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First published in 1847, Emily Wuthering Emily Bronte Heights ranks high on the listBronte'sof major works of . A brooding tale of passion and 1847 revenge set in the moors, the has inspired no fewer than four film versions in mod- em times. Early critics did not like the work, cit- ing its excess of passion and its coarseness. A sec- ond edition was published in 1850, two years after the author's death. Sympathetically prefaced by her sister Charlotte, it met with greater success, and the novel has continued to grow in stature ever since. In the novel a pair of narrators, Mr. Lockwood and , relate the story ofthe foundling Heath- cliff's arrival at Wuthering Heights, and the close- knit bond he forms with his benefactor's daughter, . One in spirit, they are none- theless social unequals, and the saga of frustrated yearning and destruction that follows Catherine's refusal to marry is unique in the English canon. The novel is admired not least for the power of its imagery, its complex structure, and its ambi- guity, the very elements that confounded its first critics. Emily Bronte spent her short life mostly at home, and apart from her own fertile imagination, she drew her inspiration from the local landscape- the surrounding moorlands and the regional archi- tecture of the Yorkshire area-as well as her per- sonal experience of religion, of folklore, and of illness and death. Dealing with themes of nature, cruelty, social position, and indestructibility of the spirit, Wuthering Heights has surpassed the more successful Charlotte Bronte's in acade- mic and popular circles.

3 0 8 N o v e I s f o r S t u d e n t s W u t h e r i n g H e i g h t s KXWIITGTN... Emily Jane Bronte was born on July 30, 1818, to Maria Branwell and the Reverend Patrick Bronte, in Thornton, Yorkshire, England. She was the fifth of six children, and the fourth daughter. The family moved to a parsonage in in 1820, and following the death of Maria Bronte in 1821, the children's maternal aunt came to care for them. In 1825 Emily was sent to join her sisters Maria, Elizabeth, and Charlotte at school, but after an epidemic at the school claimed the lives ofMaria and Elizabeth, Emily and Charlotte returned home. Emily would remain at home for the next ten years. In 1826 Patrick Bronte gave his children a set of toy soldiers, and the children began to make up sto- ries about them. A realm in Africa, called Angria, was largely the inspiration of Charlotte and brother Branwell, but soon Emily and Anne had invented the Pacific Island of Gondal, which would figure in poems and stories they wrote throughout their lives. Emily was uncomfortable with outsiders and made only brief, intermittent attempts to construct Emily Bronte a life for herself away from the parsonage. An un- successful experiment as Charlotte's pupil in East Yorkshire that began in 1835 ended after a year. She was similarly ill-suited for a position as assis- fer from a lack of context, and ambiguous punctu- tant teacher at Law Hill School near Halifax. In ation. Although the poems are often clumsy, they 1842, Charlotte and Emily traveled to Brussels, show flashes of the same originality that makes Belgium, intending to study languages, but returned Wuthering Heights so compelling. Emily Bronte home later that year because of the death of their did not know success during her lifetime, but de- aunt, who had left them what money she had. spite the initial failure of Wuthering Heights, she In 1845 Charlotte discovered a private note- has proved a giant among writers. book of Emily's poems and persuaded her to pub- lish a selection of them. Emily reluctantly agreed, and a volume of poetry that included "Remem- brance," "The Prisoner," "The Philosopher," and "Stars" appeared in 1846. It sold only two copies, but one critic was flattering. Wuthering Heights ap- Part I-Childhood peared in 1847 under the Ellis Bell and Set on the Yorkshire moors of England, was panned by contemporary critics, who objected Wuthering Heights opens with the comments ofMr. to its coarseness and brutality. In contrast, Char- Lockwood, the newly arrived tenant ofThrushcross lotte's novel Jane Eyre, published the same year, Grange. He tells of his visit to Wuthering Heights, was a runaway success. Emily produced one fur- where he encounters his landlord and neighbor, Mr. ther poem in 1846; Wuthering Heights was her only Heathcliff; Joseph, Heathcliff's pious and surly old novel. In 1848 Branwell Bronte died, in part ow- servant; , an ignorant and im- ing to his dissolute ways, which were a source of poverished young man; and the beautiful Cather- constant concern to his sisters. Emily caught cold ine Heathcliff, widow of Heathcliff's dead son. at his funeral and developed tuberculosis. Refusing Rough weather forces Lockwood to spend the to seek medical treatment, she died on December night. He finds several old books, the margins of 19, 1848. which had been used as a childhood diary by The lack of biographical material about Emily Catherine Earnshaw, mother to the current Cather- Bronte makes her an enigmatic figure and her work ine. Perusing these pages, Lockwood learns about difficult to evaluate. The poems, in particular, suf- the childhood adventures of Heathcliff and the first

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Catherine, and of their oppression by Catherine's verse would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not brother, Hindley. Lockwood falls into a restless seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the fo- by nightmares in which the first liage in the woods. Time will change it, I am well sleep, punctuated aware, as winter changes the trees-my love for Catherine Earnshaw comes to the bedroom window Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath-a and begs to be let in. He awakes screaming, and in source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, so doing he wakes Heathcliff, who opens the win- I am Heathcliff-he is always, always in my mind- dow and begs Catherine to come again. At sunrise not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a plea- Heathcliff escorts Lockwood back to Thrushcross sure to myself-but as my own being-so, do not Grange. talk of our separation again." The next day, Lockwood, finding himself sick, Part II-Marriage and Death persuades the servant, Nelly Dean, to sit and talk Catherine and Edgar are married and seem with him. She relates how she grew up at Wuther- happy, until Heathcliff returns, mysteriously ing Heights, and she tells how one night Mr. Earn- wealthy and educated. He takes up residence at shaw brought home the mysterious boy, Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights, where he gambles Hindley out whom he had found starving in . Mr. Earn- of all his possessions. Heathcliff quickly resumes shaw favors Heathcliff, causing his son Hindley to his acquaintance with Catherine, to her delight and hate the interloper, but Heathcliff and the first Edgar's annoyance. Isabella, Edgar's sister, begins Catherine become fast friends. Hindley is sent off to love Heathcliff, in spite of repeated warnings to college, but after Mr. Eamshaw's death he re- about his character. Heathcliff, desiring Isabella's turns with a wife and becomes master of Wuther- inheritance, begins to encourage the attraction, and ing Heights. Under Hindley's tyranny, Catherine when Nelly informs Edgar of this courtship he be- and Heathcliff grow closer and more mischievous, comes enraged. A fight ensues between Edgar and their favorite pastime being to wander the moors. Heathcliff, and Heathcliff is banished from the On one such excursion they are caught looking in Grange. Catherine, to punish Edgar, refuses to eat the windows of Thrushcross Grange, and Catherine for three days and drives herself into a feverish is bitten by a bulldog and has to stay at the Grange delirium. While Edgar is nursing her back to a frag- for five weeks. Hindley, meanwhile, forbids Heath- ile state of health, Isabella and Heathcliff elope. Is- cliff to have further contact with Catherine. abella soon regrets her marriage to the cruel Heath- Catherine returns much changed. She now cliff. She writes to Nelly, telling her of her dresses and acts like a lady, and she has befriended miserable life at Wuthering Heights and begging Edgar and , the siblings who live at her to visit. Heathcliff takes advantage of Nelly's the Grange. Heathcliff feels her neglect sharply, visit to request a meeting with Catherine, who is and Catherine feels torn between loyalty to her old pregnant. Nelly reluctantly agrees, and a few days friend and attraction to her new companions. Hind- later, while Edgar is at church, Heathcliff enters the ley's new wife, Frances, gives birth to a son, Hare- Grange and sees Catherine for the last time. Edgar ton, and dies of consumption, and Hindley starts enters and finds Heathcliff embracing Catherine, drinking and becomes even more tyrannical. Heath- who has fainted. Catherine dies without ever fully cliff is deprived of all education and is forced to regaining her senses, although two hours before her labor as one of the servants of the Heights. When death, she gives birth to a daughter. Edgar and Edgar proposes to Catherine, she accepts, but tells Heathcliff are both distraught at Catherine's death, Nelly that she would never have done so if her and Heathcliff begs her ghost to haunt him. brother had not turned Heathcliff into someone it Days after Catherine's death, Isabella appears would disgrace her to marry. Heathcliff overhears at the Grange, having fled the Heights. She swears this comment and flees Wuthering Heights before she will not return, but she refuses to stay at the she goes on to explain to Nelly the depth of her Grange because she fears Heathcliff will find her feelings for Heathcliff: there. She moves to the South of England and gives "I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody birth to a sickly boy she names Linton. have a notion that there is, or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my cre- Part III-The Second Generation ation if I were entirely contained here? My great mis- Shortly after Isabella's escape, the doctor, eries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my Kenneth, brings news of Hindley's death. Nelly great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, wants Edgar to take in Hindley's son Hareton, but and he remained, I should still continue to be; and, Heathcliff vows that if they take Hareton from him ifall else remained, and he were annihilated, the Uni- he will take his child from Isabella. He asserts that

