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These stories show how the dead are thought to return during a crisis to
afford protection and advice, to promote health and peace of mind, and to
aid the dying by easing their passage from this world; alt obvioLisly are
traditional themes.
In other slories, the narrator, in her depression and distress, prays for or
to the dead person, calls for him or addresses direct pleas to him, and the
dead do return 10 comfort and restore. 1
In assisting the dying. this revenant draws on "one's own death" and its iconography
of "angels" awaiting their soul's release to carry it to heaven; in relieving grief it shows its
affiliation to "thy death." Aries thus outlines the "romantic" shape of this protean crealllre:
Autrefois, Ie retour d'une arne clait signe de malheur ou de dctresse, qu'it
fallait empecher en satisfaisant ses exigences, grace a la magie, noire ou
blanche. Maintenant c'esl I'esprit du disparu qui revient vers celui qu'il a
aime et qui l'appelle. 2
lie finds in Wuthering Heights the first manifestation of the age's revenalll:
'YOll were very wicked, Mr. Heathcliff!' I exclaimed; 'were yOLl not
ashamed to disturb the dead?'
'I dislUrbed nobody, Nelly,' he replied; 'and I gave some ease {O myself.
I shall be a great deal more comfortable now; and you'll have a better
chance of keeping me underground, when I get there. Disturbed her? No!
she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years--incessantly-remorselessly--till
yesternight--and yesternight, I was tranquil. I dreamt 1
was sleeping the lasl sleep, by that sleeper, with my heart stopped, and my
cheek frozen against hers.'
'And if she had been dissolved into earth, or worse, what would yOll have
dreamt of then?' I said.
'Of dissolving with her, and being more happy still!' he answered. 'Do
you suppose I dread any change of that sort? I expected that it should not
commence till I share it. Besides, unless I had received a distinct
impression of her passionless features, that stange feeling would hardly
have been removed. It began oddly. You know, I was wild after she
died, and eternally, from dawn to dawn, praying to her lO relUm to me 44
her spirit--I have a strong faith in ghosts; I have a conviction that they can,
and do exist, among liS!
'The day she was buried there came a fall of snow. In the evening I went
to the churchyard. It blew bleak as winter--all round was solitary: I didn't
fear that her fool of a husband would wander up the den so late--and no
one else had business to bring them there.
'Being alone, and conscious two yards of loose earth was the sole barrier
between us, I said 10 myself--
"'I'll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, I'll think it is this north
wind that chills me; and if she be motionless, it is sleep."
1Bcnncll, "Hcavcnly" 92.
2Arics, lIomme 2: 153.