Brontë Studies, Vol. 30, March 2005
SPEECH IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS: JOSEPH’S DIALECT AND CHARLOTTE’S EMENDATIONS By Irene Wiltshire
In Wuthering Heights regional dialect is used by the author to delineate social class and manners. Each principal character is given a distinctive form of speaking to denote his or her social standing. The outsider Lockwood speaks received English while the servant Joseph speaks the purest form of Yorkshire dialect. In this essay I propose to examine Emily Brontë’s use of dialect speech and Charlotte Brontë’s response to the dialect passages given to Joseph. 1 Keywords: Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Wuthering Heights , Yorkshire dialect, Dialect speech, Joseph Wuthering Heights is characterized by its extraordinary narrative method and by the presence of regional dialect. Moreover, these two features are inter-related. Since there is no single narrator, events are related through a chain of witnesses, the chief of whom is Nelly Dean; and Lockwood, who sometimes gives us his own first-hand experiences and, on other occasions, provides us with Nelly Dean’s account, or events recorded in a diary.2 A problem arising from this method of narration is one that concerns authenticity, for all the dialect passages are given to us by a non-dialect speaking character. Nonetheless, we must see the novel as a written artefact and accept the dialect passages as having the author’s blessing. So although we know that Lockwood could not accurately speak to us in Joseph’s dialect, the author wants us to believe that Joseph did speak in this manner. A further complication arises from the fact that, in reality, all the Yorkshire-born characters would have spoken the local dialect to some extent because the action pre-dates compulsory schooling and because they conduct their lives within a narrow geographical location. Nonetheless, Emily Brontë gives her characters distinctive ways of speaking, according to their station in life and according to their aspirations. As an outsider in the Yorkshire scene, Lockwood’s speech stands out as received English, based on the speech of southern England, and characterised by the predominance of Latinate abstract words. Thus, in contrast to the word ‘wuthering’, Lockwood chooses ‘atmospheric tumult’ ( WH, p. 4). When reading a diary entry that records the violence and strong feeling between Heathcliff, Hindley Earnshaw, and his sister Catherine, Lockwood’s interpretation is expressed in abstract terms: ‘she waxed lachrymose’, (WH, p. 27). Catherine writes of crying until her head aches, but Lockwood cannot bring himself to speak of anything as palpable as tears. Address correspondence to Dr Irene Wiltshire, 21 Crescent Road, Hale, Altrincham, Cheshire
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Catherine’s account in this record of events is characterised by the choice of unequivocal language: ‘An awful Sunday!’ commenced the paragraph beneath. ‘I wish my father were back again. Hindley is a detestable substitute — his conduct to Heathcliff is atrocious — H. and I are going to rebel — we took our initiatory step this evening’ ( WH, p. 24).
This language is not just hyperbole, for the ensuing action lives up to the description. The use of the word ‘rebel’ is no idle threat, for Heathcliff and Catherine hurl their religious books into the dog kennel and escape to the moors. Nonetheless, some of the words used in this passage, ‘substitute’, ‘atrocious’, and ‘initiatory’ may strike today’s reader as rather formal for a girl of Catherine’s age, since she is only twelve years old. 3 It is likely that this Latinate diction reflects Emily Brontë’s own reading matter and the reading that she attributes to her fictional heroine. 4 As a reaction to the disturbing and supernatural experiences of his first night at Wuthering Heights, Lockwood turns to Nelly Dean for a rational account of events. Her contribution to the narration is immediately characterized by a recitation of hard facts. In response to Lockwood’s question, ‘You have lived here a considerable time, [. . .] did you not say sixteen years?’, Nelly replies ‘Eighteen, sir; I came, when the mistress was married, to wait on her; after she died, the master retained me for his house-keeper’ (WH, p. 40). Because of this factual manner of presentation Nelly Dean takes over the role of narrator with an air of authority, lending the story of bizarre and violent events a quiet authenticity. The surprising aspect of Mrs Dean’s personality is the fact that she does not speak in the local dialect, although she is a domestic servant and at the time of her account, 1801, without the benefit of formal schooling. Her social position is ambivalent, the daughter of the Earnshaw family nurse, running errands and helping to make hay, but eating with the family