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| The cover of the edition I first read |
[Like most of us, my
teens and early twenties were wasted years. I was studying (the word should be
interpreted in the broadest possible terms) at a college whose idea of culture
was ‘Bollywood Nite’ at the Annual Day. I was sitting in classrooms with people
whose preferred appellations for women were ‘chhavi’, ‘item’ and ‘chamiya’ and considered any girl who wore jeans to be
a slut.
However, at some point
in my post-graduation, we were given the opportunity to write a 'Book Review
that brought out the various power equations and conflicts that could happen
within human relations'. While I didn't really understand what that sentence
meant, I caught the first two words and went on and wrote a Review of
'Wuthering Heights', a book that, to me, has a near-holy status.
It was a story that grew
in the telling, and by the end of it, I had a review that was over six thousand
words long. It got me a good grade, but that was never the point. I was
writing a review of a Book that’s part of the standard syllabus across schools
wherever English is taught, and despite having no formal education in
‘Literature’ as it is taught in colleges, I gave it a shot. This is, in fact,
my first-ever ‘Book Review’.
Having nothing better to
do, I shall now proceed to put up this monster of a review on this Blog. The
longest single post ever, I think. The only editing from the original review as
written is in the last paragraph under the first section.
If you have spoiler
concerns, stop here.]
The Author, the Times and the Place
It is impossible to place Wuthering Heights as
a book into perspective without first knowing a little about its author, Emily
Brontë. She was the fifth of six children of an Irish Reverend, whose mother
died when she was three. Educated mostly at home by her father, Emily grew up
in the company of her two sisters, Charlotte and Anne, both of whom also went
on to become famous novelists, and her brother Branwell, a dissolute artist who
was, nevertheless, much doted on by his sisters. She spent most of her life in
the bleak moors of Yorkshire, which are the inspiration and backdrop of Wuthering
Heights. This isolation from the world outside proved surprisingly
conducive to the creative genius of the girls – the time spent with each other
and in solitude proving a fertile ground for the growth of their imaginations.
They wrote poetry and prose from a young age, and making up stories to fill in
the idle time rambling on the lonely moors must have been a necessity. Emily
and Anne had even created a whole fantasy world in their poems (commonly
referred to as the ‘Gondal’ Poems) – the world of Wuthering Heights is
often considered to be drawn from the Gondal world.
Wuthering Heights was
the only book its author ever wrote. She died at the age of 30, never living to
see the success and adulation her work would receive. Living most of her life
with her family or teaching at a school in Haworth, Emily lived what can only
be described as a very cloistered existence.
So perhaps it is remarkable that she
could have written as intense a book as Wuthering Heights. It is
remarkable that a woman in the prime of youth could have written a book of the
morbid splendour of Wuthering Heights. It is remarkable that a woman
could have created a character of such violent, wicked power as Heathcliff. But
then, Wuthering
Heights is a remarkable book.
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| The woman who, to combat gender prejudice, had to write her book under the pseudonym 'Ellis Bell' |
If ever a tragically short life was fulfilled, Emily Brontë’s was. What she
left behind is immortal; it is a part of the collective conscious of the
English-speaking world.
I was young when I first read it – about twelve or thirteen, I can’t quite
remember – and have read it several times since. Each reading has been a source
of endless pleasure to me as it has to generations before me. It is not just
about the tragic, almost spiritually intense love story of Catherine and
Heathcliff – as Bonamy Dobree puts it, “After a hundred years, the verdict
goes that Wuthering Heights is itself an experience, a part of our sense of
existence, it colours our view of what life is about.”
As legacies go, that of Wuthering Heights
should be, and is, immortal. It is still being made into television and movies,
160-odd years after publication. The characters have lost much in the marketing
that goes with such resilience. Heathcliff is portrayed as a brooding hero – a
Gothic Edward Cullen, and the character of Catherine Earnshaw has also been
whitewashed. Such portrayals, inspired partly no doubt by how Sir Lawrence
Olivier and Merle Oberon (who so perfectly looked the part on screen and yet
managed to do little justice to the story) portrayed them way back in 1939.
