Wuthering Heights as a Victorian Novel

Arnold Shapiro

Wuthering Heights is in the same ethical and moral tradition as the other great Victorian

novels. Its criticism of society is as fierce as Charlotte Bronte's or Dickens'.... [Much] of the same

spirit interfuses the novels of Charlotte and Emily Bronte. For both writers, society and what

passes for civilization are synonymous with selfishness. Both show family life as a sort of open

warfare, a deadly struggle for money and power. Both see organized religion as ineffective or

hypocritical or so cold and harsh as to be inhumane and deflected from true Christian ideals. The

characters in Charlotte Bronte's first two novels have to face many of the same problems

confronting the characters in Wuthering Heights, and they reach the same conclusions. Both

William Crimsworth (in The Professor) and Jane Eyre reject the master-slave relationship as static

and stultifying and come to the teacher-pupil relationship as the one that allows for growth and the

fulfillment of human potential. Similarly, Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw see the futility

of Heathcliff's desire for revenge and domination (his seeing the world solely in terms of the

master-slave relationship when love fails him) and affirm civilization and civilized values in terms

of the teacher-pupil relationship.

At the outset Heathcliff is much like the orphans in other Victorian novels--Oliver Twist, or

Jane Eyre, or Pip. He is alone, an outcast, as much an "alien" or "interloper" among the Earnshaws

as Jane Eyre is in Gateshead Hall. The family here is defined much as Charlotte Bronte portrays it

in Jane Eyre or in her third novel, Shirley. First, the family closes against the stranger. Just as the

Reeds fear Jane simply because she is different from everyone else and thus seems to pose a

threat, so the Earnshaws are repelled by Heathcliff's appearance. He looks like a "gypsy brat" ...

and Mrs. Earnshaw is ready to fling him out of the house. Just as the Reeds force Jane to know her

"place" by making her live with the servants, the Earnshaws attempt to dehumanize Heathcliff. He

is an "it" to them ... , an object, not a person. He is given a first name, not a last name, as though to

emphasize that he can never be part of the family....

Heathcliff is as much a discord among the Earnshaws as Jane Eyre is among the Reeds. The

children are jealous of him. Old Mr. Earnshaw brought him home instead of the presents they had

expected. Hindley comes to regard his father as an "oppressor" because of Mr. Earnshaw's concern

for the orphan. He sees "Heathcliff as a usurper of his parent's affections and his privileges." ...

The choice of words here--"oppressor," "usurper," Hindley's "persecuting the poor, fatherless

child"--indicates that this family is still very much a tribe, governed by power and the desire for

money rather than by love. One is reminded of such other Victorian tribes as the Crawleys in

Vanity Fair or the Yorkes in Shirley.

Emily Bronte broadens her attack when she indicates the failings of organized religion. In the

Preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte criticizes those who confuse

Christianity with sanctimoniousness: "Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not

religion." Christianity is not the same thing as self-interest: "appearance should not be mistaken

for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be

substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ." Preceding her sister in this sort of criticism,

Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights condemns the pharisaical servant, Joseph, who sees everyone

damned except himself and uses his "sermonizing and pious discoursing" ... as a way of gaining

influence. Joseph's religion is completely self-serving: he attacks those out of power in order to

gain the approval of those in power. When Mr. Earnshaw is in control, he attacks Hindley. With

Hindley in charge, he attacks Heathcliff and Cathy. Finally, when Heathcliff takes over, Joseph

savagely criticizes the younger generation.

Among the masters, we find the same hypocrisy and the same perversion of religious values.

Thus, in a telling choice of words, Emily Bronte points out that Hindley's "paradise" is his selfish

idyll with Frances at the hearth, while Heathcliff and Cathy are banished to the back kitchen.... As

Nelly indicates, Hindley's religion, like Joseph's, is egocentric: "he had room in his heart only for

two idols--his wife and himself: he doted on both, and adored one." ... Hindley's treatment of

others follows the same selfish pattern as his "religion." He is as consistent as the Brocklehursts in

Jane Eyre, who enjoy all the luxuries of life themselves, while advocating Spartan austerity for the

poor....

