Wuthering HeightsEmily Bronte First published in 1847, Emily Bronte's Wuthering

Heights ranks high on the list of major works ofEnglish literature. A brooding tale of passion and

1847 revenge set in the Yorkshire moors, the novel hasinspired 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 afterthe author's death. Sympathetically prefaced by hersister Charlotte, it met with greater success, and thenovel has continued to grow in stature ever since.In the novel a pair of narrators, Mr. Lockwood andNelly Dean, relate the story of the foundling Heath-cliff's arrival at Wuthering Heights, and the close-knit bond he forms with his benefactor's daughter,Catherine Earnshaw. One in spirit, they are none-theless social unequals, and the saga of frustratedyearning and destruction that follows Catherine'srefusal to marry Heathcliff is unique in the Englishcanon. The novel is admired not least for the powerof its imagery, its complex structure, and its ambi-guity, the very elements that confounded its firstcritics. Emily Bronte spent her short life mostly athome, 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 ofillness and death. Dealing with themes of nature,cruelty, social position, and indestructibility of thespirit, Wuthering Heights has surpassed the moresuccessful Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre in acade-mic and popular circles.

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Emily Jane Bronte was born on July 30, 1818,to Maria Branwell and the Reverend PatrickBronte, in Thornton, Yorkshire, England. She wasthe fifth of six children, and the fourth daughter.The family moved to a parsonage in Haworth in1820, and following the death of Maria Bronte in1821, the children's maternal aunt came to care forthem. In 1825 Emily was sent to join her sistersMaria, Elizabeth, and Charlotte at school, but afteran epidemic at the school claimed the lives of Mariaand 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 oftoy 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 brotherBranwell, but soon Emily and Anne had inventedthe Pacific Island of Gondal, which would figurein poems and stories they wrote throughout theirlives. Emily was uncomfortable with outsiders andmade only brief, intermittent attempts to constructa life for herself away from the parsonage. An un-successful experiment as Charlotte's pupil in EastYorkshire that began in 1835 ended after a year.She was similarly ill-suited for a position as assis-tant teacher at Law Hill School near Halifax. In1842, Charlotte and Emily traveled to Brussels,Belgium, intending to study languages, but returnedhome later that year because of the death of theiraunt, who had left them what money she had.

In 1845 Charlotte discovered a private note-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-peared in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell andwas panned by contemporary critics, who objectedto its coarseness and brutality. In contrast, Char-lotte's novel Jane Eyre, published the same year,was a runaway success. Emily produced one fur-ther poem in 1846; Wuthering Heights was her onlynovel. In 1848 Branwell Bronte died, in part ow-ing to his dissolute ways, which were a source ofconstant concern to his sisters. Emily caught coldat his funeral and developed tuberculosis. Refusingto seek medical treatment, she died on December19, 1848.

The lack of biographical material about EmilyBronte makes her an enigmatic figure and her workdifficult to evaluate. The poems, in particular, suf-

Emily Bronte

fer from a lack of context, and ambiguous punctu-ation. Although the poems are often clumsy, theyshow flashes of the same originality that makesWuthering Heights so compelling. Emily Brontedid not know success during her lifetime, but de-spite the initial failure of Wuthering Heights, shehas proved a giant among writers.

Part I-ChildhoodSet on the Yorkshire moors of England,

Wuthering Heights opens with the comments of Mr.Lockwood, the newly arrived tenant of ThrushcrossGrange. He tells of his visit to Wuthering Heights,where he encounters his landlord and neighbor, Mr.Heathcliff; Joseph, Heathcliff's pious and surly oldservant; Hareton Earnshaw, an ignorant and im-poverished young man; and the beautiful Cather-ine Heathcliff, widow of Heathcliff's dead son.Rough weather forces Lockwood to spend thenight. He finds several old books, the margins ofwhich had been used as a childhood diary byCatherine Earnshaw, mother to the current Cather-ine. Perusing these pages, Lockwood learns aboutthe childhood adventures of Heathcliff and the first

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Catherine, and of their oppression by Catherine'sbrother, Hindley. Lockwood falls into a restlesssleep, punctuated by nightmares in which the firstCatherine Earnshaw comes to the bedroom windowand begs to be let in. He awakes screaming, and inso doing he wakes Heathcliff, who opens the win-dow and begs Catherine to come again. At sunriseHeathcliff escorts Lockwood back to ThrushcrossGrange.

The next day, Lockwood, finding himself sick,persuades the servant, Nelly Dean, to sit and talkwith him. She relates how she grew up at Wuther-ing Heights, and she tells how one night Mr. Earn-shaw brought home the mysterious boy, Heathcliff,whom he had found starving in Liverpool. Mr. Earn-shaw favors Heathcliff, causing his son Hindley tohate the interloper, but Heathcliff and the firstCatherine become fast friends. Hindley is sent offto college, but after Mr. Eamshaw's death he re-turns with a wife and becomes master of Wuther-ing Heights. Under Hindley's tyranny, Catherineand Heathcliff grow closer and more mischievous,their favorite pastime being to wander the moors.On one such excursion they are caught looking inthe windows of Thrushcross Grange, and Catherineis bitten by a bulldog and has to stay at the Grangefor five weeks. Hindley, meanwhile, forbids Heath-cliff to have further contact with Catherine.

Catherine returns much changed. She nowdresses and acts like a lady, and she has befriendedEdgar and Isabella Linton, the siblings who live atthe Grange. Heathcliff feels her neglect sharply,and Catherine feels torn between loyalty to her oldfriend and attraction to her new companions. Hind-ley's new wife, Frances, gives birth to a son, Hare-ton, and dies of consumption, and Hindley startsdrinking and becomes even more tyrannical. Heath-cliff is deprived of all education and is forced tolabor as one of the servants of the Heights. WhenEdgar proposes to Catherine, she accepts, but tellsNelly that she would never have done so if herbrother had not turned Heathcliff into someone itwould disgrace her to marry. Heathcliff overhearsthis comment and flees Wuthering Heights beforeshe goes on to explain to Nelly the depth of herfeelings for Heathcliff:

"I cannot express it; but surely you and everybodyhave a notion that there is, or should be an existenceof yours beyond you. What were the use of my cre-ation if I were entirely contained here? My great mis-eries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries,and I watched and felt each from the beginning; mygreat 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 Uni-

verse would turn to a mighty stranger. I should notseem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the fo-liage in the woods. Time will change it, I am wellaware, as winter changes the trees-my love forHeathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath-asource of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly,I am Heathcliff-he is always, always in my mind-not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a plea-sure to myself-but as my own being-so, do nottalk of our separation again."

Part II-Marriage and DeathCatherine and Edgar are married and seem

happy, until Heathcliff returns, mysteriouslywealthy and educated. He takes up residence atWuthering Heights, where he gambles Hindley outof all his possessions. Heathcliff quickly resumeshis acquaintance with Catherine, to her delight andEdgar's annoyance. Isabella, Edgar's sister, beginsto love Heathcliff, in spite of repeated warningsabout his character. Heathcliff, desiring Isabella'sinheritance, begins to encourage the attraction, andwhen Nelly informs Edgar of this courtship he be-comes enraged. A fight ensues between Edgar andHeathcliff, and Heathcliff is banished from theGrange. Catherine, to punish Edgar, refuses to eatfor three days and drives herself into a feverishdelirium. While Edgar is nursing her back to a frag-ile state of health, Isabella and Heathcliff elope. Is-abella soon regrets her marriage to the cruel Heath-cliff. She writes to Nelly, telling her of hermiserable life at Wuthering Heights and beggingher to visit. Heathcliff takes advantage of Nelly'svisit to request a meeting with Catherine, who ispregnant. Nelly reluctantly agrees, and a few dayslater, while Edgar is at church, Heathcliff enters theGrange and sees Catherine for the last time. Edgarenters and finds Heathcliff embracing Catherine,who has fainted. Catherine dies without ever fullyregaining her senses, although two hours before herdeath, she gives birth to a daughter. Edgar andHeathcliff are both distraught at Catherine's death,and Heathcliff begs her ghost to haunt him.

Days after Catherine's death, Isabella appearsat the Grange, having fled the Heights. She swearsshe will not return, but she refuses to stay at theGrange because she fears Heathcliff will find herthere. She moves to the South of England and givesbirth to a sickly boy she names Linton.

Part III-The Second GenerationShortly after Isabella's escape, the doctor,

Kenneth, brings news of Hindley's death. Nellywants Edgar to take in Hindley's son Hareton, butHeathcliff vows that if they take Hareton from himhe will take his child from Isabella. He asserts that

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he wants to see if the same mistreatment will af-fect Hindley's child as Hindley's abuse affectedHeathcliff.

Twelve years later, Isabella, near death, writesto her brother and asks him to care for her son af-ter her death. Edgar brings Linton home, but Heath-cliff immediately demands custody of his son. Hereveals to Nelly his plan to see his child ruling overboth Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights.

