Reader Questions about Clare b. Dunkle's The House of Dead Maids

Readers have written me to ask questions about the book. Here are some of those questions and their answers. Although I still answer reader mail about this book, I no longer add questions and answers to this page because I wrote this book over five years ago, and I no longer trust my memory about its details.

WARNING: If you have not read the book, please DO NOT read this page. The questions won't interest you, and they will ruin some of the book's best surprises.

IS THERE GOING TO BE A BOOK 2 FOR THIS BOOK?

No, because Emily Brontë's classic novel, Wuthering Heights, is Book Two to The House of Dead Maids. If you read Wuthering Heights, you will find out what happens next to Himself and how he uses the ideas he has learned at Seldom House to shape the course of his life and the lives of others.

You won't find out what happens to Tabby in Emily's book because there really isn't more to tell, as Tabby says at the end of my story. Tabby serves as housekeeper to the Brontës until ill health forces her into retirement, but she continues to be very important to the family. Charlotte Brontë writes of how Tabby, in her eighties, wants to know all the latest family news. Since Tabby has become very hard of hearing, Charlotte has to shout the news to her, so they go for walks on the moor in order not to be overheard. Tabby lives to be eighty-five; she outlives Branwell, Emily, and Anne. She dies just a few weeks before Charlotte does and is buried in the Haworth graveyard next to the parsonage where she worked for so long.

DID YOU GET TO CHOOSE THE ILLUSTRATOR FOR THIS BOOK?

No, I didn't. The art director and editor ordinarily make that kind of decision. But my editor did share with me the names of the artists they were considering, and I lobbied for Patrick Arrasmith. I loved his work, which you can see here, and I thought it would be a perfect match to the dark, atmospheric tone of my book. And it is! You can see all his illustrations for this book by clicking on this link.

WERE THERE REALLY SUCH THINGS AS KNITTING SCHOOLS?

Yes, there were. In Tabby's day, Yorkshire was one of the major producers of textiles (cloth and clothing), and before the Industrial Revolution, weavers and knitters produced their textiles at home. Children were too small to work the big looms, but they were ideal workers to do spinning or knitting. In those days before child labor laws, many children worked in the textile industry.

Textile schools were set up as charity institutions, a way to help destitute children learn a skill that could support them in adulthood. In 1782, a committee of generous townspeople founded the Spinning School in York, which taught spinning to the older children but knitting to the younger ones. (Baines, 57) Other knitting schools, both in England and in America, came into existence during the 1700's and the early part of the 1800's.

Ma Hutton's knitting school seems to be a combination of charity school and money-making proposition. It's likely that several wealthy people in the area are contributing to its support. The children of the school have shoes and wooden overshoes (pattens), which is something poor children often didn't have, and Tabby has been brought there out of kindness, which implies that this is a school for charity cases. But the school also makes a good product that appears to be in demand. Tabby finds that people are glad to get the socks she knows how to knit.

Baines, Edward. History, Directory & Gazetteer of the County of York. Vol. 2. London: Hurst and Robinson, 1823.

ACCORDING TO YOUR BOOK, DURING HEATHCLIFF'S THREE-YEAR DISAPPEARANCE, HE HAS GONE BACK TO TAKE OVER SELDOM HOUSE. DON'T YOU THINK HE MAYBE JUST GOT RICH THROUGH A LIFE OF CRIME?

Possibly he could have. But Heathcliff has done more than just get rich. He has also taken the time to learn how to dress and behave like a gentleman and how to gamble and win—a gentleman's pastime in those days. He has also learned enough of business to understand how property gets mortgaged and how inheritance laws work. This implies a meteoric rise from anonymous poverty to wealth and then at least a year of leisure during which to study the art of being a gentleman.

The other difficulty with this solution is that while Heathcliff certainly wouldn't be averse to a life of crime, he would be no better prepared for it than any of the other young toughs out there. In fact, compared to a boy from the London underclass, he would be at a disadvantage. Georgian England was a stratified—not to say calcified—society. Given Heathcliff's disadvantages, how could he manage such an unbelievable run of luck?