The rest of the people of the novel emulate the Earnshaws in their selfishness and lack of

sympathy. The Lintons presumably are good Christians, yet they are repelled by Heathcliff

because he looks like a gypsy and therefore cannot be a member of their social class. Here one has

only to think of Great Expectations or Vanity Fair to see that Emily Bronte is on the main road of

Victorian social criticism, attacking those who judge others solely by surface appearances or

money or birth. As Heathcliff bitterly notes when he tells the story later to Nelly, Cathy "was a

young lady and they [the Lintons] made a distinction between her treatment and mine." ... The

younger Lintons follow in the footsteps of the older generation. Isabella and Edgar are spoiled

brats, like the young Earnshaws and the Reed children in Jane Eyre. They fight over their

possessions. Worst of all, Edgar shows no real evidence of Christianity in his behavior toward

Isabella. When his sister disobeys his orders and runs off with Heathcliff, he cuts himself off from

her and self-righteously blames her for his own inability to forgive: "`Trouble me no more about

her. Hereafter she is only my sister in name, not because I disown her, but because she has

disowned me.'" ...

Against this dark background ... , the novelist depicts the love between Heathcliff and Cathy.

Rereading Wuthering Heights, one finds that love is presented in almost completely negative

terms, set forth in opposition to society and its values, in a sense defined by those values. One

cannot emphasize this fact enough. Heathcliff and Cathy do not exist in some dream-like vacuum;

rather, they are the products of the world that Emily Bronte clearly describes in the first part of the

novel. To a surprisingly large extent they share the values of that world, and the novelist, at least

by implication, criticizes their actions. It is simply not accurate to say [as does Dorothy Van

Ghent] that their relationship is "irrelevant to the social and moral reason." In the opening half of

Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte shows how Cathy's selfishness and her attempt to compromise

with society's dictates keep her from fulfilling her love for Heathcliff. In the closing half she

shows how Heathcliff, in his frustration and desire for revenge, becomes the unwitting tool of the

world, embodying all of society's egoism and cruelty....

Though Dorothy Van Ghent is correct when she states that both Heathcliff and Cathy reject

ordinary concepts of human behavior, Emily Bronte does not divorce her characters from ethics

and morality entirely. Cathy, for example, cannot bear the idea that Edgar has his head buried in a

book while she suffers almost unutterable anguish. Heathcliff scorns Edgar's sense of "duty and

humanity ... pity and charity" (his italics ... ). And rightly so. "Pre-moral" Emily Bronte does not

here reject these concepts through her spokesman, Heathcliff. She does discard the ordinary man's

ordinary use of these terms. Edgar's pity and charity are directed, in the main, toward himself,

since he has no real sense of what his wife is like. He has never known her. His duty and humanity

toward his wife consist of his staying away from her during her final illness. He suspects, like

Nelly, that she is play-acting and somehow, even though she is in the final stages of pregnancy, he

never takes the trouble to find out otherwise.

In opposition to this sort of narrowness and pettiness, Cathy makes two grand positive

affirmations of her love for Heathcliff, asserting at one point "`he's more myself than I am'" ... and

later, "`I am Heathcliff'": "` ... my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he

remained, I should still continue to be; and, if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the

Universe would turn to a mighty stranger.'" ... Here Cathy seems to be trying to do away with the

boundaries that separate human beings and trying to live in and for another person. She seems to

want freedom from the restrictions of society.... Free from the world's limitations, she would be

contented, she says, with a universe composed solely of herself and Heathcliff....

[Despite] her noble assertions to the contrary, [Cathy] is a creature of this world after all.

