Emily Bronte (1818-1848)
Emily Bronte and her sister, the equally famous Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) lived
short, obscure lives in Yorkshire, England, and were almost entirely unknown during
their lifetimes. Each became famous for one novel – Emily for Wuthering Heights and
Charlotte for Jane Eyre – but each of these novels are now considered among the
greatest classics of the English language.
Emily’s father, Patrick Bronte, was a parson by profession, and was hired to be
in charge of the church in the small village of Haworth in the Yorkshire countryside
when Emily was 2 years old. As parson of the church, Bronte was given a house to live
in, near the church (called a “parsonage”) and this is where Emily grew up with her
brothers and sisters. Today that parsonage is famous because of the two Bronte sisters,
and thousands of people visit it every year to remember them and to imagine what their
life must have been like.
Patrick Bronte was a highly educated man who was very interested in literature,
and was an aspiring writer. Fortunately his passion for literature was passed on to his
daughters, and they achieved the fame which he aspired to. As adolescents and young
adults, the Bronte children wrote romances, Charlotte and her brother Branwell writing
one together about the imaginary kingdom of Angria, while Emily and her sister Anne
wrote one about the imaginary kingdom of Gondal. These romances were interspersed
with poetry, and Emily’s poetry is all that has been preserved from the tale of Gondal.
The Bronte family was not wealthy, and the brother and sisters all spent periods
of time trying to earn money as teachers, tutors and governesses. They were unable to
earn much, and hated living away from home; the two older sisters died of illnesses
while they were away from home teaching and the rest of the children eventually
returned to the family home in Haworth. Both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre were
written partly as a desperate attempt to earn money.
Emily was devoted to her brother, Patrick Branwell. Branwell was also brilliant
and talented, but unfortunately addicted to drink and opium. This ruined his health and
he died at the age of thirty, causing great sadness and distress to his sisters, especially
Emily. Emily, already in poor health herself – she had tuberculosis – caught cold and
became ill at her brother’s funeral. She never recovered, and died several months later.
Anne Bronte died shortly after that, and Charlotte only survived six more years. All the
children died young, because of illness. In Wuthering Heights illness kills most of the
characters – the experience of the Bronte family itself shows that this was not really
unusual, and life at the time was as easily lost to poor health as it was in the novel.
The Story of Wuthering Heights
The story of Wuthering Heights is told by Mr. Lockwood, a gentleman who
rents Thrushcross Grange, an old country house, from Heathcliff. He visits Heathcliff
at his home, Wuthering Heights, and spends the night in Catherine Linton’s old room,
where he sees Catherine’s ghost in a dream. When he returns to Thrushcross Grange,
he gets the servant, Nelly Dean, to tell him the whole history of the family. She tells
him the following story:
Old Mr. Earnshaw, a country farmer, goes to Liverpool, a nearby big city, to
shop. On the streets of the city, he finds a homeless, starving boy and brings the boy
home to his family. The name of the family farm is “Wuthering Heights” and it got that
name because it is high up and exposed to the stormy weather (“wuther” in Yorkshire
dialect). The boy is black-haired, dark-skinned, black-eyed, dirty and ragged. The
farmer gives the boy the name “Heathcliff”. He is immediately hated and treated as an
intruder by the farmer’s son, Hindley Earnshaw, but the farmer’s daughter, Catherine,
soon grows to love the boy and they grow up as inseparable companions. Their
character is wild and willful, and they love to be outside roaming around in any kind of
weather.
Old Mr. Earnshaw is very fond of Heathcliff and this makes Hindley Earnshaw
hate Heathcliff more and more. When old Mr. Earnshaw dies (his wife had died
sometime previously), Hindley comes home from college with a young wife and
becomes master of the farm. Hindley makes sure Heathcliff is no longer treated as one
of the family, but as a family servant who must do the rough and heavy work on the
farm. He often insults and beats Heathcliff. Heathcliff hates him for that, but hates him
even more because he tries to stop Heathcliff and Catherine from being together.
