By Indiana M. A. Humniski
Welcome to Behind the Bookshelf! This the first edition in a trio of blog posts that will explore different spaces in Dalnavert and link these locations to works of Victorian literature!
The dining room at Dalnavert.
In this edition, I invite you to take a step into the pristine setting of the dining room at Dalnavert. From the menu to the napkins, this space is meticulously set for a meal. However, this spotless setting is not necessarily representative of all Victorian mealtimes…
For an example of unorthodox dining practices, look no further than the well-known and much-debated character of Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. If you aren’t familiar with this novel, fear not! You don’t have to have read the literary piece under discussion to enjoy Behind the Bookshelf – but, if you are interested in reading this novel, you can read Wuthering Heights online.
Wuthering Heights (1847)
Lady Edna Clarke Hall’s sketch “Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliffe at Wuthering Heights” (c.1910–11)
Wuthering Heights, a celebrated example of Victorian literature, details the tumultuous lives of two generations living on the Yorkshire Moors. The novel is exceedingly claustrophobic; in fact, much of the action of the novel occurs between two homes: the farming homestead of Wuthering Heights and the luxurious walls of Thrushcross Grange. The plot is told through two main narrators: Mr. Lockwood, a visitor to the Moors who is renting Thrushcross Grange, and Nelly Dean, a maid and caregiver. Nelly recounts calamitous tales of interactions between two local families, the Earnshaws and Lintons, to Mr. Lockwood while he is recuperating from an illness at Thrushcross Grange. One of the novel’s main plots features the adoption narrative of Heathcliff. Heathcliff is an orphan, adopted by the Earnshaw family, who grows to accumulate enough wealth to purchase the two homes on the Moors. While he will become the character with the highest financial status in the novel, he begins his stay with the Earnshaw family in a state of utter squalor and emotional volatility, which I explore below.
Despite receiving harsh reviews following its publication, Wuthering Heights is very popular with modern readers and critics. With its extensive commentary on wealth, class, status, race, and gender, this novel has attracted the attention not only of scholars but also of singer and songwriter Kate Bush. Experience her iconic song (and dance) “Wuthering Heights,” for yourself.
Emily Brontë (1818–1848)
Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë’s only novel. Brontë was born and raised in Yorkshire; this windy British county was the inspiration for her novel’s iconically moody weather. Brontë has become much-loved by Victorian scholars, alongside her sisters, Anne and Charlotte, all of whom published one or more novels during their short lives.
Aggression and Apple Sauce
Wuthering Heights, though set in the late 1700s rather than the Victorian era, expands and counteracts numerous cultural stereotypes of Victorian decorum. Instead of a world filled with refined etiquette, Brontë depicts the chaos and calamity of familial politics, toxic relationships, and – quite frankly – very bad table manners.
In this passage, an account of a Christmas dinner from early in the novel, Heathcliff’s emotions reach a boiling point when a dinner guest, Edgar Linton, unintentionally insults him.
[Edgar] ventured this remark without any intention to insult; but Heathcliff’s violent nature was not prepared to endure the appearance of impertinence from one whom he seemed to hate, even then, as a rival. He seized a tureen of hot apple sauce, the first thing that came under his gripe, and dashed it full against the speaker’s face and neck; who instantly commenced a lament that brought Isabella and Catherine hurrying to the place. Mr. Earnshaw snatched up the culprit directly and conveyed him to his chamber; where, doubtless, he administered a rough remedy to cool the fit of passion, for he appeared red and breathless. (ch. VII)
Both this moment of domestic conflict – and Brontë's choice of apple sauce – have a lot to tell us about the colonial history of Victorian-era food. Let's start by exploring the history of apples.
Apples in the Age of the Victorians
Edward Thompson Davis' painting "Preparing for Dinner".
Victorians enjoyed apples, delighting in their culinary versatility. Harvested in the autumn, apples brought sweetness to numerous Victorian-era dishes. From tarts to pies to the adorably named “apple hedgehog” – this fruit was a key ingredient in many nineteenth-century recipes. Click here to try out a historical recipe of “apple hedgehog,” shared by Audley End House.
