What is the correct way of using a book? Should it be used for reading only?
Can we write notes on a book? Is it appropriate to throw a book when you feel upset?
The answers to these questions may vary from person to person. The first narrator of Wuthering Heights, Lockwood, responds to these questions implicitly when he first sees the library of Catherine Earnshaw. According to Lockwood, “Catherine’s library was select, and its state of dilapidation proved it to have been well used, though not altogether for a legitimate purpose: scarcely one chapter had escaped a pen-and-ink commentary—at least the appearance of one—covering every morsel of blank that the printer had left” (Brontë 16). The phrase “a legitimate purpose” in this passage
indicates that Lockwood believes there is a standardized and widely-accepted way of using books and that any departure from it should be frown upon. When we take into consideration what incites Lockwood’s disapproval here, i.e. Catherine Earnshaw’s scribble, we can see that, for Lockwood, a book is used for reading only, not for scribbling.
Lockwood’s comment suggests that he belongs to one particular type of readers in H. J. Jackson’s book Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books. According to Jackson, there are two categories of book users: “Annotators” and “Bibliophiles” (Jackson, Marginalia 237). They have opposing views about how to use a book properly.
Drawing on Fadiman’s idea of “‘courtly’ lovers,” Jackson explains that Bibliophiles have “Platonic adoration” of books and that, with this adoration, they want to “conserve forever the state of perfect chastity in which [the book] had left the bookseller”
(Marginalia 237). Annotators, on the other hand, are those readers who write something on the books in their hands. They do not see the need to keep their books
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spotless. While Annotators want to make use of the blanks in books, Bibliophiles consider their use as “abuse” (Jackson, Marginalia 234). Lockwood is certainly a
“Bibliophile.”
Jackson’s “Bibliophiles” refuse to write anything on books because they believe the content of a book is of paramount importance. According to this logic, blank spaces at the margins of a book, where readers are free to write down their thoughts, are negligible. There should be no writing on the book margins when the author of the book speaks in the center of the pages. While bibliophiles revere the author of a book and give him/her an aura of sanctity, “Annotators” believe that readers have a right to respond to the book author and that it is natural for a reader to take notes, put down his/her questions or express his/her (dis)agreement as he/she reads on. In other words,
“Annotators” adopt an iconoclastic approach when they take up a book, in the sense that they refuse to sanctify a book author but choose to enter into a critical dialogue with an invisible writer whose words and ideas they are reading. Writing on books, therefore, is not simply an uncontroversial daily activity. Instead, it can imply a rebellious spirit refusing to bow down to well-established authorities. In this chapter I examine how Catherine Earnshaw’s scribbles on books embody such spirit and how they affected their unintended reader—Lockwood.
To begin with, I examine where Catherine I chooses to leave her scribbles.
Catherine I signs her name on a fly-leaf of the Testament and draws a picture of Joseph on “an extra page” (Brontë 16). Besides, her scrawls “[cover] every morsel of blank that the printer had left”; these scrawls are some “detached sentences” and “a regular diary” (Brontë 16). Jackson has pointed out that there are some spaces in a book that are left intentionally for readers’ uses such as “covers, half-titles and title pages, front and back endpapers, and chapter divisions that leave convenient blanks at the bottoms and tops of certain pages” (Marginalia 18). These blanks are physically marginal to the
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main text of a book which is laid out in the center. The content of a book, in other words, is literally a central part of a book. Significantly, Catherine I does not scribble over the central text of her books. She only writes or draws on the blank spaces “that the printer had left” (Brontë 16). Those spaces are both literally and metaphorically marginal.
Surrounding and framing the central texts these blanks exist in the periphery. And indeed few people ever buy a book simply because of those blank spaces. By writing on those marginal spaces, Catherine Earnshaw apparently registers her powerlessness. We do not know exactly when Catherine Earnshaw starts writing on those blank spaces.
But her account, written on book margins, of how Hindley and Joseph mistreat her and Heathcliff suggests that many of her marginalia are written after her father dies and she becomes a victim of her brother’s oppression. The book margins where her writings appear parallel to her marginal status in her own family. Just as the central texts of a book supposedly should outweigh its peripheral blanks, the master of Wuthering Heights dominates over the life of his sister.
However, Catherine I’s writings on the book margins cannot be reduced to signs of powerlessness alone. The key to discover alternative interpretations lies in what exactly she writes. We see an inscription “Catherine Earnshaw, her book” on the fly-leaf of the Testament (Brontë 16; Jackson, Marginalia 19).1 As “the minimum of annotation,” the signature suggests that Catherine I actively declares her possession of her book.2 According to Jackson, who writes on the book margins is also an important issue when discussing the importance of marginalia. Jackson argues that if the owner of a book writes on the book margins, those writings should be understood as a matter of
“property rights and proprietariness” (Marginalia 234, 235). In this respect, Catherine I is not a weak woman entirely vulnerable to patriarchal tyranny. By insisting on her right
1 Catherine I should be the person who declares her possession of the book as its possessor.
2 Jackson defines “[a]n owner’s initials” as “the minimum of annotation” (Marginalia 19).
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to own a book, her signature suggests her self-assertion, no matter how unimpressive that may be in the face of her oppressive brother.
