It is my great pleasure today to reintroduce my friend, editor and fellow Bloodhound author, Sue Barnard to my Thursday Themes blog. Please read on for this great post about Sue’s latest novel, Heathcliff. Calling all fans of Wuthering Heights and all other discerning readers…
BEST SERVED COLD
Revenge is a dish which people of taste prefer to eat cold.
(Kind Hearts and Coronets, Ealing Studios, 1949)
It’s a sobering thought that it’s now more than half a century since I studied Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë’s only novel, for O-Level (as it then was, back in the dark ages before the introduction of GCSEs). The two main themes of the book are love and revenge, inextricably interlinked.
The male main character, Heathcliff, has often been regarded as literature’s most famous anti-hero – a man who appears to have few if any redeeming qualities. This might be a little unfair, as despite his many faults he also has an enormous capacity for love. The fact that this love is doomed to failure is what drives him to exact dreadful revenge on those he regards as having been responsible for his unhappiness.
Heathcliff’s thirst for revenge stems from two key events in his formative years: his forced separation from his beloved Catherine, and his earlier ill-treatment at the hands of her brother Hindley.
After overhearing Catherine say that it would degrade her to marry him, Heathcliff (heartbroken and penniless) disappears for three years. When he returns, much improved in manners, appearance and wealth, he finds that Catherine has now married their neighbour Edgar Linton.
Determined to avenge himself on Edgar for depriving him of Catherine, and on Hindley for what he perceives as past wrongs, Heathcliff begins a serious and calculated plan of revenge. He persuades Edgar’s sister Isabella to elope with him in order to gain control of her property. (According to the law at the time, a married woman had no rights at all – her person, property and money became the legal property of her husband.) He takes full advantage of Hindley’s addictions to alcohol and gambling, and uses these to take ownership of the latter’s home and money. Some years later he forces Edgar’s daughter to marry his own son. The son, shortly before his early death, makes a will bequeathing all his – together with what had been his wife’s – property to his father.
Heathcliff’s revenge – completed many years after the events which triggered it – is, indeed, a dish served cold. Though whether or not it brings him any lasting satisfaction is something of a moot point.
But what could have happened during Heathcliff’s unexplained three-year absence? How could his experiences in that time have changed him from victim to villain?
This is a question I set out to answer in my novel Heathcliff: The Missing Years (first published by Crooked Cat Books in 2018, and recently re-issued by Bloodhound Books). I also set myself the challenge of portraying him in a sympathetic light – a young man whose life is changed for ever by circumstances over which he has little or no control. I hope I’ve succeeded.
Heathcliff: The Missing Years is available from Amazon in paperback and ebook formats.
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DHS43162
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DHS43162
BLURB:
It only takes a few words to change the course of a life… “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now.” Cathy’s immortal words had far-reaching repercussions. At just seventeen years of age, heartbroken and penniless, Heathcliff left behind all he knew and headed into an unknown future. Three years later, he returned – much improved in manners, appearance and wealth. But what happened during those years? How did he make his fortune from nothing? And what fate turned him into literature’s most famous anti-hero? For almost two centuries, these questions have remained unanswered. Until now…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sue Barnard is a British novelist, former editor (now retired) and award-winning poet whose family background is far stranger than any work of fiction. She would write a book about it if she thought anybody would believe her.
Sue was born in North Wales some time during the last millennium. She speaks French like a Belgian, German like a schoolgirl, and Italian and Portuguese like an Englishwoman abroad. Her mind is so warped that she has appeared on BBC TV’s Only Connect quiz show, and she has also compiled questions for BBC Radio 4’s fiendishly difficult Round Britain Quiz. This once caused one of her sons to describe her as “professionally weird”. The label has stuck.
Sue now lives in Cheshire, UK, with her extremely patient husband and a large collection of unfinished scribblings.
Author at Bloodhound Books and Ocelot Press
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NOVELS: The Ghostly Father The Unkindest Cut of All Never on Saturday (also available in French as Jamais le Samedi) Nice Girls Don’t Finding Nina Heathcliff: The Missing Years
AUDIOBOOKS: The Ghostly Father Never on Saturday Nice Girls Don’t