"You loved me then what right had you to leave me?" - the parallels between Jaime/Cersei and Wuthering Heights
"There's a dialogue that goes on through the years and over the centuries where you read someone else's work and you're inspired by it, sometimes infuriated by it, and you say 'No, that's not quite right, here's the way it would be' and then you write your own twist on it, your own answer to it! There is this conscious playing with tropes, replying to other authors and making a reference or an homage in some cases… but there's also unconsciousness. Those are are rife, sometimes you read a book and you haven't looked at it for twenty years, but it's still there buried inside and suddenly someone points out 'this seems just like this' and you go 'Oh my god! It's right, I forgot about that!'. So it works both ways." - George R.R. Martin, Trinity College Dublin
“The first books I read besides comic books were cheap paperbacks which cost 35 cents back then. There were no bookstores in Bayonne so I got my paperbacks from a spinner rack and all the books in that were mixed up. There were science fiction books and fantasy books, which I liked, but there were also mystery novels, romance novels, nurse novels, gothics, spy novels and, of course, there were classics of literature mixed in with that: Shakespeare, Dostoiévski, the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, etc.” – George R.R. Martin, Gamer’s Haven Podcast
As pointed out above, George has (whether conscious or unconsciously) taken inspiration from other works to create his own characters, and with this post I’d like to explain as to why I believe A Song Of Ice And Fire specifically plays with Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights through Jaime and Cersei’s dynamic.
To briefly explain it to those who have not read it, Wuthering Heights is essentially the story of Heathcliff’s revenge on the Earnshaws and the Lintons for the discrimination suffered at their hands and their involvement in his estrangement from his friend and lover Catherine Earnshaw (aka Cathy) and, at it’s core, it is a novel about intergenerational abuse and family dysfunction.
Shaped by these circumstances, we have at the forefront of the book the toxic romance between the foster siblings Heathcliff and Catherine who, like Jaime and Cersei, develop a very intimate bond early on in their childhood:
She was much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him. – Nelly, Chapter V He could never bear to be long apart from his twin. – Jaime, ASOS
‘I was a child; my father was just buried, and my misery arose from the separation that Hindley had ordered between me and Heathcliff. I was laid alone, for the first time; and, rousing from a dismal doze after a night of weeping, I lifted my hand to push the panels aside: it struck the tabletop!’ – Catherine, Chapter XII Though Cersei often slept alone, she had never liked it. Her oldest memories were of sharing a bed with Jaime, when they had still been so young that no one could tell the two of them apart. Later, after they were separated, she'd had a string of bedmaids and companions, most of them girls of an age with her, the daughters of her father's household knights and bannermen. – Cersei, AFFC
We made ourselves as snug as our means allowed in the arch of the dresser. I had just fastened our pinafores together, and hung them up for a curtain, when in comes Joseph, on an errand from the stables. He tears down my handiwork, boxes my ears, and croaks. – Catherine, Chapter III "Sometimes as a lark we would dress in each other's clothes and spend a whole day each as the other." – Cersei, ACOK
I took my dingy volume by the scroop, and hurled it into the dogkennel, vowing I hated a good book. Heathcliff kicked his to the same place. – Catherine, Chapter III The dank and dismal fortnight Cersei spent at Greenstone, the seat of House Estermont, was the longest of her young life. Jaime dubbed the castle "Greenshit" at first sight, and soon had Cersei doing it too. – Cersei, AFFC
Miss Cathy had been sick, and that made her still; she leant against her father’s knee, and Heathcliff was lying on the floor with his head in her lap. – Nelly, Chapter V "Care for a bath, Brienne?" He laughed. "You're a maiden and there's the pool. I'll wash your back." He used to scrub Cersei's back, when they were children together at Casterly Rock. – Jaime, ASOS
Additionally, in both cases, the female characters have, from early on, a clear influence over their male counterparts:
His peevish reproofs wakened in her a naughty delight to provoke him: she was never so happy as when we were all scolding her at once, and she defying us with her bold, saucy look, and her ready words; turning Joseph’s religious curses into ridicule, baiting me, and doing just what her father hated most showing how her pretended insolence, which he thought real, had more power over Heathcliff than his kindness: how the boy would do her bidding in anything, and his only when it suited his own inclination. – Nelly, Chapter V “Father will never consent,” Jaime objected. […] “Is it a rock you want? Or me?” He remembered that night as if it were yesterday. […] By morning Casterly Rock seemed a small price to pay to be near her always. He gave his consent, and Cersei promised to do the rest. – Jaime, ASOS