Catherine and Heathcliff by this time are passionately attached to each other, and they
resist all Hindley’s efforts to drive them apart.
Hindley’s wife is very unhealthy. She has a baby boy named Hareton Earnshaw,
but she dies soon after the baby is born. Hindley is so upset by his wife’s death that he
starts to drink. His drinking gets worse and worse as time goes on (eventually he dies
because of it). As Hindley becomes more and more of a drunkard, of course, he treats
Heathcliff more and more viciously.
Not far from Wuthering Heights is a grand and comfortable country house called
Thrushcross Grange, or usually just “The Grange”. This house belongs to the Linton
family – Mr. And Mrs. Linton and their children, Edgar and Isabella. The Linton
children are quite different from the Earnshaws. They come from a richer background,
and they are soft and spoiled. They have fine manners and are used to fine clothes and
food, and the care of servants. One night Catherine and Heathcliff are roaming about
outdoors and they decide to spy through the windows of the Grange to see how the
people inside live. The house servants think they are robbers and set loose the dogs,
which they keep to guard the house. Catherine and Heathcliff start to run away, but one
of the dogs gets hold of Catherine’s leg and injures it quite badly. When they are
brought back to the house they are recognized. Catherine is treated with gentle care
because she is the sister of the neighbor, and thus part of the same landowning class as
the Lintons. Heathcliff, who is only a servant, and who looks rough and villainous, is
insulted by the Lintons and treated very roughly by their servants. He returns alone to
Wuthering Heights feeling bitter hatred toward the Linton family.
Catherine stays with the Lintons until her leg is healed – about five weeks.
When she returns she is changed – she has learned high-class manners and is able to
dress and act like a lady. She suddenly feels that Heathcliff is too dirty and wild, even
though she still loves him. Worse still, she laughs at him for being this way, and of
course all the other people around her encourage her in this attitude and make insulting
remarks about Heathcliff – the Lintons out of snobbishness, and Hindley Earnshaw out
of hatred. This makes Heathcliff furious and bitter. For Heathcliff this is the first step
towards shattering his “heaven” – that is, his special, exclusive relationship with
Catherine. For Heathcliff, the whole world is his life with Catherine out in the wildness
of nature. He does not care about being beaten or mistreated as long as he and
Catherine are together. Until Catherine’s contact with the Linton’s, Catherine and
Heathcliff have been a little “heaven” to themselves, and the whole outside world
something they despise and have no interest in. When Catherine starts to take an
interest in that world, this is the worst thing that can happen to Heathcliff – he feels it is
a terrible betrayal, and the rest of the story is concerned with the results of his anger and
hatred over this betrayal.
Over the next few months Heathcliff and Catherine fight over her attachment to
the Lintons, and Edgar Linton visits Catherine, falls in love with her, and asks for her
hand in marriage. Catherine is divided in her loyalties. She still loves Heathcliff, but
feels he is too simple and uneducated. She finally gets the idea that she can solve this
conflict by remaining close to Heathcliff as sister and close friend, marry Edgar Linton,
and use her new position and power as the mistress of a wealthy household to help
Heathcliff gain a higher position in the world. She believes that she can make these two
kinds of love co-exist. After deciding to accept Edgar Linton’s proposal of marriage,
she talks to the housekeeper, Nelly Dean, about her reasons for accepting. She does not
realize that Heathcliff is in another part of the room and can overhear everything she is
saying. In her conversation with Nelly, she says she feels she could not marry
Heathcliff because marrying him would bring her down to a lower social status in the
world (she uses the word “degrade”). When Heathcliff hears this, he feels that her
betrayal of him is complete and that his whole world is destroyed. He leaves Wuthering
Heights without speaking to anyone, and disappears without a trace. He does not return
until years later, after Catherine is married to Edgar Linton. Catherine is extremely upset
because of Heathcliff’s disappearance, and becomes dangerously ill. The Lintons
transport her to their house so that she can be more comfortably nursed back to health.