Young Catherine, daughter of Catherine andEdgar, is not told that her cousin is so close by, butone 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 andyoung Catherine will fall in love and marry. Heboasts about how he has turned Hareton, a natu-rally intelligent boy, into an ignorant brute, whileraising his own weak and selfish son up as Hare-ton's master. When Edgar hears of his daughter'svisit, he does his best to impress on her the evil na-ture of Heathcliff and the importance of avoidingthe Heights. Catherine nevertheless commences asecret correspondence with Linton, which onlyends when Nelly discovers the love letters andthreatens to tell Catherine's father. Heathcliff, how-ever, convinces Catherine that Linton is dying ofgrief because of their broken correspondence, andNelly reluctantly agrees to accompany Catherineon a visit to the Heights. That visit leads to a se-ries of clandestine visits by young Catherine to theHeights. Edgar puts a stop to the visits, but finallyagrees to let Catherine and Linton meet for weeklystrolls on the moor. During the second of these ex-cursions, Heathcliff, knowing that Edgar is neardeath, tricks Catherine and Nelly into enteringWuthering Heights, where he imprisons them andforces Catherine to marry Linton. Catherine con-vinces Linton to help her escape, and she arrives atthe Grange just in time to see her dying father. Dur-ing her absence from the Heights, Heathcliff forcesLinton to make Heathcliff the inheritor of all of hisand Catherine's property. After her father's death,young Catherine is forced to return to the Heightsand tend to her dying husband. He dies shortly af-ter her arrival, and Catherine, impoverished andalone, is forced to stay on at the Heights.

The day after hearing this story, Lockwoodvisits the Heights and gives notice that he will beleaving for London. Returning months later to set-tle some business, he finds Thrushcross Grange de-serted and matters much changed at the Heights.Hareton and Catherine, previously sworn enemies,have fallen in love, and Catherine is aiding Hare-

ton in his attempts to educate himself. Nelly is nowemployed at the Heights, and while the lovers en-joy a walk on the moor, Nelly informs Lockwoodof Heathcliff's death, which followed four days ofstarvation during which he was haunted by the vi-sion of his beloved Catherine. He was buried, asrequested, next to Catherine, with the adjoiningsides of the two coffins removed so that their ashescould mingle, and the country folks claim that aperson walking on the moors will sometimes seethe ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine wanderingtheir old playground.

Ellen DeanOne of the novel's two narrators, Nelly is loyal

but conventional, and reads very little into events.In his introduction to Wuthering Heights, DavidDaiches remarks on the contrast between the toneof the narrative and the high drama of the goings-on of the story: "It is to what might be called thesublime deadpan of the telling that the extraordi-nary force of the novel can largely be attributed....At no point does Nelly throw up her hands and ex-claim: 'For God's sake, what is going on here?What kind of people are they?"' For instance, af-ter Heathcliff has spent the night in the Linton'sgarden bashing his head against a tree trunk, Nellynotices "several splashes of blood about the barkof the tree, and his hands and forehead were bothstained; probably the scene I witnessed was a rep-etition of others acted during the night. It hardlymoved my compassion-it appalled me; still I feltreluctant to quit him so." Nelly's familiarity withthe actors is an important element of the narration,and a hazard of her station is that she must repeat-edly be the bearer of news that will move the ac-tion in a fateful direction. On the eve of Heath-cliff's return, for example, Edgar and the firstCatherine look "wonderfully peaceful," and Nellyshrinks from having to announce Heathcliff, thoughduty compels her to, just as she shrinks later fromhaving to tell Heathcliff of the first Catherine'sdeath, but does. Nelly has a mind of her own, andshe does not hesitate to query the first Catherineabout her reasons for marrying Edgar, or to sug-gest to Heathcliff at the end of the novel that hemight want to make his confession before dying.Nevertheless, the kind of passion that exists be-tween Heathcliff and the first Catherine is far be-yond her imagination.

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Stillfrom the film Wuthering Heights, starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, 1939.

Nelly DeanSee Ellen Dean

Catherine EarnshawCathy Earmshaw is six when her father brings

back with him from Liverpool not the whip sheasked for but the seven-year-old foundling Heath-cliff, who is soon her constant companion. Cathyis a "wild, wick slip," beautiful, and "much too fondof Heathcliff." Though capable of sweetness, shelikes "to act the little mistress," and it is the aware-ness of the social differences between her andHeathcliff that lead her, despite her love for him,to marry Edgar Linton, whom she finds "handsome,and pleasant to be with." When Nelly implies thather reasons are superficial, Cathy tells of her planto use Edgar's money to help Heathcliff to rise. "Itwould degrade me to marry Heathcliff, now," shetells Nelly, "so he shall never know how I lovehim"; yet "he's more myself than I am.... Nelly, Iam Heathcliff." Five months after Cathy's marriageto Linton, during which time Nelly observes thatthe couple seem to be increasingly happy, Heath-cliff returns, transformed. Their "mutual joy" atseeing each other again is undeniable, and from thatpoint on Cathy lives with a painfully divided heart.She refuses to respond to Edgar's request that shechoose between the two men. Although Heathcliff

has the looks and manners of a gentleman, the re-venge he plans is diabolical, and though she loveshim, Cathy is not fooled. "He's a fierce, pitiless,wolfish man...: and he'd crush you, like a spar-row's egg," she tells an infatuated Isabella. WhenCathy and Heathcliff meet for the last time, she tellshim, "You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heath-cliff! ... I shall not be at peace." She dies two hoursafter midnight, having given birth to a "puny, sevenmonths' child."

Cathy EarnshawSee Catherine Earnshaw

Frances EarnshawWife of Hindley. Dies after giving birth to

Hareton.

Hareton EarnshawThe son of Frances and Hindley Earnshaw,

Hareton, too, is initially targeted by Heathcliff asan object of revenge, and is degraded by him. ButHeathcliff develops a grudging affection for theboy, favoring him over his own weakling son, Lin-ton, and when Heathcliff dies, Hareton weeps overhis body. Nelly sees him as "owning better quali-ties than his father ever possessed. Good things lostamong a wilderness of weeds." Hareton is, how-

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ever, transformed by his love for Catherine, whoteaches him to read.

Hindley EarnshawHindley Earnshaw, the first Catherine's

brother, is fourteen when Heathcliff is brought toWuthering Heights. Hindley hates and envies himbecause Mr. Earnshaw clearly favors the new boy.Hindley continually degrades Heathcliff, a habitthat intensifies after the death of Mr. Earnshaw. Af-ter the death of his beloved wife Frances, Hindleyresorts to drinking and gambling, and neglects bothhis sister Catherine and his son Hareton. UponHeathcliff's return to Wuthering Heights after athree-year absence, five months after Edgar Lintonand the first Catherine have married, Hindley be-friends Heathcliff in the hopes of winning moneyfrom him. Blaming Hindley for the loss of the firstCatherine, Heathcliff ruthlessly encourages Hind-ley to drink and eventually wins Wuthering Heightsfrom him. After Hindley dies, Heathcliff brutalizesHareton, though he eventually abandons the at-tempt after the second Catherine Linton and Hare-ton fall in love.

Mr. EarnshawFather of Hindley and the first Catherine. He

brings Heathcliff home into the family. He wasstrict with his children.

Mrs. EarnshawMother of Hindley and the first Catherine. She

didn't protest the mistreatment of Heathcliff anddied two years after he joined the Earnshaw house-hold.

HeathcliffOn his return from a business trip to Liverpool,

Mr. Earmshaw brings with him "a dirty, ragged,black-haired" orphan from a Liverpool slum. Theboy, 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, andhe abuses him. Heathciff returns the hatred. "Fromthe very beginning he bred bad feeling in thehouse," says Nelly Dean, one of the two narratorsof Wuthering Heights, about the force that has en-tered their lives. Heathcliff knows only two loyal-ties, to the first Cathy and to Mr. Earnshaw, and atEamshaw's death he and Cathy "both set up aheart-breaking cry." He tries to control his jealousyover Cathy's growing friendship with Edgar Lin-ton for her sake-"Nelly, make me decent, I'm go-

MHediaAdaptations

Wuthering Heights continues to inspire film-makers: adaptations include those by WilliamWyler, starring Laurence Olivier and MerleOberon, 1939, available from HBO Home Videoand Home Vision Cinema; by Robert Fuest, star-ring Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall,1970, available from Congress Entertainment,Karol Video, The Video Catalog; a reworkingunder the title "Abismos de pasion", by LuisBuiiuel, starring Jorge Mistral and Irasema Dil-ian, 1953, available from Xenon, Media HomeEntertainment, Applause Productions; and byPeter Kosminsky, starring Ralph Fiennes andJuliette Binoche, 1992 (not released in the U.S.,but later broadcast on Turner Network Televi-sion).

Sound recordings have been published by Lis-ten for Pleasure, 1981; Recorded Books, 1981,and Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio, 1995. Thenovel was read by Michael Page and LaurelMerlington for an audio version, Brilliance Cor-poration, 1992, entitled Wuthering HeightsReadalong, Lake Publishing Co., 1994.

* The novel has been adapted as a four-act opera

by Bernard Herrman, libretto by LucilleFletcher, 1950. An adaptation by Carlisle Floyd,who also wrote the libretto, in three acts was

first performed in 1958. The novel was alsoadapted for the stage by Charles Vance and pub-lished by Samuel French, 1990.

ing to be good." But later, overhearing a conver-sation in which Cathy says it would degrade her tomarry him, he steals away and does not return toWuthering Heights until five months after Cathyhas married Edgar Linton.