‘He’s considering he’d rather I’d come to him! Find a way, then! not through that kirkyard. You are slow! Be content, you always followed me!’ – Catherine, Chapter XII She rose, her eyes brimming with tears. “Is it truly you?” She did not come to him, however. She has never come to me, he thought. She has always waited, letting me come to her. – Jaime, ASOS
And there’s an element of adoration as well. In Wuthering Heights, at the end of Heathcliff’s life, Nelly refers to Catherine as his “departed idol” and Heathcliff describes Cathy as “so immeasurably superior to everybody on earth”. On the other hand, in A Song Of Ice And Fire, Jaime puts Cersei on a pedestal as the figure of “The Maiden” and describes Cersei’s flame in his weirwood dream as “the only light in the world”. Furthermore, the two claim to have suffered through hardships solely for the sake of these women and that their love is the ultimate factor that drives them:
‘I’ve fought through a bitter life since I last heard your voice; and you must forgive me, for I struggled only for you!’ – Heathcliff, Chapter X When morning came, he made himself eat. They fed him a mush of oats, horse food, but he forced down every spoon. He ate again at evenfall, and the next day. Live, he told himself harshly, live for Cersei. – Jaime, ASOS
‘Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!’ – Heathcliff, Chapter XVI Beside Lord Tywin stood his sister, pale and beautiful, a torch burning in her hand. Her torch was the only light in the cavern. She turned to go. “Stay with me,” Jaime pleaded. “Don't leave me here alone. Don't leave me in the dark!” – Jaime, ASOS
However, the most striking similarities arise from the way that Catherine and Cersei perceive their relationships with Heathcliff and Jaime respectively. Catherine, though far from being the worst person out of the cast of characters present in the novel (certainly Hindley and Joseph and even Heathcliff himself are more morally reprehensible), is the one that possesses the most traits stereotypically ascribed to narcissism: she’s very duplicitous and self-absorbed, she has a completely delusional opinion of herself and consistently projects her own flaws onto others, she’s often contemptuous of the weaknesses of those around her, she has a very explosive temper and reacts with aggression when crossed, she flips situations on their head to make herself look like the victim and she certainly sees her relationships as transactional, including her relationship with Heathcliff:
‘And should I always be sitting with you? What good do I get? What do you talk about? You might be dumb, or a baby, for anything you say to amuse me, or for anything you do, either!’ – Catherine, Chapter VIII
It is also frequently mentioned that Catherine enjoys being in control and does not take well to being contradicted:
It was nothing less than murder in her eyes for anyone to presume to stand up and contradict her. – Nelly, Chapter IX Cersei is as gentle as King Maegor, as selfless as Aegon the Unworthy, as wise as Mad Aerys. She never forgets a slight, real or imagined. She takes caution for cowardice and dissent for defiance. – Tyrion, ADWD
I observed that Mr. Edgar had a deep-rooted fear of ruffling her humour. He concealed it from her; but if ever he heard me answer sharply, or saw any other servant grow cloudy at some imperious order of hers, he would show his trouble by a frown of displeasure that never darkened on his own account. He many a time spoke sternly to me about my pertness; and averred that the stab of a knife could not inflict a worse pang than he suffered at seeing his lady vexed. Not to grieve a kind master, I learned to be less touchy; and, for the space of half a year, the gunpowder lay as harmless as sand, because no fire came near to explode it. – Nelly, Chapter X His sister liked to think of herself as Lord Tywin with teats, but she was wrong. Their father had been as relentless and implacable as a glacier, where Cersei was all wildfire, especially when thwarted. – Jaime, AFFC
And this leads to a point of contention when Heathcliff returns a changed man from his time away:
‘Don’t vex me. Why have you disregarded my request?’ – Catherine, Chapter XI Why does he insist on vexing me? – Cersei, AFFC
‘Oh, you see, Nelly, he would not relent a moment to keep me out of the grave. That is how I’m loved!’ – Catherine, Chapter XV “You swore that you would always love me. It is not loving to make me beg.” – Cersei, AFFC
All of this, combined with the particular way in which Catherine describes her feelings for Heathcliff, led critics of the book to accuse Catherine of perceiving and thus loving Heathcliff as an extension of herself. And, surely, most of these things she privately confesses to Nelly could have easily come out of Cersei’s mouth, who has been confirmed by the author to being written as highly narcissistic.