Catherine gradually recovers, in fact, but her illness gets transmitted to old Mr. And Mrs.
Linton and both of them die of it, leaving Edgar Linton as master of The Grange and the
family fortune. Three years later, Edgar and Catherine are married.
Sometime after this, Heathcliff returns. He is extremely healthy and strong, and
also quite rich. We are never told how he made his money, but Nelly Dean, the
housekeeper, thinks he must have been in the army. Catherine is overjoyed to see him
again, and clings to her hope that he can be her close friend, and can be considered a
friend of the family by her husband. It soon becomes clear that this is impossible.
Heathcliff’s point of view is that when he and Catherine are alone together, this
is heaven; and when they are not, this is hell. He is not interested in sharing her with
anyone else. In fact, he feels that all the people around her have conspired together to
destroy his heaven and make him live in hell, and he hates them all. He also feels that
he and Catherine are superior beings, and he despises, as well as hates, all the other
Lintons and Earnshaws.
Heathcliff is, in fact, a highly intelligent, cunning and capable man, and is
extremely good at manipulating people. When it becomes clear that he cannot have his
“heaven” back, he sets about taking revenge, and his revenge is very complete and
devastating. His point of view is, since the Lintons and Earnshaws have made him live
in hell, he will do his best to make them live in hell, too.
He begins by getting control of Hindley Earnshaw. Hindley, by this time has
become completely addicted to two habits: drinking and gambling. Heathcliff becomes
his gambling partner, and persuades Hindley to let him stay at Wuthering Heights, so
they can gamble often. Heathcliff uses Hindley’s weakness and addiction to gain
control of him, and gradually Hindley gambles away all his property, so that Heathcliff
becomes legal owner of Wuthering Heights. Hindley eventually dies of drink, leaving
Heathcliff fully in charge of Wuthering Heights and his son, Hareton. Heathcliff
actually is rather fond of Hareton, but raises him as a rough farmworker who cannot
even read or write. Hareton treats Heathcliff as his father, and is quite loyal to him. He
seems to be unaware that Heathcliff has taken his family home and property, by taking
advantage of his real father’s weakness and addiction.
Next, he takes advantage of Edgar Linton’s sister Isabella. Isabella falls in love
with Heathcliff, and Heathcliff marries her although he despises her. After marrying
her he revenges himself on her family by treating her abominably, often beating her
black and blue. She finally runs away, and while living elsewhere, has a baby boy,
Heathcliff’s son, whom she names “Linton”.
Soon after his marriage to Isabella, Heathcliff quarrels openly with Edgar Linton.
Catherine is so upset that she becomes ill. She is pregnant with a baby girl and ready to
have the baby. She has the baby girl while she is ill, and she dies almost immediately,
leaving her husband Edgar in a state of extreme grief and failing health. He calls the
baby girl “Catherine” after her mother and raises her to be a young lady in the safety of
the Grange. He allows her no knowledge of nearby Wuthering Heights and of her
connection with her other relatives. The death of Catherine means that there is no
chance Edgar will have a male heir, and because of the way the property of the Grange
was arranged in his parents’ will, this means that on his death, the property should go to
his sister Isabella – and this means, effectively, that Heathcliff will get control of it.
Since there is some chance, under English law, that Heathcliff’s claim to the
Grange could be challenged, Heathcliff finds another way to bind the property to
himself, using his son, Linton.
Isabella, who has been living somewhere in the south of England, dies before
her brother, Edgar. She begs Edgar to take charge of the boy, and Edgar goes to the
place where his sister was living and brings the boy back with him to The Grange. He
does his best to keep it secret, because, since the boy is Heathcliff’s son, Heathcliff can
legally claim custody of him. He is unable to keep it secret, however, and Heathcliff
immediately claims the boy when he arrives at The Grange, and carries him off to
Wuthering Heights.