Heathcliff is transformed on his return-"tall,athletic, well-formed"-but he is hell-bent onavenging the loss of Cathy, and he sets about de-stroying the inhabitants of both Wuthering Heightsand Thrushcross Grange with a fury. His assertion

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of what David Daiches, in his introduction toWuthering Heights, calls Heathcliff's "naturalclaims" to Cathy "over the artificial claim of herhusband" is welcomed by Cathy, though the straineventually kills her. Heathcliff cruelly exploitsHindley, Isabella, Hareton, the second Catherine,and Linton, his own son. "I have no pity," he tellsNelly. Yet when the first Catherine dies, he is in-consolable, bashing his head repeatedly against atree trunk: "I cannot live without my life! I cannotlive without my soul!" And he has an obvious af-fection for Hareton, despite his determination to de-grade the boy. Heathcliff is largely incomprehen-sible to those around him, seemingly human andinhuman, a walking contradiction. "Is Mr. Heath-cliff a man?" Isabella writes to Nelly, following hermarriage to him, "If so, is he mad? And if not, ishe a devil?" Toward the end of the novel Heath-cliff confesses to Nelly that he no longer cares forrevenge: "I have lost the faculty of enjoying theirdestruction." As determined to join his "immortallove" as he once was to ruin his enemies, he tellsNelly that he feels "a strange change coming," and,forgetting to eat, starves himself. Even death, how-ever, does not compose his features, and Joseph re-marks that he looks as though the devil has carriedhim off.

Catherine HeathcliffSee Catherine Linton

Isabella HeathcliffSee Isabella Linton

Linton HeathcliffLinton Heathcliff is the spoiled, weakling son

of Isabella and Heathcliff. He is forced by Heath-cliff to marry the second Catherine Linton to se-cure for Heathcliff, at Linton's death, ThrushcrossGrange. Nobody except the second Catherine Lin-ton likes Linton very much; the housekeeper at theHeights complains to Nelly that he is "a faint-hearted creature" who can't bear to have the win-dow open at night. His character serves the dualpurpose of providing a mechanism whereby Heath-cliff can acquire Thrushcross Grange and re-createthe Edgar-Cathy-Heathcliff triangle of the previousgeneration. Linton dies soon after his marriage tothe second Catherine.

JosephJoseph is the curmudgeonly, judgmental long-

time servant at Wuthering Heights. He believes in

eternal damnation and the likelihood of everyonehe knows being bound for it, and he scolds con-stantly in a sometimes difficult-to-follow Yorkshireaccent. As in the case of the narrators of the novel,Joseph's authenticity anchors the wilder elementsof the story. Winifred Gerin observes in ReferenceGuide to English Literature that "in creating sucha character as Joseph, Emily Bronte showed that,undoubted visionary as she was, she also had herfeet firmly planted on earth."

Catherine LintonCatherine Linton is the daughter of Cathy and

Edgar, beautiful, like her mother, but cooler. "Heranger was never furious, her love never fierce,"Nelly remarks about her. Although forced byHeathcliff to marry Linton Heathcliff, she gen-uinely seems to care for her cousin. She is obvi-ously less a force than her mother, but spiritednonetheless, and refuses to be cowed by Heathcliff:"You are miserable, are you not? Lonely, like thedevil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you-nobody will cry for you, when you die! I wouldn'tbe you!" Although Catherine is at first put off byHareton's loutishness, the sheer bleakness of theirexistence propels them toward each other, and sheteaches him to read. They fall in love, and the un-derstanding at the end of the novel is that they willmarry and go to live at Thrushcross Grange.

Catherine Earnshaw LintonSee Catherine Earmshaw

Cathy LintonSee Catherine Linton

Edgar LintonEdgar Linton is all the things Heathcliff is not:

handsome, refined, kind, and patient, although thefirst Cathy later describes Edgar and his sister Is-abella as "spoiled children, [who] fancy the worldwas made for their accommodation." When Heath-cliff says he wishes he had Edgar's looks andbreeding, Nelly retorts: "And cried for Mamma atevery turn, and trembled if a country lad heavedhis fist against you, and sat at home all day for ashower of rain." On the other hand, Nelly observesthat the first Cathy's spells of bad humor are "re-spected with sympathizing silence by her husband,"and that Edgar has a "deep-rooted fear of rufflingher humor." Linton loves his wife genuinely, buthe is ineffectual. Unable to get her to choose be-tween himself and Heathcliff, he retreats to his li-brary, oblivious to her distress until alerted to it by

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Nelly. After his wife dies, Edgar sits all night be-side her body. Taking the measure of both Edgarand Hindley, Nelly remarks that Linton "displayedthe true courage of a loyal and faithful soul: hetrusted God; and God comforted him." Hindley,with the stronger head, proved the worse andweaker man.

Isabella LintonLike her brother Edgar, Isabella is perceived

by the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights as spoiled.Having glimpsed them through a window quarrel-ing amid the splendor of Thrushcross Grange,Heathcliff tells Nelly, "We laughed outright at thepetted things, we did despise them!" Nelly observesthat 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 toWuthering Heights after the first Cathy's marriageto Edgar, Isabella becomes infatuated with him, de-spite Cathy's warning that he "couldn't love a Lin-ton." At first indifferent, Heathcliff responds whenhe realizes he might gain control of her propertythrough marriage. Once she is committed to him,he cruelly mistreats her. Despite the abuse, Isabellarefuses to help Hindley in his attempt to murderHeathcliff, though she has enough of a sense ofself-preservation to escape back to ThrushcrossGrange, where she crushes her wedding ring witha poker. "I can recollect yet how I loved him," shetells Nelly, "and can dimly imagine that I could stillbe loving him, if-." Pregnant, Isabella flees toLondon, where she bears Linton. She dies whenLinton is twelve, after which the boy comes to livewith Heathcliff at the Heights.

Mr. LintonFather of Edgar and Isabella. He is the owner

of Thrushcross Grange.

Mrs. LintonMother of Edgar and Isabella. She takes the

first Catherine in for a short while and exposed herto fine clothes and social behavior.

Mr. LockwoodThe other narrator of Wuthering Heights, Mr.

Lockwood is, like Nelly Dean, conventional. But helacks Nelly's perception, and appears even a littlefoolish. At first he judges Heathcliff to be a "capi-tal fellow," and later he fantasizes a liaison with thesecond Catherine Linton. Several critics have re-marked on his name as hinting at a "locked or closedmind." In his introduction to Wuthering Heights,

David Daiches describes his general timidity: "hehad aroused the love of 'a fascinating creature,' butretreated in panic when he realized it." Mr. Lock-wood foreshadows the theme of cruelty that per-vades the novel, rubbing the wrist of the ghost ofthe first Catherine Linton across a broken pane ofglass in an attempt to loosen her grasp of his hand.Mr. Lockwood serves to vary the narrative per-spective of the novel; his view of events in the pre-sent contrasts with Nelly's retrospective view.

ZillahA servant at Wuthering Heights.

Love and PassionPassion, particularly unnatural passion, is a

predominant theme of Wuthering Heights. The firstCatherine's devotion to Heathcliff is immediate andabsolute, though she will not marry him, becauseto do so would degrade her. "Whatever our soulsare made of, his and mine are the same, and Lin-ton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning,or frost from fire." Although there has been at leastone Freudian interpretation of the text, the natureof the passion between Catherine and Heathcliffdoes not appear to be based on sex. David Daicheswrites, "Ultimate passion is for her rather a kind ofrecognition of one's self-one's true and absoluteself-in the object of passion." Catherine's passionis contrasted to the coolness of Linton, whose "coldblood cannot be worked into a fever." When he re-treats into his library, she explodes, "What in thename of all that feels, has he to do with books, whenI am dying?"

RevengeHeathcliff' s devotion to Catherine, on the other

hand, is ferocious, and when frustrated, he con-ceives a plan of revenge of enormous proportions.Catherine's brother Hindley shares her passionatenature, though he devotes most of his energies todegrading Heathcliff. In some respects the passionthat Catherine and Heathcliff share is so pure thatit approaches a kind of spirituality. "I cannot ex-press it," says Catherine, "but surely you and every-body have a notion that there is, or should be anexistence of yours beyond you." In the charactersof Heathcliff and Hindley, who both feel slightedin love, Bronte draws a parallel between the needfor love and the strength of revenge.

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Topics forFurtherStudy

* What achievements of modern medicine havereduced the high rates of maternal deaths inchildbirth that were commonplace during the pe-riod of the novel? How have social factors com-promised advances in the treatment of tubercu-losis?

* What were the milestones in women's rights thathave reduced the vulnerability of women likethe second Catherine Linton to loss of property?

* Explore how people grieve their dead in variouscultures around the world, and how these cus-

toms compare with Edgar's request in Wuther-ing Heights that Nelly "get mourning" for thesecond Catherine after Isabella's death.