3 1 0 N o v e I s f o r S t u d e n t s W u t h e r i n g H e i g h t s he wants to see if the same mistreatment will af- ton in his attempts to educate himself. Nelly is now fect Hindley's child as Hindley's abuse affected employed at the Heights, and while the lovers en- Heathcliff. joy a walk on the moor, Nelly informs Lockwood Twelve years later, Isabella, near death, writes of Heathcliff's death, which followed four days of starvation to her brother and asks him to care for her son af- during which he was haunted by the vi- sion of his beloved ter her death. Edgar brings Linton home, but Heath- Catherine. He was buried, as requested, next to Catherine, with the cliff immediately demands custody of his son. He adjoining reveals to Nelly his plan to see his child ruling over sides of the two coffins removed so that their ashes both Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. could mingle, and the country folks claim that a person walking on the moors will sometimes see Young Catherine, daughter of Catherine and the ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine wandering Edgar, is not told that her cousin is so close by, but their old playground. one day on a walk on the moor, she meets Heath- cliff and Hareton and is reacquainted with Linton. Heathcliff tells Nelly that he hopes Linton and Catherine will fall in love and young marry. He rimffm-I boasts about how he has turned Hareton, a natu- rally intelligent boy, into an ignorant brute, while Ellen Dean raising his own weak and selfish son up as Hare- One of two ton's master. When Edgar hears of his daughter's the novel's narrators, Nelly is loyal visit, he does his best to impress on her the evil na- but conventional, and reads very little into events. In ture of Heathcliff and the importance of his introduction to Wuthering Heights, David avoiding Daiches the Heights. Catherine nevertheless commences a remarks on the contrast between the tone of the narrative and the of secret correspondence with Linton, which only high drama the goings- ends when Nelly discovers the love letters and on of the story: "It is to what might be called the sublime threatens to tell Catherine's father. how- deadpan of the telling that the extraordi- Heathcliff, nary force of the novel be ever, convinces Catherine that Linton is dying of can largely attributed.... grief because of their broken correspondence, and At no point does Nelly throw up her hands and ex- Nelly reluctantly agrees to accompany Catherine claim: 'For God's sake, what is going on here? What kind of on a visit to the Heights. That visit leads to a se- people are they?"' For instance, af- ries of clandestine visits by young Catherine to the ter Heathcliff has spent the night in the Linton's garden his Heights. Edgar puts a stop to the visits, but finally bashing head against a tree trunk, Nelly notices "several splashes of blood about agrees to let Catherine and Linton meet for weekly the bark of the tree, and his strolls on the moor. During the second of these ex- hands and forehead were both cursions, Heathcliff, knowing that Edgar is near stained; probably the scene I witnessed was a rep- death, tricks Catherine and Nelly into entering etition of others acted during the night. It hardly Wuthering Heights, where he imprisons them and moved my compassion-it appalled me; still I felt reluctant forces Catherine to marry Linton. Catherine con- to quit him so." Nelly's familiarity with vinces Linton to help her escape, and she arrives at the actors is an important element of the narration, the Grange just in time to see her dying father. Dur- and a hazard of her station is that she must repeat- ing her absence from the Heights, Heathcliff forces edly be the bearer of news that will move the ac- Linton to make Heathcliff the inheritor of all of his tion in a fateful direction. On the eve of Heath- and Catherine's property. After her father's death, cliff's return, for example, Edgar and the first young Catherine is forced to return to the Heights Catherine look "wonderfully peaceful," and Nelly and tend to her dying husband. He dies shortly af- shrinks from having to announce Heathcliff, though ter her arrival, and Catherine, impoverished and duty compels her to, just as she shrinks later from alone, is forced to stay on at the Heights. having to tell Heathcliff of the first Catherine's death, but does. Nelly has a mind of her own, and The day after hearing this story, Lockwood she does not hesitate to query the first Catherine visits the Heights and gives notice that he will be about her reasons for marrying Edgar, or to sug- leaving for London. Returning months later to set- gest to Heathcliff at the end of the novel that he tle some business, he finds Thrushcross Grange de- might want to make his confession before dying. serted and matters much changed at the Heights. Nevertheless, the kind of passion that exists be- Hareton and Catherine, previously sworn enemies, tween Heathcliff and the first Catherine is far be- have fallen in love, and Catherine is aiding Hare- yond her imagination.

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Stillfrom thefilm Wuthering Heights, starring Merle Oberon and , 1939.

Nelly Dean has the looks and manners of a gentleman, the re- See Ellen Dean venge he plans is diabolical, and though she loves him, Cathy is not fooled. "He's a fierce, pitiless, Catherine Earnshaw wolfish man...: and he'd crush you, like a spar- Cathy Earmshaw is six when her father brings row's egg," she tells an infatuated Isabella. When back with him from Liverpool not the whip she Cathy and Heathcliffmeet for the last time, she tells asked for but the seven-year-old foundling Heath- him, "You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heath- cliff, who is soon her constant companion. Cathy cliff! ... I shall not be at peace." She dies two hours is a "wild, wick slip," beautiful, and "much too fond after midnight, having given birth to a "puny, seven of Heathcliff." Though capable of sweetness, she months' child." likes "to act the little mistress," and it is the aware- ness of the social differences between her and Cathy Earnshaw Heathcliff that lead her, despite her love for him, See Catherine Earnshaw to marry , whom she finds "handsome, and pleasant to be with." When Nelly implies that Frances Earnshaw her reasons are superficial, Cathy tells of her plan Wife of Hindley. Dies after giving birth to to use Edgar's money to help Heathcliff to rise. "It Hareton. would degrade me to marry Heathcliff, now," she tells Nelly, "so he shall never know how I love Hareton Earnshaw him"; yet "he's more myself than I am.... Nelly, I The son of Frances and , am Heathcliff." Five months after Cathy's marriage Hareton, too, is initially targeted by Heathcliff as to Linton, during which time Nelly observes that an object of revenge, and is degraded by him. But the couple seem to be increasingly happy, Heath- Heathcliff develops a grudging affection for the cliff returns, transformed. Their "mutual joy" at boy, favoring him over his own weakling son, Lin- seeing each other again is undeniable, and from that ton, and when Heathcliff dies, Hareton weeps over point on Cathy lives with a painfully divided heart. his body. Nelly sees him as "owning better quali- She refuses to respond to Edgar's request that she ties than his father ever possessed. Good things lost choose between the two men. Although Heathcliff among a wilderness of weeds." Hareton is, how-

3 1 2 N o v e I s f o r S t u d e n t s W u t h e r i n g H e i g h t s ever, transformed by his love for Catherine, who teaches him to read. Hindley Earnshaw Hindley Earnshaw, the first Catherine's brother, is fourteen when Heathcliff is brought to MHedia Wuthering Heights. Hindley hates and envies him because Mr. Earnshaw clearly favors the new boy. Adaptations Hindley continually degrades Heathcliff, a habit that intensifies after the death of Mr. Earnshaw. Af- Wuthering Heights continues to inspire film- ter the death of his beloved wife Frances, Hindley makers: adaptations include those by William resorts to drinking and gambling, and neglects both Wyler, starring Laurence Olivier and Merle his sister Catherine and his son Hareton. Upon Oberon, 1939, available from HBO Home Video Heathcliff's return to Wuthering Heights after a and Home Vision Cinema; by Robert Fuest, star- three-year absence, five months after Edgar Linton ring Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall, and the first Catherine have married, Hindley be- 1970, available from Congress Entertainment, friends Heathcliff in the hopes of winning money Karol Video, The Video Catalog; a reworking from him. Blaming Hindley for the loss of the first under the title "Abismos de pasion", by Luis Catherine, Heathcliff ruthlessly encourages Hind- Buiiuel, starring Jorge Mistral and Irasema Dil- ley to drink and eventually wins Wuthering Heights ian, 1953, available from Xenon, Media Home from him. After Hindley dies, Heathcliff brutalizes Entertainment, Applause Productions; and by Hareton, though he eventually abandons the at- Peter Kosminsky, starring and tempt after the second and Hare- , 1992 (not released in the U.S., ton fall in love. but later broadcast on Turner Network Televi- sion). Mr. Earnshaw Sound recordings have been published by Lis- Father of Hindley and the first Catherine. He ten for Pleasure, 1981; Recorded Books, 1981, brings Heathcliff home into the family. He was and Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio, 1995. The strict with his children. novel was read by Michael Page and Laurel Merlington for an audio version, Brilliance Cor- Mrs. Earnshaw poration, 1992, entitled Wuthering Heights Mother of Hindley and the first Catherine. She Readalong, Lake Publishing Co., 1994. didn't protest the mistreatment of Heathcliff and died two years after he joined the Earnshaw house- * The novel has been adapted as a four-act opera hold. by Bernard Herrman, libretto by , 1950. An adaptation by Carlisle Floyd, Heathcliff who also wrote the libretto, in three acts was first performed in 1958. The novel was also On his return from a business trip to Liverpool, adapted for the stage by Charles Vance and pub- Mr. Earmshaw brings with him "a dirty, ragged, lished by Samuel French, 1990. black-haired" orphan from a Liverpool slum. The boy, seven-year-old Heathcliff, and the first Cather- ine Eamshaw are almost immediately inseparable. Hindley Eamshaw, however, is jealous of Mr. Earmshaw's obvious preference for Heathcliff, and he abuses him. Heathciffreturns the hatred. "From ing to be good." But later, overhearing a conver- the very beginning he bred bad feeling in the sation in which Cathy says it would degrade her to house," says Nelly Dean, one of the two narrators marry him, he steals away and does not return to of Wuthering Heights, about the force that has en- Wuthering Heights until five months after Cathy tered their lives. Heathcliff knows only two loyal- has married Edgar Linton. ties, to the first Cathy and to Mr. Earnshaw, and at Heathcliff is transformed on his return-"tall, Eamshaw's death he and Cathy "both set up a athletic, well-formed"-but he is hell-bent on heart-breaking cry." He tries to control his jealousy avenging the loss of Cathy, and he sets about de- over Cathy's growing friendship with Edgar Lin- stroying the inhabitants of both Wuthering Heights ton for her sake-"Nelly, make me decent, I'm go- and Thrushcross Grange with a fury. His assertion