and playing with the Earnshaw children. Following Catherine’s marriage to Edgar Linton she becomes a personal maid and then housekeeper at Thrushcross Grange. Emily Brontë was clearly aware of this ambivalence for she has Lockwood comment on Mrs Dean’s refinement of manners: ‘Excepting a few provincialisms of slight consequence, you have no marks of the manners that I am habituated to consider as peculiar to your class’ ( WH, p. 78). Mrs Dean’s reply is that she has undergone strict discipline and taken advantage of the library at the Grange where, by that time, she had resided for eighteen years. Thus her speech reflects the influence exerted on her early life by the Earnshaw family and, crucially, her own book-learning at the Grange. Drawing on her time in the Earnshaw household, Mrs Dean is able to give a faithful representation of other characters’ idiolects. She recalls Heathcliff’s first appearance at Wuthering Heights after he was rescued from a life on the streets of Liverpool by Mr Earnshaw. At that time he could only speak gibberish. By the time he was thirteen and old enough to run with Catherine to the Grange he was able to give Nelly Dean an articulate account of events, using standard English. In this account he recalls the actions of the Lintons’ servant Robert, but, unlike Joseph at the Heights, Robert speaks standard English, suggesting that the gentrified Lintons employed a better class of servant. During Edgar Linton’s years at the Grange regional dialect was not spoken there. Heathcliff himself has been treated like a servant, referred to as a gypsy and a ploughboy. Nonetheless, it is the language of the Earnshaw family, especially Catherine, and not the language of the servant Joseph, that Heathcliff has adopted; thus aligning
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himself with the yeoman class and not the serving class that others see as his rightful place. By the time Lockwood meets Heathcliff in 1801, Lockwood’s only observation on his landlord’s speech is that it is somewhat laconic. Heathcliff’s benefactor, the patriarchal Mr Earnshaw, is not given a regional dialect, though his speech does contain the occasional dialect word as in the following conversation with his family following his return from Liverpool: ‘And at the end of it, to be flighted to death!’ (WH, p. 44). Mrs Dean is also alert to the uses of personal pronouns, reproducing Mr Earnshaw’s use of the familiar ‘thou’ when scolding his wayward daughter: ‘Why canst thou not always be a good lass, Cathy?’( WH, p. 53). Mr Earnshaw’s language signifies his lack of modernity, but also his superior social standing, for his speech is neither wholly dialect nor entirely standard English. His daughter’s reply, however, ‘Why cannot you always be a good man, father?’ includes neither dialect words nor local accent, portending her future upward social mobility and attractiveness to the gentrified Edgar Linton. The use of personal pronouns, ‘thee’, ‘thou’, and ‘thy’ instead of ‘you’ and ‘your’, is a further aspect of dialect speech that is faithfully reproduced in this passage and throughout Wuthering Heights. The significance of these pronouns in this novel has been commented on by K. M. Petyt in the Clarendon Edition of Wuthering Heights (p. 512), in Brontë Society Transactions, 16.4 (1974), 291–93, and in a Yorkshire Dialect Society publication, Emily Brontë and the Haworth Dialect.5 It may be helpful to readers of this essay to have some examples stated here. The first instance of the familiar form appears in a passage already referred to when Mr Earnshaw says to his daughter, ‘Why cannst thou not always be a good lass, Cathy?’, and she replies, ‘Why cannot you always be a good man, father?’ ( WH, p. 53). As pointed out by Petyt, the parental use of the familiar ‘thou’ together with Cathy’s reply using the polite ‘you’ is indicative of the power relationship between father and child. 6 Another parent/child situation occurs in the following dialogue, which is related by Nelly Dean: ‘Oh!’, said he, releasing me, ‘I see that hideous little villain is not Hareton — I beg your pardon, Nell — if it be, he deserves flaying alive for not running to welcome me, and for screaming as if I were a goblin. Unnatural cub, come hither! I’ll teach thee to impose on a good-hearted, deluded father — Now, don’t you think the lad would be handsomer cropped? It makes a dog fiercer, and I love something fierce –— Get me a scissors — something fierce and trim! Besides, it’s infernal affectation — devilish conceit it is — to cherish our ears — we’re asses enough without them. Hush, child, hush! well then, it is my darling! wisht, dry thy eyes — there’s joy; kiss me; what! it won’t? Kiss me, Hareton! Damn thee, kiss me! By god, as if I would rear such a monster! As sure as I’m living, I’ll break the brat’s neck’ (WH, p. 92).
