Wuthering heights

Emily published only one novel, Wuthering Heights, but this single work has its place among the masterpieces of English literature.

Emily was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, in the north of

England and died of tuberculosis in the late 1848. When Bronte sisters are young, their father asked them to read many books: the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Scott and many others. The children also read enthusiastically articles on current affairs.

Unlike Charlotte, Emily had no close friends. She wrote a few letters and was interested in mysticism. Her first novel, Wuthering Heights, a story-within-a-story, did not gain immediate success as Charlotte's Jane Eyre, but it has got later fame as one of the most intense novels written in the English language. In contrast to Charlotte and Anne, whose novels take the form of autobiographies written by authoritative and reliable narrators, Emily introduced an unreliable narrator, Lockwood.

Lockwood, the narrator, is a gentleman visiting the Yorkshire moors where the novel is set, and of Mrs. Dean, housekeeper to the Earnshaw family, who had been witness of the life of the original owners of the Heights. Bronte draws a

powerful picture of the strange man Heathcliff, who is brought to Heights from the streets of Liverpool by Mr. Earnshaw. Heathcliff is treated as Earnshaw's own children, Catherine and Hindley. After Mr. Earnshaw’s death Heathcliff is bullied by Hindley, who loves Catherine, but she marries Edgar Linton. Heathcliff 's destructive force is unleashed, and his first victim is Catherine, who dies giving birth to a girl, another Catherine. Isabella Linton, Edgar's sister, whom he had married, flees to the south. Their son Linton and Catherine are married, but always sickly Linton dies. Hareton, Hindley's son, and the young widow became close. Increasingly isolated and alienated from daily life, Heathcliff experiences visions, and he longs for the death that will reunite him with Catherine.

In early time, there are many critics on this novel. Some

people called it a "strange, inartistic story", but commented that every chapter seems to contain a "sort of rugged power". It

supported the second point made in the Athenaeum, suggesting that the general effect of the novel was "inexpressibly painful", but adding that all of its subjects were either "utterly hateful or thoroughly contemptible".

There some symbols in the novel, for example, the moors

and the ghosts.

The constant emphasis on landscape within the text of

Wuthering Heights endows the setting with symbolic

importance. Moorland cannot be cultivated, and its uniformity makes navigation difficult. It features particularly waterlogged patches in which people could potentially drown. Thus, the moors serve very well as symbols of the wild threat posed by nature. As the setting for the beginnings of Catherine and Heathcliff’s bond, the moorland transfers its symbolic

associations onto the love affair.

Ghosts appear throughout Wuthering Heights, as they do in most other works of Gothic fiction, yet Bronte always presents them in such a way that whether they really exist remains ambiguous. Thus the world of the novel can always be

interpreted as a realistic one. Certain ghosts—such as

Catherine’s spirit when it appears to Lockwood in Chapter III—may be explained as nightmares. The villagers’ alleged sightings of Heathcliff’s ghost in Chapter XXXIV could be

dismissed as unverified superstition. Whether or not the ghosts are “real,” they symbolize the manifestation of the past within the present, and the way memory stays with people, permeating their day-to-day lives.

I think the novel suggests us that lovers should have a healthy love, and put the needs of the beloved first.

 

第二篇：Wuthering Heights英文介绍及赏析

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popular and highly regarded novels in English literature, seemed to hold little promise when it was published in 1847, selling very poorly and

receiving only a few mixed reviews. Victorian readers found the book

shocking and inappropriate in its depiction of passionate, ungoverned love and cruelty (despite the fact that the novel portrays no sex or bloodshed), and the work was virtually ignored. Even Emily Bront?’s sister

Charlotte—an author whose works contained similar motifs of Gothic love and desolate landscapes—remained ambivalent toward the unapologetic intensity of her sister’s novel. In a preface to the book, which she wrote

shortly after Emily Bront?’s death, Charlotte Bront? stated, ―Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know. I scarcely think it is.‖

Emily Bront? lived an eccentric, closely guarded life. She was born in 1818, two years after Charlotte and a year and a half before her sister Anne, who also became an author. Her father worked as a church rector, and her aunt, who raised the Bront? children after their mother died, was deeply religious. Emily Bront? did not take to her aunt’s Christian fervor; the character of

Joseph, a caricature of an evangelical, may have been inspired by her aunt’s religiosity. The Bront?s lived in Haworth, a Yorkshire village in the midst of the moors. These wild, desolate expanses—later the setting of Wuthering Heights—made up the Bront?s’ daily environment, and Emily lived among them her entire life. She died in 1848, at the age of thirty.

As witnessed by their extraordinary literary accomplishments, the Bront? children were a highly creative group, writing stories, plays, and poems for their own amusement. Largely left to their own devices, the children created imaginary worlds in which to play. Yet the sisters knew that the outside world would not respond favorably to their creative expression; female

authors were often treated less seriously than their male counterparts in the nineteenth century. Thus the Bront? sisters thought it best to publish their adult works under assumed names. Charlotte wrote as Currer Bell, Emily as Ellis Bell, and Anne as Acton Bell. Their real identities remained secret until after Emily and Anne had died, when Charlotte at last revealed the truth of their novels’ authorship.

Today, Wuthering Heights has a secure position in the canon of world

literature, and Emily Bront? is revered as one of the finest writers—male or female—of the nineteenth century. Like Charlotte Bront?’s Jane Eyre,

Wuthering Heights is based partly on the Gothic tradition of the late

eighteenth century, a style of literature that featured supernatural

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encounters, crumbling ruins, moonless nights, and grotesque imagery, seeking to create effects of mystery and fear. But Wuthering Heights

transcends its genre in its sophisticated observation and artistic subtlety. The novel has been studied, analyzed, dissected, and discussed from every imaginable critical perspective, yet it remains unexhausted. And while the novel’s symbolism, themes, structure, and language may all spark fertile exploration, the bulk of its popularity may rest on its unforgettable

characters. As a shattering presentation of the doomed love affair between the fiercely passionate Catherine and Heathcliff, it remains one of the most haunting love stories in all of literature.