Linton Heathcliff is extremely unhealthy, soft and spoiled. In fact, he is so
sickly, that it is clear he cannot live long. Heathcliff does not love his son; in fact,
because of the boy’s softness and weakness, Heathcliff thinks of him as a member of
the Linton family and thus hates and despises him. He takes advantage of an attraction
that Catherine Linton feels for his son and uses trickery and force to make her marry
Linton, just before Linton finally dies. His daughter-in-law, young Catherine, is now
under Heathcliff’s legal control, and he forces her to live more or less as a prisoner at
Wuthering Heights. Catherine’s marriage to young Linton also makes sure that the
Grange will become Heathcliff’s property on Edgar Linton’s death. In fact, Edgar
Linton’s health has been very poor for a long time already, and he dies immediately
after the marriage of Catherine and young Linton.
Heathcliff’s revenge is now complete all: his tormentors have died unhappily,
their property all belongs to him, and their children are now essentially his property too.
The last part of the story concerns Heathcliff’s death and the relationship
between Hareton Earnshaw and Catherine Linton, the two children who grow into
young adulthood at Wuthering Heights during Heathcliff’s final years. Catherine’s
character is very much like her mother’s – she is proud and high-spirited, and although
she lives as a prisoner, she never really submits to Heathcliff’s authority. In her years at
the Grange she acquired a good education and a fondness for books and reading, and
she despises Hareton (and all the people at Wuthering Heights) because they are rough
and uncultivated. Hareton, very much the same as Heathcliff as a young man, is also
proud, and is very angry and hurt by her attitude. Gradually, however, an affection
grows up between them, which eventually blossoms into love. When Heathcliff dies it
is clear that they will stay together, and probably live happily together at Wuthering
Heights.
As this final part of the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Heathcliff’s taste for
revenge has finally abated. Rather than trying to prolong the torture of the Lintons and
Earnshaws by contriving to obstruct the friendship and growing love of his two wards,
Heathcliff finds he is no longer interested in such matters. In fact, he feels his death
approaching, and is glad of it, because he has a very profound faith, that after death he
will be re-united with his beloved Catherine. Heathcliff has felt Catherine’s ghost close
to him ever since she died. He has made arrangements with the local sexton, the man
who takes care of burials in the churchyard, that he should be buried right next to
Catherine. He has given the sexton quite a lot of money and the sexton has promised, in
return, to remove the adjacent sides of the two coffins so that their remains will mingle
under the earth after death. Heathcliff finally dies in Catherine’s old bedroom in
Wuthering Heights, with an expression of blissful happiness on his face.
Some Background Information on Wuthering Heights
I. The Setting
The action of the novel all takes place in Yorkshire, a large county in the North
of England, in fact the setting is very much like that part of Yorkshire where the Brontes
grew up. That country is mostly what is called moors. Moors are wild, hilly country,
with few trees, and very open to the wind and weather, especially on the hilltops. The
soil is poor, so few crops are grown; most farming consists of raising livestock,
especially sheep, although horses, cattle, pigs and chickens would also be raised, and
the farms would include vegetable plots. Farmhouses might be very far apart from each
other, and surrounded by miles and miles of wild, open country. Part of the beauty of
the moors is the weather, which can be very stormy, and sometimes dangerous for
travelers, especially two hundred years ago, the time when the novel is set. And when
not stormy, the weather is often dark and gloomy, with occasional glorious bursts of
sunshine, just like the novel.
It is interesting that Bronte sets all of the action of the novel within a very small
space – the churchyard and church (or kirk, as it is called in Yorkshire dialect), The
Grange, the farmhouse called “Wuthering Heights”, and the countryside immediately
surrounding those three places. The nearby village of Gimmerton is mentioned, but
never described. We learn nothing of Liverpool, where old Mr. Earnshaw finds
Heathcliff as a homeless boy, we have no idea where Heathcliff goes when he runs
away from Wuthering Heights, and when Isabella runs away from Heathcliff we know
only that she goes to live somewhere in “the south”. Like Heathcliff himself, Emily
Bronte, the novelist, seems to have no interest in the world outside this limited area.