Violence and CrueltyClosely tied to the theme of revenge, but some-

times independent of it, are themes of cruelty andsadism, which are a recurring motif throughout thenovel. Cruelty can be manifested emotionally, asin Mr. Earnshaw's disdain for his natural-born son,or in the first Catherine's apparent rejection ofHeathcliff in favor of Edgar. The characters aregiven to physical cruelty as well. "Terror made mecruel," says Lockwood at the outset of the story,and proceeds to rub the wrists of the ghost Cather-ine against a broken windowpane in an effort tofree himself from her grasp. Hindley tormentsHeathcliff, as Heathcliff will later torment Hareton.And although he has no affection for her, Heath-cliff marries Isabella and then treats her so badlythat she asks Nelly whether he is a devil. Sadismis also a recurring thematic element. Heathcliff triesto strangle Isabella's dog, and Hareton hangs a lit-ter of puppies from the back of a chair. The firstCatherine's early refusal of Heathcliff has elementsof masochism (self-abuse) in it, as does her lettinghim back into her life, since her divided heart willeventually kill her.

Class ConflictTo the characters of Wuthering Heights, prop-

erty ownership and social standing are inextricable.

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 herhusband's money to raise Heathcliff's social stand-ing, thus freeing him from Hindley's domination.Her plan is foiled when Heathcliff disappears afterhearing Catherine say that to marry him would de-grade her. When he returns, he exerts great effortsto do people out of their property: first Hindley,then Isabella, then the second Catherine Linton. Hetakes revenge on Hareton by ensuring that the boyis raised in ignorance, with loutish manners, so thathe will never escape his station. The story comesfull cycle when Catherine Linton teaches Haretonto read, thus winning his love. The understandingat the end of the novel is that the couple will moveto Thrushcross Grange.

Nature"Wuthering" is a Yorkshire term for roaring of

the wind, and themes of nature, both human andnonhuman, are closely associated with violencethroughout the story. The local landscape is asstorm-tossed as are the hearts of the inhabitants ofWuthering Heights; cycles of births and deaths oc-cur as relentlessly as the cycles of the seasons. Thecharacters feel themselves so intrinsically a part oftheir environment that the first Catherine comparesher love for Edgar to "foliage in the woods," andthat for Heathcliff to "the eternal rocks beneath."In detailing his plan to debase Hareton, Heathcliffsays, "We will see if one tree will not grow ascrooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!"The novel opens with a snowstorm, and ends withthe flowering of spring, mirroring the passions thatfuel the drama and the peace that follows its reso-lution.

SupernaturalThere are many references in the novel to the

supernatural, and even when the references seemfairly literal, the characters do not seem to thinkthem odd. When Lockwood first arrives, he en-counters the ghost of the first Catherine Linton, andhis telling of the event to Heathcliff arouses notdisbelief but a strange passion. The bond betweenthe first Catherine and Heathcliff is itself superhu-man, and after she dies, Heathcliff implores herspirit, "I pray one prayer-I repeat it till my tonguestiffens-Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest, aslong as I am living! You said I killed you-hauntme then!" At Edgar Linton's death, Heathcliff per-suades the gravedigger to open Catherine's coffin,and later confesses to Nelly that he has been

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haunted by Catherine's spirit for eighteen years. Atthe end of the novel, after Heathcliff's death, Nellyreports to Lockwood a child's claim that he hasseen Heathcliff and a woman walking on the moors.

NarrationThe power of Wuthering Heights owes much

to its complex narrative structure and to the inge-nious device of having two conventional people re-late a very unconventional tale. The story is orga-nized as a narrative within a narrative, or what somecritics call "Chinese boxes." Lockwood is used toopen and end the novel in the present tense, firstperson ("I"). When he returns to ThrushcrossGrange from his visit to Wuthering Heights sickand curious, Nelly cheerfully agrees to tell himabout his neighbors. She picks up the narrative andcontinues it, also in the first person, almost untilthe end, with only brief interruptions by Lockwood.The critic David Daiches notes in his introductionof Wuthering Heights the "fascinating counter-point" of "end retrospect and present impression,"and that the strength of the story relies on Nelly'sfamiliarity with the main characters.

SettingThe novel is set in the Yorkshire moors of Eng-

land, even now a bleakly beautiful, sparsely popu-lated area of high rolling grassy hills, few trees, andscattered rocky outcroppings or patches of heather.The lowlands between the hills are marshy. Theweather is changeable and, because the area is soopen, sometimes wild. The exposed location ofWuthering Heights high on the moors is contrastedwith the sheltered calm of Thrushcross Grange,which is nestled in a soft valley. Both seats reflectthe characters of those who inhabit them. The de-scriptions of both houses also reflect the influenceof the local architecture at the time of Bronte's writ-ing, which often incorporated a material called gritstone.

Images and SymbolismEmily Bront8's poetic vision is evident in the

imagery used throughout Wuthering Heights.Metaphors of nature and the animal kingdom arepervasive. For example, the first Catherine de-scribes Heathcliff to Isabella as "an arid wildernessof furze and whinstone," and as Catherine lies dy-ing, Heathcliff foams "like a mad dog." References

to weather are everywhere. A violent storm blowsup the night Mr. Earnshaw dies; rain pours downthe night Heathcliff runs off to London and againthe night of his death. There are many scenes ofraw violence, such as the bulldog attacking Cather-ine and Isabella crushing her wedding ring with apoker. The supernatural is evoked in the many ref-erences to Heathcliff as diabolical (literally, "likethe devil") and the descriptions of the ghost of thefirst Catherine Linton. David Daiches points out inhis introduction to Wuthering Heights that the ref-erences to food and fire, and to what he calls do-mestic routine, help "to steady" the story and togive credibility to the passion.

StructureOne of the major strengths of Wuthering

Heights is its formal organization. The design ofthe time structure has significance both for its useof two narrators and because it allows the signifi-cant events in the novel to be dated precisely,though dates are almost never given explicitly. Thetriangular relationship that existed between Heath-cliff, Catherine, and Edgar is repeated in Heath-cliff's efforts to force young Catherine to marryLinton, though its resolution is ultimately different.On his arrival at Wuthering Heights, Lockwoodsees the names "Catherine Earmshaw, CatherineLinton, Catherine Heathcliff' scratched into thewindowsill. In marrying Hareton, young CatherineHeathcliff will in turn become Catherine Earnshaw,thus completing the circle.

The Victorian Age (1837-1901)England under the reign of Queen Victoria was

in a prolonged phase of expansion. The IndustrialRevolution saw the transformation of a predomi-nately agricultural economy to a factory economy.Millions would eventually flock to London insearch of the new jobs, but Emily Bronte grew upin the last days of rural England. The tenor of thetimes was conservative, and sensitive to society'sunwillingness to accept women as authors, Emily,Charlotte, and Anne Bronte all published undermale pseudonyms.

The tempestuous climate of northern Englandin Haworth, Yorkshire, left its mark on the Brontechildren, whose fascination with the expanse andstorms of the moors is emphasized in the novel. ForEmily, who was never happy far from home, the

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Compare&

Contrast

* Late 1700s: World economies are predomi-nately agrarian.1847: England is in the midst of an IndustrialRevolution whose effects will be felt worldwide.Workers flock to cities from the countryside.Today: World economies are increasinglylinked in a "global community." Interculturalcommunication and cultural diversity in the so-called service economy are a direct result of ad-vances in transportation and communications.

* Late 1700s: Life expectancy is short, owing toharsh living and working conditions. Death inchildbirth is common.1847: Medical advances and improved publichealth and sanitation decrease maternal and in-fant mortality.Today: Though high-technology medicine of-fers solutions to many medical problems, heart

disease and cancer remain major killers, there isno cure for AIDS, and many countries grapplewith increasing costs of health care for agingpopulations.

Late 1700s: Inheritance in England passes fromthe father to the first-born male. A procedurecalled "strict settlement" must be invoked to by-pass inheritance laws.

1847: Full legal and economic equality forwomen is first championed in the United Statesby Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Today: Women worldwide have the right tovote, except in a few Muslim countries. In theUnited States, while the Equal Rights Amend-ment failed to obtain ratification, women in-creasingly bring successful sexual discriminationand sexual harassment suits against employers.

local moorland and valleys, and the grit stone ar-chitecture typical of the age were the basis for thesetting of Wuthering Heights.

Another influence on Bronte's writing was thefolklore of the Yorkshire community. Tabitha Ack-royd, a maid in the Brontd household, was a richsource of stories about fairies and ghosts. Refer-ences to folk beliefs and rituals are scatteredthroughout Wuthering Heights, particularly withreference to the deathwatch traditional in York-shire, as when Edgar sits the entire night withCatherine's body after her death, or to rituals sur-rounding funerals such as "bidding," an invitationto accompany a body to the grave. Extending orwithholding such an invitation gave some indica-tion of the state of family relationships.

Illness, Death, and Funeral CustomsOwing to the unforgiving climate and poor

heating, illness and death were common occur-rences in Yorkshire at the time the novel was cre-ated. Ill partly as a result of his stay at WutheringHeights, Lockwood laments, "Oh, these bleak

winds, and bitter, northern skies, and impassableroads, and dilatory country surgeons!" EmilyBronte's older sisters Maria and Elizabeth died oftuberculosis before they were fifteen, and inWuthering Heights, Edgar and Linton also die ofwasting diseases. Maria Branwell's death whenEmily was only three may be the inspiration for themany motherless children in Wuthering Heights.