Plot Overview

IN THE LATE WINTER MONTHS OF 1801, a man named rents a

manor house called Thrushcross Grange in the isolated moor country of England. Here, he meets his dour landlord, , a wealthy man who lives in the ancient manor of Wuthering Heights, four miles away from the Grange. In this wild, stormy countryside, Lockwood asks his housekeeper, , to tell him the story of Heathcliff and the strange denizens of Wuthering Heights. Nelly consents, and Lockwood writes down his

recollections of her tale in his diary; these written recollections form the main part of Wuthering Heights.

Nelly remembers her childhood. As a young girl, she works as a servant at Wuthering Heights for the owner of the manor, , and his

family. One day, Mr. Earnshaw goes to Liverpool and returns home with an orphan boy whom he will raise with his own children. At first, the Earnshaw children—a boy named and his younger sister —detest the dark-skinned Heathcliff. But Catherine quickly comes to love him, and the two soon grow inseparable, spending their days playing on the moors. After his wife’s death, Mr. Earnshaw grows to prefer Heathcliff to his own son, and when Hindley continues his cruelty to Heathcliff, Mr. Earnshaw sends Hindley away to college, keeping Heathcliff nearby.

Three years later, Mr. Earnshaw dies, and Hindley inherits Wuthering

Heights. He returns with a wife, , and immediately seeks revenge on Heathcliff. Once an orphan, later a pampered and favored son, Heathcliff now finds himself treated as a common laborer, forced to work in the fields. Heathcliff continues his close relationship with Catherine, however. One night they wander to Thrushcross Grange, hoping to tease and , the cowardly, snobbish children who live there. Catherine is bitten by a dog and is forced to stay at the Grange to recuperate for five weeks, during which time works to make her a proper young lady. By the time Catherine returns, she has become infatuated with Edgar, and her relationship with Heathcliff grows more complicated.

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When Frances dies after giving birth to a baby boy named , Hindley descends into the depths of alcoholism, and behaves even more cruelly and abusively toward Heathcliff. Eventually, Catherine’s desire for social

advancement prompts her to become engaged to Edgar Linton, despite her overpowering love for Heathcliff. Heathcliff runs away from Wuthering

Heights, staying away for three years, and returning shortly after Catherine and Edgar’s marriage.

When Heathcliff returns, he immediately sets about seeking revenge on all who have wronged him. Having come into a vast and mysterious wealth, he deviously lends money to the drunken Hindley, knowing that Hindley will increase his debts and fall into deeper despondency. When Hindley dies, Heathcliff inherits the manor. He also places himself in line to inherit

Thrushcross Grange by marrying Isabella , whom he treats very

cruelly. Catherine becomes ill, gives birth to a daughter, and dies. Heathcliff begs her spirit to remain on Earth—she may take whatever form she will, she may haunt him, drive him mad—just as long as she does not leave him alone. Shortly thereafter, Isabella flees to London and gives birth to

Heathcliff’s son, named Linton after her family. She keeps the boy with her there.

Thirteen years pass, during which Nelly Dean serves as Catherine’s

daughter’s nursemaid at Thrushcross Grange. is beautiful and headstrong like her mother, but her temperament is modified by her father’s gentler influence. Young Catherine grows up at the Grange with no knowledge of Wuthering Heights; one day, however, wandering through the moors, she discovers the manor, meets Hareton, and plays together with

him. Soon afterwards, Isabella dies, and Linton comes to live with Heathcliff. Heathcliff treats his sickly, whining son even more cruelly than he treated the boy’s mother.

Three years later, Catherine meets Heathcliff on the moors, and makes a visit to Wuthering Heights to meet Linton. She and Linton begin a secret romance conducted entirely through letters. When Nelly destroys

Catherine’s collection of letters, the girl begins sneaking out at night to

spend time with her frail young lover, who asks her to come back and nurse him back to health. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Linton is pursuing Catherine only because Heathcliff is forcing him to; Heathcliff hopes that if Catherine marries Linton, his legal claim upon Thrushcross

Grange—and his revenge upon Edgar Linton—will be complete. One day, as Edgar Linton grows ill and nears death, Heathcliff lures Nelly and Catherine back to Wuthering Heights, and holds them prisoner until Catherine

marries Linton. Soon after the marriage, Edgar dies, and his death is quickly followed by the death of the sickly Linton. Heathcliff now controls both

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Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. He forces Catherine to live at Wuthering Heights and act as a common servant, while he rents

Thrushcross Grange to Lockwood.

Nelly’s story ends as she reaches the present. Lockwood, appalled, ends his tenancy at Thrushcross Grange and returns to London. However, six

months later, he pays a visit to Nelly, and learns of further developments in the story. Although Catherine originally mocked Hareton’s ignorance and illiteracy (in an act of retribution, Heathcliff ended Hareton’s education

after Hindley died), Catherine grows to love Hareton as they live together at Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff becomes more and more obsessed with the memory of the elder Catherine, to the extent that he begins speaking to her ghost. Everything he sees reminds him of her. Shortly after a night spent

walking on the moors, Heathcliff dies. Hareton and young Catherine inherit Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, and they plan to be married on the next New Year’s Day. After hearing the end of the story, Lockwood goes to visit the graves of Catherine and Heathcliff.

Chronology

The story of Wuthering Heights is told through flashbacks recorded in diary entries, and events are often presented out of chronological

order—Lockwood’s narrative takes place after Nelly’s narrative, for instance, but is interspersed with Nelly’s story in his journal. Nevertheless, the novel contains enough clues to enable an approximate reconstruction of its

chronology, which was elaborately designed by Emily Bront?. For instance, Lockwood’s diary entries are recorded in the late months of 1801 and in September 1802; in 1801, Nelly tells Lockwood that she has lived at

Thrushcross Grange for eighteen years, since Catherine’s marriage to Edgar, which must then have occurred in 1783. We know that Catherine was

engaged to Edgar for three years, and that Nelly was twenty-two when they were engaged, so the engagement must have taken place in 1780, and Nelly must have been born in 1758. Since Nelly is a few years older than Catherine, and since Lockwood comments that Heathcliff is about forty years old in 1801, it stands to reason that Heathcliff and Catherine were born around 1761, three years after Nelly. There are several other clues like this in the novel (such as Hareton’s birth, which occurs in June, 1778). The following chronology is based on those clues, and should closely approximate the

timing of the novel’s important events. A ―~‖ before a date indicates that it cannot be precisely determined from the evidence in the novel, but only closely estimated.