Yorkshire country people, especially in the old days, spoke their own dialect of
English. This dialect is quite hard to understand for people from other parts of the
country. The only person who is shown as speaking this dialect in the novel is Joseph,
the old manservant of Wuthering Heights. Those of us who are unfamiliar with
Yorkshire dialect must sometimes just guess at what he is saying!
II. English Social Classes and Property Law
We see a small section of the English social class system in Wuthering Heights,
but it plays an important role in the novel. There are really only two classes of people
in Wuthering Heights: landowning farmers, and their servants. The Earnshaws own the
farmland surrounding the farmhouse called Wuthering Heights. They are not rich, but
certainly not poor. They have enough money to send their son, Hindley, to college to be
educated as a gentleman. On the other hand, when old Mr. Earnshaw goes to Liverpool
he walks there and back – a distance of 60 miles each way, as he himself mentions –
and he chose to travel this way in order to save money, no doubt. The Lintons, who
own the farmhouse known as The Grange, and the attached farmland, are certainly
much richer than the Earnshaws. They have a much larger and more comfortable house,
and a larger number of servants to keep house for them, to wait on them, and to do all
the heavy work on the farm. Culturally, they are much closer to the high aristocracy,
which were much more numerous in the South of the country, and would no doubt feel
comfortable in the society frequented by Lockwood, the southern gentleman who rents
The Grange from Heathcliff, and is the narrator of the story.
The most important servants in the book are Nelly Dean, who witnesses all the
events in the story, and tells the story to Lockwood, Joseph, the old manservant of
Wuthering Heights farm, and Zillah who becomes housekeeper at Wuthering Heights
sometime after Nelly Dean leaves to take care of The Grange. These servants are pretty
much considered part of the family, and stay with the family for their whole life. They
may stay with a family for more than one generation – Nelly Dean mentions that she
became part of the household at Wuthering Heights because her mother had been a
servant there. Servants could be abused and beaten, or dismissed from service at the
will of their masters, but this would rarely happen to old family retainers like Nelly,
Joseph or Zillah, who might even scold their masters from time to time, and were
respected by the children of the family.
When old Mr. Earnshaw brings Heathcliff home, he announces that Heathcliff
will be a brother to Catherine and Hindley, and as long as old Mr. Earnshaw was still
alive, Heathcliff does, in fact, have that status. As soon as Mr. Earnshaw dies, however,
Hindley obtains complete authority over the household, and makes sure Heathcliff is
treated as a servant, and is given as much heavy, dirty farmwork as possible. He also
exercises his right to beat and abuse Heathcliff. Heathcliff, accustomed to physical
abuse from Hindley all his life, does not really care about this. What provokes his
undying hatred, and his ultimate revenge on the whole family, is Hindley’s part in
separating him from his beloved Catherine.
The head of the household had almost unlimited authority, not only over the
household servants, but also over his wife and children. Hindley mistreats his sister
Catherine because of her association with Heathcliff, and Heathcliff freely beats and
abuses his wife, his son, and his daughter-in-law. Households were inherited by the
oldest son (the male heir); when there is no male heir, a female may inherit, but which
female member of the family receives the property may be determined by a will. The
old Lintons made a mistake by not making sure that Edgar’s daughter rather than his
sister inherited The Grange. Thus, Heathcliff is able to inherit the Grange after Edgar
Linton’s death because he is entitled to the inherited property of his wife, Edgar’s sister.
Emily Bronte may have been making a criticism of this system, which so
completely favors the male head of household, giving him more power than a king has
over his subjects.
III. Ghosts and Goblins, Religion and Superstition in Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte, daughter of a parson, was raised as a Christian. What her beliefs
were as an adult, we can only guess. Only one clue comes from her biography. A
school friend tells the story – she was asked about her religion and replied “I …said that
that was between God and me – Emily (who was lying on the hearth-rug) exclaimed
‘That’s right.’” (taken from Laurie Langbauer’s introduction in the Enriched Classics
Pocket Books edition, Simon and Schuster, 1997, p.xxi).