While Catherine I’s signature is one of the most common kinds of marginalia, the other of Catherine I’s writings on books appears entirely out of place (Jackson, Marginalia 19). Lockwood finds “[a]t the top of an extra page . . . an excellent caricature of . . . Joseph” and in the book margins some “detached sentences” and her diary account of her rebellion against Joseph’s religious doctrines (Brontë 16). Neither the caricature nor the diary account is directly relevant to the book in which they appear.
Jackson argues that, because Catherine I’s scribbles do not directly respond to the text of the book, they suggest that Catherine I uses her book as “scrap paper” (Marginalia 21).3 Jackson also argues that only “readers with little experience of books” would see book margins as scrap paper (Marginalia 21). I would like to point out that Catherine I’s disrespectful attitude toward books is intentional. According to A. Stuart Daley’s “A Chronology of Wuthering Heights” (2013), Catherine I is then twelve years old and has learned with the curate (358; Brontë 36; Golden 72). As she has been educated, she should know she is not using book margins in a conventional way. Her age and education suggest that she deliberately refuses to abide by a traditional way of using books. Catherine I turns a blind eye to the content of a book, as if printed words therein are far less significant than her own writing. By such use of her book, Catherine I shows little respect to her book and its author. Her use of the blanks in the books as scrap paper illustrates her rebellious nature. She chooses not to be submissive in the face of
3 Before making this argument, Jackson mentions two examples of similarly dismissive attitude towards book. Both occurred in the late eighteenth century. At that time, books could be used to write “a list of prices of household goods” (Marginalia 20). A sermon collection could be used to write “a list of names” of the owner’s family (Marginalia 20). Colclough and Vincent also report similar use of the book that in the early nineteenth century, “more than three-quarters of homes . . . had a book in the house, most frequently a Bible or prayer book” which “was more often owned than used . . . for maintaining a private record of births and deaths” (298). Using the blanks in books as scrap papers, hence, appeared usual in the time of Brontë.
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Catherine I’s rebellious nature assumes a more glaring form in the diary she keeps in the book margins. The time of the diary is “an awful Sunday,” when Hindley disciplines Catherine I and Heathcliff by religious practice (Brontë 16). According to Catherine I’s own account, Hindley makes them listen to Joseph’s sermon in the cold garret while he “bask[s] downstairs before a comfortable fire—doing anything but reading . . . bibles” (Brontë 16).When Catherine I and Heathcliff refuse to comply with this religious discipline, they are scolded and treated with violence: Frances pulls Heathcliff’s hair because he makes noises with his fingers, and Joseph slaps Catherine I (Brontë 17). When Joseph insists on imposing religious tracts on them, they both damage the books put in their hands. Catherine I writes in her diary: “I could not bear this employment. I took my dingy volume by the scroop, and hurled it into the
dog-kennel, vowing I hated a good book. / Heathcliff kicked his to the same place”
(Brontë 17). Stevie Davies notices that Brontë chooses the word choice “hurled” rather than “thrown” (103). While both “hurl” and “throw” imply an object that is driven by a force to move in a space, “hurl,” compared to “throw,” “implies a powerful and forceful driving as in throwing a massive weight” (“Hurl” 410). The book’s weight and its movement from Catherine I’s hand to the dog kennel suggest she gets rid of Joseph’s influence both physically and symbolically. On that occasion she further declares her hatred for “a good book” (Brontë 17). Significantly, this real-life scenario was written down in the margins of “a series of religious texts,” further ensuring that Catherine I’s rebellion against patriarchal and religious authority is not transient. (Marsden 79).5 Becoming a record, it can last for a long time.
4 Catherine I’s daughter, Catherine Linton, shows a similar disrespect of books and their authority. Like her mother, she treats books as if they were scrap papers. She says to Lockwood, who asks her to reply Nelly’s letter: “I have no materials for writing, not even a book from which I might tear a leaf” (Brontë 229).
5 Joseph’s obsession with theology and his influence over Old Earnshaw as well as Hindley imply he may have persuaded them to purchase religious books for Catherine I.
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A number of scholars have pointed out the assertive power of Catherine I’s writing. Patrick Brantlinger considers Catherine I’s diary written in the book margins as
“turn[ing] reading and writing into acts of self-assertion” (118). Golden further
investigates the connection between the scribbles and the book. The religious books are the device with which Hindley aims to control her and Heathcliff. Hence, they
symbolize the “patriarchal power” of him as a foster-father, and Catherine I’s writing about her rebellion “expresses her voice” against such power and the stability it wants to maintain (Golden 72). Treating books disrespectfully, Catherine I firmly rejects the book and the authority that it stands for.
I wish to point out that the timing of Catherine I’s writing is also important.
