Gothic Settings: The Moors

I’m back with another installment of my Gothic Settings series! In case you missed it, last month I decided to start exploring the particular environments and locales that repeatedly appear as the backdrops to Gothic stories by examining the most classic and iconic of settings: the castle. While the ancient and exotic aura of the castle captured the Gothic imagination from the genre’s start, this week I want to shift gears entirely to a setting closer to home for British writers: the moors.

What is a moor, exactly? Moorland is a type of habitat characterized by low-growing vegetation on acidic soils. The Oxford English Dictionary also defines it as “uncultivated ground covered with heather; a heath.” This type of ecosystem is particularly common in the British Isles, from the Scottish Highlands to Mid Wales, Yorkshire to Cornwall. For many British citizens, going for a walk on the moors was their primary way to get away from the bustle of the home or the city and simply be out in nature with their thoughts. It’s no wonder, then, that this landscape came to be increasingly romanticized in the early nineteenth century by artists, poets, and novelists alike. But the moors have their dark side, as well. For all that they are serene and beautiful, their wild and isolated nature also makes them dangerous. One can easily get lost amongst the unchanging scenery of the moors or stumble upon uneven ground or unexpected marshland. The moors are also deeply entwined with British folklore as the home of fae creatures, both helpful and malevolent. Throughout Gothic literature, the moors are often depicted as both refuge and a threat.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

The authors perhaps most responsible for turning the English moors into an iconic Gothic setting were the Brontë sisters. Charlotte Brontë and her siblings were raised in West Yorkshire and spent much of their childhood exploring the surrounding moorland. Charlotte and her sisters would stay in the area all their lives, so it makes sense that the environment they loved so much would find its way into their writings. Charlotte Brontë’s titular protagonist of her 1847 novel Jane Eyre is quite closely associated with the moors. As a child, Jane is raised on tales from her nursemaid of fairies and imps that make their homes on the moors. At Thornfield, Mr. Rochester affectionately refers to Jane as a “fairy,” “elf,” and “sprite,” as if she were a supernatural creature that wandered into his home from the wild moors. Indeed, Jane and Rochester first meet out on the moors when Rochester experiences their danger for himself after his horse slips on a patch of ice, leaving him injured and far from civilization as darkness descends. Luckily, Jane is there to rescue him and help him back onto his horse. The moors are also where Jane retreats to for meditation and self-reflection. And, of course, after learning that marrying Rochester would involve committing the sin of bigamy, Jane flees out onto the moors in the middle of the night and wanders without food or shelter, sleeping out in the open, until she comes upon the aptly named Moor House. It is here that Jane finds family and fortune, gaining confidence and power until she is ready to meet Rochester again as his equal. In Jane Eyre, the moors represent everything from the mysterious realm of the supernatural, to a peaceful refuge, to the inhospitable wilds.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

The moors feature prominently in a novel by another Brontë sister, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847). In my Gothic Vocab post on the liminal, I briefly discussed how the moors in Wuthering Heights represent a liminal space between the two homes, Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights, and its wildness allows it to be a place where the boundaries of society are crossed and Cathy and Heathcliff can indulge in a relationship that transcends social class. Heathcliff, specifically, is closely identified with the moors, as you can tell by his very name including the synonym “heath.” His moods are tempestuous, like the “wuthering” wind storms that the moors are known for. Like the elfin Jane, Heathcliff is often compared to a supernatural being—in this case, not an alluring fairy creature but a devil or an “imp of Satan.” And the moors are where the supernatural makes its home, as evidenced particularly by the story’s ghosts. Cathy’s ghost seems to drift in from the moors to scratch at the windows of Wuthering Heights, and she seems to bring Heathcliff’s soul out with her at the end of the novel. As ghosts, Cathy and Heathcliff return to the moors where they loved to roam together as children. The moors here represent freedom, unrestrained passion, and the supernatural.

Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

But the Brontës weren’t the only ones to write about the moors. Nearly a century later and at the opposite end of the country, Daphne du Maurier would showcase how truly frightening the moors could be in her 1936 novel Jamaica Inn. The titular tavern is a real establishment located on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, in the south of England. In the novel, young Mary Yellen comes to live with her aunt and uncle at the inn after her parents’ deaths. On her lengthy drive over the barren landscape of the moor to the isolated and dreary location of the inn, Mary thinks, “No human being could live in this wasted country … and remain like other people; the very children would be born twisted, like the blackened shrubs of broom, bent by the force of a wind that never ceased.” This ominous characterization of the moors sets the tone for the novel. Like the wild youths of Wuthering Heights, Mary Yellen entertains herself by exploring the moors, but she is well aware of the dangers. She learns of her uncle’s brother who drowned on the moors one summer despite living there all his life. At one point she finds herself in danger of a similar fate after straying too far on a winter evening and getting lost in the darkened wild. Mary also soon discovers that the moor is inhabited by thieves, wreckers, and murderers and that the wasteland provides the perfect refuge for all sorts of crime. But the moor’s most dangerous villain is the one Mary least suspects: Francis Davey, the vicar from the nearby town reveals himself to be both the head of the wrecker gang and a pagan who wants to bring back the religion of the Druids. His pagan tendencies seem to give him a special connection with the moor, and after kidnapping Mary, Davey is able to make his way across the dangerous wilderness in the dark and without following any road. But the moors turn against even their worshipper Davey, and a mist traps him long enough for Mary’s rescuers to catch up and kill him. This is perhaps one of the darkest depictions of the moors in Gothic literature. While they do allow the ramblings of youthful freedom, it is always with the reminder that death, violence, and the ungovernable forces of nature lurk just around the corner.

What other Gothic novels can you think of that take place on the moors? And what other settings would you like to see me cover? Let me know in the comments below!