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| The book that lies on my bookshelf today |
The Setting
Wuthering
Heights is set on the bleak moors of Yorkshire. The action
confines itself to a small geographical area – the eponymous House of the Earnshaw family, Wuthering Heights, and that of the Lintons, Thrushcross Grange.
There are occasional references to the nearby village of Gimmerton, but it
hardly impinges on the narrative. The landscape Brontë describes is of wild,
uncultivated hills and crags, of cold wintry plains, and the warm comfort of
Thrushcross Grange. The houses are isolated – four miles separate the Grange
from the Heights, and the village is even further away. It is in this close
isolation that she traces the fortunes of the two families – the Lintons and
the Earnshaws, and the effect the foundling Heathcliff has on them. The houses themselves are indicative of the
occupants – Wuthering Heights located at a high altitude amidst cold biting
winds and the Grange in the calm, gentle plains.
It is the wildness that lends the book that flavour that leaves its mark, I
think. The title itself is aptly chosen – ‘Wuthering’ literally refers to the
effect of atmospheric tumults, a word describing the setting as perfectly as it
does the story. Long after you close the book, you carry the image of the stony
moors, the moss on the ground, the forbidding exterior of the Heights, the
grim, brooding figure of the ‘hero’ and the light-footed, wild step of the
heroine walking along paths only known to themselves, in your mind.
The Characters
Mr Earnshaw: Landowner, master of Wuthering
Heights
Heathcliff: A foundling, raised by the elder
Mr. Earnshaw.
Catherine Earnshaw: Daughter of Mr. Earnshaw
Hindley Earnshaw: Catherine’s elder brother
Edgar Linton: Master of
Thrushcross Grange
Isabella Linton: His sister
Catherine Linton: daughter of Catherine
Earnshaw (to avoid confusion, I shall refer to her as ‘Cathy’, the name by which her father referred to her)
Linton Heathcliff: Son of Heathcliff
Hareton Earnshaw: Son of Hindley
Ellen ‘Nelly’ Dean: Housekeeper and trusted
servant of the Earnshaws and Lintons at various times.
Lockwood: Heathcliff’s tenant
…and other minor characters
The Book
Wuthering Heights begins in
a dramatic fashion.
Lockwood, the tenant at Thrushcross Grange, calls on his landlord Heathcliff at
his house, the titular Heights, where he observes the taciturn protagonist, the uncouth
Hareton and the beautiful but haughty child-widow, Cathy. Forced to stay
overnight by a violent snowstorm, Lockwood finds himself sleeping in a tiny garret
that obviously was once the refuge of a certain Catherine Earnshaw, whose name
is scrawled multiple times on the wooden desk. Falling into a fitful sleep, he
dreams that he hears a knock on the window, through which the ghost of a little
girl unknown to him tries to enter the house.
“Begone!”screams
Lockwood, “I’ll never let you in, not if you beg these twenty years!”
“It
is twenty years,” replies the apparition, “I’ve
been a waif these twenty years!”
Lockwood’s screams bring to the room none other than his landlord himself, who,
on hearing what just transpired, throws open the window in a fit of desperation
and implores the ghost to
“Come
in! Come in! Cathy, do come. Oh do – once more. Oh my heart’s darling, hear me
this time, Catherine, at last!”
The ghost of Catherine fails to respond.
This passage sets the tone for the narrative, in its way. On his return to
Thrushcross Grange, where he has taken up his abode, Lockwood asks his
housekeeper, Nelly Dean, if she knows anything about the strange happenings and
behaviour of the residents of Wuthering Heights. From here begins the story of
Catherine and Heathcliff, as told by Nelly –
She takes Lockwood back some forty years, and tells of her being brought up at
the Heights, the daughter of the then-housekeeper, where she was a favourite of
the elder Mr. Earnshaw and a close friend of his son, Hindley. One fateful
night, Mr Earnshaw returns from a trip to Liverpool, whence he brings back a
dark, unknown boy, presumably an orphan whom he names ‘Heathcliff’ and proposes
to raise as his own.
Through his quiet, uncomplaining nature, Heathcliff quickly establishes himself
as a favourite of the old man, much to the annoyance of Hindley. Catherine, on
the other hand, develops a close bond with the boy. As children, the brutish
nature of Hindley is already evident, as is the headstrong, capricious nature
of his sister. Heathcliff’s true nature, however, awaits revelation.