Once she gets a taste of life at the Lintons' she decides that she enjoys gentility; like her brother,

Hindley, she enjoys wielding power and she tyrannizes Edgar and Isabella who give in to all her

whims. In Nelly's words, she begins "to adopt a double character" ... , acting one way with the

Lintons, another with Heathcliff. In the "catechism" ... on love and marriage that Nelly puts her

through, she reveals that at least half her being has been given to society. She will marry Edgar

because he is rich and handsome and because he loves her, not because she loves him. She thinks

she can have her cake and eat it too: marrying Edgar, she will have money enough to help her true

love, Heathcliff. In some ways she seems scarcely blameworthy. Like a child, she thinks she can

control the world, when, in reality, the world controls her....

Where Cathy remains a child, Heathcliff shows he has been tutored only too well in the

lessons taught by Hareton, Joseph, the Lintons, Cathy herself. Once deflected from his love, he

turns aside blindly from the path of freedom and openness and casts himself in the iron mold of

revenge: "`I seek no revenge on you [he tells Cathy] ... That's not the plan. The tyrant grinds down

his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them. You are welcome to

torture me to death for your amusement, only allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style.'"

... Here Heathcliff opts for stasis rather than development, for fixity rather than growth. The whole

purpose of the master-slave relationship, which he chooses quite deliberately, is to keep things

always the same. The master, like the gentleman upholding the caste system, wants to maintain his

superiority at all costs. He wants to keep the slave beneath his feet forever. In this way Heathcliff

betrays himself and imitates the society that earlier had denied him his individuality and

humanness. He ends up playing society's game because society too, as Emily Bronte has portrayed

it in the novel, is based on the master-slave relationship: the Lintons and Earnshaws and

Lockwoods are grasping people who like the status-quo because it keeps them in power.

Ironies abound in the second half of Wuthering Heights as Heathcliff accepts, and lives by,

the values of the people he formerly detested and finds that these values are as empty for him as

they were for the others. Thus, after three years away, he returns as a "capitalist," some sort of

successful businessman. Using force and trickery, he gobbles up both the Earnshaw and Linton

estates. But what does property mean to him? Wuthering Heights, which had at least been a home

when Heathcliff entered it, is chaos and anarchy when he comes to govern it. In order to revenge

himself on Edgar, he cruelly mistreats Isabella and the young Cathy Linton. Yet, scorning both

females, he gets no satisfaction from his vengeance, and he remains lonely and desolate, haunted

by his visions of the first Catherine.

Emily Bronte shows Heathcliff becoming a parody of his former tormentors, of Hindley

especially. Reversing the golden rule, he does to his son, Linton, what Hindley had tried to do to

him. His words even echo those used earlier to describe him, as he calls Linton "my property,"

"it." ... He brutalizes Hareton, as he was brutalized by Hindley, by cutting him off from ordinary

humanity and denying him an education. He is even more monstrous than Hindley, however,

because he realizes what he is doing. Where Hindley was too savage or too stupid to understand

Heathcliff, Heathcliff can empathize with Hareton, but he uses his empathy perversely, as a way of

tormenting his fellow human being:

"If he were a born fool [he says of Hareton] I should not enjoy it half so much. But he's no

fool; and I can sympathize with all his feelings, having felt them myself. I know what he suffers

now, for instance, exactly--it is merely a beginning of what he shall suffer, though. And he'll never

be able to emerge from his bathos of coarseness and ignorance. I've got him faster than his

scoundrel of a father secured me, and lower; for he takes a pride in his brutishness. I've taught him

to scorn everything extra-animal as silly and weak."...

All Heathcliff has learned from his experiences is hate. With devastating irony, Emily Bronte

shows that this hatred plays right into society's hands, as Heathcliff helps perpetuate the system

that earlier he struggled against and that he knows destroyed his chance for love....

Symbolically, [the second half of the novel] begins with a birth, Catherine Linton's, which is

described in much the same terms as was the entrance of Heathcliff. Nelly calls Cathy a "feeble

orphan" and says she is "an unwelcomed infant it was, poor thing! It might have wailed out of life,

and nobody cared a morsel, during those first hours of existence." ... Though the language is an

echo of the past, however, Cathy turns out to be the representative of a new generation, and

without the author's being foolishly optimistic, of a new set of values, an answer to the old ways.