1500 - The stone above the front door of Wuthering Heights, bearing the name of Hareton Earnshaw, is inscribed, possibly to mark the completion of the house.

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1758 - Nelly is born.

~1761 - Heathcliff and Catherine are born.

~1767 - Mr. Earnshaw brings Heathcliff to live at Wuthering Heights. 1774 - Mr. Earnshaw sends Hindley away to college.

1777 - Mr. Earnshaw dies; Hindley and Frances take possession of

Wuthering Heights; Catherine first visits Thrushcross Grange around

Christmastime.

1778 - Hareton is born in June; Frances dies; Hindley begins his slide into alcoholism.

1780 - Catherine becomes engaged to Edgar Linton; Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights.

1783 - Catherine and Edgar are married; Heathcliff arrives at Thrushcross Grange in September.

1784 - Heathcliff and Isabella elope in the early part of the year; Catherine becomes ill with brain fever; young Catherine is born late in the year;

Catherine dies.

1785 - Early in the year, Isabella flees Wuthering Heights and settles in London; Linton is born.

~1785 - Hindley dies; Heathcliff inherits Wuthering Heights.

~1797 - Young Catherine meets Hareton and visits Wuthering Heights for the first time; Linton comes from London after Isabella dies (in late 1797 or early 1798).

1800 - Young Catherine stages her romance with Linton in the winter. 1801 - Early in the year, young Catherine is imprisoned by Heathcliff and forced to marry Linton; Edgar Linton dies; Linton dies; Heathcliff assumes control of Thrushcross Grange. Late in the year, Lockwood rents the Grange from Heathcliff and begins his tenancy. In a winter storm, Lockwood takes ill and begins conversing with Nelly Dean.

1801–1802 - During the winter, Nelly narrates her story for Lockwood. 1802 - In spring, Lockwood returns to London; Catherine and Hareton fall in love; Heathcliff dies; Lockwood returns in September and hears the end of the story from Nelly.

1803 - On New Year’s Day, young Catherine and Hareton plan to be

married.

Character List

Heathcliff - An orphan brought to live at Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw, Heathcliff falls into an intense, unbreakable love with Mr.

Earnshaw’s daughter Catherine. After Mr. Earnshaw dies, his resentful son

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Hindley abuses Heathcliff and treats him as a servant. Because of her desire for social prominence, Catherine marries Edgar Linton instead of Heathcliff. Heathcliff’s humiliation and misery prompt him to spend most of the rest of his life seeking revenge on Hindley, his beloved Catherine, and their

respective children (Hareton and young Catherine). A powerful, fierce, and often cruel man, Heathcliff acquires a fortune and uses his extraordinary powers of will to acquire both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, the estate of Edgar Linton

Catherine - The daughter of Mr. Earnshaw and his wife, Catherine falls powerfully in love with Heathcliff, the orphan Mr. Earnshaw brings home from Liverpool. Catherine loves Heathcliff so intensely that she claims they are the same person. However, her desire for social advancement motivates her to marry Edgar Linton instead. Catherine is free-spirited, beautiful, spoiled, and often arrogant. She is given to fits of temper, and she is torn

between her wild passion for Heathcliff and her social ambition. She brings misery to both of the men who love her.

Edgar Linton - Well-bred but rather spoiled as a boy, Edgar Linton

grows into a tender, constant, but cowardly man. He is almost the ideal

gentleman: Catherine accurately describes him as ―handsome,‖ ―pleasant to be with,‖ ―cheerful,‖ and ―rich.‖ However, this full assortment of

gentlemanly characteristics, along with his civilized virtues, proves useless in Edgar’s clashes with his foil, Heathcliff, who gains power over his wife, sister, and daughter.

Nelly Dean - Nelly Dean (known formally as Ellen Dean) serves as the chief narrator of Wuthering Heights. A sensible, intelligent, and

compassionate woman, she grew up essentially alongside Hindley and

Catherine Earnshaw and is deeply involved in the story she tells. She has

strong feelings for the characters in her story, and these feelings complicate her narration.

Lockwood - Lockwood’s narration forms a frame around Nelly’s; he

serves as an intermediary between Nelly and the reader. A somewhat vain and presumptuous gentleman, he deals very clumsily with the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights. Lockwood comes from a more domesticated region of England, and he finds himself at a loss when he witnesses the strange

household’s disregard for the social conventions that have always structured his world. As a narrator, his vanity and unfamiliarity with the story

occasionally lead him to misunderstand events.

Young Catherine - For clarity’s sake, this SparkNote refers to the

daughter of Edgar Linton and the first Catherine as ―young Catherine.‖ The first Catherine begins her life as Catherine Earnshaw and ends it as

Catherine Linton; her daughter begins as Catherine Linton and, assuming

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that she marries Hareton after the end of the story, goes on to become

Catherine Earnshaw. The mother and the daughter share not only a name, but also a tendency toward headstrong behavior, impetuousness, and

occasional arrogance. However, Edgar’s influence seems to have tempered young Catherine’s character, and she is a gentler and more compassionate creature than her mother.

Hareton Earnshaw - The son of Hindley and Frances Earnshaw,

Hareton is Catherine’s nephew. After Hindley’s death, Heathcliff assumes custody of Hareton, and raises him as an uneducated field worker, just as Hindley had done to Heathcliff himself. Thus Heathcliff uses Hareton to seek revenge on Hindley. Illiterate and quick-tempered, Hareton is easily

humiliated, but shows a good heart and a deep desire to improve himself. At the end of the novel, he marries young Catherine.

Linton Heathcliff - Heathcliff’s son by Isabella. Weak, sniveling,

demanding, and constantly ill, Linton is raised in London by his mother and does not meet his father until he is thirteen years old, when he goes to live with him after his mother’s death. Heathcliff despises Linton, treats him contemptuously, and, by forcing him to marry the young Catherine, uses him to cement his control over Thrushcross Grange after Edgar Linton’s death. Linton himself dies not long after this marriage.

Hindley Earnshaw - Catherine’s brother, and Mr. Earnshaw’s son.

Hindley resents it when Heathcliff is brought to live at Wuthering Heights. After his father dies and he inherits the estate, Hindley begins to abuse the young Heathcliff, terminating his education and forcing him to work in the fields. When Hindley’s wife Frances dies shortly after giving birth to their son Hareton, he lapses into alcoholism and dissipation.