While Wuthering Heights was written in 1847, the British preoccupation with apples has a history that predates the early Victorian period and continues to this day. In fact, approximately 3,000 orchards were planted annually in Britain from the 1880s to the 1890s. Despite the love for apples being ingrained in British taste-buds, a fact reflected in the literature and the cookbooks of the nineteenth century, apples are not domestic to Britain.
Apples were taken from their domestic soils of Central Asia (likely Kazakhstan) and transplanted to England. While they have become emblematic of British cuisine, apples are not indigenous to British soils. Nor, of course, were the widely-beloved Chinese teas or the ingredients for the rich Indian curries that Queen Victoria adored. The popularity of these ingredients (particularly, tea) soared exponentially in the Victorian period. To read journalist Sarah Rose’s retelling of Scottish Botanist Robert Fortune’s infamous Chinese tea heist, click here. To read Chef Palak Patel comment on how Portuguese, Dutch, French, and British colonial presences in India have influenced modern curry culture, click here.
The concept of culinary adoption, of nations adopting imported ingredients into their cuisine, is similar to Heathcliff’s story of familial adoption. Much like Heathcliff himself, transplanted recipes and culinary staples have been adopted into English culture. In both the cases of transplanted ingredients and Heathcliff’s entry into the Earnshaw family, there is a distinct period of adjustment and fascination that comes before the general public can accept a new arrival into their everyday lives. Like the tea leaves of China, the savoury spices of India, and the apples of Kazakhstan – Heathcliff is transplanted from a distant and possibly foreign home into a British environment.
Mr. Earnshaw finds Heathcliff, an abandoned child, in the city of Liverpool. Liverpool is a city that became rich through the transatlantic slave trade. Interestingly, Mr. Earnshaw uses terms that are reminiscent of the enslavement of people when he recounts his visit to Liverpool and his first encounter with Heathcliff. For example, referring to Heathcliff, Mr. Earnshaw makes note of how he “inquired for its owner”(ch. IV). In addition to Mr. Earnshaw’s dehumanizing use of “it” as a pronoun for the young boy, he additionally uses terms of ownership rather than terms of parentage when referring to whoever should have been caring for Heathcliff. After concluding that “not a soul knew to whom it belonged,” Mr. Earnshaw essentially steals Heathcliff off of the city’s streets, bringing him to Yorkshire to live with his family (ch. IV). Both young Heathcliff’s darker complexion and his use of a non-English “gibberish that nobody could understand,” characterize him as a foreigner and racialized person. It’s a possibility engaged early in the novel when Mrs. Earnshaw – his new adoptive mother – refers to Heathcliff as a foreign “gipsy brat” (ch. IV). Heathcliff is an outsider, a spectacle, in his new life with the Earnshaw family.
With the framework of culinary colonialism in mind, we can re-examine some other colonial and racial sentiments within the novel. The fantastical ideas of Nelly, who encourages Heathcliff to mythologize his own origins, come to mind.
Nelly has a key role in raising the home’s children, including Heathcliff. His racialized features are frequently remarked upon. In addition to making frequent mentions of Heathcliff’s dark skin, Brontë emphasizes the violent nature of his emotions in regard not only to his anger but also his insecurities about his ambiguous background. This insecurity is important as both his race and his lack of class status prevent him from being a viable marriage candidate for Cathy, the young daughter of the Earnshaw household. In fact, only a few moments before the apple sauce incident, Nelly attempts to soothe Heathcliff by telling him:
Giorgio Gallesio's botanical drawing "Mela Panaja" from The New York Public Library Digital Collections (1817 - 1839)
And now that we’ve done washing, and combing, and sulking—tell me whether you don’t think yourself rather handsome? I’ll tell you, I do. You’re fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up, with one week’s income, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange together? [...] Were I in your place, I would frame high notions of my birth; and the thoughts of what I was should give me courage and dignity! (ch. VII)
Given the cultural histories of tea, curry, and apples, all of which are now viewed as essentials of the British diet, it seems noteworthy that Nelly chooses to imagine for the adopted child a biological father who is the “Emperor of China” and a biological mother who is an “Indian queen.” Rather than painting Heathcliff’s parents as working-class people, she gives them identities that – in her view – elevate their station. By choosing India and China, two locations where British colonization practices and the exportation of goods occurred, Nelly feeds into colonial constructs of race and, in turn, sets the scene for the food fight that follows.