In this passage Hindley Earnshaw alternates between the familiar ‘thee’ and ‘thy’, and the polite ‘you’ and ‘your’ according to which person he is addressing, Hareton or Nelly. Because Nelly Dean, as a child, had played and eaten with the Earnshaw children, and because she is a woman, she is addressed by Hindley in the polite form even though she is a servant. But the way in which Hindley addresses his son, Hareton, constitutes a deliberate use of the familiar form to indicate a power relationship. Joseph also addresses the young Hareton in the familiar form in the following instance related by Isabella Linton in a letter to Nelly: ‘Thear!’ he ejaculated. ‘Hareton, thah willn’t sup thy porridge tuh neeght; they’ll be nowt bud lumps as big as maw nave. Thear, agean! Aw’d fling in bowl un’ all, if Aw wer yah! Thear, pale t’guilp off, un’ then yah’ll hae done wi’t. Bang, bang. It’s a marcy t’bothom isn’t deaved aht!’ ( WH, p. 172).
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This passage further illustrates alternation between the familiar and the polite form, according to the status of the person who is being addressed. When Joseph addresses his remarks to the gentrified Isabella for her hapless cooking, he uses the polite form, pronouncing ‘you’ as ‘yah’. But although Joseph is a servant, he uses ‘thah’ and ‘thy’ when speaking to Hareton, partly out of affection, but also because Hareton is a child and one whose future status in the household is uncertain. 7 It is also one of the few opportunities for Joseph to address someone whose status is inferior to his own. This could explain why Joseph continues to use the familiar form to Hareton when he is no longer a child but a young man of eighteen: ‘Niver heed, Hareton, lad — dunnut be ’feared — he cannot get at thee!’ ( WH, p. 306). Hareton himself succumbs to the kind of degradation that was intended for Heathcliff. When Isabella first meets him she describes him as a ‘ruffianly child, strong in limb and dirty in garb’. He replies to her polite enquiry in a jargon she does not understand. When pressed further by Isabella the child’s reply is in a dialect similar to Joseph’s, ‘Now, wilt tuh be ganging’ (WH, p. 167). Hareton’s speech, and the way in which it changes as the plot develops, is worthy of close consideration. In spite of his degradation, or because of it, he treats those around him with contempt. When the young Cathy Linton orders her cousin Hareton to bring a horse he replies in the familiar: ‘I’ll see thee damned, before I be thy servant’ (WH, p. 239). The italicization of ‘ thy’ here emphasizes Hareton’s deliberate insult to his socially superior cousin. Later on, when Heathcliff’s son Linton taunts Hareton about his ‘frightful Yorkshire pronunciation’ and lack of book-learning, Hareton shows his contempt for the effete Linton by replying ‘If thou wern’t more a lass than a lad, I’d fell thee this minute, I would; pitiful lath of a crater!’ (WH, p. 269). Hareton’s dialect speech is also noted by his cousin Cathy when she gives Nelly an account of an illicit visit to the Heights. Once again Hareton is performing the duties of a servant, taking care of Cathy’s horse. On being told by Cathy to leave the horse alone she recalls that ‘He answered in his vulgar accent’ ( WH, p. 303). Nelly is also alert to Hareton’s dialect speech: when Hareton brings food to her she recalls that he said, rather as Joseph would, ‘oppen t’door!’ and ‘Tak it!’ ( WH, p. 336). Here, Hareton is still performing the duties of servant, but his fortunes are shortly to change for the better and this will be reflected in his speech. The catalyst for change is his cousin Cathy and, though their conversations are initially less than harmonious, it is through this interaction that he begins to emulate his cousin’s way of speaking. When Cathy first encourages Hareton to be friends he replies, ‘Get off wi’ ye!’ [. . .] ‘I shall have naught to do wi’ you, and your mucky pride, and your damned, mocking tricks!’. [. . .] ‘Side out of t’gait, now; this minute!’ (WH, pp. 378–79). Significantly, Hareton is now addressing Cathy with the polite pronoun. This indicates that in response to Cathy’s overtures he is losing his former surliness and is beginning to respect his cousin because of her social and intellectual superiority. During this conversation Cathy makes Hareton a gift of a book and promises to teach him to read properly. At the end of the conversation Hareton has come to see himself as Cathy does, replying to her offer of friendship ‘Nay! you’ll be ashamed of me every day of your life,’ [. . .] ‘And the more, the more you know me, and I cannot bide it’ ( WH, p. 382). There is no hint of the former ‘vulgar accent’ here; only the regional ‘nay’ and ‘bide’ link him to his former manner of speaking.8 By the time Cathy has rescued Hareton from his degradation as a servant at