Isabella Linton - Edgar Linton’s sister, who falls in love with Heathcliff and marries him. She sees Heathcliff as a romantic figure, like a character in a novel. Ultimately, she ruins her life by falling in love with him. He never returns her feelings and treats her as a mere tool in his quest for revenge on the Linton family.

Mr. Earnshaw - Catherine and Hindley’s father. Mr. Earnshaw adopts Heathcliff and brings him to live at Wuthering Heights. Mr. Earnshaw

prefers Heathcliff to Hindley but nevertheless bequeaths Wuthering Heights to Hindley when he dies.

Mrs. Earnshaw - Catherine and Hindley’s mother, who neither likes nor trusts the orphan Heathcliff when he is brought to live at her house. She dies shortly after Heathcliff’s arrival at Wuthering Heights.

Joseph - A long-winded, fanatically religious, elderly servant at

Wuthering Heights. Joseph is strange, stubborn, and unkind, and he speaks with a thick Yorkshire accent.

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Frances Earnshaw - Hindley’s simpering, silly wife, who treats

Heathcliff cruelly. She dies shortly after giving birth to Hareton.

Mr. Linton - Edgar and Isabella’s father and the proprietor of

Thrushcross Grange when Heathcliff and Catherine are children. An

established member of the gentry, he raises his son and daughter to be well-mannered young people.

Mrs. Linton - Mr. Linton’s somewhat snobbish wife, who does not like Heathcliff to be allowed near her children, Edgar and Isabella. She teaches Catherine to act like a gentle-woman, thereby instilling her with social ambitions.

Zillah - The housekeeper at Wuthering Heights during the latter stages of the narrative.

Mr. Green - Edgar Linton’s lawyer, who arrives too late to hear Edgar’s final instruction to change his will, which would have prevented Heathcliff from obtaining control over Thrushcross Grange.

Analysis of Major Characters

Heathcliff

Wuthering Heights centers around the story of . The first

paragraph of the novel provides a vivid physical picture of him, as describes how his ―black eyes‖ withdraw suspiciously under his brows at Lockwood’s approach. ’s story begins with his introduction into the Earnshaw family, his vengeful machinations drive the entire plot, and his death ends the book. The desire to understand him and his

motivations has kept countless readers engaged in the novel.

Heathcliff, however, defies being understood, and it is difficult for readers to resist seeing what they want or expect to see in him. The novel teases the reader with the possibility that Heathcliff is something other than what he seems—that his cruelty is merely an expression of his frustrated love for , or that his sinister behaviors serve to conceal the heart of a

romantic hero. We expect Heathcliff’s character to contain such a hidden virtue because he resembles a hero in a romance novel. Traditionally,

romance novel heroes appear dangerous, brooding, and cold at first, only later to emerge as fiercely devoted and loving. One hundred years before Emily Bront? wrote Wuthering Heights, the notion that ―a reformed rake makes the best husband‖ was already a cliché of romantic literature, and romance novels center around the same cliché to this day.

However, Heathcliff does not reform, and his malevolence proves so great and long-lasting that it cannot be adequately explained even as a desire for revenge against , Catherine, , etc. As he himself points out, his abuse of is purely sadistic, as he amuses himself by seeing how

much abuse she can take and still come cringing back for more. Critic Joyce

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Carol Oates argues that Emily Bront? does the same thing to the reader that Heathcliff does to Isabella, testing to see how many times the reader can be shocked by Heathcliff’s gratuitous violence and still, masochistically, insist on seeing him as a romantic hero.

It is significant that Heathcliff begins his life as a homeless orphan on the streets of Liverpool. When Bront? composed her book, in the 1840s, the

English economy was severely depressed, and the conditions of the factory workers in industrial areas like Liverpool were so appalling that the upper and middle classes feared violent revolt. Thus, many of the more affluent members of society beheld these workers with a mixture of sympathy and fear. In literature, the smoky, threatening, miserable factory-towns were often represented in religious terms, and compared to hell. The poet

William Blake, writing near the turn of the nineteenth century, speaks of

England’s ―dark Satanic Mills.‖ Heathcliff, of course, is frequently compared to a demon by the other characters in the book.

Considering this historical context, Heathcliff seems to embody the

anxieties that the book’s upper- and middle-class audience had about the working classes. The reader may easily sympathize with him when he is powerless, as a child tyrannized by Hindley Earnshaw, but he becomes a villain when he acquires power and returns to Wuthering Heights with money and the trappings of a gentleman. This corresponds with the

ambivalence the upper classes felt toward the lower classes—the upper

classes had charitable impulses toward lower-class citizens when they were miserable, but feared the prospect of the lower classes trying to escape their miserable circumstances by acquiring political, social, cultural, or economic power.

Catherine

The location of Catherine’s coffin symbolizes the conflict that tears apart her short life. She is not buried in the chapel with the Lintons. Nor is her coffin placed among the tombs of the Earnshaws. Instead, as Nelly describes in

Chapter XVI, Catherine is buried ―in a corner of the kirkyard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry plants have climbed over it from the moor.‖ Moreover, she is buried with Edgar on one side and Heathcliff on the other, suggesting her conflicted loyalties. Her actions are driven in part by her social ambitions, which initially are awakened during her first stay at the Lintons’, and which eventually compel her to marry Edgar. However, she is also motivated by impulses that prompt her to violate social conventions—to

love Heathcliff, throw temper tantrums, and run around on the moor. Isabella Linton—Catherine’s sister-in-law and Heathcliff’s wife, who was born in the same year that Catherine was—serves as Catherine’s foil. The

two women’s parallel positions allow us to see their differences with greater

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clarity. Catherine represents wild nature, in both her high, lively spirits and her occasional cruelty, whereas Isabella represents culture and civilization, both in her refinement and in her weakness.

Edgar

Just as Isabella Linton serves as Catherine’s foil, Edgar serves as Heathcliff’s. Edgar is born and raised a gentleman. He is graceful,

well-mannered, and instilled with civilized virtues. These qualities cause Catherine to choose Edgar over Heathcliff and thus to initiate the

contention between the men. Nevertheless, Edgar’s gentlemanly qualities ultimately prove useless in his ensuing rivalry with Heathcliff. Edgar is

particularly humiliated by his confrontation with Heathcliff in Chapter XI, in which he openly shows his fear of fighting Heathcliff. Catherine, having witnessed the scene, taunts him, saying, ―Heathcliff would as soon lift a

finger at you as the king would march his army against a colony of mice.‖ As the reader can see from the earliest descriptions of Edgar as a spoiled child, his refinement is tied to his helplessness and impotence.

