paglia says of Rousseau, "In love, he is passive; women must make the first move. [...] Idolizing woman is natural and right, a cosmic law. [...] Rousseau feminizes the European male persona. The late eighteenth century, the Age of Sensibility, gives the ideal man a womanlike sensitivity. [...] For Rousseau and the Romantics, the female principle is absolute. Man is a satellite in woman's sexual orbit." (p. 232)

As a result, Romanticism gives rise to passive and effeminate "male heroines." In Chapter 17, Paglia says that Heathcliff is one more High Romantic "male heroine" in the same mold as the others. She says, "Heathcliff as a sexual persona is not conventionally masculine." (p. 453) He is a typical Byronic hero as described in Chapter 13 of Sexual Personae: Gloomy, dark, and brooding. Heathcliff only comes alive in his interactions with Catherine, who represents his semi-incestuous double. 

Paglia points out the symbolism of Heathcliff's inability to sire "vigorous offspring" in his marriage to Isabella Linton as a symptom of his Romantic effeminacy: "In Romanticism, we have seen, the masculine is always qualified or impaired [...] Heathcliff, a force of nature beginning with his craggy name, is strangely infertile. [...] There is some impediment to the transmission of virile energy in Heathcliff. He is seminally vitiated. His power flows not into heterosexual generation but into incestuous passion for his double." (p. 453) Elsewhere Paglia says, "Heathcliff’s seminal weakness betrays his transsexual origins. He is a woman with a man’s energy but without a man’s potency." (p. 455)

Paglia says that Emily Brontë projected herself into the character of Heathcliff, which might explain in part Heathcliff's underlying effeminacy: "Romanticism’s amorality and pagan power are concentrated in its Byronic hero, Heathcliff, product of a stunning sex change. Heathcliff is Emily Brontë" (p. 439). Elsewhere Paglia says, "My theory is this: Heathcliff is one of the great hermaphrodite sexual personae of Romanticism, a dream-representation of Emily Brontë as naturalized Byron [...] like Coleridge in Christabel" (p. 453).

Paglia says that Emily Brontë was in fact quite masculine in real life: "Emily Brontë herself, by overwhelming evidence, possessed all the masculinity necessary for the creation of her great hero." Paglia goes on to quote quite a large number of references originating with Brontë's family and acquaintances concerning Emily's masculine mannerisms and personality (p. 454). Thus the character of Heathcliff was a way for Brontë to project into literature a masculine side of herself that she otherwise had to moderate or conceal in real life. Paglia calls the cross-sex projection a "metathesis" and says, "The sexual metathesis operating in Wuthering Heights, like that in Coleridge’s Christabel, is directed toward the self rather than a charismatic other. It arises from the artist’s desire to vivify and eternalize his or her essential but socially forbidden identity." (p. 455)

Catherine as Apollonian female

The passive and effeminate "male heroines" of High Romantic literature tended to find themselves in thrall to a strong female. The result was two very different High Romantic trends:

• In the case of the more "sentimental" High Romantic authors like Rousseau and Wordsworth, the feminine/Dionysian element was portrayed in a sentimental manner as a nurturing maternal or nature influence. 

• But in the case of "daemonic" Romantic authors such as Coleridge and Sade, the feminine/Dionysian element appeared as threatening, ominous, or monstrous female or nature figures.

Paglia says that Brontë follows the model of Coleridge and Sade. Heathcliff's love interest, Catherine Earnshaw, is violent and sadistic in the throes of love and emotion. Paglia says that this is because Brontë herself is masculine and lacks a maternal, nurturing side, and Brontë projects that throughout her book. Nature itself is presented as stormy and threatening rather than sentimental and nurturing. Paglia says, "The Earnshaws’ Wuthering Heights, like Cleopatra’s Egypt, is a realm of raw natural energy and uncontrolled metamorphoses." Paglia describes "the dark, roiling realm of Heathcliff’s Dionysian nature-force, [...] the storms that blast and flatten vegetation on the Heights [...] This hostile landscape of 'bleak winds and bitter northern skies'” (pp. 448-449). Paglia says, "Nature does stand behind the novel, but it is nature as stormy masculine force, not as fertility or renewal." (p. 445) "Here is Brontë’s most significant departure from High Romanticism, where nature even at its most tumultuous is usually an inexhaustible well of fertility. For her, nature is primarily force, not nurturance. She creates, in other words, a nature without a mother." (p. 449)