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the Heights he is speaking standard English. When Cathy asks him if Heathcliff is going to join them for a meal, Hareton replies, showing all the benefits of Catherine’s tuition and his own book-learning, Nay, [. . .] but he’s not angry; he seemed rare and pleased indeed; only, I made him impatient by speaking to him twice; and then he bid me be off to you; he wondered how I could want the company of any body else (WH, p. 400).
Hareton has cast off his regional speech almost entirely now; he is ready for marriage to Cathy, and a life of gentility at the Grange. At the end of the novel strong dialect speech is confined to the lower ranks of the serving class: the little herd-boy, the hostler, the temporary woman at the Grange, and of course Joseph. Zillah, the former female servant at the Heights, relates events to Nelly mainly in standard English. While she uses an occasional provincialism, such as ‘hisseln’, she is not given a consistent regional dialect. The character whose language is closest to that of the chief narrator Lockwood, is the gentrified Isabella Linton, and her conversation with Joseph highlights class differences, prompting the following comment from the servant, ‘Minching un’ munching! Hah can Aw tell whet ye say?’ (WH, p. 168). The use of ‘ye’ here is not the plural of the familiar ‘thou’, but a phonetic pronunciation of the polite ‘you’. During this scene Isabella’s manner of speaking is further parodied when Joseph mocks her choice of the word ‘parlour’ and her pronunciation of ‘room’. In response to Isabella’s request for another room, preferably a parlour, in which to enjoy her supper, Joseph replies with a sneer, ‘Parlour!’ [. . .] ‘parlour! Nay, we’ve noa parlours’. In response to her demand for a bedroom, he retorts mockingly ‘Bed-rume!’ [. . .] ‘Yah’s see all t’bed-rumes thear is — yon’s mine’(WH, p. 173). This is an important passage since it illustrates very clearly the association of regional dialect with lower-class status, and the awareness of speech difference on the part of the servant as he deliberately mocks the speech of the gentry. In a novel that focuses so closely on property and social mobility this self-conscious use of language is central to the authenticity of the work. Charlotte Brontë clearly appreciated the importance of language and of the character of Joseph in her sister’s novel when, in September 1850, she wrote to the publisher Smith Elder as follows: It seems to me advisable to modify the orthography of the old servant Joseph’s speeches; for though, as it stands, it exactly renders the Yorkshire dialect to a Yorkshire ear, yet I am sure Southerns must find it unintelligible; and thus one of the most graphic characters in the book is lost on them. 9
I would now like to look at a selection of Joseph’s passages as they appeared in the first edition of Wuthering Heights and as they appeared in the second edition following Charlotte’s emendations. In each case the 1847 edition is given first. 10 ‘Maister Hindley!’ shouted our chaplain. ‘Maister, coom hither! Miss Cathy’s riven th’back off “Th’Helmet uh Salvation,” un’ Heathcliff’s pawsed his fit intuh t’first part uh “T’Brooad Way to Destruction!” It’s fair flaysome ut yah let ’em goa on this gait. Ech! th’owd man ud uh laced ’em properly — bud he’s goan!’(WH, p. 26). ‘Maister Hindley!’ shouted our chaplain. ‘Maister, coom hither! Miss Cathy’s riven th’back off “Th’Helmet o’ Salvation,” un’ Heathcliff’s pawsed his fit into t’first part o’ “T’Brooad Way to Destruction!” It’s fair flay-/some that ye let ’em go on this gait. Ech! th’owd man wad ha’ laced ’em properly — but he’s goan! (WH, Appendix ii, pp. 448–49).
