Grade 10
Wuthering Heights
Questions & answers
1- What is Lockwood's relationship to Heathcliff?
Lockwood is renting Thrushcross Grange, which Heathcliff owns. Thus, their
relationship is one of a landlord and his tenant. At the beginning of the novel,
Lockwood has not met Heathcliff and decides to visit him at Wuthering
Heights. It is this encounter which provides the basis for the rest of the story.
2- Compare and contrast Heathcliff and Lockwood. Does Lockwood’s
impression of Heathcliff change by the time he leaves Wuthering Heights?
The two characters Heathcliff and Lockwood are definitely set against each
other in Wuthering Heights, and, at first glance, do have some compelling
comparisons. Both are outsiders to the bleak world of the moors and both
appear to like the solitude and want to reject human contact. This is the first
impression that Lockwood has of Heathcliff - this impression is so strong, in
fact, that it compels Lockwood to get to know Heathcliff more.
3- Explain the role of the ghost in Wuthering Heights.
At the beginning of Wuthering Heights, Lockwood gets trapped at the Heights
by a snowstorm. He is allowed to sleep in a certain forbidden bedroom, which
used to be Catherine Earnshaw's. While there, Lockwood finds Cathy's name
scratched into the wood, sometimes ending with Linton and sometimes with
Earnshaw or Heathcliff. He also finds a journal, which he reads. He falls asleep
with Catherine on his mind. He has dreams, and then thinking a branch has
awoken him by banging on the window, he opens the window to break it off. To
his surprise, he is grasped by a ghostly hand.
4- Who is Hareton in Wuthering Heights?
Hareton Earnshaw is a character in Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights. He
is the son of Hindley Earnshaw and Hindley's wife, Frances. At the end of the
novel, he makes plans to wed Catherine Linton, with whom he falls in love.
5- How did Catherine’s feelings towards Heathcliff change after her visit
to the grange?
Catherine has stayed at the grange for five weeks. She returned to the heights
quite a dazzling young lady, much improved in manners. She greeted Heathcliff
enthusiastically, but allowed him to see that his dirtiness disturbed her. Her
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affection for Heathcliff has remained unchanged in spite of the Linton’s’ over
her. She said that she knew in her soul that she has no right to marry Edgar
but that it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff.
6-What are the differences between the children of Wuthering Heights
and those of the Grange?
The children of the Grange are rich, cultivated and well educated. They are mild
and unaggressive. They used to spend the Sunday evenings with their father
and mother. Edgar disowns and abandoned his sister (Isabella) for marrying a
man he abhors (Heathcliff).
The children of Wuthering heights are not well educated. They are aggressive.
Hindley degrades Heathcliff to the status of a rough, uneducated and crude
servant.
7- How had Heathcliff been brought to Wuthering Heights? How was he
received there?
One day old Mr. Earnshaw had gone on a journey to Liverpool, promising to bring
his children (Hindley & Catherine) gifts when he returned. After three days of
his absence, he came back, carrying a child, a small, dark skinned boy, whom Mr.
Earnshaw had found in the Liverpool slums. At first he was treated badly, but
later he and Catherine became close friends. Heathcliff grew up a hard child,
attached to no one but Catherine.
8- How did Heathcliff get his revenge on Hindley?
When Heathcliff overheard Catherine speaking to Nelly Dean in the kitchen
about accepting to marry Edgar Linton, he left the Heights and disappeared.
Three years passed and Heathcliff came back very rich, aiming for revenge
from Hindley who degraded him. He found Hindley a drunkard man who turned
to gambling after his wife’s death. Heathcliff encouraged him by supporting him
with money and at last making him sign papers to sell the Heights. He also illtreated his son Hareton.
9- How did Heathcliff get his revenge on Edgar Linton?
Three years passed after his disappearance, and Heathcliff came back very
rich, aiming for revenge from his rival Edgar Linton who married the woman
whom he loved (Catherine). He started attracting his sister Isabella when he
knew from Catherine that she admires him and eloped with her. Later on,
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Isabella sent a letter to Nelly telling her how this Heathcliff was a horrible
person to live with. He might be a devil, but not a human being. By the end of
the story, we found out how Heathcliff destroyed the lives of both the
Earnshaws and the Lintons and took the Grange and the Heights for himself.
10- Nelly noticed that Heathcliff affected Harleton’s life badly. Explain
briefly.
Nelly revealed that Heathcliff had brought up Hareton, the rightful heir of the
Earnshaws, as a common labourer. He has denied him en education, and generally
degraded him to the level of a rough, uncivilised boor. It is a piece of his
personal revenge from Hindley.
11- Was Heathcliff a “dark” and “evil” character in Emily Bronte’s
Wuthering Heights?
Heathcliff is the most important character of Wuthering height. In the novel,
Heathcliff is an orphan who is introduced into the family by Mr. Earnshaw who
found him in Liverpool. Wuthering Height is a story of love, passion, revenge and
jealously. As a reader, one would have both sympathy as well as hostility
towards Heathcliff. I feel that Heathcliff’s character was indeed ‘dark’ and
‘evil. In the beginning though he will appear as a mystery- a dark gypsy with no
familial origin but with the progress of the novel, it becomes easier to classify
him as dark character. This idea of Heathcliff as a dark human of dark energy
is finally confirmed and registered in the minds of the reader as someone with
definitely evil power when he returned from where he went to make his fortune
after he felt rejected by Catherine.
12-Why does Heathcliff want Cathy and Linton married?
At the house, Heathcliff tells Nelly that he hopes Linton and Cathy will one day
marry. Yet Cathy and Linton don't even recognize each other when they meet.
Heathcliff's plot becomes clear: he wants to marry them in order to solidify
his claim to Thrushcross Grange.
13-Who is Joseph? What job does he do?
Joseph is an older man who is employed by the residents at Wuthering Heights
as a servant. The family gives him much freedom, and often he chooses not to
work very hard at all.
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No matter who is in charge at Wuthering Heights, Joseph uses religion to pass
harsh judgements, never using it to show mercy or kindness. He is allowed to
influence the decisions of Mr Earnshaw and convinces him to discipline his
children with violence and cruelty. When Heathcliff flees Wuthering Heights in
the midst of a storm, Joseph thinks that God is sending due judgement on the
family.
14-“It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know
how I love him”: why are these words important for the future development
of the plot?
Catherine is a passionate and romantic young woman but she also bound to
conventions, realistic and perhaps a bit calculating: she knows well that
marrying Heathcliff would mean social failure. Heathcliff is so deeply hurt by
her decision of marrying Linton that he leaves the house secretly not to return
for a number of years.
The main conflict in the novel is between the desires of the heart and the
economic and social constraints on that desire posed by family and society.
Catherine Earnshaws and
15-What are the main conflicts in Wuthering Heights and how do they
relate to the novel's themes?
Heathcliff love each other deeply and would love to get married, but
Heathcliff, degraded to a farmhand by his older stepbrother Hindley, makes
that an unrealistic possibility. Catherine does the practical thing and marries
the rich man in the neighbourhood, Edgar Linton.
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