Likewise, the character of Catherine Earnshaw lacks a nurturing, maternal side, presumably because the masculine Brontë has repressed her own maternal side: Paglia says that Brontë "strips Wordsworthian maternalism from nature because of her own alienation from the procreative, which she purges from her body through her self-desexualization as Heathcliff. In other words, the nature without a mother in Wuthering Heights is a swerve from the self. The novel promulgates a nature-cult without a goddess." (p. 458)

If Heathcliff represents a masculine Emily Brontë, then Paglia says that the character of Catherine Earnshaw probably represents a lesbian love interest of Brontë's stemming from an earlier period in Brontë's life; Paglia suggests a couple candidates based on Brontë's known life story. Paglia says that the love interest was likely a fantasy relationship rather than something that occurred in real life: "Brontë’s poetry may reflect a premodern sexual state, inflamed but celibate. Visionary nuns have lived in this exalted condition for a thousand years. Emily Brontë seeks clairvoyance, not orgasm, a burning vapor of ghostly cathexis." (p. 456) This fantasy relationship allowed Brontë to project her own repressed femininity onto another person and turn that person into a feminine "anima figure." For example, Paglia suggests that Maria, an elder sister who died early in Emily's childhood, might be the focus of Emily's attention: "Maria is Emily’s sacrificial Muse. The Muse or anima, the soul’s repressed and projected feminine half, is she who comes from outside. Emily Brontë, stern, sudden, and austere, is masculine in relation to a hovering female fructification." (p. 457)

But because Brontë represses her femininity, the feminine influence appears in Wuthering Heights in daemonic form: Catherine is masculine and violent to the point of sadomasochism. After Catherine's death midway through Wuthering Heights, her ghost even appears in a dream sequence as a poor lost child seeking shelter from a storm; Paglia interprets this as a repressed memory of vulnerability and femininity resurfacing from childhood: "The ghost tapping at the window, whether lost lesbian beloved or lamented late sister, is a girl who is a haunting memory, who presses at the portals of consciousness." (p. 457) However, even this ghostly manifestation of Catherine is daemonic; the dreamer, Lockwood, interprets the ghost-child as a vampire seeking to murder him and drink his blood (pp. 451-452).

In light of Brontë's Apollonian masculinity, as well as her swerve from femininity (which Brontë represents as daemonic), I have categorized both Brontë and her female characters as Apollonian females in my table above.

Incest and doubles

High Romantic literature demonstrates something of an obsession with incest and relationships based on "doubles," and Wuthering Heights is no exception.

Paglia says, "Wuthering Heights’ incest theme has been long recognized but only sporadically discussed. Catherine and the orphaned Heathcliff grow up in the intimacy of brother and sister. Heathcliff could even be Earnshaw’s bastard son and hence Catherine’s half-brother. [...] as we have seen, incest is so indispensable to Romantic consciousness that even when a sibling does not exist, as in Shelley, he or she must be invented. Incest is not a danger to be shunned but a royal empowerment of imagination. Heathcliff and Catherine’s love is inflamed, not checked by their fraternal twinship. Their love can be called sexless, since carnal intercourse is not desired. Romantic union is a conflation of soul-images, mirrored self-love." (p. 446)

The emotional Romantic authors look for a heightened, spiritual form of love; they look for "soulmates" in their partners. And we all share so much in common with our siblings that an overwrought, rebellious Romantic nature may well see siblings as an attractive option. 

As I said in my notes for Chapter 15 concerning Lord Byron: The High Romantic's attraction to incest and spiritual "doubles" seems to spring in part from a desire for complementarity: The High Romantic Dionysian male rejects and represses his Apollonian side, and the repressed Apollonian side is then projected out into the world as both fear and temptation. The existence of an Apollonian sister would then create a certain "synergy" of recognition and attraction between the parties as a result of this projection and represent a complementary pairing. Paglia says that High Romantics see their doubles as reflections in a mirror and suggests that Byron's incest "may be a dream of copulating with oneself in sexually transmuted form." (p. 400)

Emily Brontë appears to undergo the same process, but in reverse: As described in the previous section on the Apollonian female, Brontë represses her Dionysian side and then projects her own repressed femininity out into the world as both fear and temptation. A Dionysian female love interest creates a certain "synergy" of recognition and attraction between the parties and helps fulfill a complementary pairing. 