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With regard to Emily’s choice of lexis in this passage, there are five dialect words that remain unchanged in the 1850 edition. They are ‘riven’ meaning torn; ‘pawsed’ meaning kicked; ‘flaysome’ meaning fearful; ‘gait’ meaning way; and ‘laced’ meaning to flog. 11 ‘Fit’ is a phonetic spelling of feet. The changes made by Charlotte in this passage are principally phonological, so that ‘uh Salvation’ becomes ‘o’Salvation’, an alteration which changes the vowel sound of ‘uh’, robs it of its final aspirate and, by giving o’ an apostrophe, indicates the abbreviation of ‘of’ as the source of ‘uh’. This removal of final aspirates is repeated in changing ‘intuh’ to ‘into’; ‘yah’ to ‘ye’ and ‘uh’ to ‘ha’’. The amendment of vowel sounds is evident in the dropping of the ‘a’ in ‘goa’. In Northern accents this word is pronounced to rhyme with ‘gore’, while the amended spelling indicates the standard pronunciation as in ‘go’. Another form of alteration in this passage is the devoicing of the final consonant in ‘bud’ by changing it to ‘but’. Where the initial consonant sounds are omitted by Emily they are put in by Charlotte so ‘ut’ becomes ‘that’ and ‘ud’ becomes ‘wad’. The puzzling aspect of this kind of alteration is that the amended ‘ut’ represents a complete change to the standard form, but in changing ‘ud’ to ‘wad’, the vowel sound is altered, in addition to adding an initial consonant, but the word is still not a standard form. The other amendment that is puzzling is the insertion by Charlotte of the hyphen and oblique sign in ‘flay-/some’, although this does highlight ‘flay’ as the root of the word. Charlotte’s alterations in this passage are fairly representative of her approach and similar examples can be found in all the dialect passages. A longer extract taken from a later chapter in the novel reveals the amendments that one comes to expect but also some surprising examples of non-alteration. The following speech of Joseph’s is related by Nelly Dean: ‘Running after t’lads, as usuald!’ croaked Joseph, catching an opportunity, from our hesitation, to thrust in his evil tongue. ‘If Aw wur yah, maister, Aw’d just slam t’boards i’ their faces all on ’em, gentle and simple! Never a day ut yah’re off, but yon cat uh Linton comes sneaking hither — and Miss Nelly, shoo’s a fine lass! shoo sits watching for ye i’ t’kitchen; and as yah’re in at one door, he’s aht at t’other — Und, then, wer grand lady goes a coorting uf hor side! It’s bonny behaviour, lurking amang t’fields, after twelve ut’ night, wi’ that fahl, flaysome divil uf a gipsy, Heathcliff! They think Aw’m blind; but Aw’m noan, nowt ut t’soart! Aw seed young Linton, boath coming and going, and Aw seed yah’ (directing his discourse to me), ‘yah gooid fur nowt, slattenly witch! nip up and bolt intuh th’hahs, t’minute yah heard t’maister’s horse fit clatter up t’road’ ( WH, pp. 107–08).