The Racialization of Heathcliff
Thomas Davidson's painting ‘Mr Heathcliff?', I said. A nod was the answer," housed at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
Image Description: A painting that shows older Heathcliff as dapper, dressed in the appropriate fashions of an gentleman. Surrounded by the farm’s animals and with Joseph hunched behind him, Heathcliff meets Lockwood. The home has dark wood and an ominous red interior.
Heathcliff’s unknown lineage and dark features are the primary markers of difference that separate him from the novel’s main families, the Earnshaws and the Lintons. Additionally, Heathcliff has been singled out by critics; his toxicity has been commented upon over the years despite the novel’s other characters sharing similar degrees of intense emotion and a tendency towards violence. While his characterization is particularly complex as he is the sole racialized character in this novel, the emotional volatility that Brontë assigns to him cannot be ignored. His anger is a key force that accentuates and accelerates the ire of other characters such as Wuthering Heights’ other wild-child, Catherine Earnshaw.
Heathcliff, like the food items discussed above, is effectively reformed over the course of the novel; he will be modified by mysteriously-earned money in the hopes of better suiting his environment. It is not until Heathcliff reshapes himself in the image of a rich Englishman that he gains status in the novel; in fact, he achieves Nelly’s high fantasies of his birth status when he does, in fact, “buy up” the properties of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.
Reclaiming Power Through Property (and Parentage)
A film still from Nancy Meyers' The Holiday (2006).
Image Description: A photograph of a beige-toned, rustic cobblestoned cottage with light blue window-panes and a matching door frame. The wintery cottage is dusted with snow on the roof’s shingles and is surrounded by large black trees and evergreen shrubbery.
Heathcliff’s adoptive home of Wuthering Heights, with its windswept cliffs and cobblestone walkways, is often thought of as quintessentially British. This cultural image of charming English cottage life persists in modern media as well. For example, we can picture the rustic-chic beauty of Rosehill Cottage from Nancy Meyers’ 2006 Christmas film The Holiday. While this house only existed on a Hollywood soundstage, the delightfully dilapidated cottage seems well-suited to the windy Moors of Romantic-era Yorkshire. Personally, this was my image of Wuthering Heights during my first reading of the novel. While the homes in Wuthering Heights fit this same standard of charm, the chaotic state of the novel’s weather, like its violent family dynamics, deviates from Nancy Meyers’ penchant for fluffy and fuss-free romances.
Notably, Heathcliff’s name evokes his adopted surroundings of literal heaths and cliffs. While he is named after a deceased son of the Earnshaw family, it is interesting how Heathcliff’s name has a dual purpose; he is somehow simultaneously the novel’s representation of a racialized foreigner and a mirror to the physical environment of Wuthering Heights. It is between these two opposing identities that meaning can be found. Through his purchase of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, Heathcliff reclaims power. This reclamation is remarkable as it occurs in a narrative where his race disempowers him, blocking him from achieving the social standing that he desires, time and time again.
If we return to the dining room conflict discussed above, we can see that Heathcliff’s weaponization of apples is significant. In short, the younger Heathcliff seizes a food with foreign roots, in a fit of rage, marking himself and the apple sauce as weapons of both defiance and covertly foreign status that have yet-to-be fully anglicized. He reclaims power at an English family’s dining table with this “gripe” on the tureen; Heathcliff still has force, an aggression, that differentiates him from the ideal Englishman. This is a brief moment of aggression that supports Brontë’s racialization of Heathcliff as the hot-tempered, dark-featured orphan of both dubious parentage and dubious manners. I encourage you to expand your reading of this dining scene beyond a mere description of a young boy’s temper tantrum; instead, when viewed through the lens of Victorian food history, this scene can be reimagined as a moment of covert colonial revolt.
