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			\|summary=This article explores the striking thematic and structural parallels between Arthur Conan Doyle's The Captain of the Pole-Star and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, focusing on haunted lovers, bleak landscapes, and destructive passion. It argues that the Arctic tale echoes Brontë's Gothic intensity, suggesting conscious or unconscious literary influence.
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	''Fiery Passions and Icy Realms: 'The Captain of the Pole-Star' and Wuthering Heights'' is an article written by [[Barbara Roden]] published in the [[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 3, 1992).		''Fiery Passions and Icy Realms: 'The Captain of the Pole-Star' and Wuthering Heights'' is an article written by [[Barbara Roden]] published in the [[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 3, 1992).

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{{Cargo_Research_Articles
|date=1992-01-01
|author=Barbara Roden
|topic=Intertextuality
}}
''Fiery Passions and Icy Realms: 'The Captain of the Pole-Star' and Wuthering Heights'' is an article written by [[Barbara Roden]] published in the [[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 3, 1992).

This article explores the striking thematic and structural parallels between [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s "[[The Captain of the 'Pole-Star'|The Captain of the Pole-Star]]" and Emily Brontë's ''Wuthering Heights'', focusing on haunted lovers, bleak landscapes, and destructive passion. It argues that the Arctic tale echoes Brontë's Gothic intensity, suggesting conscious or unconscious literary influence.

== Fiery Passions and Icy Realms ==
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1992-vol3-p45-fiery-passions-and-icy-realms.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 3, 1992, p. 45)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1992-vol3-p46-fiery-passions-and-icy-realms.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 3, 1992, p. 46)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1992-vol3-p47-fiery-passions-and-icy-realms.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 3, 1992, p. 47)<br /><br />Illustration by [[Charles Kerr]] for the 1893 [[Longmans, Green & Co.]] edition of [[The Captain of the 'Pole-Star'|The Captain of the Pole-Star]].]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1992-vol3-p48-fiery-passions-and-icy-realms.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 3, 1992, p. 48)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1992-vol3-p49-fiery-passions-and-icy-realms.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 3, 1992, p. 49)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1992-vol3-p50-fiery-passions-and-icy-realms.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 3, 1992, p. 50)]]

''' 'The Captain of the Pole-Star' and Wuthering Heights'''

Conan Doyle's short story '[[The Captain of the 'Pole-Star'|The Captain of the Pole-Star]]' (1883) is a remarkably complete work, the more so when one takes into account the fact that it was written by a twenty-three year old with fewer than a dozen published stories to his credit. The setting and characters were obviously inspired by his experiences on the whaling ship Hope, in which he served as surgeon for seven months in 1880. The narrator of the story, John M'Alister Ray, is a student of medicine, as was [[Arthur Conan Doyle|ACD]] himself, and the relations he has with Captain Craigie in the tale are much the same as the relations which existed between [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] and the Hope's captain, John Gray.

The setting of '[[The Captain of the 'Pole-Star'|The Captain of the Pole-Star]]' is very similar to that of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein, as has been noted. Certainly [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s sojourn in the Arctic Ocean would have reminded him of the powerful opening and closing scenes of Shelley's novel, set in those same icy realms. The fact that his story starts on 11 September, the same day that the events in Shelley's novel reach their conclusion, is a great tribute to that pioneering work.

Even more striking than the similarity '[[The Captain of the 'Pole-Star'|The Captain of the Pole-Star]]' bears to Frankenstein, however, is its similarity to another great work of fiction, Emily Brontë's ''Wuthering Heights'' (1847). Like [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]], Emily was young, being only twenty-seven when she began work on her novel in 1845: but she did not have the benefit of any published works to her credit. Her passionate tale of love, hatred, and revenge on the Yorkshire moors was not an immediate success when first published, but grew in stature as the century progressed, and it is entirely possible that [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] read, and remembered, the novel. Indeed, in Through the Magic Door he wrote, 'Whence came the intense glowing imagination of the Brontës — so unlike the Miss-Austen-like calm of their predecessors?'