A period of mourning was formally observedafter the death of a family member. The appropri-ate period of mourning depended on whether thedeceased was a close or distant relative. For ex-ample, a year's mourning was usually observed fora husband or wife, and a week for the death of asecond cousin. In Wuthering Heights Nelly is "bidto get mourning"-that is, to lay out dark clothes-for Catherine, whose aunt Isabella has died.

As the children of a minister, the Brontes feltthe influence of religion both at home and at school.A fire-and-brimstone instructor may have beenEmily Bronte's inspiration for Joseph, who canbarely speak a word that does not invoke hellfire.Critics also suspect that this influence is at the root

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of Lockwood's dream at the beginning of Wuther-ing Heights, in which he is forced to listen to theReverend Jabes Branderham preach a sermon di-vided into 490 parts.

Literary Traditions and RomanticismWhereas Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre won im-

mediate acclaim, the wild passion and coarseness ofWuthering Heights baffled its readers. In an essay inReference Guide to English Literature, WinifredGerin attributes the failure of the novel to its themeof 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 gothictradition, still being followed by Mary Shelley withher Valperga (1823) in Emily Bronte's childhood."

The time in which the action of WutheringHeights takes place, and its themes of nature andthe individual, coincides with the Romantic Move-ment in Europe, a turning away from reason andintellect in favor of free and more mystical ideas,inspired in part by the French Revolutionary Warof 1789.

Inheritance and Social PositionSocial position and respectability in this period

were directly tied to possession of property. Acountry house owned by landed gentry like theEarnshaws and the Lintons was known as a "seat,"a broad term that included both the tangible assets(for instance, the house and land) and intangible as-sets (for instance, the family name and any hered-itary titles) of the family that owned it. In Wuther-ing Heights, the first Catherine tells Nelly that sheis marrying Edgar Linton because to marry Heath-cliff would degrade her (they would be beggars)and because she plans to use Linton's money tohelp Heathcliff to rise.

Seats passed from father to first-born male orto the next closest male relative if there were nosons in a family. The only way around this processwas to invoke a device called "strict settlement," inforce between 1650 and 1880, which allowed afather to dispose of his holdings as he liked througha trustee. Because Edgar Linton dies before ensur-ing that his daughter Catherine will inheritThrushcross Grange, the land passes first to her hus-band, Linton, and after Linton's death to his father,Heathcliff.

In contrast to earlier times when incest wasforbidden by law, in eighteenth-century Englandmarriage between first cousins was looked upon fa-vorably as a way of preserving position and prop-

"Top Withens," the farm which served as amodel for the one in Wuthering Heights.

erty. A typical union was one of a woman who mar-ried her father's brother's son, which kept the seatof the bride's family under their control. In Wuther-ing Heights, in a perverse twist, the second Cather-ine Linton marries her father's sister's son, and inthe absence of a strict settlement ends up losing herfamily's seat.

Landholding families typically maintained alarge staff of servants who fulfilled the functions(for a man) of steward, valet, butler, and gardener,or (for a woman) of lady's maid, housekeeper,cook, and nurse. In a household the size of Wuther-ing Heights, whose inhabitants did not entertain,combining functions made economic sense. In thenovel Joseph serves as both valet and steward, andEllen as housekeeper, though her duties are fairlybroadly defined.

Initial reception to the publication of Wuther-ing Heights in 1847 was overwhelmingly negative.Published in a volume that also included her sisterAnne Bronte's first novel, Agnes Grey, Emily'sbrooding tale managed to find favor only with Syd-

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ney Dobell and Algemon Charles Swinburne. "Ihave just read over Wuthering Heights," wroteCharlotte Bronte in her preface to the 1850 editionof her sister's book, "and, for the first time, haveobtained a clear glimpse of what are termed (and,perhaps, really are) its faults.... Wuthering Heightsmust appear a rude and strange production ... in agreat measure unintelligible, and-where intelligi-ble-repulsive." The preface was intended as a de-fense of the writer and the work and must haveachieved its aim, for the second edition of the novelwas received more favorably. Algernon CharlesSwinbume, writing in The Athenaeum in 1883, ad-mitted to the awkward construction and clumsymethod of narration "which no reader ... can un-dertake to deny," although these were minor faults.He was more troubled by "the savage note or thesickly symptom of a morbid ferocity," but wasoverall so impressed by the "special and distinctivecharacter of its passion" that "it is certain that thosewho do like it will like nothing very much betterin the whole world of poetry or prose."

A monograph by Charles Percy Sanger pub-lished in 1926 marked a major turning point in crit-ical appreciation of the sophistication and com-plexity of the writing in Wuthering Heights, andtoday the novel is indisputably considered a workof genius. That critics cannot agree whether thebook falls more neatly into the Gothic or Roman-tic literary tradition is accepted as further evidenceof the work's uniqueness. In his introduction to thenovel, David Daiches argues that the central ques-tion of Wuthering Heights is "Who and what isHeathcliff?", a question Daiches argues can be an-swered only by looking at the effect Heathcliff hason those around him. While Daiches agrees withthe conventional view that the relationship betweenHeathcliff and the first Catherine is "curiously"sexless, he does find persuasive Thomas Moser's(1962) case for recurring sexual symbolism in thenovel. Daiches echoes other critics in praising thebook's narrative structure and other elements of itsorganization. He places special emphasis on the de-tails of everyday living, and descriptions of foodand hearth, that help to anchor the story and to makeit believable. "One of Emily Bronte's most extra-ordinary achievements in this novel is the domi-ciling of the monstrous in the ordinary rhythms oflife and work, thereby making it at the same timeless monstrous and more disturbing." Tom Win-nifrith, in the Dictionary of Literary Biography,picks up on the idea of Heathcliff as a force of na-

ture and attributes his attraction in part to his as-sociation with the landscape and to his honesty,however brutal. This last idea highlights one ofmany ambiguities of the novel, a strength oftencommented on by scholars and critics. "Bronte'sdefiance of rigid categories and her refusal to di-vide people into saints and sinners," says Win-nifrith, "is very un-Victorian.... Heathcliff's cru-elty and Cathy's selfishness do not prevent themfrom being attractive. The Lintons are spoiled andweak, but Isabella's and her son's sufferings andEdgar's devotion to his wife win them sympathy."Winnifrith dismisses the oft-cited effort to fit thenovel into an overall framework of storm andcalm-that is, storm and calm opposed in the per-sons of Catherine and Heathcliff, but fused in theunion of Catherine and Hareton-proposed by LordDavid Cecil in Early Victorian Novelists (1934) astoo schematic. He argues that some modern socio-logical interpretations ignore the book's enigmaticending. Other modem critical articles on the novel,he says, "tend to be eccentric or to deal with onlya very small section of the book." In an essay inReference Guide to English Literature, WinifredGerin describes the message of "the indissolublenature of earthly love" as "profoundly metaphysi-cal," its original failure easily explained by itsgothic atmosphere, no longer in fashion at the timeof publication. Gerin attributes the novel's "curi-ous and lasting appeal" to the "unflagging excite-ment of the plot; the wild moorland setting; [and]... the originality of the characters." She callsHeathcliff s self-induced death by starvation "oneof the most powerful and daring climaxes in Eng-lish fiction."

"Whether it is right or advisable to createthings like Heathcliff, I do not know," wrote Char-lotte Bronte at the end of the preface to the 1850edition. "I scarcely think it is. But this I know; thewriter who possesses the creative gift owns some-thing of which he is not always master-somethingthat at times strangely wills and works for itself."It is English literature's gain that Emily lost her-self in her creation.

Donna C. WoodfordIn the following essay, Woodford, a doctoral

candidate at Washington University, explores howan examination of the patterns that recur through-

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out Wuthering Heights provide a useful way ofreading and interpreting the novel.

Wuthering Heights was the only novel EmilyBronte ever published, and both it and the bookof poetry she published with her sisters wereprinted under the pen name, Ellis Bell, a namewhich Emily chose because she was afraid workspublished under a woman's name would not betaken seriously. Emily Bronte died shortly afterher book was published and just prior to her thir-tieth birthday, but her single novel remains one ofthe classics of English literature. WutheringHeights is a complex novel, and critics have ap-proached it from many different standpoints. Fem-inist critics have examined the strong female char-acters and their oppression by and resistance toviolent men. Marxist critics have pointed to theclass differences that set in motion the primaryconflicts of Wuthering Heights, and psychoana-lytic critics have analyzed the dreams that fill thebook. While all of these approaches are useful andvalid, Wuthering Heights is, above all, a book ofrepeating cycles and recurring patterns, and per-haps the simplest way to begin an examination ofthis book is by tracing the course and resolutionof some of these patterns.