Wuthering Heights certainly assigns an important role to beliefs in the spirit
world, and the book begins and ends with ghost stories. The story of Wuthering
Heights is actually narrated by Mr. Lockwood, who meets Heathcliff because he rents
The Grange from him, long after most of the main characters in the book are dead. He
spends a stormy night in Catherine’s room at Wuthering Heights and is visited by her
ghost. The ghost of Catherine appears as a girl-child who tries to enter through the
bedroom window, terrifying the unfortunate Mr. Lockwood.
At the end of the book Heathcliff tells Nelly Dean that he has felt Catherine’s
ghost close to him constantly ever since she died. And after Heathcliff himself dies, his
ghost appears to various people of the neighborhood.
However, all of these stories are presented in such a way that they could all be
the result of dreams and hallucinations – they are not really ghost stories in the true
sense of the term. They are part of the atmosphere of the novel – it’s as if Emily Bronte
wanted to portray the house and neighborhood as “haunted” by the spirits of her
characters, and by the spirit of her story.
Belief in the existence of ghosts is not really part of the Christian religion: the
human soul goes straight to hell or heaven after death, according to the teaching of the
church. The soul does not remain on earth to interfere with the living. However, belief
in ghosts and other spiritual powers has remained with the common people since pagan
times. In English literature, ghosts appeared from time to time up to the renaissance,
and are notably present in the works of Shakespeare. In the classical literature of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they are very rare indeed, and educated people of
those times generally believed in the spiritual world pretty much as defined in orthodox
Christianity. In the nineteenth century, when the Bronte sisters were writing, ghosts and
other types of supernatural powers came back into literature, along with a new interest
in the heritage of paganism, the pre-christian heritage of northern Europe. The german
story-teller of that time, E. T. A. Hoffman, was famous for his tales of ghosts and magic,
in England Mary Shelley’s story of Frankenstein (1818) was published as well as a
large number of novels in the “gothic” style, and in America Edgar Allen Poe wrote his
famous tales of horror. Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897, and we have
inherited a whole tradition of ghost and horror stories.
Some quotes from Wuthering Heights
The novel begins with Mr. Lockwood’s first visit to Wuthering Heights and tells the
story of his dream, in which the ghost of Catherine appears to him in the form of a little
girl. In his terror, he cries out, and wakes Heathcliff. Heathcliff, on hearing that
Lockwood has seen Catherine’s ghost at the window, suddenly reveals his heartfelt
desire to see her himself:
(Heathcliff)…got onto 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… (p. 26)
Something of Heathcliff’s passionately violent nature is shown in his confession to
Nelly Dean of his feelings about the Lintons and their style of life:
“…I’d not exchange, for a thousand lives, my condition here, for Edgar Linton’s
at Thrushcross Grange – not if I might have the privilege of flinging Joseph off
the highest gable, and painting the house-front with Hindley’s blood!” (p.44)
After Heathcliff is insulted and beaten by Hindley, Nellie sees him quietly meditating
his revenge. She is shocked by his unchristian determination to pay back Hindley for
his torments:
…He leant his two elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands, and remained
wrapt in dumb meditation. On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he
answered gravely:
“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!”
“For shame, Heathcliff!” said I. “It is for God to punish wicked
people; we should learn to forgive.”
“No, God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall,” he returned. “I
only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I’ll plan it out: while I’m
thinking of that I don’t feel pain.” (p. 56)
Catherine has an important conversation with Nelly about her decision to marry Edgar
Linton. Unfortunately Heathcliff is in the same room, but Catherine does not realize it
because he is sitting behind a large piece of furniture and cannot be seen. Heathcliff
overhears the conversation down to the point where Catherine says “To marry
Heathcliff now would degrade me”, and then he leaves the room and disappears from
the farm, in a passion of pain and anger. Here are Catherine’s words with Nelly Dean:
“If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.”