This passage is a crucial one. At this stage of the novel the reader has learned that Catherine Earnshaw is caught up in an intense personal drama. She has confided to Nelly Dean that Heathcliff is her true love and that she is marrying Edgar Linton for social advancement. She has made her famous statement about her spiritual affinity with Heathcliff, ‘Nelly, I am Heathcliff — he’s always, always in my mind’ ( WH, p. 102). When Nelly tells Catherine that Heathcliff is missing and that he had heard a good part of what Catherine had been saying, Catherine exposes herself to the wind and rain in an attempt to find Heathcliff. To the reader this is high drama indeed, one of the most powerful episodes in the novel, but, to the unimaginative Joseph, Catherine is no more than a flighty young girl running after the boys. Charlotte was wise enough to know that Joseph fulfilled a vital function here, and elsewhere in the novel, by providing an alternative and prosaic version of events. Nonetheless, her concern about the ability of ‘Southerns’ to appreciate this passage led her to make only modest amendments as shown in the following 1850 version:
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‘Running after t’lads, as usuald!’ croaked Joseph, catching an opportunity, from our hesitation, to thrust in his evil tongue. ‘If I war yah, maister, I’d just slam t’boards i’ their faces all on ’em, gentle and simple! Never a day ut yah’re off, but yon cat o’ Linton comes sneaking hither; and Miss Nelly, shoo’s a fine lass! shoo sits watching for ye i’ t’kitchen; and as yah’re in at one door, he’s out at t’other; and, then, wer grand lady goes a coorting of her side? It’s bonny behaviour, lurking amang t’fields, after twelve ot’ night, wi that fahl, flaysome divil of a gipsy, Heathcliff! They think I’m blind; but I’m noan: no’wt ut t’soart! — I seed young Linton boath coming and going, and I seed yah (directing his discourse to me), yah gooid fur nowt, slattenly witch! nip up and bolt into th’house, t’minute yah heard t’maister’s horse fit clatter up t’road.’ ( WH, Appendix ii, p. 455).
The changes made to this passage are again restricted to phonology, although even this aspect was not always altered. Phonological changes are as follows: ‘uh’ becomes ‘o’’, ‘intuh’ becomes ‘into’, ‘Aw’ becomes ‘I’, ‘aht’ becomes ‘out’, ‘Und’ becomes ‘and’, ‘uf’ becomes ‘of’, ‘hahs’ becomes ‘house’ and ‘wur’ becomes ‘war’. There are, however, cases of non-standard spellings remaining unchanged. These are ‘usuald’ (usual), ‘t’’ (the), ‘amang’, ‘fahl’, ‘divil’, ‘gooid’, ‘shoo’, ‘yah’, ‘noan’, ‘maister’, and ‘coorting’. While the last two of these words would not be expected to present serious problems to non-Yorkshire people, some of the other words in that particular form would not be easily understood. No changes to grammar can be found in this passage. The non-standard ‘seed’ remains unaltered. Neither is there any lexical change. Joseph’s position as servant at the Heights does not change as the novel progresses. An example from one of the closing chapters demonstrates how Joseph’s perception of events remains unchanged. Lockwood is making a return visit to the Heights and learns from Nelly Dean that Heathcliff has died. While Nelly fetches ale and Lockwood makes himself comfortable, Joseph comically and inappropriately asks whether it warn’t a crying scandal that she should have fellies at her time of life? And then, to get them jocks out uh t’Maister’s cellar! He fair shaamed to bide still and see it ( WH, p. 374).
This is from Emily’s 1847 edition. The same passage from the 1850 edition reads as follows: it warn’t a crying scandal that she should have followers at her time of life? And then, to get them jocks out o’ t’maister’s cellar! He fair shaamed to ’bide still and see it ( WH, Appendix II, p. 474).