When Lockwood spends the night at theHeights, he finds the window ledge covered with"a name repeated in all kinds of characters, largeand small-Catherine Earnshaw, here and therevaried to Catherine Heathcliff and then again toCatherine Linton." Indeed, the repetition and vari-ation of these four names, Catherine, Earnshaw,Heathcliff, and Linton, fills the book just as thewriting fills the window ledge. The original Cather-ine begins life as Catherine Earnshaw. In whatTerry Eagleton in Case Studies In ContemporaryCriticism: Wuthering Heights calls "a crucial act ofself-betrayal and bad faith," she rejects the oppor-tunity to become Catherine Heathcliff and insteadbecomes Catherine Linton. She then gives birth toanother Catherine Linton, who enters the worldonly hours before her mother leaves it, and this sec-ond Catherine first marries Linton Heathcliff, be-coming Catherine Heathcliff, and finally, at the endof the book, becomes engaged to Hareton Earn-shaw. The cycle of names thus comes full circle asthis final marriage will give the second Catherinethe original name of the first.

At the same time, Catherine's marriage withHareton completes another cycle-the union ofsouls for which the reader has longed. The secondCatherine is in many ways a reincarnation of her

WhatDo I Read

Next?* The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Bronte

(1910) is a collection of Bronte's metaphysicalpoetry.

* The memorable heroine of Charlotte Bronte'sJane Eyre (1847) finds love with her moody em-

ployer, Mr. Rochester, but manages not to giveup her independence.

* George Eliot's Middlemarch: A Study ofProvin-cial Life (1871-72) is a portrait of life in a smallrural town. George Eliot was the pseudonym ofMary Ann Evans.

* Frankenstein (1818) is Mary WollstonecraftShelley's gothic tale of destructive pride. Dr.Victor Frankenstein makes a living monster outof inanimate matter and is ultimately destroyedby his creation.

mother. Though she is softened by the characteris-tics which she has inherited from her father, she has"the Eamshaw's handsome, dark eyes" and, asNelly states, she has the same "capacity for intenseattachments" as her mother. Similarly, Hareton is agentler version of his oppressor and foster father,Heathcliff. Though Heathcliff does his best to makeHareton a tool of his revenge against the firstCatherine's brother Hindley Earnshaw, he succeedsinstead in creating a reproduction of himself. He re-veals his own knowledge of this strange turn ofevents when he tells Nelly, "Hareton [seems] a per-sonification of my youth .... the ghost of my im-mortal love, of my wild endeavours to hold myright, my degradation, my pride, my happiness, andmy anguish." Thus, even more than the reunion ofCatherine's and Heathcliff's ghosts, the union oftheir spiritual descendants gives the reader the im-pression that a great wrong has finally been set right.

In addition to being later versions of Heath-cliff and the first Catherine, Hareton and the sec-ond Catherine are the last in a long line of orphansand outcasts. In an article in American Imago PhilipK. Wion has observed that the absence of mothers

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in Wuthering Heights has a profound effect on theidentities of the orphaned children, and certainlythe book is full of orphaned and abandoned char-acters seeking fulfillment through union with oth-ers. Heathcliff, of course, is a foundling taken inby Mr. Earnshaw, and after the old man's deathHindley makes him an outcast. The first Catherine,also orphaned by Earnshaw's death, becomes stillmore isolated after Heathcliff's departure. Heath-cliff has been her one true companion, so much apart of herself that she tells Nelly, "if all else per-ished, and he remained, I should still continue tobe; and, if all else remained, and he were annihi-lated, the Universe would turn to a mightystranger." The loss of her soul mate thus leaves heralone in the world, and her death, likewise, orphanshim for a second time, leaving him "lonely, like thedevil, and envious like him." The next generationfares no better. Linton Heathcliff loses his motherand is raised by a father who despises him; Hare-ton's mother dies shortly after his birth, and thedeath of his alcoholic and abusive father leaves himpenniless and at the mercy of Heathcliff. Likewise,the second Catherine is born only hours before hermother's death, and the death of her father leavesher "destitute of cash and friends." Once again, itis the marriage of Hareton and Catherine that willbring this cycle of orphanhood to a close. Thehousekeeper, Nelly, proudly tells the tenant Lock-wood that they are both "in a measure, [her] chil-dren," and the union of her two charges finally endsthe progression of lonely, isolated, orphaned indi-viduals.

Heathcliff s death and the second Catherine'sgaining control of the property also bring to an endthe series of tyrannical men who rule the Heightswith violence and curses. The first Mr. Earnshawis easily vexed, and "suspected slights of his au-thority nearly [throw] him into fits." Hindley, Mr.Earnshaw's successor, is still worse. He threatensto "demolish the first who puts [him] out of tem-per," and his abuse of Heathcliff is "enough tomake a fiend of a saint." Heathcliff, in his turn,does turn out to be a fiend, and deserves the term"Devil daddy" with which young Hareton christenshim. He takes pleasure in inflicting on Hindley'sson the same abuse which Hindley had givenHeathcliff because he wants to see "if one treewon't grow as crooked as another, with the samewind to twist it," and he values his own son onlybecause he wants "the triumph of seeing [his] de-scendent fairly lord of their estates; [his] child hir-ing their children, to till their father's lands forwages." Thus, even Heathcliff's plot to reverse past

patterns by making his child lord of the Earnshawsand Lintons, only results in the reestablishment ofan old pattern. Heathcliff, the former victim oftyranny, becomes yet another tyrannical man rul-ing Wuthering Heights. This cycle is only brokenwhen, after Heathcliff's death, the property isgranted to the second Catherine, the first woman inthe book to own her own property. Her marriageto Hareton will, of course, make her property his,but it seems unlikely that his "honest, warm, intel-ligent nature" will allow him to become a tyrantlike his predecessors. The pattern of violent menruling the Heights, like so many other patterns inthe book, ends with the death of Heathcliff and themarriage of the second Catherine and Hareton.

Source: Donna C. Woodford, in an essay for Novels forStudents, Gale, 1997.

Annette R. FedericoIn thefollowing essay, Federico maintains that

Wuthering Heights is a bildungsroman-a novelwhich outlines the initiation of a young characterinto adulthood-focusing on the development ofyoung Cathy Linton rather than that ofher mother.

In their study of nineteenth-century womenwriters, The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra M.Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue persuasively thatbecause the story of Wuthering Heights is builtaround a central fall-generally understood to beCatherine and Heathcliff s anti-Miltonic fall fromhell to heaven-"a description of the novel as inpart a Bildungsroman about a girl's passage from'innocence' to 'experience' (leaving aside the pre-cise meaning of these terms) would probably bewidely accepted."

This is an interesting interpretation, and bril-liantly demonstrated. But like other views ofWuthering Heights as a feminine Bildungsroman,the focus of development is Catherine, and by as-sociation her male doppelganger Heathcliff. Theemphasis upon the first generation of the Heightsis, of course, important, and certainly Catherine andHeathcliff suffer their own peculiar rites of passagein their search for identity and wholeness. And yetit is curious that the tortured first generation ofWuthering Heights fail to develop a mature under-standing of themselves and others-in fact, Cather-ine and Heathcliff actually shrink from full partic-ipation in adult life, regressing into the adolescentpreoccupation with self and the desperate need tofeel loved. Catherine, especially, is not so muchstruggling to grow up as she is struggling not to: it

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is significant that it is the "waif' not the womanwho appears in Lockwood's terrifying dream.

So the critical view of Catherine and Heath-cliff as Bildungsroman protagonists neglects thesecharacters' inability to interpret experience realis-tically and face the limitations of adulthood. In fact,in terms of the first generation, Wuthering Heightsis not a Bildungsroman at all, but an Entwickslun-groman, a novel of mere physical passage withoutpsychological development. Catherine and hermale soul-mate remain stubbomly adolescent frombeginning to end; granted, they are triumphant, re-bellious, passionate characters, and Emily Bronteis obviously celebrating the untamed and undisci-plined spirit of adolescent love. But in view of thisfirst generation, Wuthering Heights is less a novelof development than a novel of arrested childhood.It is actually with Catherine's death in childbirththat Bronte's Bildungsroman begins. In fact, thesecond half of Wuthering Heights and the concernwith young Cathy is a fascinating variation of theprototypic novel of female education in the nine-teenth century, a dramatization of the struggle torelinquish childhood for the duties of womanhoodin the most traditional, romantic capacity: marriagewith the man of one's choice. Cathy emerges froma relatively happy childhood and a lonely adoles-cence as an assertive, sharing, and contented adultwho is prepared to accept the responsibilities andlimitations of marriage.

Cathy's marriage to Hareton is in a sense a re-vision of her mother's unsuccessful marriage toEdgar Linton, and a significant role reversal of thetraditional feminine Bildungsroman in which awoman can achieve intellectual and social ad-vancement only through marriage. For example, theelder Catherine looks at marriage as a means ofachieving outward sophistication, as well as an es-cape from mental and emotional stagnation: Edgaris the man who will define her, who will shape heridentity and give her status-"He will be rich, andI shall be the greatest woman of the neighborhood,and I shall be proud to have such a husband," shetells Nelly Dean. Catherine's selfish and short-sighted attitude toward marriage is not only in-dicative of her childish sensibilities, but under-scores the traditional theme of the feminineBildungsroman-that is, the woman must seekknowledge by attaching herself to a knowledgeablemale. Bronte varies this theme in her descriptionof young Cathy's courtship with Hareton; insteadof marrying to be advanced, Bronte's true femaleBildungsroman protagonist marries in order to ad-vance the intellectual and moral status of the male.