And there is one other detail from Wuthering Heights that the solution of a life of crime doesn't explain. When Heathcliff returns, Nelly is very surprised at his remarkable change and immediately starts asking questions. We do not witness Heathcliff's and Cathy's first meeting, but they come upstairs almost immediately thereafter, and it is interesting to note that Cathy asks Heathcliff no such question. She seems to understand where he has been and how he has accomplished his transformation. She doesn't discuss this matter either then or later, and thus, Nelly (a very nosy woman) never does find out how Heathcliff has transformed himself.

My solution—that he has returned to Seldom House to claim the mastery of it—explains his wealth, his leisure to learn gentlemanly habits, his change in luck, and Cathy's understanding of where he goes during his absence. She hears all about Seldom House when they are children together, during the same conversations that convert her from her Christian faith to a belief in an afterlife on the land she loves. She stops believing in Heathcliff's childhood stories of wealth and opportunity by the time she decides to marry Edgar. But when Heathcliff shows up, transformed into a wealthy and accomplished gentleman, she realizes that his old stories were true and that he has gone back to claim his inheritance, just as he said he would.

AT THE END OF THE BOOK CATHERINE EARNSHAW MAKES AN APPEARANCE. HAS SHE BECOME A DEAD MAID?

Yes and no. In my book, Cathy has become a dead maid—but not a dead maid of Seldom House. Cathy loves two things: the land of Wuthering Heights and Heathcliff. By becoming a dead maid, she is gambling that she will be able to keep both of them.

In Wuthering Heights, when Cathy tries to explain why she shouldn't marry Edgar, she brings up three things: Heathcliff, the land of Wuthering Heights, and the afterlife. She declares that "my secret" is the reason she's convinced she's wrong to marry Edgar. She can't explain it distinctly but can only hint at it. Whatever this secret is, it troubles her: "... her countenance grew sadder and graver, and her clasped hands trembled." (81)

What this secret is we don't discover. Nelly prevents Cathy from explaining it. "'Oh! Don't, Miss Catherine!' I cried. 'We're dismal enough without conjuring up ghosts, and visions to perplex us. Come, come, be merry, and like yourself!'" (81) This tells us that Nelly suspects Cathy's secret is horrible.

What is the dream Cathy tries to tell in order to explain her secret? We don't know. This is one of the central mysteries of Wuthering Heights. But, given the fact that Cathy's substitute dream involves an afterlife on the moors of Wuthering Heights, and given the fact that their conversation has been about her spiritual connection to Heathcliff, we may suppose that Cathy's dream parallels a dream that, much later, Heathcliff tells: "I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep, by that sleeper, with my heart stopped, and my cheek frozen against hers." (293)

The text of Wuthering Heights supports the following interpretation: Cathy's secret is that she and Heathcliff have made a pact to remain together after death. Moreover, the text of Wuthering Heights makes it clear that Heathcliff and Cathy believe their eternity together depends upon their corpses lying next to one another in the ground. Thus, in her delirium, Cathy speaks to Heathcliff and demands that he join her in the grave: "I'll not lie there by myself; ... I won't rest till you are with me." (128) And she reminds Heathcliff of it as she lies dying: "I only wish us never to be parted." (162-3)

Both Heathcliff and Cathy threaten to haunt the living if their plans to lie side by side in the earth are not carried out. Neither one of them is particularly fanciful, and this is what makes their liebestod fixation particularly bizarre. Cathy makes the cold-blooded decision to marry Edgar in order to enjoy a comfortable life and help Heathcliff to rise in the world. Her reasonable approach to life contrasts sharply with her irrational talk about not resting after death. For his part, Heathcliff overcomes adversity of every sort and calmly goes about avenging himself and gathering up his neighbors' goods, focusing on the practical, day-to-day running of farms for almost twenty years. How is it, then, that such a level-headed man, almost twenty years after his sweetheart's death, should scheme to join her corpse in a single grave?