What is interesting here is the effect on Hindley, who realises that in his own
house, he is subordinate to a foundling in his father’s eyes. Heathcliff knows
he can get anything from the old man, and that gives him a power over Hindley.
Hindley responds to this loss of power by resorting to physically beating
Heathcliff whenever opportunity affords. The latter never actually complains
about this to his benefactor, however, reserving his revenge for later.
The elder Earnshaw’s death is followed by the marriage of Hindley to Frances, a
pretty but empty-headed girl from the city. Now in charge of Wuthering Heights
and having power over Heathcliff, Hindley looks to exact revenge on Heathcliff
for perceived slights. Reducing the boy to a common labourer, subjecting him to
beatings and ensuring his utter degradation become Hindley’s tools for doing
so. Heathcliff falls into a life of rustic drudgery and all-round decay. His
association with his tormentor’s sister, however, continues as before.
Catherine and Heathcliff are still close confidantes, friends and lovers – two
against the world.
A significant event takes place while Catherine and Heathcliff are about
fifteen – on a ramble across the moors, the twosome stray into Thrushcross Grange,
where one of the Lintons’ dogs bites Catherine. On recognising Catherine as
their neighbour’s daughter, the old Lintons invite her to stay with them until
she recovers her health. This stay lasts a month, and Catherine makes her
acquaintance with Edgar and Isabella Linton. The Lintons are a sharp contrast
to the Earnshaws – they are exceedingly genteel, living in an atmosphere of
luxury and elegance. The Earnshaws, no less rich, live in much harsher
conditions, partly because of the location of the Heights at the high altitude
and partly because they are more rugged by nature. Even physically the families
are very different – where the Earnshaws and their household are dark-haired
and strong, possessed of strong constitutions (a characteristic that extends to
Heathcliff), the Lintons are blond-haired and delicate. The nobler, ‘superior’
Catherine quickly establishes herself in a position of dominance over the
Lintons. The boy adores her, she fascinates the girl and the old couple dotes
on her. It doesn’t take long for Catherine to realise that she has this ability
to dominate people through the force of her beauty and will.
The Catherine who returns to the Heights is quite different from the wild
gypsy-like creature who left it. Dressed in the finest clothes the Linton’s
could give her, she now looks like quite the little lady and acts the part when
she returns to her home – until she meets Heathcliff. Then the acquired
elegance is forgotten and she flies to his arms even as he returns from a long
tiring day at the fields, dirty and shoddy. Noble or rustic, for Catherine, he still
remains in ascendance.
But the visit to the Linton’s is not forgotten. Hindley, recognising the
advantages that association with the Lintons would bring, takes steps to
further restrict the contact between his sister and his enemy Heathcliff, even
as he encourages visits from the Linton family. Yet, the ties between Catherine
and Heathcliff continue as strong as ever.
Several years pass. Catherine is now grown to a true beauty of a woman;
Heathcliff to a near-savage farm labourer. Edgar Linton is now a close friend
of Catherine’s and she finds herself torn between the handsome, gentle Edgar,
the life of easy comfort that he epitomises - and the dark, rough, impoverished
Heathcliff. The contrast between them, as Brontë describes it, as the contrast
between a “beautiful,
fertile valley” and a “bleak, hilly, coal country”. The death of
Frances Earnshaw in childbirth leaves Hindley devastated. He becomes an
alcoholic, violent in temper and dissolute in behaviour, even as Hareton, his son, grows up in constant
fear of his father. It is here that Hindley, in fact, loses control over his
son – Hareton hates his
father, who gives him only beatings and abuses, and becomes closer to
Heathcliff – this fact is significant as the story progresses. The power that
Hindley exercises over his son through physical coercion is also much inferior
to that which we later find Edgar Linton exercise over his daughter.
Matters come to a crisis when Edgar eventually proposes to, and is accepted by,
Catherine. The subsequent conversation between Catherine and Nelly, which is
overheard by Heathcliff, is the central passage of the book. Catherine, acutely
aware that the man she has just accepted is not the one she considers her soul-mate,
is racked with doubt as to whether she has done the right thing, and tries to
convince herself, much more than Nelly, in this regard.
