Vampires, Ghosts, and the Disease of Dis/Possession in Wuthering Heights

Abstract

Perhaps of all of the Brontë novels, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is the one novel most obsessed with illness. In 1963, Charles Lemon provided the first scholarly look at Emily Brontë’s obsessive use ofillness in “Sickness and Health in Wuthering Heights.” Lemon’s early essay chronicles when Brontë’s characters become ill within the plot, summarizes what illnesses they suffer, and where possible, gives the ages of the characters’ deaths. More recent critics, including Graeme Tytler and Susan Rubinow Gorsky, are beginning to look at Brontë’s use of specific illnesses, such as monomania and “anorexia.”¹