Charlotte Bront?, in her preface to the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights, refers to Edgar as ―an example of constancy and tenderness,‖ and goes on to suggest that her sister Emily was using Edgar to point out that such

characteristics constitute true virtues in all human beings, and not just in women, as society tended to believe. However, Charlotte’s reading seems influenced by her own feminist agenda. Edgar’s inability to counter

Heathcliff’s vengeance, and his na?ve belief on his deathbed in his

daughter’s safety and happiness, make him a weak, if sympathetic, character Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a

literary work.

The Destructiveness of a Love that Never Changes

Catherine and Heathcliff’s passion for one another seems to be the center of Wuthering Heights, given that it is stronger and more lasting than any other emotion displayed in the novel, and that it is the source of most of the major conflicts that structure the novel’s plot. As she tells Catherine and

Heathcliff’s story, Nelly criticizes both of them harshly, condemning their passion as immoral, but this passion is obviously one of the most

compelling and memorable aspects of the book. It is not easy to decide

whether Bront? intends the reader to condemn these lovers as blameworthy or to idealize them as romantic heroes whose love transcends social norms and conventional morality. The book is actually structured around two

parallel love stories, the first half of the novel centering on the love between Catherine and Heathcliff, while the less dramatic second half features the

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developing love between young Catherine and Hareton. In contrast to the first, the latter tale ends happily, restoring peace and order to Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The differences between the two love

stories contribute to the reader’s understanding of why each ends the way it does.

The most important feature of young Catherine and Hareton’s love story is that it involves growth and change. Early in the novel Hareton seems

irredeemably brutal, savage, and illiterate, but over time he becomes a loyal friend to young Catherine and learns to read. When young Catherine first meets Hareton he seems completely alien to her world, yet her attitude also evolves from contempt to love. Catherine and Heathcliff’s love, on the other hand, is rooted in their childhood and is marked by the refusal to change. In choosing to marry Edgar, Catherine seeks a more genteel life, but she

refuses to adapt to her role as wife, either by sacrificing Heathcliff or

embracing Edgar. In Chapter XII she suggests to Nelly that the years since she was twelve years old and her father died have been like a blank to her, and she longs to return to the moors of her childhood. Heathcliff, for his part, possesses a seemingly superhuman ability to maintain the same

attitude and to nurse the same grudges over many years.

Moreover, Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is based on their shared

perception that they are identical. Catherine declares, famously, ―I am

Heathcliff,‖ while Heathcliff, upon Catherine’s death, wails that he cannot live without his ―soul,‖ meaning Catherine. Their love denies difference, and is strangely asexual. The two do not kiss in dark corners or arrange secret trysts, as adulterers do. Given that Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is based upon their refusal to change over time or embrace difference in others, it is fitting that the disastrous problems of their generation are overcome not by some climactic reversal, but simply by the inexorable passage of time, and the rise of a new and distinct generation. Ultimately, Wuthering Heights presents a vision of life as a process of change, and celebrates this process over and against the romantic intensity of its principal characters.

The Precariousness of Social Class

As members of the gentry, the Earnshaws and the Lintons occupy a

somewhat precarious place within the hierarchy of late eighteenth- and

early nineteenth-century British society. At the top of British society was the royalty, followed by the aristocracy, then by the gentry, and then by the lower classes, who made up the vast majority of the population. Although

the gentry, or upper middle class, possessed servants and often large estates, they held a nonetheless fragile social position. The social status of

aristocrats was a formal and settled matter, because aristocrats had official titles. Members of the gentry, however, held no titles, and their status was

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thus subject to change. A man might see himself as a gentleman but find, to his embarrassment, that his neighbors did not share this view. A discussion of whether or not a man was really a gentleman would consider such

questions as how much land he owned, how many tenants and servants he had, how he spoke, whether he kept horses and a carriage, and whether his money came from land or ―trade‖—gentlemen scorned banking and

commercial activities.

Considerations of class status often crucially inform the characters’

motivations in Wuthering Heights. Catherine’s decision to marry Edgar so that she will be ―the greatest woman of the neighborhood‖ is only the most obvious example. The Lintons are relatively firm in their gentry status but nonetheless take great pains to prove this status through their behaviors. The Earnshaws, on the other hand, rest on much shakier ground socially. They do not have a carriage, they have less land, and their house, as

Lockwood remarks with great puzzlement, resembles that of a ―homely,

northern farmer‖ and not that of a gentleman. The shifting nature of social status is demonstrated most strikingly in Heathcliff’s trajectory from

homeless waif to young gentleman-by-adoption to common laborer to gentleman again (although the status-conscious Lockwood remarks that Heathcliff is only a gentleman in ―dress and manners‖).

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Doubles

Bront? organizes her novel by arranging its elements—characters, places, and themes—into pairs. Catherine and Heathcliff are closely matched in

many ways, and see themselves as identical. Catherine’s character is divided into two warring sides: the side that wants Edgar and the side that wants Heathcliff. Catherine and young Catherine are both remarkably similar and strikingly different. The two houses, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, represent opposing worlds and values. The novel has not one but two distinctly different narrators, Nelly and Mr. Lockwood. The relation between such paired elements is usually quite complicated, with the

members of each pair being neither exactly alike nor diametrically opposed. For instance, the Lintons and the Earnshaws may at first seem to represent opposing sets of values, but, by the end of the novel, so many intermarriages have taken place that one can no longer distinguish between the two

families.

Repetition

Repetition is another tactic Bront? employs in organizing Wuthering

Heights. It seems that nothing ever ends in the world of this novel. Instead,

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time seems to run in cycles, and the horrors of the past repeat themselves in the present. The way that the names of the characters are recycled, so that the names of the characters of the younger generation seem only to be

rescramblings of the names of their parents, leads the reader to consider how plot elements also repeat themselves. For instance, Heathcliff’s

degradation of Hareton repeats Hindley’s degradation of Heathcliff. Also, the young Catherine’s mockery of Joseph’s earnest evangelical zealousness repeats her mother’s. Even Heathcliff’s second try at opening Catherine’s grave repeats his first.