The result is the character of Catherine Earnshaw: Catherine is an attractive Dionysian "anima projection"; but at the same time Catherine embodies "daemonic" femininity (the result of Brontë's own repressed femininity, as I described above), and Catherine is imbued with the harshness and Apollonianism of both Heathcliff and Brontë herself. Wuthering Heights is Brontë's world, and Brontë was herself apparently a rather harsh, masculine figure in real life. The creative literary process allows Brontë to populate the world in her own image.

In the end, Heathcliff and Catherine end up as "doubles." They both have Dionysian elements insofar as Heathcliff represents a "male heroine" and Catherine represents an "anima projection." But they both also have Apollonian elements insofar as both of them reflect Brontë's repression of her own femininity and Brontë's inability to reflect femininity in any form other than the daemonic. Paglia quotes French critic Emile Montégut's description of Heathcliff and Catherine: “He and she are, so to speak, but a single person; together they form a hybrid monster, twin-sexed and twin-souled; he is the male soul of the monster, she the female." Paglia adds, "This love affair is Emily Brontë’s Romantic coalescence of the doubles." (p. 446)

Sadomasochism

As I mentioned in the previous section, the feminine influence appears in Wuthering Heights in daemonic form, prompting Brontë to express the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine in terms of sadomasochistic violence & explosiveness. Paglia says, "Wuthering Heights’ central problem is the passionate attraction between Catherine Earnshaw and rough Heathcliff, with his 'half-civilized ferocity.' [...] Emotion is a flash flood of turbulence, glutting the personae with amoral energies. There is tremendous emphasis on cruelty, brutality, and violence, which few critics manage to integrate into a balanced view of the novel. Most ignore the subject altogether, since sadism is incompatible with academic humanitarianism." (p. 445)

Nor is the sadomasochism confined to just Heathcliff and Catherine. Paglia says, "Virtuosity of sadistic speech pours from all the characters, not just Heathcliff. Even affable Nelly Dean speaks this primitive language. The novel’s sadistic eloquence ultimately belongs to Emily Brontë herself." (p. 450) On pages 449-450 of Sexual Personae Paglia catalogs some of the more gory imagery contained in the novel. She sums it up as follows: "The novel is a sadomasochistic swirl of primitive noise and motion, the rending and tearing of Dionysian sparagmos [...] Wuthering Heights is a catalog of chthonian horrors, each a Coleridgean affront to Wordsworthian benevolence. It is full of outbreaks of violence and lurid imaginings of death and torture." (p. 449)

In earlier chapters on High Romantic authors Paglia related sadomasochism to anxiety and the need to set boundaries via self-punishment. Excessive freedom results in anxiety, which leads to self-punishment to head off further excess and quell the anxiety. As Paglia says, "Sadomasochism will always appear in the freest times, in imperial Rome or the late 20th century. It is a pagan ritual of riddance, stilling anxiety and fear." (p. 263)

In Chapter 9, with regard to Kleist's play Penthesilea Paglia said, "The failure of traditional hierarchies in the late 18th century removed social and philosophical limitations essential for happiness, security, and self-knowledge. Without external restrictions, there can be no self-definition. The dissolution of hierarchical orders permitted personality to expand so suddenly that it went into a free fall of anxiety. Hence, the self has to be chastened, its boundaries redefined, even by pain. The self must be reduced in size. This is the ultimate meaning of Penthesilea's erotics of mastectomy." (p. 263)

Returning to Emily Brontë, I said above that the creative literary process allows Brontë to populate the world in her own image. But Brontë knows that she is crossing lines with the barely-concealed incest and sadomasochism themes. Paglia describes Brontë as "a woman who pressed at the limits of gender and, failing to find satisfaction in art, died. [...] In the novel’s secret psychodrama, hermaphrodite Emily Brontë clashes with society, law, fate." (p. 439) Paglia says, "It is Emily Brontë who completes the High Romantic quest for incest. Wuthering Heights recreates the daemonism of the primeval incest-realm. Hence the book’s universal sadism." (p. 447)

In other words there appears to be a lot of anxiety involved in Brontë's creative process, and sadomasochism as a means of stilling anxiety seems to apply in Brontë's case. Prior to modern psychology, I imagine sadomasochism appealed to some both as a subject of fascination and as its own punishment. Without the structure and security provided by medieval religion and with no clear explanation or solution for her anxiety, the anxious outcast feels increasingly shamed and alienated and runs to ever-greater extremes of isolation and self-punishment in anticipation of society's disapproval. (In modern times, with mass media at our disposal, we have become accustomed to exorcising our anxieties by finding salvation and damnation in our own and opposing political views, respectively.)