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of what David Daiches, in his introduction to eternal damnation and the likelihood of everyone Wuthering Heights, calls Heathcliff's "natural he knows being bound for it, and he scolds con- claims" to Cathy "over the artificial claim of her stantly in a sometimes difficult-to-follow Yorkshire husband" is welcomed by Cathy, though the strain accent. As in the case of the narrators of the novel, eventually kills her. Heathcliff cruelly exploits Joseph's authenticity anchors the wilder elements Hindley, Isabella, Hareton, the second Catherine, of the story. Winifred Gerin observes in Reference and Linton, his own son. "I have no pity," he tells Guide to English Literature that "in creating such Nelly. Yet when the first Catherine dies, he is in- a character as Joseph, Emily Bronte showed that, consolable, bashing his head repeatedly against a undoubted visionary as she was, she also had her tree trunk: "I cannot live without my life! I cannot feet firmly planted on earth." live without my soul!" And he has an obvious af- fection for Hareton, despite his determination to de- Catherine Linton grade the boy. Heathcliff is largely incomprehen- Catherine Linton is the daughter of Cathy and sible to those around him, seemingly human and Edgar, beautiful, like her mother, but cooler. "Her inhuman, a walking contradiction. "Is Mr. Heath- anger was never furious, her love never fierce," cliff a man?" Isabella writes to Nelly, following her Nelly remarks about her. Although forced by marriage to him, "If so, is he mad? And if not, is Heathcliff to marry Linton Heathcliff, she gen- he a devil?" Toward the end of the novel Heath- uinely seems to care for her cousin. She is obvi- cliff confesses to Nelly that he no longer cares for ously less a force than her mother, but spirited revenge: "I have lost the faculty of enjoying their nonetheless, and refuses to be cowed by Heathcliff: destruction." As determined to join his "immortal "You are miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the love" as he once was to ruin his enemies, he tells devil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you- when die! I Nelly that he feels "a strange change coming," and, nobody will cry for you, you wouldn't at first put off by himself. Even how- be you!" Although Catherine is forgetting to eat, starves death, Hareton's loutishness, the sheer bleakness of their not compose his features, and Joseph re- ever, does existence them toward each other, and she devil has carried propels marks that he looks as though the teaches him to read. They fall in love, and the un- him off. derstanding at the end of the novel is that they will Catherine Heathcliff marry and go to live at Thrushcross Grange. See Catherine Linton Catherine Earnshaw Linton See Catherine Earmshaw Isabella Heathcliff See Isabella Linton Cathy Linton See Catherine Linton Linton Heathcliff Linton Heathcliff is the spoiled, weakling son Edgar Linton of Isabella and Heathcliff. He is forced by Heath- Edgar Linton is all the things Heathcliff is not: cliff to marry the second Catherine Linton to se- handsome, refined, kind, and patient, although the cure for Heathcliff, at Linton's death, Thrushcross first Cathy later describes Edgar and his sister Is- Grange. Nobody except the second Catherine Lin- abella as "spoiled children, [who] fancy the world ton likes Linton very much; the housekeeper at the was made for their accommodation." When Heath- Heights complains to Nelly that he is "a faint- cliff says he wishes he had Edgar's looks and hearted creature" who can't bear to have the win- breeding, Nelly retorts: "And cried for Mamma at dow open at night. His character serves the dual every turn, and trembled if a country lad heaved purpose of providing a mechanism whereby Heath- his fist against you, and sat at home all day for a cliff can acquire Thrushcross Grange and re-create shower of rain." On the other hand, Nelly observes the Edgar-Cathy-Heathcliff triangle of the previous that the first Cathy's spells of bad humor are "re- generation. Linton dies soon after his marriage to spected with sympathizing silence by her husband," the second Catherine. and that Edgar has a "deep-rooted fear of ruffling her humor." Linton loves his wife genuinely, but Joseph he is ineffectual. Unable to get her to choose be- Joseph is the curmudgeonly, judgmental long- tween himself and Heathcliff, he retreats to his li- time servant at Wuthering Heights. He believes in brary, oblivious to her distress until alerted to it by

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Nelly. After his wife dies, Edgar sits all night be- David Daiches describes his general timidity: "he side her body. Taking the measure of both Edgar had aroused the love of 'a fascinating creature,' but and Hindley, Nelly remarks that Linton "displayed retreated in panic when he realized it." Mr. Lock- the true courage of a loyal and faithful soul: he wood foreshadows the theme of cruelty that per- trusted God; and God comforted him." Hindley, vades the novel, rubbing the wrist of the ghost of with the stronger head, proved the worse and the first Catherine Linton across a broken pane of weaker man. glass in an attempt to loosen her grasp of his hand. Mr. Lockwood serves to vary the narrative per- Isabella Linton spective of the novel; his view of events in the pre- Like her brother Edgar, Isabella is perceived sent contrasts with Nelly's retrospective view. by the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights as spoiled. Having glimpsed them through a window quarrel- Zillah ing amid the splendor of Thrushcross Grange, A servant at Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff tells Nelly, "We laughed outright at the petted things, we did despise them!" Nelly observes that Isabella is "infantile in manners, though pos- sessed of keen wit, keen feelings, and a keen tem- per, too, if irritated." On Heathcliff's return to Wuthering Heights after the first Cathy's marriage Love and Passion to Edgar, Isabella becomes infatuated with him, de- Passion, particularly unnatural passion, is a spite Cathy's warning that he "couldn't love a Lin- predominant theme ofWuthering Heights. The first ton." At first indifferent, Heathcliff responds when Catherine's devotion to Heathcliffis immediate and he realizes he might gain control of her property absolute, though she will not marry him, because through marriage. Once she is committed to him, to do so would degrade her. "Whatever our souls he cruelly mistreats her. Despite the abuse, Isabella are made of, his and mine are the same, and Lin- refuses to help Hindley in his attempt to murder ton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, Heathcliff, though she has enough of a sense of or frost from fire." Although there has been at least self-preservation to escape back to Thrushcross one Freudian interpretation of the text, the nature Grange, where she crushes her wedding ring with of the passion between Catherine and Heathcliff a poker. "I can recollect yet how I loved him," she does not appear to be based on sex. David Daiches tells Nelly, "and can dimly imagine that I could still writes, "Ultimate passion is for her rather a kind of be loving him, if-." Pregnant, Isabella flees to recognition of one's self-one's true and absolute London, where she bears Linton. She dies when self-in the object of passion." Catherine's passion Linton is twelve, after which the boy comes to live is contrasted to the coolness of Linton, whose "cold with Heathcliff at the Heights. blood cannot be worked into a fever." When he re- treats into his library, she explodes, "What in the Mr. Linton name of all that feels, has he to do with books, when Father of Edgar and Isabella. He is the owner I am dying?" of Thrushcross Grange. Revenge Mrs. Linton Heathcliff' s devotion to Catherine, on the other Mother of Edgar and Isabella. She takes the hand, is ferocious, and when frustrated, he con- first Catherine in for a short while and exposed her ceives a plan of revenge of enormous proportions. to fine clothes and social behavior. Catherine's brother Hindley shares her passionate nature, though he devotes most of his energies to Mr. Lockwood degrading Heathcliff. In some respects the passion The other narrator of Wuthering Heights, Mr. that Catherine and Heathcliff share is so pure that Lockwood is, like Nelly Dean, conventional. But he it approaches a kind of spirituality. "I cannot ex- lacks Nelly's perception, and appears even a little press it," says Catherine, "but surely you and every- foolish. At first he judges Heathcliff to be a "capi- body have a notion that there is, or should be an tal fellow," and later he fantasizes a liaison with the existence of yours beyond you." In the characters second Catherine Linton. Several critics have re- of Heathcliff and Hindley, who both feel slighted marked on his name as hinting at a "locked or closed in love, Bronte draws a parallel between the need mind." In his introduction to Wuthering Heights, for love and the strength of revenge.

