"Don't Turn
Me Out":
Reorienting
Love and
Revenge in
Emily
Brontë’s
Wuthering
Heights (1847)
“it is, precisely the
multiplicity and
indeterminacy of its
meaning that makes the
novel irresistible.”
--Gillian Frith, “Decoding
Wuthering Heights”.
First Generation
Mythic Plot
Gothic Genre
 The Earnshaws
Yeomanry
 Wuthering Heights
“Storm”
Second Generation
Realist Plot
Domestic Plot
 The Lintons
Gentry
 Thrushcross Grange
“Calm”
“subjectively a Heights figure opposing the Grange,
and objectively a Grange figure undermining the
Heights...he symbolises at once the triumph of the
oppressed over capitalism and the triumph of
capitalism over the oppressed.”
--Terry Eagleton, Myths of Power.
‘insofar as it is "natural," we treat its presence as a given,
and insofar as it is "wicked," we take it at face value. Unlike
such virtues as disinterestedness, altruism, and sympathy,
that is, revenge does not seem to stand in need of
demystification.’
-Daniel Hack, “Revenge Stories of Modern Life”.
“If Heathcliff combats the cannibalistic rituals of an
aristocratic mode of inheritance, then he ultimately
does so with the tools provided by the cannibalistic
culture of capitalist competition.”
--Mathew Beaumont, “Heathcliff’s Great Hunger:
The Cannibal Other in Wuthering Heights.”
“How strong you are! How many years do you mean to
live after I am gone?...Will you forget me—will you be
happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty
years hence, ‘That’s the grave of Catherine Earnshaw. I
loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it
is past. I have loved many others since—my children
are dear to me than she was...”
--Cathy to Heathcliff. Vol.2, Ch.1.
“He has, nobody knows what money, and every year it increases.
Yes, yes, he’s rich enough to live in a finer house than this. but
he’s near—close-handed; and, ...he could not have borne to miss
the chance of getting a few hundreds more. It is strange people
should be so greedy, when they are alone in the world!”
-- Nelly to Lockwood. Vol.1, Ch.4.
“Most of the farmers simply scratched out a living from
a few acres of inhospitable land, though some of the
larger landowners, like the Taylors of Stanbury and the
Haetons of Ponden Hall, had become wealthy by
judicious investment in property, rents and small scale
manufacturing.”
--Juliet Barker, “The Haworth Context”.
“Having levelled my palace, don’t erect a hovel and
complacently admire your own charity in giving me
that for a home. If I imagined you really wished me to
marry Isabella, I’d cut my truth!”
--Heathcliff to Cathy. Vol. 1, Ch.11.
“The treatment of duration is an important way of
foregrounding certain events and reducing the status
of others.”
--Teresa Bridgeman, “Time and Space”.
 “I’m trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don’t
care how long I wait, if I can only do it, at last. I hope he
will not die before I do!” Vol.1, Ch.7.
 “if you fancy I’ll suffer unrevenged, I’ll convince you of the
contrary” Vol.1, Ch.11.
 “I want the triumph of seeing my descendent fairly lord of
their estates; my child hiring their children, to till their
fathers’ lands for wages—” Vol.2, Ch.6.
 “I get levers and mattocks to demolish the two houses, and
train myself to be capable of working like Hercules, and
when everything is ready, and in my power, I find the will
to lift a slate off either roof has vanished!” Vol.2, Ch.19.
“it was the name of a son who died in childhood, and it
served him ever since both for Christian and surname.
Miss Cathy and he were now thick; but Hindley hated
him”
--Vol.1, Ch.4.
“'Wuthering Heights' was hewn in a wild workshop,
with simple tools, out of homely materials. The
statuary found a granite block on a solitary moor;
gazing thereon, he saw how from the crag might be
elicited a head, savage, swart, sinister; a form moulded
with at least one element of grandeur—power.
--From the “Preface” to the 1850 edition.
“ This betweeness persists, I think: Heathcliff, for instance,
fluctuates between poverty and riches; and also between
virility and impotence. To Catherine he is between brother
and lover; he slept with her as a child, and again in death,
but not between latency and extinction.”
--Frank Kermode, The Classic.