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| Nelly and Catherine (played by Merle Oberon in the 1939 movie) |
"I
love the ground under his feet,” says Catherine of
Edgar, “and the air over his head, and everything he touches, and
every word he says…so tell me Nelly, am I doing right?”
“Perfectly
right,” says Nelly, “And now, let us hear what you are
unhappy about. Your brother will be pleased, you will escape from a disorderly,
comfortless home, into a wealthy, respectable one; and you love Edgar, and
Edgar loves you. All seems smooth and easy: where is the obstacle?”
“Here,
and here!” responds Catherine, striking her forehead and
breast, “in
whichever place the soul lives. In my soul and my heart, I am convinced I am
wrong.”
The explanation follows swiftly as Catherine relates to Nelly a dream she had:
“…I
broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry
they flung me out into the middle of the heath on top of Wuthering Heights
where I woke up sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as
the other. I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I do to be in
heaven; and if my brother had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn’t have
thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never
know how I love him, and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because
he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are
the same; and Linton’s and mine are as different as a moonbeam from lightening,
or frost from fire…I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a
notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were
the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in
this life had been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the
beginning: 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. My love for Linton
is a little like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware,
as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks
beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I AM
Heathcliff. He’s always in my mind, not as a pleasure, any more than I am a
pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”
In these words does the headstrong Catherine express her love for the man whose
fate she has just sealed by promising to marry his rival, and brings out the
searing intensity of their feelings for each other. It is a love beyond love, a
feeling of belonging, of oneness that they share, an almost supernatural depth
that will eventually consume both.
Heathcliff, unable to bear the insult of Catherine’s words that it would
degrade her to marry him now, runs away from Wuthering Heights. A traumatised
Catherine suffers a stroke and brain fever from which she makes a slow
recovery. It is three years before she and Edgar get married, by which time the
elder Lintons have succumbed to the ravages of time. Nelly moves with her
mistress to Thrushcross Grange, hoping for a brighter, quieter future than the
past has been. And this, indeed, seems to be the prospect. Edgar is a devoted
husband, bending to his wife’s caprices, his sister dotes on her as well, “honeysuckles
embracing the thorn”, as Nelly puts it. There is no bending from
Catherine, who is as headstrong as ever, but her husband and his sister are so
careful of her tempers and of ruffling her feathers, as it were, that life at
the Grange settles into a form of domestic bliss. The domestic life of the
Lintons is entirely subservient to the whims of the woman of the house.
Catherine Linton is the queen in her domain, lording it over the gentle natures
of her husband and sister-in-law. And just as absolute power can sometimes be
generous, she lets them have their own way when the fancy takes her, and
considers herself very magnanimous indeed for doing so.
There is a difference here between the power exercised by Heathcliff over
Hindley while old Earnshaw was alive, that exercised by Hindley over Heathcliff
after his death and that now exercised by Catherine over her husband’s family.
The first was power emerging from influence – the influence that
Heathcliff had over Hindley’s father. The second
flowed from authority. Hindley was
the master of the house; he fed and clothed Heathcliff, and the option before
Heathcliff was to accept this authority or leave – with leaving Catherine not
an option, Heathcliff was effectively in Hindley’s control. Here, however, the control is voluntary – Edgar allows Catherine to have her own way for the love he bears for her and the fear he has of crossing her.
This state of affairs does not last for long. Heathcliff makes his long-awaited
(and feared) return, a quite different man from the one who had left – the
plough-boy is now a wealthy gentleman. The text is deliberately silent on where
and how he made his money and got his education – Emily Brontë presumably
wanting readers to make their own judgement based on their own temperament.
The first meeting of Heathcliff in his new avatar, Catherine and Edgar Linton
is described in great detail. On seeing her old playmate, Catherine reverts to
her old self – it is as though the years and the layers of reserve have peeled
away again. Nelly points out to Lockwood the marked difference between her new
master and her old acquaintance – the effeminate, peevish Linton and the manly,
solid Heathcliff. Catherine, dominant as always, persuades Edgar to accept
Heathcliff as a friend. Heathcliff confides to Nelly later that he had not
planned on staying long; being uncertain of the reception he would receive from
Catherine. The effusiveness, the excitement, the emotion of her reception to
him convinces him that the love she once felt for him is far from dead; his own
burns as strongly as ever. Finding Hindley has dissolutely gambled away most of
his inheritance, Heathcliff installs himself as a tenant of his old tormentor at
Wuthering Heights and cunningly plots his landlord’s downfall, taking advantage
of his gambling habit. A new side of Heathcliff is also revealed here – his avarice, as he moves towards taking
over the home where he was once brought as a waif.