The Conflict between Nature and Culture

In Wuthering Heights, Bront? constantly plays nature and culture against each other. Nature is represented by the Earnshaw family, and by Catherine and Heathcliff in particular. These characters are governed by their passions, not by reflection or ideals of civility. Correspondingly, the house where they live—Wuthering Heights—comes to symbolize a similar wildness. On the other hand, Thrushcross Grange and the Linton family represent culture, refinement, convention, and cultivation.

When, in Chapter VI, Catherine is bitten by the Lintons’ dog and brought

into Thrushcross Grange, the two sides are brought onto the collision course that structures the majority of the novel’s plot. At the time of that first

meeting between the Linton and Earnshaw households, chaos has already begun to erupt at Wuthering Heights, where Hindley’s cruelty and injustice reign, whereas all seems to be fine and peaceful at Thrushcross Grange. However, the influence of Wuthering Heights soon proves overpowering, and the inhabitants of Thrushcross Grange are drawn into Catherine,

Hindley, and Heathcliff’s drama. Thus the reader almost may interpret Wuthering Heights’s impact on the Linton family as an allegory for the

corruption of culture by nature, creating a curious reversal of the more

traditional story of the corruption of nature by culture. However, Bront? tells her story in such a way as to prevent our interest and sympathy from straying too far from the wilder characters, and often portrays the more civilized characters as despicably weak and silly. This method of

characterization prevents the novel from flattening out into a simple

privileging of culture over nature, or vice versa. Thus in the end the reader must acknowledge that the novel is no mere allegory.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent

abstract ideas or concepts.

Moors

The constant emphasis on landscape within the text of Wuthering Heights endows the setting with symbolic importance. This landscape is comprised

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primarily of moors: wide, wild expanses, high but somewhat soggy, and thus infertile. Moorland cannot be cultivated, and its uniformity makes

navigation difficult. It features particularly waterlogged patches in which

people could potentially drown. (This possibility is mentioned several times in Wuthering Heights.) Thus, the moors serve very well as symbols of the wild threat posed by nature. As the setting for the beginnings of Catherine and Heathcliff’s bond (the two play on the moors during childhood), the moorland transfers its symbolic associations onto the love affair.

Ghosts

Ghosts appear throughout Wuthering Heights, as they do in most other

works of Gothic fiction, yet Bront? always presents them in such a way that whether they really exist remains ambiguous. Thus the world of the novel can always be interpreted as a realistic one. Certain ghosts—such as

Catherine’s spirit when it appears to Lockwood in Chapter III—may be explained as nightmares. The villagers’ alleged sightings of Heathcliff’s ghost in Chapter XXXIV could be dismissed as unverified superstition. Whether or not the ghosts are ―real,‖ they symbolize the manifestation of the past within the present, and the way memory stays with people,

permeating their day-to-day lives.

Important Quotations Explained

1. But Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living. He is a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a

gentleman, that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire: rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome figure—and rather morose. Possibly, some people might suspect him of a degree of under-bred pride; I have a sympathetic chord within that tells me it is nothing of the sort: I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling—to

manifestations of mutual kindliness. He’ll love and hate, equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or hated

again—No, I’m running on too fast—I bestow my own attributes

over-liberally on him.

This passage, from the first chapter and spoken in the voice of , constitutes the first of many attempts in the book to explain the mysterious figure of , his character and motivations. Outside of the novel, when critics and readers discuss Wuthering Heights, the same question arises repeatedly. How is Heathcliff best understood? We see here that the question of his social position—is he a gentleman or a gypsy?—causes particular confusion.

The situation of the reader, just beginning to enter into Wuthering Heights as a novel, parallels the situation of Lockwood, just beginning to enter into

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Wuthering Heights as a house. Like Lockwood, readers of the novel

confront all sorts of strange scenes and characters—Heathcliff the strangest of all—and must venture interpretations of them. Later illuminations of Heathcliff’s personality show this first interpretation to be a laughable

failure, indicating little beyond Lockwood’s vanity. Lockwood, in claiming to recognize in Heathcliff a kindred soul, whom he can understand ―by

instinct,‖ makes assumptions that appear absurd once Heathcliff’s history is revealed. Lockwood, while he rather proudly styles himself a great

misanthrope and hermit, in fact resembles Heathcliff very little. In the many misjudgments and blunders Lockwood makes in his early visits to

Wuthering Heights, we see how easy it is to misinterpret Heathcliff’s

complex character, and the similarity between our own position and

Lockwood’s becomes a warning to us as readers. We, too, should question our instincts.

2. The ledge, where I placed my candle, had a few mildewed books piled up in one corner; and it was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This

writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small—Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton. In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the window, and continued spelling over Catherine

Earnshaw—Heathcliff—Linton, till my eyes closed; but they had not rested five minutes when a glare of white letters started from the dark, as vivid as spectres—the air swarmed with Catherines; and rousing myself to dispel the obtrusive name, I discovered my candle wick reclining on one of the antique volumes, and perfum-ing the place with an odour of roasted calf-skin.

In this passage from Chapter III, relates the first of the troubling dreams he has in ’s old bed. The quotation testifies to Lockwood’s role as a reader within the novel, representing the external reader—the perplexed outsider determined to discover the secrets of Wuthering Heights. Upon Lockwood’s first arrival at the house, no one answers his knocks on the door, and he cries, ―I don’t care—I will get in!‖ The same blend of frustration and determination has marked the responses of many readers and critics when facing the enigmas of Wuthering Heights.

The connection between Lockwood and readers is particularly clear in this passage. Catherine first appears to Lockwood, as she does to readers, as a written word—her name, scratched into the paint. When Lockwood reads over the scraped letters, they seem to take on a ghostly power—the simile Bront? uses is that they are ―as vivid as spectres.‖ , of course,

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constitute a key image throughout the novel. In this instance, it is crucial to note that what comes back, in this first dream, is not a dead person but a name, and that what brings the name back is the act of reading it. We see that Bront?, by using Lockwood as a stand-in for her readers, indicates how she wants her readers to react to her book; she wants her words to come vividly before them, to haunt them.

