Wuthering Heights
•1757:Hindley born (summer); Nelly born
•1762:Edgar Linton born
•1764:Heathcliff born[dubious ]
•1765:Catherine Earnshaw born (summer); Isabella Linton
born (late 1765)
•1771:Heathcliff brought to Wuthering Heights by Mr Earnshaw
(late summer)
•1773:Mrs Earnshaw dies (spring)
•1774:Hindley sent off to college
•1777:Hindley marries Frances; Mr Earnshaw dies and Hindley
comes back (October); Heathcliff and Cathy visit Thrushcross
Grange for the first time; Cathy remains behind (November),
and then returns to Wuthering Heights (Christmas Eve)
•1778:Hareton born (June); Frances dies
• 1780:Heathcliff runs away from Wuthering Heights; Mr
and Mrs Linton both die
• 1783:Catherine has married Edgar (March); Heathcliff
comes back (September)
• 1784:Heathcliff marries Isabella (February); Catherine
dies and Cathy born (20 March); Hindley dies; Linton
born (September)
• 1797:Isabella dies; Cathy visits Wuthering Heights and
meets Hareton; Linton brought to Thrushcross Grange
and then taken to Wuthering Heights
• 1800:Cathy meets Heathcliff and sees Linton again (20
March)
• 1801:Cathy and Linton are married (August); Edgar dies
(August); Linton dies (September); Mr Lockwood goes to
Thrushcross Grange and visits Wuthering Heights,
beginning his narrative
• 1802:Mr Lockwood goes back to London (January);
Heathcliff dies (April); Mr Lockwood comes back to
Thrushcross Grange (September)
• 1803:Cathy plans to marry Hareton (1 January)
Setting
• The story begins in 1801, then flashes back to
the 1770's and eventually returns to the early
1800's. The locale is the Yorkshire moors in
northern England. A moor is tract of mostly
treeless wasteland where heather thrives and
water saturates the earth. The action takes place
at two estates, Wuthering Heights and
Thrushcross Grange, about four miles apart.
Genre
• Wuthering Heights is a novel of romance, revenge, and tragedy. It
exhibits many characteristics of the so-called Gothic novel, which
focuses on dark, mysterious events. The typical Gothic novel
unfolds at one or more creepy sites, such as a dimly lit castle, an old
mansion on a hilltop, a misty cemetery, a forlorn countryside, or the
laboratory of a scientist conducting frightful experiments. In some
Gothic novels, characters imagine that they see ghosts and
monsters. In others, the ghosts and monsters are real. The weather
in a Gothic novel is often dreary or foul: There may be high winds
that rattle windowpanes, electrical storms with lightning strikes, and
gray skies that brood over landscapes. (The word wuthering refers
to violent wind.) The Gothic novel derives its name from the Gothic
architectural style popular in Europe between the 12th and 16th
centuries. Gothic structures–such as cathedrals–featured cavernous
interiors with deep shadows, stone walls that echoed the footsteps
of worshippers, gargoyles looming on exterior ledges, and soaring
spires suggestive of a supernatural presence.
Themes
•
Theme 1: Love gone wrong. Relationships in Wuthering Heights are like the
moors: dark, stormy, twisted. Cathy loves Heathcliff but marries Edgar
Linton. Heathcliff loves Cathy but marries Isabella Linton. Mr. Earnshaw
loves his adopted son, Heathcliff, better than his biological son, Hindley,
causing Hindley to despise Heathcliff. Linton and young Cathy are forced to
marry.
Theme 2: Cruelty begets cruelty. Hindley’s maltreatment of Heathcliff helps
turn the latter into a vengeful monster. In developing this theme, Emily
Bronte is ahead of her time, demonstrating that suffering abuse as a child
can lead to inflicting abuse as an adult.
Theme 3: Revenge. Heathcliff’s desire to get even against all who wronged
him is at times so strong that it subverts his other emotions, including love.
Theme 4: Lure of Success and Social Standing. Cathy marries Edgar after
becoming infatuated with his image as a cultured gentleman with wealth
enough to meet her every need. Isabella marries Heathcliff after becoming
infatuated with an idealized, romantic image of him.
Themes
• Theme 5: Class distinctions. Heathcliff’s fury erupts after Cathy
decides to marry “up” into the world of the Lintons, and not down
into the world of Heathcliff.
Theme 6: Fate. The entire novel depends on the forces unleashed
when Mr. Earnshaw happens upon an orphan child, Heathcliff, on a
street in Liverpool and returns with him to Wuthering Heights.
Theme 7: Prejudice. The upper crust, the Lintons, look down upon
the lower crust, Heathcliff and his kind.
Theme 8: The moors as a reflection of life around them (or vice
versa) and life beyond. The dark, stormy moors–where only lowgrowing plants such as heather thrive–symbolize the passionate and
sometimes perverted emotional lives of the residents of Wuthering
Heights and Thrushcross Grange. In the gloomy wasteland, the
Yorkshire folk, including Heathcliff himself, sometimes report seeing
ghosts of people buried in the moors.
Climax
• Most analysts of Wuthering Heights maintain
that the climax of the novel occurs when Cathy
dies, unarguably a decisive turning point.
However, one may fairly conclude that the
climax comes earlier–in particular when
Heathcliff overhears Cathy say she intends to
marry Edgar Linton. This event deeply wounds
Heathcliff, causes him to abandon Wuthering
Heights, and triggers the dreadful events that
follow.
Plot Structure: Frame Tale
. To tell her story, Brontë uses two narrators, Mr.
Lockwood and Ellen Dean, called Nelly.
Lockwood, who rents Thrushcross Grange,
begins the narrative; Nelly takes it over after he
asks her to tell him the story of Heathcliff.
Lockwood and Nelly thus combine to form a
picture, Lockwood acting as the "outer narrator"
who frames the picture and Nelly acting as the
"inner narrator" who paints the picture.