Cathy’s subversive ‘Black Art’ in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

Abstract

In this article, I argue that in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights ([1847] 2003. London: Penguin) the ‘witch’ motif is used to explore the novel's depiction of nineteenth-century anxieties surrounding threats to patriarchy, and of expectations around women's domesticity and role in society. I show how Cathy Heathcliff (née Linton), who is called a ‘witch’ by various men in the novel, appropriates the role of witch, drawing on vestiges of medieval superstition to resist the patriarchal order, to gain authority, and to assert her position at the Heights when she is dispossessed of her patrimony and physically and emotionally abused by Heathcliff, and is verbally attacked by his servant Joseph. I posit that the narrative's references to the use of ‘witchcraft’ in relation to Cathy are integral to its engagement with debates concerning the role of women in male-controlled social contexts, the subversion of male domination, and the empowerment of women.