Similarly, High Romantic authors like Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley explore hedonism, sensuality, and lust to the point of white-knuckle extremism, tantalizing and also tormenting themselves with the accompanying fascination and anxiety. As Paglia puts it: "The problem of evil had an assigned place in all-inclusive Christian theology. But as religion weakened, evil sprang free. [...] Romantic imagination faced evil without the organized certitudes of church and state. The power to punish was taken over by the self. Hence the nineteenth-century abundance of daemonic epiphanies of the double. The self ambushes, harasses, flails itself. Romanticism's most terrifying encounter with the double was ironically by the atheist Shelley. Making himself feminine, the poet was under the fascist rod of what he had repressed." (p. 381)

But the exploration of such themes in literature leads to other problems. In exploring the themes of incest and sadomasochism in the interactions between Heathcliff and Catherine, Brontë runs into the same problem faced by Shelley in the writing of the poem Epipsychidion (see my notes for Chapter 14): Emotions require boundaries or a natural end point, but Romanticism doesn't recognize structure, boundaries, or hierarchies. So Romantic literature tends to get overheated and run to excess.

Paglia draws parallels between Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Shelley's Epipsychidion. Paglia says, "It is their mad striving for an impossible union which makes Heathcliff and Catherine's last meeting, on the day of her death, so astonishing a moment in fiction. The two embrace with wild, bruising convulsions. The scene is less love than ritual combat. [...] Behind Emily Brontë’s long thrilling scene I feel Shelley’s fusion with his sister-spirit at the climax of Epipsychidion. There the fictive siblings beat, burn, and boil in a mystic welter of water and fire." (pp. 446-447) Elsewhere she says, "Wuthering Heights systematically revises its Romantic sources. [...] It transfers Epipsychidion’s incestuous meeting of twin-souls from contemplative to active and from spiritual to material. [...] Wuthering Heights is Epipsychidion with nature written in." (p. 449)

Eventually Brontë moderates the tension between Heathcliff and Catherine by separating them: Paglia says, "Catherine tells her puzzled housekeeper, Nelly Dean, that she will marry Edgar, not Heathcliff, because she and Heathcliff are too alike: “He’s more myself than I am.... Nelly, I am Heathcliff." (p. 446) But apparently even that isn't enough to resolve the attraction between them, and ultimately Brontë causes Catherine to die in childbirth.

Unfortunately, the tension between Heathcliff and Catherine is the main force driving the novel. Catherine's death ends up draining the novel of much of its psychodrama, making the second half of the book rather flat by comparison to the first half. Paglia says that "Wuthering Heights falls stylistically into two parts" and notes a "tremendous loss of intensity" in the second half. (p. 455) She says, "Wuthering Heights’ lapse in energy is virtually simultaneous with Catherine’s death." (p. 456) 

With the death of Catherine, the character of Heathcliff shrinks in stature. Paglia suggests that Brontë herself loses interest in the book at that point; she says "Wuthering Heights declines with the diminution of Heathcliff’s archetypal force. He becomes a naturalistic character, a country squire and tyrannical paterfamilias. He loses his aura of glamour, the uncanny scintillation of the author’s identification. Emily Brontë has absented herself. [...] Wuthering Heights flattens into a social novel and leaves its lurid Romantic irrationalism behind. Why the sudden reduction of scale and style? Emily Brontë’s sexual metathesis into Heathcliff is inseparable from the incestuous-twin theme." (p. 456) Elsewhere, Paglia says of the ending, "In the second half, [...] Romanticism is yielding to Victorianism, the pleasant, ordered present in which Emily Brontë refuses to dwell. Extending and revising High Romanticism, she follows Byron, Shelley, and Keats in electing to die young, at the height of imagination." (p. 459)

This is the paradox of Romanticism: Emotion threatens to lead to excess. So High Romantic authors are compelled to choose: Benevolent sentimentality and moderation of emotion as in the case of Rousseau or Wordsworth, or the "daemonism" of excess like Coleridge, Sade, or Brontë. But the second path has no natural endpoint and threatens to lead to either death from excess or to the closure, isolation, and nihilism of Decadence.

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~Posted March 24, 2025