Dashing Back to Dalnavert
Dalnavert’s Christmas 1895 menu.
It is somewhat difficult to imagine the launching of apple sauce at the head of a guest at Dalnavert’s well-decorated dining room table. However, it is useful to remember that Victorians were not merely vessels for literary longing, clad in lace. Like people of all periods of human history, from time immemorial up to modernity, Victorians experienced and indulged in the more chaotic facets of life. The violence of Wuthering Heights is an ice-cold shock to readers who turn to this novel expecting a world of stereotypical politeness. We don’t know exactly what was served at each meal to the various guests that sat at Dalnavert’s dining room, just as we don’t know what their dinner conversations were like. Next time you visit, I encourage you to imagine a tantrum taking place at one of those seats, complete with hot apple sauce splattering across the room’s green wallpaper…
Stay tuned for two more blog exploring connections between the treasured spaces in Dalnavert museum and incredible works of Victorian literature!
About Indiana M. A. Humniski
Indiana Humniski is a fourth-year Honours English student at the University of Manitoba. She is spending her summer as a Research Assistant focusing on the Victorian period. From studying ghost stories to experimenting with Victorian-era crafting practices, Indiana appreciates the treasures of our literary past and finds great joy in transposing them into her academic future.
Acknowledgements & Sources
Dr. Vanessa Warne: for introducing me to the woeful world of Wuthering Heights.
Source Citations
“About the International Slavery Museum.” National Museums Liverpool, 2024, https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/transatlantic-slavery-collection.
Bilton, Sam. “A Brief History of Curry in England: A Dish Fit for a Queen.” English Heritage, 2016, www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/blog/blog-posts/a-history-of-curry-in-england/.
Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Project Gutenberg, 18 Jan. 2022, https://gutenberg.org/files/768/768-h/768-h.htm.
Donohue, Laura. “The British Apple and Its Orchard Heritage.” Crumbs on the Table, 5 Oct. 2019, www.crumbsonthetable.co.uk/the-british-apple-and-its-orchard-heritage/#:~:text=Apples%20may%20be%20quintessentially%20British,4%2C000%20to%2010%2C000%20years%20ago.
“Emily Brontë.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 2024, www.britannica.com/biography/Emily-Brontë.
Formichella, Janice. “A Victorian Interest in Apples.” Recollections Blog, 19 Oct. 2023, recollections.biz/blog/a-victorian-interest-in-apples/.
Gershon, Livia. “The Extremely Un-British Origins of Tea.” JSTOR Daily, 11 Jan. 2018, daily.jstor.org/the-extremely-un-british-origins-of-tea/.
Patel, Palak. “The History of Curry.” The Institute of Culinary Education, 14 Jan. 2021, www.ice.edu/blog/beef-curry.
Rose, Sarah. “The Great British Tea Heist.” Smithsonian Magazine, 9 Mar. 2010, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-british-tea-heist-9866709/.
Image Citations
Clark, Virginia. "The cottage from The Holiday - let's take a closer look " Home & Garden, 4. Sept 2023, https://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/gallery/the-cottage-from-the-holiday.
Dalnavert Museum. Photo of the Dining Room. https://www.friendsofdalnavert.ca/museum-tours-1/safe.
Davidson, Thomas. ‘Mr Heathcliff?', I said. A nod was the answer.'. Brontë Parsonage Museum, West Yorkshire.
Davis, Edward Thompson. Preparing for Dinner. Source. Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton.
Gallesio, Giorgio. "Mela panaja. [Mela panaia o, Mela flagellata ; Apple]" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1817 - 1839. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-e263-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.
Hall, Lady Edna Clarke. Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliffe at Wuthering Heights. c.1910–11, Tate Museum, London.