In the concluding section of Wuthering Heights we trace the education of the second

Catherine. She parallels her mother in her "sunshine" and in her imperiousness.... But she differs

from her mother also: as her relationship to Linton indicates, she is open to others, receptive to

their needs. She responds to Linton because he is a human being and is in trouble. This is not the

awesome love claimed by Heathcliff and the first Catherine, perhaps, but human sympathy--the

same pity, charity, duty, humanity that Heathcliff rejected in Edgar, the difference being that Cathy

practices without preaching.... [Unlike] her mother, she is not simply interested in self-fulfillment;

she wants to help someone else. Like Heathcliff she has the gift of empathy. Hers is a softened

emotion, however, which makes her comprehend others and behave better toward them. When she

is angry with Hareton because he will not share her attitude toward Heathcliff, he makes her

understand by appealing to her remembrance of her relationship with her father: "he found means

to make her hold her tongue, by asking, how she would like him to speak ill of her father? and

then she comprehended that Earnshaw took the master's reputation home to himself, and was

attached by ties stronger than reason could break--chains, forged by habit, which it would be cruel

to attempt to loosen." ... Responding to Hareton's appeal, Cathy shows that a new way of life is

possible. The old system need not hold sway forever, after all....

The final relationship described in Wuthering Heights offers a way out of ... barrenness and

hope for the future. The "heaven" of Hareton and Cathy, unlike that of Heathcliff and the first

Catherine, remains undisturbed and they can progress from childhood to adulthood. They enter

into a proper teacher-pupil relationship, which is different from any other we have seen in the

novel, since it implies mutuality, respect and forbearance, development and change. Unlike the

master, the teacher wants his pupil to grow until he becomes his equal. It is a truism that the

teacher is taught by his pupil. The words that Emily Bronte has Nelly use at this point underlie the

significance of what has taken place between Hareton and Cathy. They have signed a "treaty." The

former "enemies were, thenceforth, sworn allies." The promise is that civilization, this time based

on proper actions, not on the old mouthings of the Lintons and Earnshaws, will be reaffirmed:

"Earnshaw was not to be civilized with a wish [Nelly tells Lockwood]; and my young lady was no

philosopher, and no paragon of patience; but both their minds tending to the same point--one

loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed--they contrived in

the end to reach it." ...

This statement is not "pre-moral," dreamlike, or sentimental. The teacher-pupil metaphor is

not merely "liberal" wish-fulfillment. As my analysis of Wuthering Heights has tried to show,

Emily Bronte is totally clear-sighted about the failures of society and she is fully aware of the

limitations and inadequacies of most people.... [She] describes her characters as not completely

evolved into human beings: Lockwood is a "snail," Edgar a "leveret," and Heathcliff at various

times is a "cur," or "wolf," or "tiger." Like Eliot in her description of the growth of Dorothea

Brooke, however, like the other major Victorian novelists, she has a sense of what society can be.

About half way through the novel, Isabella Linton indirectly indicates the futility of the old way of

doing things--the strict adherence to the lex talionis:

"But what misery laid on Heathcliff could content me [she asks Nelly], unless I have a hand

in it? I'd rather he suffered less, if I might cause his sufferings and he might know that I was the

cause.... On only one condition can I hope to forgive him. It is, if I may take an eye for an eye, a

tooth for a tooth, for every wrench of agony, return a wrench, reduce him to my level.... But it is

utterly impossible I can ever be revenged, and therefore I cannot forgive him."...

Isabella's is the system followed blindly by most of the characters in the book, including

Heathcliff. It is endless--when will the desire for revenge ever stop?--and finally, as the description

of Heathcliff's death shows, self-defeating. At the end of Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte points

to the only escape from this impasse: she describes that slow, gradual transformation of the

individual which alone makes education possible and puts a better society within our reach....

(Source:  Arnold Shapiro, “Wuthering Heights as a Victorian Novel," in Studies in the Novel,, Vol.

1, No. 3, Fall, 1969.)