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The Earnshaws and the Lintons both own estates, whereas Heathcliff is a foundling and has nothing. The first Catherine plans to marry Linton to use her Topics for husband's money to raise Heathcliff's social stand- ing, thus freeing him from Hindley's domination. Further Her plan is foiled when Heathcliff disappears after hearing Catherine say that to marry him would de- Study grade her. When he returns, he exerts great efforts to do people out of their property: first Hindley, * What achievements of modern medicine have the second Catherine Linton. He reduced the high rates of maternal deaths in then Isabella, then takes revenge on Hareton by ensuring that the boy childbirth that were commonplace during the pe- is raised in ignorance, with loutish manners, so that riod of the novel? How have social factors com- The story comes promised advances in the treatment of tubercu- he will never escape his station. losis? full cycle when Catherine Linton teaches Hareton to read, thus winning his love. The understanding * What were the milestones in women's rights that at the end of the novel is that the couple will move have reduced the vulnerability of women like to Thrushcross Grange. the second Catherine Linton to loss of property?

* Explore how people grieve their dead in various Nature cultures around the world, and how these cus- "Wuthering" is a Yorkshire term for roaring of toms compare with Edgar's request in Wuther- the wind, and themes of nature, both human and ing Heights that Nelly "get mourning" for the nonhuman, are closely associated with violence second Catherine after Isabella's death. throughout the story. The local landscape is as storm-tossed as are the hearts of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights; cycles of births and deaths oc- cur as relentlessly as the cycles of the seasons. The characters feel themselves so intrinsically a part of Violence and Cruelty their environment that the first Catherine compares Closely tied to the theme ofrevenge, but some- her love for Edgar to "foliage in the woods," and times independent of it, are themes of cruelty and that for Heathcliff to "the eternal rocks beneath." sadism, which are a recurring motif throughout the In detailing his plan to debase Hareton, Heathcliff novel. Cruelty can be manifested emotionally, as says, "We will see if one tree will not grow as in Mr. Earnshaw's disdain for his natural-born son, crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!" or in the first Catherine's apparent rejection of The novel opens with a snowstorm, and ends with Heathcliff in favor of Edgar. The characters are the flowering of spring, mirroring the passions that given to physical cruelty as well. "Terror made me fuel the drama and the peace that follows its reso- cruel," says Lockwood at the outset of the story, lution. and proceeds to rub the wrists of the ghost Cather- ine against a broken windowpane in an effort to Supernatural free himself from her grasp. Hindley torments Heathcliff, as Heathcliff will later torment Hareton. There are many references in the novel to the And although he has no affection for her, Heath- supernatural, and even when the references seem cliff marries Isabella and then treats her so badly fairly literal, the characters do not seem to think that she asks Nelly whether he is a devil. Sadism them odd. When Lockwood first arrives, he en- is also a recurring thematic element. Heathclifftries counters the ghost of the first Catherine Linton, and to strangle Isabella's dog, and Hareton hangs a lit- his telling of the event to Heathcliff arouses not ter of puppies from the back of a chair. The first disbelief but a strange passion. The bond between Catherine's early refusal of Heathcliff has elements the first Catherine and Heathcliff is itself superhu- of masochism (self-abuse) in it, as does her letting man, and after she dies, Heathcliff implores her him back into her life, since her divided heart will spirit, "I pray one prayer-I repeat it till my tongue eventually kill her. stiffens-Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest, as long as I am living! You said I killed you-haunt Class Conflict me then!" At Edgar Linton's death, Heathcliff per- To the characters of Wuthering Heights, prop- suades the gravedigger to open Catherine's coffin, erty ownership and social standing are inextricable. and later confesses to Nelly that he has been

3 1 6 N o v e I s f o r S t u d e n t s W u t h e r i n g H e i g h t s haunted by Catherine's spirit for eighteen years. At to weather are everywhere. A violent storm blows the end of the novel, after Heathcliff's death, Nelly up the night Mr. Earnshaw dies; rain pours down reports to Lockwood a child's claim that he has the night Heathcliff runs off to London and again seen Heathcliffand a woman walking on the moors. the night of his death. There are many scenes of raw violence, such as the bulldog attacking Cather- ine and Isabella crushing her wedding ring with a poker. The supernatural is evoked in the many ref- erences to Heathcliff as diabolical (literally, "like the devil") and the descriptions of the ghost of the Narration first Catherine Linton. David Daiches points out in The power of Wuthering Heights owes much his introduction to Wuthering Heights that the ref- to its complex narrative structure and to the inge- erences to food and fire, and to what he calls do- nious device of having two conventional people re- mestic routine, help "to steady" the story and to late a very unconventional tale. The story is orga- give credibility to the passion. nized as a narrative within a narrative, or what some critics call "Chinese boxes." Lockwood is used to Structure open and end the novel in the present tense, first One of the major strengths of Wuthering person ("I"). When he returns to Thrushcross Heights is its formal organization. The design of Grange from his visit to Wuthering Heights sick the time structure has significance both for its use and curious, Nelly cheerfully agrees to tell him of two narrators and because it allows the signifi- about his neighbors. She picks up the narrative and cant events in the novel to be dated precisely, continues it, also in the first person, almost until though dates are almost never given explicitly. The the end, with only briefinterruptions by Lockwood. triangular relationship that existed between Heath- The critic David Daiches notes in his introduction cliff, Catherine, and Edgar is repeated in Heath- of Wuthering Heights the "fascinating counter- cliff's efforts to force young Catherine to marry point" of "end retrospect and present impression," Linton, though its resolution is ultimately different. and that the strength of the story relies on Nelly's On his arrival at Wuthering Heights, Lockwood familiarity with the main characters. sees the names "Catherine Earmshaw, Catherine Linton, Catherine Heathcliff' scratched into the Setting windowsill. In marrying Hareton, young Catherine The novel is set in the Yorkshire moors ofEng- Heathcliff will in turn become Catherine Earnshaw, land, even now a bleakly beautiful, sparsely popu- thus completing the circle. lated area of high rolling grassy hills, few trees, and scattered rocky outcroppings or patches of heather. The lowlands between the hills are marshy. The weather is changeable and, because the area is so open, sometimes wild. The exposed location of Wuthering Heights high on the moors is contrasted The Victorian Age (1837-1901) with the sheltered calm of Thrushcross Grange, England under the reign ofQueen Victoria was which is nestled in a soft valley. Both seats reflect in a prolonged phase of expansion. The Industrial the characters of those who inhabit them. The de- Revolution saw the transformation of a predomi- scriptions of both houses also reflect the influence nately agricultural economy to a factory economy. ofthe local architecture at the time ofBronte's writ- Millions would eventually flock to London in ing, which often incorporated a material called grit search of the new jobs, but Emily Bronte grew up stone. in the last days of rural England. The tenor of the times was conservative, and sensitive to society's Images and Symbolism unwillingness to accept women as authors, Emily, Emily Bront8's poetic vision is evident in the Charlotte, and Anne Bronte all published under imagery used throughout Wuthering Heights. male . Metaphors of nature and the animal kingdom are The tempestuous climate of northern England pervasive. For example, the first Catherine de- in Haworth, Yorkshire, left its mark on the Bronte scribes Heathcliff to Isabella as "an arid wilderness children, whose fascination with the expanse and of furze and whinstone," and as Catherine lies dy- storms of the moors is emphasized in the novel. For ing, Heathcliff foams "like a mad dog." References Emily, who was never happy far from home, the

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Compare & Contrast * Late 1700s: World economies are predomi- disease and cancer remain major killers, there is nately agrarian. no cure for AIDS, and many countries grapple 1847: England is in the midst of an Industrial with increasing costs of health care for aging Revolution whose effects will be felt worldwide. populations. Workers flock to cities from the countryside. Late 1700s: Inheritance in England passes from Today: World economies are increasingly the father to the first-born male. A procedure linked in a "global community." Intercultural called "strict settlement" must be invoked to by- communication and cultural diversity in the so- pass inheritance laws. called service economy are a direct result of ad- vances in transportation and communications. 1847: Full legal and economic equality for * Late 1700s: Life expectancy is short, owing to women is first championed in the United States harsh living and working conditions. Death in by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. childbirth is common. Today: Women worldwide have the right to 1847: Medical advances and improved public vote, except in a few Muslim countries. In the health and sanitation decrease maternal and in- United States, while the Equal Rights Amend- fant mortality. ment failed to obtain ratification, women in- Today: Though high-technology medicine of- creasingly bring successful sexual discrimination fers solutions to many medical problems, heart and sexual harassment suits against employers.