In this passage, one also can see an active example of Wuthering Heights’s ambiguous genre. The work is often compared to the Gothic novels popular in the late eighteenth century, which dealt in ghosts and gloom, demonic heroes with dark glints in their eyes, and so on. But Bront? wrote her book in the 1840s, when the fashion for the Gothic novel was past and that genre was quickly being replaced as the dominant form by the socially conscious realistic novel, as represented by the work of Dickens and Thackeray.

Wuthering Heights often seems to straddle the two genres, containing many Gothic elements but also obeying most of the conventions of Victorian

realism. The question of genre comes to a head in the appearances of ghosts in the novel. Readers cannot be sure whether they are meant to understand the ghosts as nightmares, to explain them in terms of the psychology of the characters who claim to see them, or to take them, as in a Gothic novel, as no less substantial than the other characters. Bront? establishes this

ambiguity carefully. The ―spectres‖ here are introduced within a simile, and in a context that would support their interpretation as a nightmare.

Similarly subtle ambiguities lace Lockwood’s account, a few pages later, of his encounter with the ghost of Catherine.

3. 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 [Edgar’s] is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.

’s speech to about her acceptance of ’s proposal, in Chapter IX, forms the turning-point of the plot. It is at this point that leaves Wuthering Heights, after he has overheard Catherine say that it would ―degrade‖ her to marry him. Although the action of Wuthering Heights takes place so far from the bustle of society, where most of Bront?’s contemporaries set their scenes, social ambition motivates many of the actions of these characters, however isolated among the moors. Catherine’s decision to marry Edgar Linton out of a desire to be ―the greatest woman of the neighbourhood‖ exemplifies the effect of social considerations on the characters’ actions.

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In Catherine’s paradoxical statement that Heathcliff is ―more myself than I am,‖ readers can see how the relation between Catherine and Heathcliff often transcends a dynamic of desire and becomes one of unity.

Heterosexual love is often, in literature, described in terms of

complementary opposites—like moonbeam and lightning, or frost and

fire—but the love between Catherine and Heathcliff opposes this convention. Catherine says not, ―I love Heathcliff,‖ but, ―I am Heathcliff.‖ In following the relationship through to its painful end, the novel ultimately may attest to the destructiveness of a love that denies difference.

4. ―. . . I got the sexton, who was digging Linton’s grave, to remove the

earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there, when I saw her face again—it is hers yet—he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change, if the air blew on it, and so I struck one side of the coffin loose, and covered it up—not Linton’s side, damn him! I wish he’d been soldered in lead—and I bribed the sexton to pull it away, when I’m laid there, and slide mine out too. I’ll have it made so, and then, by the time

Linton gets to us, he’ll not know which is which!‖ ―You were very wicked, Mr. Heathcliff!‖ I exclaimed; ―were you not ashamed to disturb the dead?‖ When narrates this ghoulish scene to in Chapter XXIX, the book enters into one of its most Gothic moments. Heathcliff, trying to recapture herself, constantly comes upon mere reminders of her. However, far from satisfying him, these reminders only lead him to further attempts. Heathcliff’s desire to rejoin Catherine might indeed explain the majority of Heathcliff’s actions, from his acquisition of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights, to his seizure of power over everyone associated with Catherine.

He tries to break through what reminds him of his beloved to his beloved herself by destroying the reminder, the intermediary. Readers can see, in the language he uses here, this difference between the objects that refer to Catherine and Catherine herself. When he opens her coffin, he does not say that he sees her again. Instead, he says, ―I saw her face again,‖ showing that her corpse, like her daughter or her portrait, is a thing she possessed, a

thing that refers to her, but not the woman herself. It seems that, in this extreme scene, he realizes at last that he will never get through to her real presence by acquiring and ruining the people and possessions associated with her. This understanding brings Heathcliff a new tranquility, and from this point on he begins to lose interest in destruction.

5. That, however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my

imagination, is actually the least, for what is not connected with her to me?

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and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her

features are shaped on the flags! In every cloud, in every tree—filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day, I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women—my own

features—mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful

collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!

In this passage from Chapter XXXIII, confesses to his inner state. What Nelly calls Heathcliff’s ―monomania on the subject of his departed idol‖ has now reached its final stage of development. In the passage in which Heathcliff describes his excavation of ’s grave, the reader gains insight into Heathcliff’s frustration regarding the double nature of all of Catherine’s ―memoranda.‖ While Catherine’s corpse recalls her presence, it fails to substitute fully for it, and thus recalls her absence. Heathcliff’s perception of this doubling comes through in his language. The many signs of Catherine show that ―she did exist‖ but that ―I have lost her.‖ In the end, because his whole being is bound up with Catherine, Heathcliff’s total set of perceptions of the world is permeated by her presence. Consequently, he finds signs of Catherine in ―[t]he entire world,‖ and not just in localized figures such as her daughter or a portrait of Catherine.

Key Facts

FULL TITLE · Wuthering Heights

AUTHOR · Emily Bront?

TYPE OF WORK · Novel

GENRE · Gothic novel (designed to both horrify and fascinate readers with scenes of passion and cruelty; supernatural elements; and a dark,

foreboding atmosphere); also realist fiction (incorporates vivid

circumstantial detail into a consistently and minutely thought-out plot, dealing mostly with the relationships of the characters to one another)

LANGUAGE · English (including bits of Yorkshire dialect)

TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN · In 1846–7, Emily Bront? wrote Wuthering Heights in the parsonage of the isolated village of Haworth, in Yorkshire. DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION · 1847

PUBLISHER · Thomas C. Newby

NARRATOR · Lockwood, a newcomer to the locale of Wuthering Heights, narrates the entire novel as an entry in his diary. The story that Lockwood records is told to him by Nelly, a servant, and Lockwood writes most of the narrative in her voice, describing how she told it to him. Some parts of

Nelly’s story are narrated by other characters, such as when Nelly receives a letter from Isabella and recites its contents verbatim.

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POINT OF VIEW · Most of the events of the novel are narrated in Nelly’s voice, from Nelly’s point of view, focusing only on what Nelly can see and hear, or what she can find out about indirectly. Nelly frequently comments on what the other characters think and feel, and on what their motivations are, but these comments are all based on her own interpretations of the other characters—she is not an omniscient narrator.