Before long, Heathcliff is a more and more familiar visitor at the Grange, and
he and Catherine resume their former relations as nearly as they can. The long
walks on the moors are resumed, in spite of Edgar’s resentment. To Heathcliff,
this is a triumph over his hated rival. To Catherine, this is a vindication of
her earlier stand that he should never have left. She does not believe she
loves Edgar any less for loving Heathcliff more. But then her feelings for
Heathcliff are not love as we understand it – it is something well beyond that.
In his new position, Heathcliff is not Catherine’s greatest comfort, but rather
her greatest torment. His presence
reproaches her every moment with that she could have had. His constant
accusations to her of not loving him, of tormenting him drive her near the edge
mentally even as her pregnancy weakens her physically.
A complication arises when Isabella Linton falls in love with Heathcliff, much
to the despair of Edgar and Nelly. A misguided affection, a childish
infatuation with that which she cannot comprehend, Isabella, who commonly
accompanies her sister-in-law and Heathcliff on their rambles, believes herself
well and truly in love with her brother’s enemy. There is an essential
difference between her feelings for him and Catherine’s. Whereas Isabella is in love with an idea of Heathcliff, of
a ‘black knight’, as it were, Catherine has no such illusions. Where Isabella
builds up an idealized image of a person who does not exist, Catherine
plaintively and honestly says,
“Tell
her what Heathcliff is: an unreclaimed creature, without refinement, without
cultivation: an arid wilderness of furze and whinstone. It is a deplorable
ignorance of his character, child, and nothing else, which makes that dream
enter your head. Pray, don’t imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and
affection beneath that stern exterior! He’s not a rough diamond, a
pearl-containing diamond of a rustic: he’s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.
He’d crush you like a sparrow’s egg, Isabella, if he found you a troublesome
charge. I know he couldn’t love a Linton; and yet he’d be quite capable of
marrying your fortune and your expectations.”
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| Rosalind Halsted as Isabella Linton from the 2009 TV adaptation |
Tragically for her, Isabella Linton disregards this advice from the person who
knows Heathcliff best; they elope some weeks later.
But before that, takes place the big confrontation between Edgar and Heathcliff
that precipitates Catherine’s decline. Edgar, returning from a Church service,
finds his wife and his bété noire engaged in
a heated argument about Isabella. Already smarting under the accumulated
insults of his situation, the enraged husband tries foolishly to evict
Heathcliff from his home permanently. The physical confrontation that ensues
between the two leaves Edgar hurt, Heathcliff furious and Catherine a mental
wreck. She suffers another stroke, followed by delirium and brain-fever. Edgar,
crushed by his wife’s illness and sister’s desertion, becomes a recluse. He
cuts off ties with his sister entirely and even Heathcliff desists from
repeating his visits to the Grange.
It is worth observing here that Edgar is unable to assert his rightful
authority as the master of his own home in the face of Heathcliff’s
overwhelming physical superiority. Already he has ceded control in his
relationship with his wife to her; and to her, there is no tinge of
unfaithfulness in what she’s doing. It is worth recalling that there is no hint of a sexual relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine – the battle
is always on the plane of the mind
and heart. To Catherine, this is
insignificant – it is Heathcliff who rules her heart and mind; she can identify
with him, she feels what he feels, she hurts when he hurts, but her duties to
Edgar as a wife are distinct from this. To her, there is place in her life for
both Edgar and Heathcliff, but neither of the men in her life sees it that way.
Heathcliff resents the loss of physical possession of Catherine, Edgar cannot
bear his loss of Catherine’s spirit.