local moorland and valleys, and the grit stone ar- winds, and bitter, northern skies, and impassable chitecture typical of the age were the basis for the roads, and dilatory country surgeons!" Emily setting of Wuthering Heights. Bronte's older sisters Maria and Elizabeth died of Another influence on Bronte's writing was the tuberculosis before they were fifteen, and in folklore of the Yorkshire community. Tabitha Ack- Wuthering Heights, Edgar and Linton also die of royd, a maid in the Brontd household, was a rich wasting diseases. Maria Branwell's death when source of stories about fairies and ghosts. Refer- Emily was only three may be the inspiration for the ences to folk beliefs and rituals are scattered many motherless children in Wuthering Heights. throughout Wuthering Heights, particularly with A period of mourning was formally observed reference to the deathwatch traditional in York- after the death of a family member. The appropri- shire, as when Edgar sits the entire night with ate period of mourning depended on whether the Catherine's body after her death, or to rituals sur- deceased was a close or distant relative. For ex- rounding funerals such as "bidding," an invitation ample, a year's mourning was usually observed for to accompany a body to the grave. Extending or a husband or wife, and a week for the death of a withholding such an invitation gave some indica- second cousin. In Wuthering Heights Nelly is "bid tion of the state of family relationships. to get mourning"-that is, to lay out dark clothes- for Catherine, whose aunt Isabella has died. Illness, Death, and Funeral Customs As the children of a minister, the Brontes felt Owing to the unforgiving climate and poor the influence ofreligion both at home and at school. heating, illness and death were common occur- A fire-and-brimstone instructor may have been rences in Yorkshire at the time the novel was cre- Emily Bronte's inspiration for Joseph, who can ated. Ill partly as a result of his stay at Wuthering barely speak a word that does not invoke hellfire. Heights, Lockwood laments, "Oh, these bleak Critics also suspect that this influence is at the root

3 1 8 N o v e I s f o r S t u d e n t s W u t h e r i n g H e i g h t s of Lockwood's dream at the beginning of Wuther- ing Heights, in which he is forced to listen to the Reverend Jabes Branderham preach a sermon di- vided into 490 parts. Literary Traditions and Whereas Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre won im- mediate acclaim, the wild passion and coarseness of Wuthering Heights baffled its readers. In an essay in Reference Guide to English Literature, Winifred Gerin attributes the failure of the novel to its theme of indestructibility of the spirit, which was a "sub- ject ... far removed from the general run of Victo- rian fiction-it belonged, if anywhere, to the gothic tradition, still being followed by Mary Shelley with her Valperga (1823) in Emily Bronte's childhood." The time in which the action of Wuthering Heights takes place, and its themes of nature and the individual, coincides with the Romantic Move- ment in Europe, a turning away from reason and intellect in favor of free and more mystical ideas, inspired in part by the French Revolutionary War of 1789. "," thefarm which served as a modelfor the one in Wuthering Heights. Inheritance and Social Position Social position and respectability in this period were directly tied to possession of property. A country house owned by landed gentry like the erty. A typical union was one of a woman who mar- Earnshaws and the Lintons was known as a "seat," ried her father's brother's son, which kept the seat a broad term that included both the tangible assets of the bride's family under their control. In Wuther- (for instance, the house and land) and intangible as- ing Heights, in a perverse twist, the second Cather- sets (for instance, the family name and any hered- ine Linton marries her father's sister's son, and in itary titles) of the family that owned it. In Wuther- the absence of a strict settlement ends up losing her ing Heights, the first Catherine tells Nelly that she family's seat. is marrying Edgar Linton because to marry Heath- Landholding families typically maintained a cliff would degrade her (they would be beggars) large staff of servants who fulfilled the functions and because she plans to use Linton's money to (for a man) of steward, valet, butler, and gardener, help Heathcliff to rise. or (for a woman) of lady's maid, housekeeper, Seats passed from father to first-born male or cook, and nurse. In a household the size of Wuther- to the next closest male relative if there were no ing Heights, whose inhabitants did not entertain, sons in a family. The only way around this process combining functions made economic sense. In the was to invoke a device called "strict settlement," in novel Joseph serves as both valet and steward, and force between 1650 and 1880, which allowed a Ellen as housekeeper, though her duties are fairly father to dispose of his holdings as he liked through broadly defined. a trustee. Because Edgar Linton dies before ensur- ing that his daughter Catherine will inherit Thrushcross Grange, the land passes first to her hus- band, Linton, and after Linton's death to his father, Heathcliff. Initial reception to the publication of Wuther- In contrast to earlier times when incest was ing Heights in 1847 was overwhelmingly negative. forbidden by law, in eighteenth-century England Published in a volume that also included her sister marriage between first cousins was looked upon fa- Anne Bronte's first novel, , Emily's vorably as a way of preserving position and prop- brooding tale managed to find favor only with Syd-

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ney Dobell and Algemon Charles Swinburne. "I ture and attributes his attraction in part to his as- have just read over Wuthering Heights," wrote sociation with the landscape and to his honesty, Charlotte Bronte in her preface to the 1850 edition however brutal. This last idea highlights one of of her sister's book, "and, for the first time, have many ambiguities of the novel, a strength often obtained a clear glimpse of what are termed (and, commented on by scholars and critics. "Bronte's perhaps, really are) its faults.... Wuthering Heights defiance of rigid categories and her refusal to di- must appear a rude and strange production ... in a vide people into saints and sinners," says Win- great measure unintelligible, and-where intelligi- nifrith, "is very un-Victorian.... Heathcliff's cru- ble-repulsive." The preface was intended as a de- elty and Cathy's selfishness do not prevent them fense of the writer and the work and must have from being attractive. The Lintons are spoiled and achieved its aim, for the second edition of the novel weak, but Isabella's and her son's sufferings and was received more favorably. Algernon Charles Edgar's devotion to his wife win them sympathy." Swinbume, writing in The Athenaeum in 1883, ad- Winnifrith dismisses the oft-cited effort to fit the mitted to the awkward construction and clumsy novel into an overall framework of storm and method of narration "which no reader ... can un- calm-that is, storm and calm opposed in the per- dertake to deny," although these were minor faults. sons of Catherine and Heathcliff, but fused in the He was more troubled by "the savage note or the union ofCatherine and Hareton-proposed by Lord sickly symptom of a morbid ferocity," but was David Cecil in Early Victorian Novelists (1934) as overall so impressed by the "special and distinctive too schematic. He argues that some modern socio- character of its passion" that "it is certain that those logical interpretations ignore the book's enigmatic who do like it will like nothing very much better ending. Other modem critical articles on the novel, in the whole world of poetry or prose." he says, "tend to be eccentric or to deal with only a very small section of the book." In an essay in A monograph by Charles Percy Sanger pub- Reference Guide to English Literature, Winifred lished in 1926 marked a major turning point in crit- Gerin describes the message of "the indissoluble ical appreciation of the sophistication and com- nature of earthly love" as "profoundly metaphysi- plexity of the writing in Wuthering Heights, and cal," its original failure easily explained by its today the novel is indisputably considered a work gothic atmosphere, no longer in fashion at the time of genius. That critics cannot agree whether the of publication. Gerin attributes the novel's "curi- book falls more neatly into the Gothic or Roman- ous and lasting appeal" to the "unflagging excite- tic literary tradition is accepted as further evidence ment of the plot; the wild moorland setting; [and] of the work's uniqueness. In his introduction to the ... the originality of the characters." She calls novel, David Daiches argues that the central ques- Heathcliff s self-induced death by starvation "one tion of Wuthering Heights is "Who and what is of the most powerful and daring climaxes in Eng- Heathcliff?", a question Daiches argues can be an- lish fiction." swered only by looking at the effect Heathcliff has "Whether it is right or advisable to create on those around him. While Daiches agrees with things like Heathcliff, I do not know," wrote Char- the conventional view that the between relationship lotte Bronte at the end of the preface to the 1850 Heathcliff and the first is Catherine "curiously" edition. "I scarcely think it is. But this I know; the sexless, he does find Moser's persuasive Thomas writer who possesses the creative gift owns some- (1962) case for recurring sexual symbolism in the thing of which he is not always novel. Daiches echoes other critics in master-something praising the that at times strangely wills and works for itself." book's narrative structure and other elements of its It is English literature's gain that Emily lost her- organization. He places special emphasis on the de- self in her creation. tails of everyday living, and descriptions of food and hearth, that help to anchor the story and to make it believable. "One of Emily Bronte's most extra- ordinary achievements in this novel is the domi- ciling of the monstrous in the ordinary rhythms of life and work, thereby making it at the same time Donna C. Woodford less monstrous and more disturbing." Tom Win- In the following essay, Woodford, a doctoral nifrith, in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, candidate at Washington University, explores how picks up on the idea of Heathcliff as a force of na- an examination ofthe patterns that recur through-