It is certain that there are many points of resemblance between the works. Wuthering Heights is, like 'The Captain of the Pole-Star', narrated by an outsider: in this case the hapless tenant Mr Lockwood, who is renting Thrushcross Grange from the surly and brooding Heathcliff. Early in the novel he pays a visit to his landlord at Wuthering Heights and is trapped in the house for the night by a blinding snowstorm, which makes it impossible for him to return to his home.

Although the bleak setting of ice, snow, and cold is similar to that of [[Arthur Conan Doyle|ACD]]'s short story, it is the character and nature of Heathcliff which are even more striking. bearing as they do a strong resemblance to those of Captain Craigie. Both men are tall and well-formed, with dark, handsome faces and resolute manners. Both are intelligent, and can be pleasant when need be, but both have hidden passions, which often break the surface to confuse and frighten those around them. During his enforced stay at Wuthering Heights, Lockwood is awakened by a sound outside his window, and encounters the spirit of Catherine. His shouts awake Heathcliff, who bursts into the room. When Lockwood tells his story, his host reacts violently:

: 'What can you mean by talking in this way to me'. thundered Heathcliff with savage vehemence.
: 'How how dare you, under my roof? — God! he's mad to speak so!' And he struck his forehead with rage.

Young Ray invokes a similarly unexpected and savage response from Craigie when he mentions his fiancée, Flora:

: 'Curse you!' he yelled, springing out of his seat, with his very beard bristling with passion. 'What is your happiness to me? What have I to do with her that you must dangle her photograph before my eyes? I almost thought that he was about to strike me in the frenzy of his rage, but with another imprecation he dashed open the door of his cabin and rushed out upon deck...

Heathcliff's outburst is followed by a more tender scene, however, which Lockwood witnesses as he leaves the room:

: He got on to the bed, and wrenched open the lattice, bursting, as he pulled at it, into an uncontrollable passion of tears. 'Come in! Come in!' he sobbed. 'Cathy, do come. Oh do once more! Oh! my heart's darling! hear me this time, Catherine, at last!' The spectre showed a spectre's ordinary caprice: it gave no sign of being: but the snow and wind whirled wildly through...
: There was such anguish in the rush of grief that accompanied this raving, that my compassion made me overlook its folly...

Captain Craigie's rage is followed, two days later, by a similar scene, as he and Ray stand on the deck of the ship:

: He was staring out over the ice with an expression in which horror, surprise, and something approaching to joy were contending for the mastery. In spite of the cold, great drops of perspiration were coursing down his forehead, and he was evidently fearfully excited...
: Look! he gasped, seizing me by the wrist, but still keeping his eyes upon the distant ice, and moving his head slowly in a horizontal direction, as if following some object which was moving across the field of vision. Look! There, man. there! Between the hummocks! Now coming out from behind the far one! You see her you must see her! There still! Flying from me. by God, flying from me and
gone'
: He uttered the last two words in a whisper of concentrated agony which shall never fade from my remembrance.

The ironic difference is that while the ghost in [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s story is initially visible to Captain Craigie but not Ray, Cathy's ghost reveals itself to the indifferent Lockwood but not to Heathcliff, the man who so desperately longs to see her, and who invited her ghost to haunt him after she died in childbirth:

: And I pray one prayer I repeat it till my tongue stiffens Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always take any form — drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!

There is little doubt that the ghost which haunts Captain Craigie is that of his fiancée, who, it is discovered in the last lines of the story, died during one of Craigie's absences at sea 'under circumstances of peculiar horror.' These circumstances are left to the reader's imagination, but a plausible hypothesis would be that she died during childbirth, having been made pregnant by Craigie. If he had returned to his ship shortly afterwards he would have had no knowledge of his fiancée's plight until he arrived home after several months at sea.

An unwed and pregnant girl in 1883 would have become a social outcast, bringing scorn and shame down upon herself and her family. The absence of Craigie would have made the situation even more difficult, as the one means of salvaging her position and reputation, marriage, was denied her. Her death, and that of the baby, during childbirth could, given her position and the time the story is set, have been described as being 'under circumstances of peculiar horror.' Lending credence to this hypothesis is the suggestion that Craigie is being haunted by more than the woman alone. Early in the story Mr Manson, the second mate, describes hearing a sound coming from the ice, ... sometimes like a bairn crying and sometimes like a wench in pain.'

