Dangerous Lovers
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When I read Jane Eyre for the first time, I was a teenager. Plain Jane, growing from an angst-ridden lonely child into a strong, confident woman, struggling between reason and passion, fighting for her independence was one of the rare female role models I had so far come across in literature that I actually found worth considering. The novel left a lasting impression.

It was therefore rather discomforting when I had to realize that the formula of the standard mass-market-romance described by Modleski (in Lutz 2006:3) – young, virginal heroine of simple origins meets handsome, cynical older man, superior in status, physical power and experience with a dark secret in his past, who mocks her, threatens her, tries to seduce her only to be finally redeemed by the purity of her love – fits rather too well to describe major plot elements of my cherished Jane Eyre. The fact that this novel is so much more than a love story offered little consolation, as it had been mainly same love story that had conquered my teenage-self, whose reputation as a reader I suddenly saw endangered.

Once I had got over the fact that I had something in common with fans of the ‘bodice-ripper’, this common pattern raised some interesting questions. Be it cynical, guilt-ridden Rochester obsessed with his quest for salvation, violent, brooding Heathcliff obsessed with his quest for revenge or some dashing pirate in an erotic historical romance - why do all the girls in the stories always fall for the bad-boys? “Mere masochism” seems to be an all too simple explanation. Lutz (2006) sheds some light on the reasons that make this popular pattern so powerful, pursuing the path of this trope from its origins in Gothic novels and Byronism to its current realm in mass market romances. ‘Dangerous lover’ is the term she uses to describe the pattern.

So what Heathcliff and Rochester share with the heroes of mass market romance is that they too can be considered to be examples of the dangerous lover.


f the dangerous lover romance should be furnished with a happy ending, the dangerous lover has to become a reformed rake. The ‘reformed rake’-pattern is based on the belief in the moral superiority of women, which allows the heroine to guide the dangerous lover, who has lost his moral orientation, back on the road to salvation. According to Ruback (1985: 79) this mirrors how Victorian ideology typically structures gender-relations: Men are strong and women are weak, except when it comes to moral requirements, in which case the roles are reversed.

According to Lutz much of the attractiveness of the ‘reformed rake’ genre can be attributed to its representation of a “slow movement of power passing from the hero to the heroine” (Lutz 2006:5), which provides the romance with aspects of a revenge fantasy. This conforms to the interpretation of Rochester’s mutilation after his rescue attempt of his mad wife as a symbolic castration necessary to compensate his superiority over Jane with regard to sexual experience, as detailed by Gilbert and Gubar (1979: 368). In their feminist analysis of Jane Eyre they suggest that Bertha can be read as Jane’s alter ego, representing aspects of Jane’s identity that are not compatible with Victorian gender roles, namely her rage about her imprisonment by all the crippling Victorian regulations imposed on her sex and her sex drive. Bertha’s hostile actions towards Rochester – for instance her attack on Rochester in his sleep after he has had a very frank conversation about his sexual past with Jane (Chapter 15) – therefore may be said to reinforce the revenge-aspect of this pattern.

Lutz (2006:5) stresses the dependence of the hero on the heroine, once he has realized that her love is his only key to salvation. At first sight the development of Rochester and Jane’s relationship seems to fit the description. Jane and Rochester cannot become a couple before Rochester is turned from rich, haughty alpha-male into impoverished humble cripple, needing Jane to take him by her hand because of his blindness. On closer inspection however it turns out that Jane Eyre is actually a subversion of the trope. Jane may have to take care of Rochester now that he is blind and support him financially, but on another – for my reading of the novel more important - level, Rochester is less dependent on her after his accident than he was before. He no longer needs Jane to redeem him, because he has redeemed himself by his noble and self-sacrificing attempt to safe his mad wife.



Being in need of redemption is one of the main characteristics of the Byronic Hero (and thus also the dangerous lover). It is easy to see why Heathcliff fits the description: He is violent, reckless and cruel, obsessed with his hate for Hindley (and later Edgar and probably society as a whole), unable to find any peace before he has completed his revenge on those who wronged him. The conventional approach of the reformed rake formula would be to have him fall for the morally superior heroine, whose pure love makes him a better man (or at least is absorbing enough to distract him from his plans for revenge).