3 2 0 N o v e l s f o r S t u d e n t s W u t h e r i n g H e i g h t s out Wuthering Heights provide a useful way of reading and interpreting the novel. Wuthering Heights was the only novel Emily What Bronte ever published, and both it and the book of poetry she published with her sisters were Do I Read printed under the pen name, Ellis Bell, a name which Emily chose because she was afraid works Next? published under a woman's name would not be taken seriously. Emily Bronte died shortly after * The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Bronte her book was published and just prior to her thir- (1910) is a collection of Bronte's metaphysical tieth birthday, but her single novel remains one of poetry. the classics of English literature. Wuthering * The memorable heroine of Charlotte Bronte's Heights is a complex novel, and critics have ap- Jane Eyre (1847) finds love with her moody em- proached it from many different standpoints. Fem- ployer, Mr. Rochester, but manages not to give inist critics have examined the strong female char- up her independence. acters and their oppression by and resistance to violent men. Marxist critics have pointed to the * George Eliot's Middlemarch: A Study ofProvin- class differences that set in motion the primary cial Life (1871-72) is a portrait of life in a small conflicts of Wuthering Heights, and psychoana- rural town. George Eliot was the pseudonym of lytic critics have analyzed the dreams that fill the Mary Ann Evans. book. While all of these approaches are useful and * Frankenstein (1818) is Mary Wollstonecraft valid, Wuthering Heights is, above all, a book of Shelley's gothic tale of destructive pride. Dr. repeating cycles and recurring patterns, and per- Victor Frankenstein makes a living monster out haps the simplest way to begin an examination of of inanimate matter and is ultimately destroyed this book is by tracing the course and resolution by his creation. of some of these patterns. When Lockwood spends the night at the Heights, he finds the window ledge covered with "a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small-Catherine Earnshaw, here and there mother. Though she is softened by the characteris- varied to Catherine Heathcliff and then again to tics which she has inherited from her father, she has Catherine Linton." Indeed, the repetition and vari- "the Eamshaw's handsome, dark eyes" and, as ation of these four names, Catherine, Earnshaw, Nelly states, she has the same "capacity for intense Heathcliff, and Linton, fills the book just as the attachments" as her mother. Similarly, Hareton is a writing fills the window ledge. The original Cather- gentler version of his oppressor and foster father, ine begins life as Catherine Earnshaw. In what Heathcliff. Though Heathcliffdoes his best to make Terry Eagleton in Case Studies In Contemporary Hareton a tool of his revenge against the first Criticism: Wuthering Heights calls "a crucial act of Catherine's brother Hindley Earnshaw, he succeeds self-betrayal and bad faith," she rejects the oppor- instead in creating a reproduction of himself. He re- tunity to become Catherine Heathcliff and instead veals his own knowledge of this strange turn of becomes Catherine Linton. She then gives birth to events when he tells Nelly, "Hareton [seems] a per- another Catherine Linton, who enters the world sonification of my youth .... the ghost of my im- only hours before her mother leaves it, and this sec- mortal love, of my wild endeavours to hold my ond Catherine first marries Linton Heathcliff, be- right, my degradation, my pride, my happiness, and coming Catherine Heathcliff, and finally, at the end my anguish." Thus, even more than the reunion of of the book, becomes engaged to Hareton Earn- Catherine's and Heathcliff's ghosts, the union of shaw. The cycle of names thus comes full circle as their spiritual descendants gives the reader the im- this final marriage will give the second Catherine pression that a great wrong has finally been set right. the original name of the first. In addition to being later versions of Heath- At the same time, Catherine's marriage with cliff and the first Catherine, Hareton and the sec- Hareton completes another cycle-the union of ond Catherine are the last in a long line of orphans souls for which the reader has longed. The second and outcasts. In an article in American Imago Philip Catherine is in many ways a reincarnation of her K. Wion has observed that the absence of mothers

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in Wuthering Heights has a profound effect on the patterns by making his child lord of the Earnshaws identities of the orphaned children, and certainly and Lintons, only results in the reestablishment of the book is full of orphaned and abandoned char- an old pattern. Heathcliff, the former victim of acters seeking fulfillment through union with oth- tyranny, becomes yet another tyrannical man rul- ers. Heathcliff, of course, is a foundling taken in ing Wuthering Heights. This cycle is only broken by Mr. Earnshaw, and after the old man's death when, after Heathcliff's death, the property is Hindley makes him an outcast. The first Catherine, granted to the second Catherine, the first woman in also orphaned by Earnshaw's death, becomes still the book to own her own property. Her marriage more isolated after Heathcliff's departure. Heath- to Hareton will, of course, make her property his, cliff has been her one true companion, so much a but it seems unlikely that his "honest, warm, intel- part of herself that she tells Nelly, "if all else per- ligent nature" will allow him to become a tyrant ished, and he remained, I should still continue to like his predecessors. The pattern of violent men be; and, if all else remained, and he were annihi- ruling the Heights, like so many other patterns in lated, the Universe would turn to a mighty the book, ends with the death of Heathcliff and the stranger." The loss of her soul mate thus leaves her marriage of the second Catherine and Hareton. alone in the world, and her death, likewise, orphans Source: Donna C. Woodford, in an essay for for him for a second time, leaving him "lonely, like the Students, Gale, 1997. devil, and envious like him." The next generation fares no better. Linton Heathcliff loses his mother and is raised by a father who despises him; Hare- Annette R. Federico ton's mother dies shortly after his birth, and the In thefollowing essay, Federico maintains that death ofhis alcoholic and abusive father leaves him Wuthering Heights is a bildungsroman-a novel penniless and at the mercy of Heathcliff. Likewise, which outlines the initiation of a young character the second Catherine is born only hours before her into adulthood-focusing on the development of mother's death, and the death of her father leaves young Cathy Linton rather than that ofher mother. her "destitute of cash and friends." Once again, it is the marriage of Hareton and Catherine that will In their study of nineteenth-century women bring this cycle of orphanhood to a close. The writers, The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra M. housekeeper, Nelly, proudly tells the tenant Lock- Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue persuasively that wood that they are both "in a measure, [her] chil- because the story of Wuthering Heights is built dren," and the union ofher two charges finally ends around a central fall-generally understood to be the progression of lonely, isolated, orphaned indi- Catherine and Heathcliff s anti-Miltonic fall from viduals. hell to heaven-"a description of the novel as in part a Bildungsroman about a girl's passage from Heathcliff s death and the second Catherine's 'innocence' to 'experience' (leaving aside the pre- gaining control of the property also bring to an end cise meaning of these terms) would probably be the series of tyrannical men who rule the Heights widely accepted." with violence and curses. The first Mr. Earnshaw is easily vexed, and "suspected slights of his au- This is an interesting interpretation, and bril- thority nearly [throw] him into fits." Hindley, Mr. liantly demonstrated. But like other views of Earnshaw's successor, is still worse. He threatens Wuthering Heights as a feminine Bildungsroman, to "demolish the first who puts [him] out of tem- the focus of development is Catherine, and by as- per," and his abuse of Heathcliff is "enough to sociation her male doppelganger Heathcliff. The make a fiend of a saint." Heathcliff, in his turn, emphasis upon the first generation of the Heights does turn out to be a fiend, and deserves the term is, ofcourse, important, and certainly Catherine and "Devil daddy" with which young Hareton christens Heathcliff suffer their own peculiar rites of passage him. He takes pleasure in inflicting on Hindley's in their search for identity and wholeness. And yet son the same abuse which Hindley had given it is curious that the tortured first generation of Heathcliff because he wants to see "if one tree Wuthering Heights fail to develop a mature under- won't grow as crooked as another, with the same standing of themselves and others-in fact, Cather- wind to twist it," and he values his own son only ine and Heathcliff actually shrink from full partic- because he wants "the triumph of seeing [his] de- ipation in adult life, regressing into the adolescent scendent fairly lord of their estates; [his] child hir- preoccupation with self and the desperate need to ing their children, to till their father's lands for feel loved. Catherine, especially, is not so much wages." Thus, even Heathcliff's plot to reverse past struggling to grow up as she is struggling not to: it