In young Cathy, Bronte gives us a woman whoseacquired humility, patience, and affection yieldwhat promises to be a satisfying marriage and amutual broadening of experience. More than hermother, Cathy represents a successful passagethrough the difficult rites of adolescence: the searchfor self, and the sharing of self with others.

If one looks closely at the novel, it becomesclear that Cathy and Hareton are not merely wa-tered down versions of Catherine and Heathcliff,as Richard Chase suggests. Although the strange,transcendental love of the first generation of theHeights is more stirring, more piquant than the set-tled affections of Cathy and Hareton, it is only be-cause their type of frenzied passion is so rare-andso typical of adolescence. It is well to ask whyCatherine marries Edgar at all, considering her feel-ings for Heathcliff; her naive belief that she canhave both Edgar-who represents culture and se-curity-and Heathcliff, who is the embodiment ofsexual and natural energy, proves her complete in-ability to understand reality outside of her own nar-row perspective. When Nelly Dean suggests thatby marrying Edgar, Catherine will lose Heathcliff,she is incredulous: "Oh, that's not what I intend-that's not what I mean! I shouldn't be Mrs. Lintonwere such a price demanded! He'll be as much tome as he has been all his lifetime. Edgar must shakeoff his antipathy and tolerate him, at least. He willwhen he learns my true feelings...." It is obviousthat Catherine is entering marriage with the stub-born adolescent sensibility that she can have hercake and eat it, too. Of course, this has been herspoiled way of looking at life all along; many timesin the novel Bronte portrays Catherine as a selfish,demanding, manipulative child. "I demand it!" is,in fact, Catherine's favorite expression, and com-pletely consistent with the adolescent determina-tion to have everything.

By contrast, young Cathy gradually develops asensitivity towards the feelings and needs of others.This is most explicit in her devotion to her father,Edgar Linton-and a complete contrast to Cather-ine's "naughty delight" in provoking Mr. Earnshaw.The young Cathy tells Nelly, "I fret about nothingon earth except papa's illness.... And I'll never-never-oh, never, while I have my senses, do any-thing to vex him. I love him better than myself...."Cathy's comparatively happy childhood has cer-tainly influenced her idealized view of Edgar Lin-ton, and she is naturally submissive to patriarchalauthority. But Cathy is not without spirit; she ex-hibits the typical adolescent preoccupation withlove intrigues, and shares her mother's rebellious-

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ness and scorn for those who interfere with herplans. The important difference between the twogenerations is in the nature of the rebellion; Cather-ine's disregard for others- all others, except herother-self, Heathcliff-has a cruel, manipulativequality that takes pleasure in deceitfulness and in"punishing" others for their lack of devotion to her.Her many melodramatic "scenes" illustrate Cather-ine's acting talent in the service of narcissism: as achild, after an argument with Edgar Linton, she saysto him, ". ..get away! And now I'll cry-I'll cry my-self sick!" and she proceeds to deliver a perfect fitof weeping which softens poor Edgar's heart.Catherine never outgrows these willful displays ofmad emotion, and by feigning a fit to arouse herhusband's concern, she ultimately brings about herown death. She begs Nelly to tell Edgar she is "indanger of being seriously ill.... I want to frightenhim.... Will you do so, my good Nelly? You areaware that I am in no way blameable in this mat-ter." Catherine often uses Nelly Dean as an instru-ment for her guile: "... and remind Edgar of mypassionate temper verging, when kindled, onfrenzy." Certainly Catherine's last performance ismagnificent, if unsuccessful, for even Nelly is star-tled by "the aspect of death" her mistress is able toassume. This undisciplined and domineeringchild-the little girl who wanted her father to bringher a whip from Liverpool-fails to mature at allbecause she never learns to control her perverse ego-tism. That in her last breath Catherine looks to Nelly"like a child reviving" aptly suggests the adolescentspirit of the woman's rebellion, a fatal result ofCatherine's last scene of "mad resolution."

Unlike her mother's obsessiveness, youngCathy's rebellion is actually a healthy curiosityabout her relatives at Wuthering Heights. Certainlyit is not surprising that a young and intelligent girlwho has not been beyond the range of the park be-fore the age of thirteen, whose only companion isher nurse, and whose only amusements are ram-bling on the moors and reading, should be eager tomake new acquaintances. And of course Cathypasses through certain predictable stages of ado-lescence; but unlike her mother, she does passthrough, and restlessness, romantic love, and re-bellion are only stages of her development. For ex-ample, Cathy and Linton Heathcliff s "love affair"is typical of the adolescent absorption with ro-mantic notions, and the fact that the relationship issomehow taboo makes it all the more alluring.Cathy exaggerates the importance of her love let-ters, weeping and pleading to Nelly "to spare oneor two." Nelly Dean's common sense reply to the

mere suggestion of Cathy loving Linton is, "Lov-ing! Pretty loving indeed, and both times togetheryou have seen Linton hardly four hours in yourlife!" That Cathy is able to open her mind to thisobjective, adult point of view is a credit to her ma-turity, and something the older Catherine neverlearned to do.

In her relationship to Linton, Cathy begins tolearn that her desires are complex and that her ex-perience of reality must be reconciled to actual re-ality-in other words, her view of Linton Heath-cliff as "a pretty little darling" must be reconciledto Nelly's less generous description: "The worst-tempered bit of a sickly slip that ever struggled intoits teens!" In learning to distinguish between whatshe thinks she wants (Linton) and what she reallywants (an energetic and empathetic companion),Cathy begins to achieve the disciplined growth andbroad perspective which is the undertaking of theBildungsroman protagonist. Simply the way shehandles Heathcliff and her captivity at WutheringHeights demonstrates an intelligent, unselfish, andpractical kind of defiance which Catherine neverdisplayed, because Catherine acknowledged onlyher own needs and desires. When Linton says,"You must obey my father, you must," Cathyreplies, "I must obey my own," reflecting her grow-ing sense of responsibility. After her forced mar-riage, she is prepared to accept the consequencesof her situation by loving Linton in spite of Heath-cliff-"You cannot make us hate each other!"Cathy remains dignified and controlled, and speaks"with a kind of dreary triumph: she seemed to havemade up her mind to enter into the spirit of her fu-ture family, and draw pleasure from the griefs ofher enemies."

If Nelly's narrative makes Cathy's behaviorsound reminiscent of the older Catherine's venge-ful fits, it should be pointed out that Cathy's "en-emies" are real, not fancied, conspirators. Heath-cliff at this point has kidnapped her, kept her fromher dying father, abused her physically, and forcedher to marry his sickly, peevish son. Cathy's situ-ation is wretched, almost hopeless; when Lintondies shortly after their degenerate union, she is leftat Wuthering Heights with only Hareton and Heath-cliff. And here her bildung or education needs tobe emphasized. Part of education and developmentis arriving at an understanding of one's value; this,I would argue, is the major undertaking of adoles-cence. The older Catherine never sees herself real-istically. She has notions of superiority and self im-portance that can be justified only in terms of herexceptionally passionate nature and her extraordi-

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nary bond to Heathcliff. Catherine's immature andnarrow vision cannot imagine that she is not thecentral concern in everyone else's life. It is almostan epiphany when she says to Nelly, "How strange!I thought, though everybody hated and despisedeach other, they could not avoid loving me." De-spite Heathcliff's furious devotion and her hus-band's genuine affection, Catherine always feelsunloved and undervalued. Even as she is dying, shecries, "That is how I am loved!" like a self-pityingchild. Nor does Catherine value the love of others:"I have such faith in Linton's love," she says, "thatI believe I might kill him, and he wouldn't wish toretaliate." Rarely if ever is Catherine described asa loving person, one who is willing to give the selffreely to another; even her professed love forHeathcliff is strangely qualified by her claim, "I amHeathcliff!" He seems to be only a kind of narcis-sistic double.

Young Cathy of course wants to be loved, butunlike her mother she is willing to take the risksand suffer the consequences of loving another.When she kisses Hareton in an effort to makepeace, she is conquering her pride and scorn-andher loneliness-in a way that truly suggests matu-rity. She is beginning to see herself in relation toothers, beginning to develop a realistic adult per-spective. For example, Cathy knows she has beenunfair and cruel to Hareton, and sincerely tries toimprove their relationship in the best-the moststraightforward-way she knows how. "When Icall you stupid, I don't mean anything-I don'tmean that I despise you," she explains, and by ar-ticulating her meaning she arrives at a closer un-derstanding of the way she affects others. By hum-bling herself, Cathy learns to master herself, andby offering her friendship to Hareton, she is on theverge of a new, perhaps more traditional, kind ofeducation: marriage. But the marriage of Cathy andHareton is not the traditional union of the maleteacher/master and the female learner/servant. Byreversing the roles and making Cathy the educator,Wuthering Heights takes on the aspects of a newfeminine Bildungsroman in which a woman emerg-ing from childhood and adolescence approachesmarriage not merely as a means of social advance-ment, or knowledge, or security, but as a mutualbroadening of experience in which love balancespower, with "both their minds tending to the samepoint."