It is not difficult to imagine the scene when Captain Craigie returned to his beloved's Cornish village and discovered her fate and that of their child. Heathcliff's passionate outburst after Cathy's death could equally have come from Craigie, who might well have looked upon himself as his fiancée's murderer. Both men seek their haunting. almost rejoicing in it at times, while at others they seem overcome by the horror of their situation. This horror may stem from their inability to be with their loved ones. Craigie and Heathcliff are both resigned to life, from which they derive little pleasure: Craigie tells Ray that 'the thought of death was a pleasant one to him,' while Heathcliff tells the dying Cathy:

: So much the worse for me, that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you oh. God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?

Neither man seeks the easy answer by committing suicide, although Craigie seems to go to great lengths to place himself at risk. One of the seamen believes that he has devoted himself to whaling 'simply for the reason that it is the most dangerous occupation which he could select and that he courts death in every possible manner.` Heathcliff does not actively seek death; but he does not seek life either:

: Then you are not afraid of death?' I pursued.
: 'Afraid? No!' he replied. 'I have neither a fear, nor a presentiment, nor a hope of death. Why should I? With my hard constitution and temperate mode of living, and unperilous occupations. I ought to. and probably shall, remain above ground till there is scarcely a black hair on my head. And yet I cannot continue in this condition! I have to remind myself to breathe almost to remind my heart to beat!... I have a single wish, and my whole being and faculties are yearning to attain it.'

We know little of Captain Craigie's fiancée, not even her name. Young Ray sees a sketch of a woman in the captain's cabin, and we must assume that it is his betrothed. Her features make a strong impression on him:

: That any one in the short space of nineteen years of existence could develop such strength of will as was stamped upon her face seemed to me at the time to be well-nigh incredible. She must have been an extraordinary woman.

Heathcliff's Cathy is a similarly strong-willed woman, passionate and capricious. It is not difficult to believe that both women would find the means to return after death to be with the men they loved, but their motives are rather more complex. There is undoubtedly an element of cruelty in both hauntings, which bring pain and torment to Heathcliff and Craigie. Both women, justifiably or not, would have reasons to see the men as their 'murderers', and the hauntings would seem to conform to the standard pattern of the dead returning for revenge upon the living for past misdeeds. Yet both women passionately loved the men they are haunting, and the fact that both have chosen to return to be near their loved ones indicates a tenderness and yearning which overshadows mere revenge.

Death finally reunites Captain Craigie with his fiancée: several of the men who discover his body on the ice floe declare that a figure which was bending over it ... started up in the shape of a woman, stooped over the corpse and kissed it, and then hurried away across the floe.' The captain died with a smile upon his lips and his arms outstretched as though grasping at the strange visitor which had summoned him away into the dim world that lies beyond the grave. Heathcliff and Cathy are reunited at the end of Wuthering Heights: Heathcliff's body is buried beside that of his love, and there are people who believe that their ghosts now roam the land where Cathy once walked alone:

: An odd thing happened to me about a month ago. I was going to the Grange one evening a dark evening, threatening thunder and, just at the turn of the Heights. I encountered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs before him; he was crying terribly...
: 'What's the matter, my little man?' I asked.
: They's Heathcliff and a woman. yonder, under t'Nab.' he blubbered. 'un Aw darnut pass 'em.'
: I saw nothing; but neither the sheep nor he would go on; so I bid him take the road lower down. He probably raised the phantoms from thinking, as he traversed the moors alone, on the nonsense he had heard his parents and companions repeat. Yet, still. I don't like being out in the dark now; and I don't like being left by myself in this grim house: I cannot help it...

Heathcliff and Cathy. Captain Craigie and his fiancée: all are united in death with a permanence that escaped them in life. Both '[[The Captain of the 'Pole-Star'|The Captain of the Pole-Star]]' and Wuthering Heights are meditations on the themes of love, loss, and hope, tales of passion played out against a bleak and barren landscape. Both works show an astonishing maturity and depth on the part of their young authors: The Captain of the Pole-Star is one of the most delicate and haunting of ghost stories, while few works can match the power of Emily Brontë's one novel, with its poignant closing lines: I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

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Fiery Passions and Icy Realms - Revision history

TCDE-Team at 21:26, 17 February 2026