3 2 2 N o v e I s f o r S t u d e n t s W u t h e r i n g H e i g h t s is significant that it is the "waif' not the woman In young Cathy, Bronte gives us a woman whose who appears in Lockwood's terrifying dream. acquired humility, patience, and affection yield So the critical view of Catherine and Heath- what promises to be a satisfying marriage and a cliff as Bildungsroman protagonists neglects these mutual broadening of experience. More than her characters' inability to interpret experience realis- mother, Cathy represents a successful passage tically and face the limitations of adulthood. In fact, through the difficult rites ofadolescence: the search in terms of the first generation, Wuthering Heights for self, and the sharing of self with others. is not a Bildungsroman at all, but an Entwickslun- If one looks closely at the novel, it becomes groman, a novel of mere physical passage without clear that Cathy and Hareton are not merely wa- psychological development. Catherine and her tered down versions of Catherine and Heathcliff, male soul-mate remain stubbomly adolescent from as Richard Chase suggests. Although the strange, beginning to end; granted, they are triumphant, re- transcendental love of the first generation of the bellious, passionate characters, and Emily Bronte Heights is more stirring, more piquant than the set- is obviously celebrating the untamed and undisci- tled affections of Cathy and Hareton, it is only be- plined spirit of adolescent love. But in view of this cause their type of frenzied passion is so rare-and first generation, Wuthering Heights is less a novel so typical of adolescence. It is well to ask why of development than a novel of arrested childhood. Catherine marries Edgar at all, considering her feel- It is actually with Catherine's death in childbirth ings for Heathcliff; her naive belief that she can that Bronte's Bildungsroman begins. In fact, the have both Edgar-who represents culture and se- second half of Wuthering Heights and the concern curity-and Heathcliff, who is the embodiment of with young Cathy is a fascinating variation of the sexual and natural energy, proves her complete in- prototypic novel of female education in the nine- ability to understand reality outside of her own nar- teenth century, a dramatization of the struggle to row perspective. When Nelly Dean suggests that relinquish childhood for the duties of womanhood by marrying Edgar, Catherine will lose Heathcliff, in the most traditional, romantic capacity: marriage she is incredulous: "Oh, that's not what I intend- with the man of one's choice. Cathy emerges from that's not what I mean! I shouldn't be Mrs. Linton a relatively happy childhood and a lonely adoles- were such a price demanded! He'll be as much to cence as an assertive, sharing, and contented adult me as he has been all his lifetime. Edgar must shake who is prepared to accept the responsibilities and off his antipathy and tolerate him, at least. He will limitations of marriage. when he learns my true feelings...." It is obvious Cathy's marriage to Hareton is in a sense a re- that Catherine is entering marriage with the stub- vision of her mother's unsuccessful marriage to born adolescent sensibility that she can have her Edgar Linton, and a significant role reversal of the cake and eat it, too. Of course, this has been her traditional feminine Bildungsroman in which a spoiled way of looking at life all along; many times woman can achieve intellectual and social ad- in the novel Bronte portrays Catherine as a selfish, vancement only through marriage. For example, the demanding, manipulative child. "I demand it!" is, elder Catherine looks at marriage as a means of in fact, Catherine's favorite expression, and com- achieving outward sophistication, as well as an es- pletely consistent with the adolescent determina- cape from mental and emotional stagnation: Edgar tion to have everything. is the man who will define her, who will shape her By contrast, young Cathy gradually develops a identity and give her status-"He will be rich, and sensitivity towards the feelings and needs of others. I shall be the greatest woman of the neighborhood, This is most explicit in her devotion to her father, and I shall be proud to have such a husband," she Edgar Linton-and a complete contrast to Cather- tells Nelly Dean. Catherine's selfish and short- ine's "naughty delight" in provoking Mr. Earnshaw. sighted attitude toward marriage is not only in- The young Cathy tells Nelly, "I fret about nothing dicative of her childish sensibilities, but under- on earth except papa's illness.... And I'll never- scores the traditional theme of the feminine never-oh, never, while I have my senses, do any- Bildungsroman-that is, the woman must seek thing to vex him. I love him better than myself...." knowledge by attaching herself to a knowledgeable Cathy's comparatively happy childhood has cer- male. Bronte varies this theme in her description tainly influenced her idealized view of Edgar Lin- of young Cathy's courtship with Hareton; instead ton, and she is naturally submissive to patriarchal of marrying to be advanced, Bronte's true female authority. But Cathy is not without spirit; she ex- Bildungsroman protagonist marries in order to ad- hibits the typical adolescent preoccupation with vance the intellectual and moral status of the male. love intrigues, and shares her mother's rebellious-

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ness and scorn for those who interfere with her mere suggestion of Cathy loving Linton is, "Lov- plans. The important difference between the two ing! Pretty loving indeed, and both times together generations is in the nature of the rebellion; Cather- you have seen Linton hardly four hours in your ine's disregard for others- all others, except her life!" That Cathy is able to open her mind to this other-self, Heathcliff-has a cruel, manipulative objective, adult point of view is a credit to her ma- quality that takes pleasure in deceitfulness and in turity, and something the older Catherine never "punishing" others for their lack of devotion to her. learned to do. Her many melodramatic "scenes" illustrate Cather- In her relationship to Linton, Cathy begins to ine's acting talent in the service of narcissism: as a learn that her desires are complex and that her ex- child, after an argument with Edgar Linton, she says perience of reality must be reconciled to actual re- to him, ". ..get away! And now I'll cry-I'll cry my- ality-in other words, her view of Linton Heath- self sick!" and she proceeds to deliver a perfect fit cliff as "a pretty little darling" must be reconciled of weeping which softens poor Edgar's heart. to Nelly's less generous description: "The worst- Catherine never outgrows these willful displays of tempered bit of a sickly slip that ever struggled into mad emotion, and by feigning a fit to arouse her its teens!" In learning to distinguish between what husband's concern, she ultimately brings about her she thinks she wants (Linton) and what she really own death. She begs Nelly to tell Edgar she is "in wants (an energetic and empathetic companion), danger of being seriously ill.... I want to frighten Cathy begins to achieve the disciplined growth and him.... Will you do so, my good Nelly? You are broad perspective which is the undertaking of the aware that I am in no way blameable in this mat- Bildungsroman protagonist. Simply the way she ter." Catherine often uses Nelly Dean as an instru- handles Heathcliff and her captivity at Wuthering ment for her guile: "... and remind Edgar of my Heights demonstrates an intelligent, unselfish, and passionate temper verging, when kindled, on practical kind of defiance which Catherine never frenzy." Certainly Catherine's last performance is displayed, because Catherine acknowledged only magnificent, if unsuccessful, for even Nelly is star- her own needs and desires. When Linton says, tled by "the aspect of death" her mistress is able to "You must obey my father, you must," Cathy assume. This undisciplined and domineering replies, "I must obey my own," reflecting her grow- child-the little girl who wanted her father to bring ing sense of responsibility. After her forced mar- her a whip from Liverpool-fails to mature at all riage, she is prepared to accept the consequences because she never learns to control herperverse ego- of her situation by loving Linton in spite of Heath- tism. That in her last breath Catherine looks to Nelly cliff-"You cannot make us hate each other!" "like a child reviving" aptly suggests the adolescent Cathy remains dignified and controlled, and speaks spirit of the woman's rebellion, a fatal result of "with a kind of dreary triumph: she seemed to have Catherine's last scene of "mad resolution." made up her mind to enter into the spirit of her fu- Unlike her mother's obsessiveness, young ture family, and draw pleasure from the griefs of Cathy's rebellion is actually a healthy curiosity her enemies." about her relatives at Wuthering Heights. Certainly If Nelly's narrative makes Cathy's behavior it is not surprising that a young and intelligent girl sound reminiscent of the older Catherine's venge- who has not been beyond the range of the park be- ful fits, it should be pointed out that Cathy's "en- fore the age of thirteen, whose only companion is emies" are real, not fancied, conspirators. Heath- her nurse, and whose only amusements are ram- cliff at this point has kidnapped her, kept her from bling on the moors and reading, should be eager to her dying father, abused her physically, and forced make new acquaintances. And of course Cathy her to marry his sickly, peevish son. Cathy's situ- passes through certain predictable stages of ado- ation is wretched, almost hopeless; when Linton lescence; but unlike her mother, she does pass dies shortly after their degenerate union, she is left through, and restlessness, romantic love, and re- at Wuthering Heights with only Hareton and Heath- bellion are only stages of her development. For ex- cliff. And here her bildung or education needs to ample, Cathy and Linton Heathcliffs "love affair" be emphasized. Part of education and development is typical of the adolescent absorption with ro- is arriving at an understanding of one's value; this, mantic notions, and the fact that the relationship is I would argue, is the major undertaking of adoles- somehow taboo makes it all the more alluring. cence. The older Catherine never sees herself real- Cathy exaggerates the importance of her love let- istically. She has notions of superiority and self im- ters, weeping and pleading to Nelly "to spare one portance that can be justified only in terms of her or two." Nelly Dean's common sense reply to the exceptionally passionate nature and her extraordi-