In chapter IX, Catherine says that her love for Heathcliff is a necessity and throughout the series Cersei’s sentiments for Jaime are frequently displayed through that same lens:
The wench had the right of it. He could not die. Cersei was waiting for him. She would have need of him. – Jaime, ASOS They rode hard the next day, at Jaime's insistence. His son was dead, and his sister needed him. – Jaime, ASOS “Jaime, you're my shining knight. You cannot abandon me when I need you most!” – Cersei, ASOS “I need you with me. In me. Please, Jaime. Please.” – Cersei, AFFC “Why would Cersei need the Warrior? She has me.” – Jaime, AFFC She licked her lips, shivering. “Come at once. Help me. Save me. I need you now as I have never needed you before. I love you. I love you. I love you. Come at once.” – Cersei, AFFC Jaime, I need Jaime. – Cersei, ADWD
Of course, in Cersei’s case, she “needs” Jaime because he is, in her mind, the brawn to her brain (“He was meant to be my sword and shield, my strong right arm.”), her protector, her agency in a patriarchal society… but she also needs him because she does not feel like a self-realized autonomous human being without him as she believes her own personhood has been split into two entities. And the same goes for Catherine:
‘I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here?’ – Catherine, Chapter IX “Jaime and I are more than brother and sister. We are one person in two bodies.” – Cersei, AGOT
‘Supposing at twelve years old I had been wrenched from the Heights, and every early association, and my all in all, as Heathcliff was at that time, and been converted at a stroke into Mrs. Linton, the lady of Thrushcross Grange, and the wife of a stranger: an exile, and outcast, thenceforth, from what had been my world. You may fancy a glimpse of the abyss where I grovelled!’ – Catherine, Chapter XII “I was lost without you, Jaime. I was afraid the Starks would send me your head. I could not have borne that. I am not whole without you.” – Cersei, ASOS
In fact, both women go as far as claiming their partners’ identities as their own:
‘Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.’ – Catherine, Chapter IX “You are me, I am you.” – Cersei, AFFC ‘It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am.’ – Catherine, Chapter IX
And from this idea of a shared existence and a lack of purpose when apart comes the desire for union in death and the mythologizing of these relationships:
‘If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.’ – Catherine, Chapter IX “If he were dead, I would know it. We came into this world together, Uncle. He would not go without me.” – Cersei, ADWD ‘She’s dead! I’ve not waited for you to learn that’. – Heathcliff, Chapter XVI
‘We’ve braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But, Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I’ll keep you. I’ll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won’t rest till you are with me. I never will!’ – Catherine, Chapter XII I cannot die while Cersei lives, he told himself. We will die together as we were born together. – Jaime, ASOS ‘I wish they may shovel in the earth over us both!’ – Heathcliff, Chapter XXIX
What’s interesting about Wuthering Heights, though, is that, other than codependency, there is an inherent selfishness and possessiveness to this. In chapter XV, when Catherine is effectively dying, it is clear that she does not want Heathcliff to outlive her and she’s terrified by the idea of him moving on and finding happiness elsewhere:
‘How strong you are! How many years do you mean to live after I am gone?’ – Catherine, Chapter XV “Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, ‘That’s the grave of Catherine Earnshaw? I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I’ve loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than she was; and, at death, I shall not rejoice that I are going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them!’ Will you say so, Heathcliff?” – Catherine, Chapter XV
Indeed, Catherine goes as far as telling Heathcliff that she wishes he would just die (and suffer) alongside her:
‘I wish I could hold you till we were both dead! I shouldn’t care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn’t you suffer? I do!’ – Catherine, Chapter XV ‘I’m not wishing you greater torment than I have, Heathcliff. I only wish us never to be parted.’ – Catherine, Chapter XV
And Cersei does something comparable when she (in her delusion) asks Jaime to be her champion in a mortal combat knowing he is likely to lose for his handicap:
“My queen,” said Qyburn, “have you . . . forgotten? Ser Jaime has no sword hand. If he should champion you and lose . . .” We will leave this world together, as we once came into it. “He will not lose. Not Jaime. Not with my life at stake.” – Cersei, AFFC