“Because you are not fit to go there,” I answered. “All sinners would
be miserable in heaven.”
“But it is not for that. I dreamt once that I was there…heaven did not
seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth;
and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath
on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to
explain my secret, as well as the other. I’ve no more business to marry Edgar
Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not
brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn’t have thought of it. It would degrade me
to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not
because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am.
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as
different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.”(p.76)
When He returns to find Catherine married to Edgar Linton, Heathcliff finds out that
Edgar’s sister is attracted to him. In conversation with Catherine he expresses his
hatred for the Lintons, and how he plans to treat Isabel if she becomes his wife.
Catherine first says she will oppose the plan, because she is fond of Isabel:
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…I like her too well, my dear Heathcliff, to let you absolutely seize and devour
her up.”
“And I like her too ill to attempt it,” said he, “except in a very
ghoulish fashion. You’d hear of odd things if I lived alone with that mawkish,
waxen face: the most ordinary would be painting on its white the colours of the
rainbow, and turning the blue eyes black, every day or two: they detestably
resemble Linton’s.”
Heathcliff then tells Catherine of the depths of his misery, his feeling of betrayal, and
his desire for revenge:
“…I want you to be aware that I know you have treated me infernally –
infernally! Do you hear? And if you flatter yourself that I don’t perceive it, you
are a fool; and if you think I can be consoled by sweet words, you are an idiot;
and if you fancy I’ll suffer unrevenged, I’ll convince you of the contrary, in a
very little while! Meantime, thank you for telling me your sister-in-law’s secret:
I swear I’ll make the most of it. And stand you aside!”
“What new phase of his character is this?” exclaimed Mrs. Linton, in
amazement. “I’ve treated you infernally – and you’ll take your revenge! How
will you take it, ungrateful brute? How have I treated you infernally?”
“I seek no revenge on you,” replied Heathcliff less vehemently. “That’s
not the plan. The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him;
they crush those beneath them. You are welcome to torture me to death for your
amusement, only allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style, and refrain
from insult as much as you are able. Having leveled my palace, don’t erect a
hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home.
(p.107)
Towards the end of the novel, Heathcliff talks to Nelly Dean of his desire that his
remains mingle with those of Catherine. He has made arrangements with the sexton to
remove the adjacent sides of his and Catherine’s coffins. He also makes a veiled claim
that if his wishes are not followed, he will arise from the grave and accomplish the
matter himself!
…you remind me of the manner in which I desire to be buried. It is to be carried
to the churchyard in the evening. You and Hareton may, if you please,
accompany me: and mind, particularly, to notice that the sexton obeys my
directions concerning the two coffins! No minister need come; nor need
anything be said over me. – I tell you I have nearly attained my heaven; and that
of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me.”
“And supposing you persevered in your obstinate fast, and died by
that means, and they refused to bury you in the precincts of the kirk?” I said,
shocked at his godless indifference. “How would you like it?”
“They won’t do that,” he replied: “if they did, you must have me
removed secretly: and if you neglect it you shall prove, practically, that the dead
are not annihilated!” (pp. 320-321)
Wuthering Heights – questions and topics for discussion
Towards the end of his life Heathcliff is advised by Nelly Dean to repent for the
injustices he has committed. He replies: “as to repenting of my injustices, I’ve done no
injustice and I repent of nothing”. Heathcliff appears to believe that his actions were a
just punishment on those who had tormented and abused him. Do you agree with Nelly
Dean? What’s your assessment of Heathcliff’s life and character?
The male head of an English household had a huge amount of power over his wife,
children and servants. What do you know about the power of male heads of household
in ancient China? Was it more, or less than those of Europe? Are the sexes now
entirely equal before the law?
Why do people love ghost stories? How does including ghost stories in the novel
change the atmosphere of the tale?