When she later is kept in the back-kitchen as a punishment for her disobedience, she refuses to merely stay there. While Heathcliff is still impatient with the confinement and urges Catherine I to leave with him, she flees to the book margins where she can write anything at will. Catherine I finds the book that Lockwood will read many years later and, instead of reading it, writes down her resistance to her brother’s unkind treatment. The act of writing suggests that as she can master the blanks in the book, she is capable of resisting and defying Hindley and becoming the master of her life.
Catherine Golden has pointed out the connection between Catherine I’s diary written on the book margins and the various names written on the window ledge in her childhood bedroom (Brontë 15-16).6 She suggests that both reflect Catherine I’s
“marginal position” (73). The window ledge facing the outside of the house is on the margin of the bedroom which, thanks to an “odd notion” of Heathcliff, is marginalized to its residents as it becomes a forbidden, unknown, and almost deserted place (Brontë 15). Likewise, no one, not even Heathcliff, seems to have noticed and cared about
6 These names include her maiden name “Catherine Earnshaw,” the married name “Catherine Linton,”
and “Catherine Heathcliff,” which she wants to but never becomes (Brontë 15-16).
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Catherine I’s marginalia, until they are discovered by Lockwood. While this
comparison is accurate, I wish to point out that Catherine I’s marginalia differ from the names she wrote on the window ledge in one significant respect. The latter exist in a verbal vacuum. No other words compete with them for attention. By contrast, the former jostle with the central text of books for attention.
Writings in book margins, including “hostile or discordant printed glosses”
supplementing the main text in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, are in “battle”
with the main text “for authority” (Evelyn E. Tribble qtd. in Jackson, Marginalia 52).
This “battle for authority” grants the marginal words, hand-written or printed, a position which is at once related to but independent of the text. In Romantic Readers:
The Evidence of Marginalia (2005), Jackson comments that even readers who annotate the text in book margins “may easily come to conceive of themselves as equal or superior to the author” rather than merely “contributors or editors” (302). While Jackson usefully underlines the competition between the author and the annotator of a book, Emily Brontё further dramatizes this competition, not least by introducing a third party—the reader who can choose to pay attention to either the author or the annotator of a book.
Remarkably, when Lockwood opens Catherine I’s books, he only notices Catherine I’s scrawls on them. The scribbles attract Lockwood much more than the main text of a book. This is an extraordinary phenomenon, if we consider that, as I mention earlier in this chapter, Lockwood is a traditional book lover who disapproves of writing on the book margins. Lockwood’s neglect of the main text of a book and his interest in Catherine I’s scribbles in the book margins suggest that Catherine I has successfully undermined the authority of the text of a book.
The power of Catherine I’s marginalia carries social implications. Jackson points out that this remarkable attention of Lockwood to Catherine I’s writings
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“indicat[es] the distance between them” (Marginalia 21). By “distance,” Jackson means the gap separating the socially respectable Lockwood and the recalcitrant Catherine I refusing to obey social expectations (Jackson, Marginalia 21). Jackson’s view suggests that Lockwood’s dismissal of Catherine I’s scribble as an “illegitimate”
use of books can be read in terms of the tension between different social classes (Brontë 16). In How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain, Leah Price discusses the tension between social classes brought about by book margins. In the Victorian era, servants had “‘no business to open’ books” (Price 193). As a privilege of the middle class, reading books is not permitted for servants, possibly because servants’ working hands may dirty their masters’ books (Price, ch. 6 passim). Since fouling books is associated with disrespect to masters (Price 186-88), stained blanks in books, thus,
“[become] staging grounds for the tension” between upper and lower classes (Price 175). Price’s argument suggests that unwanted marks in a book can reveal power struggle in the Victorian era. Catherine I’s marginalia certainly represent such
undesirable marks in a book, as Lockwood’s disapproval makes clear. But Brontё does not stop short at registering the power struggle between the genteel book lover and the disrespectful girl. By dramatizing how the former’s attention is gripped by the latter’s scribble, so much so that he almost turns a blind eye to the main text of a book, Brontё demonstrates the triumph of Catherine I’s rebellion. The disobedient Catherine Earnshaw has already passed away when Lockwood takes up her book. However, due to her marginalia, her story and feisty spirit survive the trial of time, affecting a visitor to Wuthering Heights significantly. As Simon Marsden has rightly maintained, while the ghost-Catherine has been “[m]arginalized by death and time, excluded from participation in the present,” she “exists at the margins of Wuthering Heights, intruding into presence and into the present by an act of textual incursion” (Marsden 54; my emphasis).
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Catherine I’s scribbles on book margins not only parallel her peripheral status in the house of Wuthering Heights after her father passes away but also register her successful attempt to resist and rebel against patriarchal oppression. If Catherine I’s marginalia and its power suggest that reading a book for the knowledge contained in its main text is not a major reason why books are present in Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontё further strengthens this argument by showing that, even when characters in this novel take up a book without being distracted by marginalia, the purpose of perusing the main text is still far away from their minds. I will discuss this phenomenon in the next chapter.