Charlotte’s amendments here are restricted to three minor changes: ‘fellies’ becomes ‘followers’; ‘uh t’Maister’s’ becomes ‘o’t’maister’s’; and ‘bide’, acquiring an apostrophe, becomes ‘’bide’. Apart from the change to the word fellies, Charlotte’s amendments here would not have been much help to the ‘Southerns’ she was so concerned about. Interestingly, this appears to be the only passage of Joseph’s in which Charlotte substituted a standard word for a non-standard word. The foregoing analyses show that Charlotte only changed a small proportion of Joseph’s dialect speech, and that her concerns were mainly restricted to aspects of phonology. Moreover, these changes were not only limited but also inconsistent. On pages 12 and 26 of Wuthering Heights ‘goa’ is changed to ‘go’, but on page 18 it remains unchanged. On page 12 ‘Aw’ll’ becomes ‘I’ll’, but on page 18 ‘Aw’ remains unchanged. ‘Bud’ frequently occurs and is usually changed to ‘but’ though not always, for on page 104 it remains the same. ‘Und’ is often changed to ‘and’ but not in the passages on pages 104 and 249. ‘Nur’ sometimes becomes ‘nor’, though on page 128 there are instances of ‘nur’ remaining unchanged and of ‘nor’ becoming ‘nur’. On pages 174 and 176 ‘un’’ becomes ‘un’ (without the apostrophe), but on page 175 ‘un’’ remains as it is. On page
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12 ‘dahn’ becomes ‘down’ but on page 104 the word remains unchanged. Heathcliff’s name is often pronounced by Joseph as ‘Hathecliff’; on page 104 Charlotte changes this to ‘Heathcliff’ but on other occasions leaves it unchanged. Little change to grammar can be detected. The alteration of ‘yah’ to ‘ye’ve’ on page 175 introduces an auxiliary verb where it had been absent. But even this change could be phonological if ‘yah’ is taken to be a non-standard spelling of ‘you have’. Changing ‘they’s’ to ‘there’s’, on pages 172 and 173, is almost certainly a phonological alteration. Charlotte’s amendments rarely extended to the lexis of the dialect speech in Wuthering Heights. A list of dialect words appearing in Wuthering Heights is appended to the end of this essay. The OED gives the origin of most of these words as Old English and/or Old Norse. Words of Scandinavian origin reflect the significant influence of Viking settlements in the ninth and tenth centuries in this part of the country.12 Although many Scandinavian words have etymologies that are quite distinct, language historians also point out that in some cases the Scandinavian loan words were similar to the native Old English words. A further point of interest is the considerable number of dialect words in Wuthering Heights which appear one hundred years later in Orton’s Survey of English Dialects.13 Moreover, those words in the appended list which do appear in the Survey have Scandinavian etymology and most of these have no parallel in Old English. It is evident, therefore, that dialect words do not easily fall into disuse and that the Viking settlers brought a language that was to become incorporated into the indigenous speech in areas such as Yorkshire which were covered by the Danelaw. The appended list of dialect words also demonstrates the fact that dialect words are predominantly Old English or Scandinavian in origin, pre-dating the later influences of Latin and French on the English language. As such they would have been in normal use by the working classes in the North of England and would, therefore, have been words that both Emily and Charlotte Brontë would have heard around them in West Yorkshire. Charlotte seldom made changes to the lexis in Wuthering Heights, either because she was unaware of the regional character of these dialect words, or because she did not see this particular aspect of language as a problem. 14 Neither was Charlotte concerned with problems of authenticity which arose from Emily’s narrative method, nor was she concerned by the use of thee, thou and thy, for she made no changes to these aspects of the novel. Charlotte’s emendations were restricted almost entirely to accent. The question of what was lost or gained by such changes must depend on the individual reader. Anyone who was familiar with the Haworth dialect in the nineteenth century, especially if nurtured in the area, may have been offended by the diluted accent, seeing it as counterfeit. Readers who were not, or are not, familiar with this particular accent might still find the amended dialect passages daunting because of the inconsistent and incomplete nature of the alterations, which still present the reader with non-standard spellings. There is also the problem with arises from the unfamiliarity of regional dialect words. The inescapable conclusion, therefore, is that any possible gain is not substantial enough to offset the loss. Just why Charlotte carried out the kind of alterations that she did must remain open to speculation. She and her sisters were familiar with the Yorkshire dialect through their daily intercourse with servants at the parsonage and with local people in the village. Charlotte, however, had, by 1850, spent more time away from Haworth than her sisters had done. Her concern about the unintelligibility of Joseph’s speech to ‘Southerns’ was probably fostered by her recent visits to London. Towards the end of the previous year,