TONE · It is not easy to infer the author’s attitude toward the events of the novel. The melodramatic quality of the first half of the novel suggests that Bront? views Catherine and Heathcliff’s doomed love as a tragedy of lost potential and wasted passion. However, the outcome of the second half of the novel suggests that Bront? is more interested in celebrating the renewal and rebirth brought about by the passage of time, and the rise of a new generation, than she is in mourning Heathcliff and Catherine.

TENSE · Both Lockwood’s and Nelly’s narrations are in the past tense. SETTING (TIME) · The action of Nelly’s story begins in the 1770s; Lockwood leaves Yorkshire in 1802.

SETTING (PLACE) · All the action of Wuthering Heights takes place in or around two neighboring houses on the Yorkshire moors—Wuthering

Heights and Thrushcross Grange.

PROTAGONISTS · Heathcliff, Catherine

MAJOR CONFLICTS · Heathcliff’s great natural abilities, strength of

character, and love for Catherine Earnshaw all enable him to raise himself from humble beginnings to the status of a wealthy gentleman, but his need to revenge himself for Hindley’s abuse and Catherine’s betrayal leads him into a twisted life of cruelty and hatred; Catherine is torn between her love for Heathcliff and her desire to be a gentlewoman, and her decision to

marry the genteel Edgar Linton drags almost all of the novel’s characters into conflict with Heathcliff.

RISING ACTION · Heathcliff’s arrival at Wuthering Heights, Hindley’s

abusive treatment of Heathcliff, and Catherine’s first visit to Thrushcross Grange set the major conflicts in motion; once Heathcliff hears Cathy say it would ―degrade‖ her to marry him, the conversation between Nelly and

Cathy, which he secretly overhears, drives him to run away and pursue his vengeance.

CLIMAX · Catherine’s death is the culmination of the conflict between

herself and Heathcliff and removes any possibility that their conflict could be resolved positively; after Catherine’s death, Heathcliff merely extends and deepens his drives toward revenge and cruelty.

FALLING ACTION · Heathcliff destroys Isabella and drives her away, takes possession of young Linton, forces Catherine and Linton to marry, inherits Thrushcross Grange, then loses interest in the whole project and dies;

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Hareton and young Catherine are to be engaged to be married, promising an end to the cycle of revenge.

THEMES · The destructiveness of a love that never changes; the

precariousness of social class

MOTIFS · Doubles, repetition, the conflict between nature and culture SYMBOLS · The moors, ghosts

FORESHADOWING · Lockwood’s initial visit to Wuthering Heights, in

which the mysterious relationships and lurking resentments between the characters create an air of mystery; Lockwood’s ghostly nightmares, during the night he spends in Catherine’s old bed, prefigure many of the events of the rest of the novel.

Study Questions & Essay Topics

Study Questions

1. Many of the names in Wuthering Heights are strikingly similar. For

example, besides the two Catherines, there are a number of Lintons,

Earnshaws, and Heathcliffs whose names vary only slightly. What role do specific names play in Wuthering Heights?

Names have a thematic significance in Wuthering Heights. As the second generation of characters gradually exhibits certain characteristics of the first generation, names come to represent particular attributes. The Earnshaws are wild and passionate, the Lintons tame and civilized; therefore, young displays a milder disposition than her mother, Catherine Earnshaw. Linton Heathcliff becomes a mixture of the worst of both his parents. In other words, he possesses ’s arrogance and imperiousness, combined with the Lintons’ cowardice and frailty. Names in Wuthering Heights also serve to emphasize the cyclic nature of the story. Just as the novel begins and ends with a Catherine Earnshaw, the name of also bookends an era; the final master of Wuthering Heights shares his name with a distant ancestor, whose name was inscribed above the main door in 1500.

2. In many ways, Wuthering Heights structures itself around matched,

contrasting pairs of themes and of characters. What are some of these pairs, and what role do they play in the book?

Matched and contrasting pairs form the apparatus through which the book’s thematic conflicts play out, as the differences between opposed characters and themes force their way into action and development. Some of the pairs include: the two manor houses, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange; the two loves in ’s life, and ; the two Catherines in the novel, mother and daughter; the two halves of the novel, separated by Catherine’s death; the

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two generations of main characters, each of which occupies one half of the novel; the two families, Earnshaw and , whose family trees are almost exactly symmetrical; and the two great themes of the novel, love and revenge. By placing these elements into pairs, the novel both compares and contrasts them to each other. The device of pairing serves to emphasize the book’s themes, as well as to develop the characters.

3. Analyze the character of Edgar Linton. Is he a sympathetic figure? How does he compare to Heathcliff? Is Catherine really in love with him? is a kind, gentle, civilized, somewhat cowardly man who

represents the qualities of Thrushcross Grange as opposed to the qualities of Wuthering Heights. Married to a woman whom he loves but whose passions he cannot understand, Edgar is a highly sympathetic figure after returns to Wuthering Heights. The man finds himself in an almost

impossible position, seeing his wife obviously in love with another man but unable to do anything to rectify the situation. Still, he proves weak and ineffectual when compared to the strong-willed Heathcliff, and thus can exercise almost no claim on ’s mind and heart.

While the reader may pity Edgar and feel that morality may be on his side, it is hard not to sympathize with the charismatic Catherine and Heathcliff in their passionate love. It is impossible to think that Catherine does not really love Edgar with some part of herself. Although she marries him largely

because of her desire for his social status, she seems genuinely drawn to his good looks, polished manners, and kind demeanor. But it is also impossible to think that her feelings for Edgar equal her feelings for

Heathcliff—compared with her wild, elemental passion for Heathcliff, her love for her husband seems frail and somewhat proper,

Suggested Essay Topics

1. Discuss the novel’s narrative structure. Are the novel’s narrators

trustworthy? Why or why not? With particular reference to Nelly’s story, consider what might be gained from reading between the lines of the

narration. What roles do the personalities of the narrators play in the way that the story is told?

2. What role does social class and class ambiguity play in Wuthering

Heights? To what extent is Heathcliff’s social position responsible for the misery and conflict so persistent in the book?

3. Discuss revenge in Wuthering Heights. In what ways is it connected to love? What is the nature of love in the novel, that it can be so closely

connected to vengeance?

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4. Think about the influence of the physical landscape in the novel. What role do the moors play in the development of the story, and in the

presentation of the characters? How does Catherine’s abiding love of the moors help us to understand her character? What do the moors come to symbolize in the novel?