Heathcliff and Catherine don’t die together, however, and, despite what happened in Game Of Thrones, I’m still highly sceptical that Jaime and Cersei will die together in the books either. Yet the impression that Wuthering Heights leaves is that the unhealthy nature of Heathcliff and Catherine’s bond is at the root of their own self-destruction and tragic end:
Ere long, I heard the click of the latch, and Catherine flew up-stairs, breathless and wild; too excited to show gladness: indeed, by her face, you would rather have surmised an awful calamity. – Nelly, Chapter X ‘Mrs. Linton is now just recovering,’ I said; ‘she’ll never be like she was, but her life is spared; and if you really have a regard for her, you’ll shun crossing her way again. […] Another encounter between you and the master would kill her altogether.’ – Nelly, Chapter XIV ‘You have killed me and thriven on it, I think.’ - Catherine, Chapter XV “’Nay, it’s enough that he has murdered one of you,’ I observed aloud. ‘At the Grange, everyone knows your sister would have been living now had it not been for Mr. Heathcliff. After all, it is preferable to be hated than loved by him. When I recollect how happy we were, how happy Catherine was before he came, I’m fit to curse the day.’ Most likely, Heathcliff noticed more the truth of what was said, than the spirit of the person who said it. His attention was roused, I saw, for his eyes rained down tears among the ashes, and he drew his breath in suffocating sighs.” – Isabella, Chapter XVII ‘She might have been living yet, if it had not been for him!’ was his constant bitter reflection; and, in his eyes, Heathcliff seemed a murderer. – Nelly, Chapter XXI
‘I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer but yours! How can I?’ – Heathcliff, Chapter XV ‘It was a strange way of killing: not by inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope through eighteen years!’ – Heathcliff, Chapter XXIX
The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in let me in!’ ‘Who are you?’ I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. ‘Catherine Linton,’ it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton) ‘I’m come home: I’d lost my way on the moor!’ As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window. - Mr. Lockwood, Chapter III The following evening was very wet: indeed, it poured down till day-dawn; and, as I took my morning walk round the house, I observed the master’s window swinging open, and the rain driving straight in. […] I peeped in. Mr. Heathcliff was there laid on his back. His eyes met mine so keen and fierce, I started; and then he seemed to smile. I could not think him dead: but his face and throat were washed with rain; the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly still. The lattice, flapping to and fro, had grazed one hand that rested on the sill; no blood trickled from the broken skin, and when I put my fingers to it, I could doubt no more: he was dead and stark! – Nelly, Chapter XXXVI
And I wouldn’t be surprised if A Song Of Ice And Fire were to go in the same direction:
It is raining again, he thought when he saw how wet she was. The water was trickling down her cloak to puddle round her feet. How did she get here? I never heard her enter. She was dressed like a tavern wench in a heavy roughspun cloak, badly dyed in mottled browns and fraying at the hem. A hood concealed her face, but he could see the candles dancing in the green pools of her eyes, and when she moved he knew her. – Jaime, AFFC I thought that I was the Warrior and Cersei was the Maid, but all the time she was the Stranger, hiding her true face from my gaze. – Jaime, AFFC The Stranger represents death and the unknown, and leads the dead to the other world. Whilst referred to as male, he is neither male nor female. The Stranger's face has been described as half-human, concealed beneath a hooded mantle. – A Wiki Of Ice And Fire
“Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds. And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.” – Maggy The Frog, AFFC “Tyrion is the valonqar. Do you use that word in Myr? It's High Valyrian, it means little brother.” - Cersei, AFFC “He came into this world holding my foot, our old maester said”. – Cersei, AGOT “The Imp is no longer my brother, if he ever was.” – Cersei, AFFC A man stepped into the lantern light, and she saw his cloak was white. “Jaime?” I dreamt of one brother, but the other has come to wake me. – Cersei, AFFC
So, in conclusion, I find it plausible that George might have simply taken the narcissism, the violence and the “twin soul”/“other half” connection present in Wuthering Heights to it’s even more extreme by creating the chaotic mess that is the incestuous relationship between twins who are mirror images of each other... And there's a decent number of parallels to at least make a case for it!
Tag: @faintingheroine