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1849, she had spent two weeks in London as a guest of Mr Smith, her publisher, at his home in Paddington. During this time the ‘Southerns’ she met included Thackeray; Harriet Martineau; the actor Macready; and literary critics John Forster and Henry Chorley. In the early summer of 1850 she had paid a further visit to London, again as a guest of her publisher, but this time at his new home in Hyde Park Gardens. During this stay she visited the opera, the Royal Academy, and the Ladies Gallery at the House of Commons. She also accepted an invitation to Thackeray’s house, where she met more literary folk.15 These then were the ‘Southerns’ that Charlotte had in mind when she thought of Joseph’s Yorkshire dialect in Wuthering Heights. They were influential people, at the heart of literary society; people whose opinions might have an impact on the fate of her sister’s novel. It might also be added that in August 1850 Charlotte first met Mrs Gaskell, who, in spite of her Cheshire associations, may have had difficulty with the Haworth dialect. None of this, however, explains the kind of alteration that Charlotte made to her sister’s work. She may have believed that selected changes to the orthography were all that were necessary to render the dialect passages more widely understood. The inconsistencies indicate either carelessness or uncertainty. With regard to lexis she might have been unaware of the regional aspect of many of the dialect words. On the other hand, she might have intended only marginal changes because she wished to retain some local flavour while making the dialect speech more accessible to non-Yorkshire readers. If this kind of compromise was Charlotte’s aim then it must be said that she fell between two stools. It is of immense value that the 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights has remained available to readers. Charlotte’s concerns also encompassed the role of Joseph; she described him as ‘one of the most graphic characters in the book’. 16 The loss to the reader who skips Joseph’s passages of dialogue is considerable, not least because of the very problem that Charlotte recognized, for his regional speech contributes to the realism of the novel. The creation of Joseph is a complete cameo, for he has all the attributes of a dialect speaker: male, manual, non-conformist religious background, and, in spite of his Bible knowledge, resistant to book-learning. Joseph’s speech constitutes linguistic verisimilitude and Emily Brontë was not deterred by the possible problems encountered by southern readers, or else she was less aware of the difficulty, since she had spent less time in London than her sister had done. Nonetheless, a faithful rendering of Haworth, or at least West Yorkshire, had to contain some dialect speech. By restricting strong dialect speech to one central character and giving standard speech to the chief narrators, the main strand of the narrative remains accessible. Joseph escapes being at total variance with the social milieu through the inclusion of very minor dialect parts such as the herd-boy, the hostler and the old woman at the Grange; important touches that add credibility to the speech of Joseph. Given that Emily’s intention was to include dialect speech as an intrinsic part of the social scene, this was done with eminent success. Joseph is the one central character who, unlike Hareton, retains his regional speech. For this very reason he cannot be transplanted to the Grange, but must remain at Wuthering Heights. Joseph also performs a delicate balance between credibility and reductiveness. The balance is achieved because his perception of incidents can seldom, if ever, be shared by the reader. While we see, through Joseph, an alternative and more prosaic interpretation of events, we see, not only the value of this perception, but also its limitations. Joseph is real to us but so are the passions of the other characters.
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Irene Wiltshire
Dialect Words in Wuthering Heights Page numbers are for the Clarendon edition of Wuthering Heights. Page
Word
Meaning
134 387 383 388 69/281 104 172 188 18 12 44 172 53 26 167 128 172 411 374 26 26 12 26 173 174 370 387 172 172 26 175 388 374 104 26 26 379 305 116 172 353 104 51
Barn Barthen Bide Brust Cant/Canty Chimbley Deaved Dree Faishion Flaysome Flighted Flitting Frame Gait Ganging Girn Guilp Harried Jocks Laced Laiking Laith Lugs Meeterly Mells Mensful Mun Neive/Nave Ortherings Pawsed Plisky Quean Reaming Riggs Riven Scroop Side (out) Skift Sough Thible Thrang War Wick
Child Shelter Stay/Wait Burst Pleasant/Brisk Chimney Deafened Cheerless Make/Dare Fearful Frightened Moving house Make progress/Get on with Way/Path Going Snarl/Grimace Scum from porridge Robbed Food Flogged Playing Barn Ears Moderately Interferes Proper Must Fist Orderings Kicked Mischief/Rage Woman Foaming/Frothy Ridges Torn Back of book Move away Move quickly Ditch Porridge stick Busy Worse Wicked/lively
Notes 1
Wuthering Heights was first published in 1847 by Thomas Cautley Newby. In 1850 Smith Elder brought out the second edition incorporating Charlotte’s revisions. All page references in this essay are to the Clarendon edition, ed.