So it is with the second generation of theHeights that Bronte begins her feminine Bil-dungsroman. If Catherine and Heathcliff have amore tumultuous and exciting story, it may be be-

cause theirs is the tale of arrested childhood, a fu-rious protest against the necessity of growing up.Perhaps Cathy's struggle is less stormy and her fu-ture too settled and neat to satisfy our lingering ado-lescent admiration for rebellion, stubborn self sat-isfaction, and emotional intensity. But in the worldof Wuthering Heights, as in our own, the passagefrom innocence to experience is an awkward limbo,a thin papery wall, between two selves-betweenthe waif outside the window, and the womanwithin.

Source: Annette R. Federico, "The Waif at the Window:Emily Bronte's Feminine 'Bildungsroman'," in The Victo-rian Newsletter, No. 68, Fall, 1985, pp. 26-28.

Vereen M. BellIn thefollowing essay, Bell comments on moral

themes in Wuthering Heights, focusing in particu-lar on the Biblical allusions in narrator Lock-wood's first dream.

The two dreams Lockwood experiences earlyin Wuthering Heights-the first of a visit to Gim-merton Kirk, and the second of a visit from theghost-child Catherine-have recently received crit-ical attention from Ruth M. Adams and EdgarShannon. Of the two interpretations Shannon's["Lockwood's Dreams and the Exegesis of Wuther-ing Heights, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Septem-ber, 1959] seems the most convincing in that it of-fers the only plausible source for the Biblicalallusion in the first dream; but in discussing the re-lationship of the dream sermon and its title to thetragedy of Heathcliff and Catherine, Shannon ig-nores significant aspects of the dream itself, andconsequently the value of his interpretation seemsimpaired somewhat, like Miss Adams's, by its owningenuity.

The preacher that Lockwood hears in the firstdream is Jabes Branderham, and the sermon is en-titled "Seventy Times Seven and the First of theSeventy-first." Shannon identifies the sermon'stext as Matt. 18: 21-22. In this passage Peter asksJesus, "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin againstme, and I forgive him? Till seven times?" and Je-sus answers, "I say not unto thee Until seven times:but, Until seventy times seven." "The First of theSeventy-first," then, Shannon asserts, "advancesthe idea of an unpardonable sin beyond the ordi-nary scale of human wrongs." The subsequentnightmare, he continues, connects this idea withCatherine, who appears as an outcast, and we areasked to believe that it is she who has committedthe unforgivable sin by marrying Edgar and deny-

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ing the "natural and elemental affinity" inherent inher love for Heathcliff. "Adhered to, [love] is atonce the source of joy and harmony; rejected orsubverted, it becomes the fountainhead of enmityand strife."

One cannot challenge Shannon's assertionthat thematically Wuthering Heights displays the"destructive consequences of thwarted love"; butit seems both unfair and inexact to imply that theguilt devolves upon Catherine exclusively. More-over such an interpretation does not seem to besubstantiated by a close reading of the literal andsymbolic action of Lockwood's first dream. Shan-non implies that the nature of the unpardonablesin is merely hinted at rather than defined, andthat the reader is left to infer its nature from thesecond dream and from the the action that follows.In fact, however, through a curious kind of logi-cal paradox, the unpardonable sin is definedwithin the action of the dream itself. Not long af-ter Branderham's sermon opens Lockwood beginsto fidget, laboring under the four hundred andninety heads of discourse-each in itself thelength of a separate sermon. Finally, when Bran-derham reaches the "First of the Seventy-first"Lockwood can bear it no longer; he rises and de-nounces Branderham as

the sinner of the sin that no Christian need pardon[emphasis supplied]. Seventy times seven times haveI plucked up my hat and been about to depart-Sev-enty times seven times have you preposterouslyforced me to resume my seat. The four hundred andninety-first is too much. Fellow-martyrs, have at him!

Branderham's reply is equally significant as heturns the congregation back upon Lockwood.

"Thous art the Man!" cried Jabes.... "Seventy timesseven times didst thou gapingly contort thy visage-seventy times seven times did I take counsel with mysoul-Lo, this is human weakness; this also may beabsolved! The First ofthe Seventy-first is come [em-phasis supplied]. Brethren, execute upon him thejudgment written...."

Lockwood himself, in other words, commits(in the dream at least) the unforgivable sin in ac-cusing Branderham of that sin no Christian needpardon. That is, the unforgivable sin is to accuseanother of committing the unforgivable sin-or,more simply put, the absence of forgiveness, of for-bearance, of mercy. Each man forgives the otherfour hundred and ninety times, as Jesus enjoins, butneither has the charity to forbear the four hundredand ninety-first offense; each then denounces theother, and chaos erupts-"Every man's hand wasagainst his neighbour."

Moreover, it is manifestly forgiveness, and not,as Shannon suggests, sin that Jesus is talking about;Peter in using the verb sin refers to a personal of-fense, not to mortal transgression; and of coursewhat Jesus is urging is perpetual forgiveness, per-petual charity, only he phrases it in finite terms.

The relation of the dream and its Biblicalsource to the tragedy that follows would seem ob-vious. It is the want of forgiveness-or phrasedpositively, it is vengeance-that disrupts the moraland social order of Wuthering Heights. Hindleycannot forgive Heathcliff for usurping the love ofhis father; so once he is master of the Heights, hesees that Heathcliff is methodically humiliated anddegraded. Heathcliff s degradation in turn enforcesa physical and psychological separation fromCatherine which preordains marriage to Edgar Lin-ton. When Heathcliff acquires his fortune, he usesthe power it affords to avenge himself against Hind-ley, whom he easily corrupts and destroys; againstHareton and Catherine, the children, who of courseare innocent; against Isabella, who is equallyblameless; and through all of these, against EdgarLinton, whom he hates not just as a rival but as anembodiment of everything effete and conventionalthat erodes Catherine's spirit and finally destroysher. Father is turned against son, brother againstsister, servant against master, husband against wife,lover against lover-"Every man's hand wasagainst his neighbour."

Catherine is really less a perpetrator than a vic-tim of this turmoil. She shares the guilt of coursebecause her union with Edgar is the act which has-tens the tragedy. But hers is an error in judgmentrather than a mortal transgression; she marriesEdgar in faith, naively assuming that she can pre-serve her intense sibling affinity with Heathcliffand perhaps redeem him (and herself) as well. Butneither man can forgive her for loving the other andwhat he represents. In his last interview withCatherine, Heathcliff tells her, "It is hard to for-give, and to look at those eyes, and feel thosewasted hands.... I forgive what you have done tome. I love my murderer-but yours! How can I?"Torn between the two men, who inspire contraryimpulses within her, she grows weak-almost asan act of will-and ultimately dies. When she ap-pears to Lockwood as a ghost and an outcast, hiscruelty to her is merely a vivid physical image ofthe emotional torment she has been made to sufferduring her mortal existence.

Among those whom Catherine loves there isno one who can forgive her human error; there is

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love abundant for her, but it is always conditionallove that demands and punishes. Young Catherineand Hareton, we are led to believe, eventually cometo love with patience and understanding, but onlyafter Heathcliff' s influence is removed. And Heath-cliff's rancor merely epitomizes the chief moral de-fect of all of the characters concerned. That defectwould seem to be not so much the denial of lovethat Shannon suggests as love's failure to attaincharity, to achieve moral fulfillments as well asemotional intensity.Source: Vereen M. Bell, "Wuthering Heights and the Un-forgivable Sin," in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 17, No.2, September, 1962, pp. 188-91.

Charlotte Bronte, "Editor's Preface to the New [1850] Edi-tion of Wuthering Heights," in Wuthering Heights, editedby David Daiches, Penguin, 1965, pp. 37-41.

David Daiches, editor, in the introduction to WutheringHeights, Penguin, 1965, pp. 7-29.

Winifred Gerin, "Emily Bronte," in Reference Guide to Eng-lish Literature, edited by D. L. Kirkpatrick, St. James Press,1991, pp. 300-02.

Algemon Charles Swinburne, "Emily Bronth," in TheAthenaeum, No. 2903, June 16, 1883, pp. 762-63.

Tom Winnifrith, "Emily Brontd," in Dictionary of LiteraryBiography, Volume 21: Victorian Novelists before 1885,edited by Ira B. Nadel and William E. Fredeman, Gale Re-search, 1983, pp. 55-67.

Miriam Allot, The Brontes: The Critical Heritage, Rout-ledge, 1974.A collection of criticism on the works of the Brontdsisters, including reprints of early reviews of Wuther-ing Heights and Poems by Currer, Ellis and ActonBell and Charlotte Bronte's observations on her sis-ter's novel.

Terry Eagleton, "Myths of Power: A Marxist Study onWuthering 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-ences in nineteenth-century England.

Winifred Gerin, Emily Bronte: A Biography, Clarendon,1971.

Gerin discusses Emily Bronte's life and the effect ofher environment on her work.

Philip K. Wion, "The Absent Mother in Wuthering Heights"in American Imago, Vol. 42, No. 2, 1985.

Wion suggests that the early death of Emily Bronte'smother accounts for Brontd's portrayal of orphanedcharacters in search of mother figures.

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