Heathcliff however utterly fails to be redeemed by love. Ironically it is not his unquenchable thirst for revenge but one of his allegedly better instincts - his love for Catherine - that finally finishes him off by eating him up. The logical thing (that is, logical according to the logic of the reformed-rake-pattern) would be to assume that the love in question is simply not pure enough, yet Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s love for each other is actually as pure as love could be. It is almost impossible to conceive them as having any of the ulterior motives people might conventionally harbour for pursuing a relationship such as a rise in the social hierarchy , a boost for the ego obtained by one’s ability to win someone’s heart, fear of loneliness, wish to comply with social norms and consideration of economic necessities (typical problems of Jane Austen characters) or fear of being branded as a shelf-warmer without any chance on the partner market. Catherine is not pure per se, as she clearly has ulterior motives for marrying Edgar, but her love for Heathcliff is untainted and the same applies to Heathcliff’s love for her.

Instead, Wuthering Heights offers a number of other reasons, why salvation through love does not work. Firstly, Heathcliff does not ‘fall in love’. To the contrary, he is rather ‘raised in love’, as Heatchliff, arriving at Wuthering Heights at a very early age, has probably been in love with Catherine for as long as he can remember. There is not the slightest hint in the novel when this childhood-love, that could also be interpreted as an admittedly idiosyncratic version of brotherly affection, turns into full-blown grown up romantic heterosexual love. In fact it is highly questionable whether this transition takes place at all and probably even irrelevant in this context. What is more important however is the following question: If Heathcliff has been in love all along anyway and his love could not prevent him from becoming wretched in the first place, how can it be supposed to save him?

Secondly, Catherine seems not the least bit interested in reforming Heathcliff . Unlike other heroines of dangerous lover romances she genuinely loves the wilderness that is Heathcliff for its intrinsic value (basically because it reflects her own wilderness), not because it gives her a nice sense of purpose to tame it. Catherine cannot compensate for Heathcliff’s moral ambiguity because she is morally ambiguous too, wretched herself, because she has betrayed her love for Heathcliff by marrying Edgar. Thus Catherine also qualifies as someone in need of redemption, which only makes sense after all: If you want to love a dangerous lover, you had better be a dangerous lover yourself . The notion that women should try to reform their men is probably one of the saddest misunderstandings between the sexes ever fuelled by literature. Emily Brontë cannot be blamed, though. She even bothered to insert a graphic warning example in her novel in the form of Isabella Linton who perfectly illustrates why whoever attaches oneself to a dangerous lover with such expectations is bound to fail miserably – that is in an aesthetically much less satisfying manner than Catherine, who, not counting the afterlife, arguably fails too when it comes to living with Heathcliff, but in contrast to Isabella at least rather gloriously.


By introducing the dangerous lover the Brontës use the same concept as modern mass market romances, but they explore it more thoroughly. What sets them apart from the overwhelming majority of their successors in the field of the dangerous lover romance is their merciless consistency.

Jane Eyre is frightfully consistent because it also hints at the ugly sides of the idea that men are redeemed by the love of their women: this notion is problematic for women, because it forces them into a strictly defined role that is burdened with moral responsibility and it is problematic for men, because it places them in a position of moral inferiority and dependence. Having Rochester redeemed by Jane would make him the loser of their power struggle, which would violate the main message of the novel: a loving relationship is not about salvation but about equality.

Wuthering Heights is frightfully consistent because it fully embraces the ambivalence of love instead of merely flirting with it. It too shows that love is not about salvation: (Absolute) Love is what haunts, not what saves you. Heathcliff’s love for Catherine is absolute: he loves her so much that he does not care if people have to suffer for it – even if these people are Heathcliff or Catherine themselves. Emily Brontë’s dangerous lovers are therefore truly dangerous to each other – not only in the sexy, glamorous and superficial sense, but in the real, unsettling, life-threatening one too. Sure, their love is great – but it is also ultimately destructive. Modern mass market romances with their obligatory happy ending shy away from fully exploring this second aspect, thus invariably hollowing out the concept. They may play with the fascination of ambivalence, but they only scratch its surface.

In various ways Wuthering Heights represents an escalation of the themes treated in Jane Eyre, where the passions are still balanced by common sense. Wuthering Heights in contrast takes the notions of the dangerous lover’s ambivalence and the transcendental dimension of love as well as the subversion of the reformed rake pattern to their extremes. In fact a novel that executes the pattern of the dangerous lover even more drastically than Wuthering Heights is hard to imagine. When it comes to role models, however, I still prefer Jane Eyre.