There is a very good case to be made that Cathy and Heathcliff, in framing their unusual funeral requests and predictions about the afterlife, are harking back to a pact made when they were young and fanciful children— when Heathcliff was "my all in all," as Cathy says. (127) This explains why, during her delirium, she fixates on both her childhood and her afterlife, often blending the two in a single speech: "...We must pass by Gimmerton Kirk, to go that journey! 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 won't rest till you are with me ... I never will!" (128)

Now we leave the text of Wuthering Heights and enter the world of The House of Dead Maids. Seldom House, with its ritual of Master and Maid, provides the young Heathcliff and Cathy with the framework for their childhood pact. In fact, they have only one question to settle: will their grave be on the land of Wuthering Heights, or will it be on the land of Seldom House? Heathcliff will have told Cathy all about Seldom House, where he believes Arnby is waiting to welcome him home as master. But Cathy, as we know from the text of Wuthering Heights, wants to remain on the land she loves. So Heathcliff stays at the old farmhouse with her, growing poorer and more unlucky, until finally she rejects him for Edgar.

When Heathcliff comes back as a wealthy gentleman, he is no longer under Cathy's spell. His three years' absence has taught him a great deal about life. "I want you to be aware that I know you have treated me infernally," he tells Cathy, " and if you think I can be consoled by sweet words you are an idiot—and if you fancy I'll suffer unrevenged, I'll convince you of the contrary. ... Stand you aside!" (114) He goes on to provoke a quarrel that even peaceable, indulgent Edgar Linton cannot ignore and gets himself thrown out of the house. Cathy must choose between being Edgar's wife or being Heathcliff's friend, and if she remains Heathcliff's friend, they will have to flee together. She will not be able to remain near Wuthering Heights.

Cathy, however, is not so easily mastered. She refuses to let either Heathcliff or Edgar bully her. In the end, she wants two things: Wuthering Heights and Heathcliff. By dying, she can have them both. Once her body is in the ground, Heathcliff may continue to be master of Seldom House, but he will have to die at Wuthering Heights to stay with her. This is why she taunts Heathcliff so cruelly before she dies: "Will you forget me—will you be happy when I am in the earth?" (162) By torturing him with these questions and by haunting him after death, she ensures that he will keep his promise to join her in the grave.

Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Penguin classics deluxe ed. New York: Penguin, 2009.

WHY IS CATHY HAUNTING TABBY IN THE LAST CHAPTER? ISN'T SHE HAPPY WITH HEATHCLIFF?

Cathy has probably been haunting Tabby for a number of years. But Tabby hasn't seen her before. As long as Tabby's family has been together, the maids have stayed outside the house, and she has taken care not to look out at them. When she finally is alone and vulnerable and she does look outside, the year is 1824. Even according to the chronology of my book (which shifts dates by ten years), Cathy has been dead for some thirty years, and Heathcliff has been dead for about twelve years. Why, then, is Cathy alone? And why is she still haunting? Shouldn't she be enjoying her paradise on earth with Heathcliff?

Tabby would say that Cathy is haunting because all dead maids haunt; they are doomed to do so. And since Tabby was, however briefly, Heathcliff's consort—the original Maid who was there to see the Young Master take his place in the Master's Seat—it is fitting that she receives visits from the Maid who shares his grave. She would add that Cathy has become a horrible thing emptied of identity and purpose, a mere pawn to the hunger of the land.

At Seldom House, people seem to see in their specters the things they expect to see. Heathcliff sees a suitably demonic and worthy opponent in his ghost. The coward Jack sees a fearsome monster. Miss Winter, lonely and childless, sees no one at all—her isolation is unbroken. But Tabby, strong in her religious faith, sees zombie victims of a hideous heathen ritual. How could they look otherwise to her?

When Tabby sees Izzy as a loathsome horror, Heathcliff sees Izzy as a pretty little girl. Now Tabby sees Cathy as a loathsome horror. But what is she really?