3 2 4 N o v e I s f o r S t u d e n t s W u t h e r i n g H e i g h t s nary bond to Heathcliff. Catherine's immature and cause theirs is the tale of arrested childhood, a fu- narrow vision cannot imagine that she is not the rious protest against the necessity of growing up. central concern in everyone else's life. It is almost Perhaps Cathy's struggle is less stormy and her fu- an epiphany when she says to Nelly, "How strange! ture too settled and neat to satisfy our lingering ado- I thought, though everybody hated and despised lescent admiration for rebellion, stubborn self sat- each other, they could not avoid loving me." De- isfaction, and emotional intensity. But in the world spite Heathcliff's furious devotion and her hus- of Wuthering Heights, as in our own, the passage band's genuine affection, Catherine always feels from innocence to experience is an awkward limbo, unloved and undervalued. Even as she is dying, she a thin papery wall, between two selves-between cries, "That is how I am loved!" like a self-pitying the waif outside the window, and the woman child. Nor does Catherine value the love of others: within. "I have such faith in Linton's love," she says, "that Source: Annette R. Federico, "The Waif at the Window: I believe I might kill him, and he wouldn't wish to Emily Bronte's Feminine 'Bildungsroman'," in The Victo- retaliate." Rarely if ever is Catherine described as rian Newsletter, No. 68, Fall, 1985, pp. 26-28. a loving person, one who is willing to give the self freely to another; even her professed love for Vereen M. Bell Heathcliff is strangely qualified by her claim, "I am In thefollowing essay, Bell comments on moral Heathcliff!" He seems to be only a kind of narcis- themes in Wuthering Heights, focusing in particu- sistic double. lar on the Biblical allusions in narrator Lock- Young Cathy of course wants to be loved, but wood's first dream. unlike her mother she is willing to take the risks and suffer the consequences of loving another. The two dreams Lockwood experiences early When she kisses Hareton in an effort to make in Wuthering Heights-the first of a visit to Gim- peace, she is conquering her pride and scorn-and merton Kirk, and the second of a visit from the her loneliness-in a way that truly suggests matu- ghost-child Catherine-have recently received crit- rity. She is beginning to see herself in relation to ical attention from Ruth M. Adams and Edgar others, beginning to develop a realistic adult per- Shannon. Of the two interpretations Shannon's spective. For example, Cathy knows she has been ["Lockwood's Dreams and the Exegesis of Wuther- unfair and cruel to Hareton, and sincerely tries to ing Heights, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Septem- improve their relationship in the best-the most ber, 1959] seems the most convincing in that it of- straightforward-way she knows how. "When I fers the only plausible source for the Biblical call you stupid, I don't mean anything-I don't allusion in the first dream; but in discussing the re- mean that I despise you," she explains, and by ar- lationship of the dream sermon and its title to the ticulating her meaning she arrives at a closer un- of Heathcliff and Catherine, Shannon ig- derstanding of the way she affects others. By hum- nores significant aspects of the dream itself, and bling herself, Cathy learns to master herself, and consequently the value of his interpretation seems by offering her friendship to Hareton, she is on the impaired somewhat, like Miss Adams's, by its own verge of a new, perhaps more traditional, kind of ingenuity. education: marriage. But the marriage of Cathy and The preacher that Lockwood hears in the first Hareton is not the traditional union of the male dream is Jabes Branderham, and the sermon is en- teacher/master and the female learner/servant. By titled "Seventy Times Seven and the First of the reversing the roles and making Cathy the educator, Seventy-first." Shannon identifies the sermon's Wuthering Heights takes on the aspects of a new text as Matt. 18: 21-22. In this passage Peter asks feminine Bildungsroman in which a woman emerg- Jesus, "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against ing from childhood and adolescence approaches me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?" and Je- marriage not merely as a means of social advance- sus answers, "I say not unto thee Until seven times: ment, or knowledge, or security, but as a mutual but, Until seventy times seven." "The First of the broadening of experience in which love balances Seventy-first," then, Shannon asserts, "advances power, with "both their minds tending to the same the idea of an unpardonable sin beyond the ordi- point." nary scale of human wrongs." The subsequent So it is with the second generation of the nightmare, he continues, connects this idea with Heights that Bronte begins her feminine Bil- Catherine, who appears as an outcast, and we are dungsroman. If Catherine and Heathcliff have a asked to believe that it is she who has committed more tumultuous and exciting story, it may be be- the unforgivable sin by marrying Edgar and deny-

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ing the "natural and elemental affinity" inherent in Moreover, it is manifestly forgiveness, and not, her love for Heathcliff. "Adhered to, [love] is at as Shannon suggests, sin that Jesus is talking about; once the source of joy and harmony; rejected or Peter in using the verb sin refers to a personal of- subverted, it becomes the fountainhead of enmity fense, not to mortal transgression; and of course and strife." what Jesus is urging is perpetual forgiveness, per- One cannot challenge Shannon's assertion petual charity, only he phrases it in finite terms. that thematically Wuthering Heights displays the The relation of the dream and its Biblical "destructive consequences of thwarted love"; but source to the tragedy that follows would seem ob- it seems both unfair and inexact to imply that the vious. It is the want of forgiveness-or phrased guilt devolves upon Catherine exclusively. More- positively, it is vengeance-that disrupts the moral over such an interpretation does not seem to be and social order of Wuthering Heights. Hindley substantiated by a close reading of the literal and cannot forgive Heathcliff for usurping the love of symbolic action of Lockwood's first dream. Shan- his father; so once he is master of the Heights, he non implies that the nature of the unpardonable sees that Heathcliff is methodically humiliated and sin is merely hinted at rather than defined, and degraded. Heathcliff s degradation in turn enforces that the reader is left to infer its nature from the a physical and psychological separation from second dream and from the the action that follows. Catherine which preordains marriage to Edgar Lin- In fact, however, through a curious kind of logi- ton. When Heathcliff acquires his fortune, he uses cal paradox, the unpardonable sin is defined the power it affords to avenge himself against Hind- within the action of the dream itself. Not long af- ley, whom he easily corrupts and destroys; against ter Branderham's sermon opens Lockwood begins Hareton and Catherine, the children, who of course to fidget, laboring under the four hundred and are innocent; against Isabella, who is equally ninety heads of discourse-each in itself the blameless; and through all of these, against Edgar length of a separate sermon. Finally, when Bran- Linton, whom he hates not just as a rival but as an derham reaches the "First of the Seventy-first" embodiment of everything effete and conventional Lockwood can bear it no longer; he rises and de- that erodes Catherine's spirit and finally destroys nounces Branderham as her. Father is turned against son, brother against the sinner of the sin that no Christian need pardon sister, servant against master, husband against wife, [emphasis supplied]. Seventy times seven times have lover against lover-"Every man's hand was I plucked up my hat and been about to depart-Sev- against his neighbour." enty times seven times have you preposterously forced me to resume my seat. The four hundred and Catherine is really less a perpetrator than a vic- ninety-first is too much. Fellow-martyrs, have at him! tim of this turmoil. She shares the guilt of course because her union with Edgar is the act which has- Branderham's reply is equally significant as he tens the tragedy. But hers is an error in judgment turns the congregation back upon Lockwood. rather than a mortal transgression; she marries "Thous art the Man!" cried Jabes.... "Seventy times Edgar in faith, naively assuming that she can pre- seven times didst thou gapingly contort thy visage- serve her intense sibling affinity with Heathcliff seventy times seven times did I take counsel with my and perhaps redeem him (and herself) as well. But soul-Lo, this is human weakness; this also may be absolved! The First ofthe Seventy-first is come [em- neither man can forgive her for loving the other and phasis supplied]. Brethren, execute upon him the what he represents. In his last interview with judgment written...." Catherine, Heathcliff tells her, "It is hard to for- give, and to look at those eyes, and feel those Lockwood himself, in other words, commits wasted hands.... I forgive what you have done to sin in ac- (in the dream at least) the unforgivable me. I love my murderer-but yours! How can I?" cusing Branderham of that sin no Christian need Torn between the two men, who inspire contrary pardon. That is, the unforgivable sin is to accuse impulses within her, she grows weak-almost as another of committing the unforgivable sin-or, an act of will-and ultimately dies. When she ap- more simply put, the absence of forgiveness, of for- pears to Lockwood as a ghost and an outcast, his bearance, of mercy. Each man forgives the other cruelty to her is merely a vivid physical image of four hundred and ninety times, as Jesus enjoins, but the emotional torment she has been made to suffer the four neither has the charity to forbear hundred during her mortal existence. and ninety-first offense; each then denounces the other, and chaos erupts-"Every man's hand was Among those whom Catherine loves there is against his neighbour." no one who can forgive her human error; there is

3 2 6 N o v e I s f o r S t u d e n t s W u t h e r i n g H e i g h t s love abundant for her, but it is always conditional Tom Winnifrith, "Emily Brontd," in Dictionary of Literary love that demands and punishes. Young Catherine Biography, Volume 21: Victorian Novelists before 1885, and Hareton, we are led to believe, eventually come edited by Ira B. Nadel and William E. Fredeman, Gale Re- to love with patience and understanding, but only search, 1983, pp. 55-67. after Heathcliff' s influence is removed. And Heath- cliff's rancor merely epitomizes the chief moral de- fect of all of the characters concerned. That defect would seem to be not so much the denial of love that Shannon suggests as love's failure to attain Miriam Allot, The Brontes: The Critical Heritage, Rout- charity, to achieve moral fulfillments as well as ledge, 1974. emotional intensity. A collection of criticism on the works of the Brontd Source: Vereen M. Bell, "Wuthering Heights and the Un- sisters, including reprints of early reviews of Wuther- forgivable Sin," in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 17, No. ing Heights and Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton 2, September, 1962, pp. 188-91. Bell and Charlotte Bronte's observations on her sis- ter's novel. Terry Eagleton, "Myths of Power: A Marxist Study on Wuthering Heights" in Case Studies In Contemporary Crit- icism: Wuthering Heights, St. Martin's, 1992, pp. 399-414. Eagleton analyzes the novel in terms of class differ- Charlotte Bronte, "Editor's Preface to the New [1850] Edi- ences in nineteenth-century England. tion of Wuthering Heights," in Wuthering Heights, edited by David Daiches, Penguin, 1965, pp. 37-41. Winifred Gerin, Emily Bronte: A Biography, Clarendon, 1971. David Daiches, editor, in the introduction to Wuthering Gerin discusses Emily Bronte's life and the effect of Heights, Penguin, 1965, pp. 7-29. her environment on her work. Winifred Gerin, "Emily Bronte," in Reference Guide to Eng- Philip K. Wion, "The Absent Mother in Wuthering Heights" lish Literature, edited by D. L. Kirkpatrick, St. James Press, in American Imago, Vol. 42, No. 2, 1985. 1991, pp. 300-02. Wion suggests that the early death of Emily Bronte's Algemon Charles Swinburne, "Emily Bronth," in The mother accounts for Brontd's portrayal of orphaned Athenaeum, No. 2903, June 16, 1883, pp. 762-63. characters in search of mother figures.

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