Letters from Isabella to Nelly reveal her quick disillusionment with her
husband. His brutish nature shines in full force on her, and the witty, laughing
girl is reduced to a depressive cynic who hopes that her husband’s hatred will
eventually lead him to kill her, delivering her from a fate she believes worse
than death. She describes domestic life at the Heights with Hindley, Hareton,
the fanatical servant Joseph and of course, her husband. Hindley and Heathcliff
are always at each other’s throat – the former constantly plotting ghastly
revenges on the latter – plots he is never sober enough to undertake. The only
thing standing between Heathcliff killing Hindley is Catherine – as long as she
lives, Heathcliff knows he cannot harm her brother. Meanwhile the child Hareton
is growing up without ever learning to read or write, doting on his father’s
tormentor. The house is now a dark, dingy hell-hole, frequented by Hindley’s
drunken companions by day and by the spectral Heathcliff at night.
Whatever love Isabella may have felt for her husband is crushed by him.
“He’s
not a human being,” says the unfortunate girl, “and he
has no claim in my charity. I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to
death; and flung it back at me. People feel with their hearts, and since he has
destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.”
Catherine’s recovery is slow but she does, eventually, come to. Her
condition is still delicate, and the doctor warns Edgar that they have only
delayed the inevitable. Under Edgar’s care she does, however, return to
consciousness, though her mind is still, as Nelly says, “seemingly
fixed on a point well beyond what she can see.”
Heathcliff, hearing of her recovery, insists on a meeting with
her – his ‘soul’s
torment’ as he calls her. Through threats of forced entry, he
coerces Nelly into facilitating a meeting – him Catherine recognises. The final
meeting of the two is portrayed in a moving, often wild conversation, as they
accuse each other of causing the other misery, all the while clasped in a tight
embrace.
“I
wish I could hold you,” says the dying woman, “till
we were both dead! I shouldn’t care what you suffered! What care I for your
sufferings? Why shouldn’t you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be
happy when I am in the earth?”
“Don’t torture me till I
am as mad as yourself!” is his only response.
Here it might be worthwhile to try and examine the relationship between Heathcliff
and Catherine. There is something unnatural about their feelings for each other
– it reaches the point of obsession in him, to her he is a need as fundamental
to her as breathing. Where and when who has the greater power in their
relationship is difficult to say. Certainly Catherine seems dominant – she gets
her own way most of the time. Without her restraining influence, Heathcliff’s
savage nature would have, no doubt, expressed itself in a much more violent way
on his enemies. He has a power over her too – the power to make her feel guilty
and miserable through constant reproaches and accusations, which eventually
lead her to her death, but Catherine’s power is more ‘absolute’ – she gets what
she wants by commanding it, the tragedy is that she rarely knows what she
really wants. He ends up exercising his power to destroy the one thing he loves
most. In their complex relationship, power equations shift like the shifting
tides; and the force of their love, like a force of nature, takes with it not just
their own destinies, but those of all who associate with them – Edgar,
Isabella, Hindley and their children.
The arrival of Edgar at this tryst results in their sudden parting – Catherine
faints, never to rise again, Heathcliff flees the scene. That night, the elder
Catherine dies in childbirth, leaving her husband devastated and her lover
desperate. She leaves behind the prematurely-born Cathy Linton, a forgotten
child, her birth as tragic as that of her cousin Hareton’s.
The same night, Isabella takes the opportunity to escape her torture, stopping
at the Grange on the way, telling Nelly of her intention to go to a place where
her husband can never find her, which she does, raising their son on her own,
without ever telling him who his father is or that he even has one.
Edgar’s reaction to his wife’s death contrasts sharply with that of Hindley
Earnshaw’s. Where the one plumbs the depths of despair, taking to drink,
neglecting his estate and his son, the other raises his daughter in memory of
her mother, as doting and loving a parent as child could ever wish for. Hindley
dies soon, possibly murdered by Heathcliff, mourned by none but Nelly Dean.
Edgar lives on, though he confesses that he would be much happier interred with
his beloved wife. Cathy grows up a pampered child, beautiful like her aunt, but
with her mother’s fascinating eyes, accustomed to having the world bend to her
will, though she is far more sweet-tempered than her mother. The tranquillity
of her existence is broken one evening when, out on a ride, she trespasses into
the land belonging to Heathcliff, who is now the owner of Wuthering Heights.
There she and Nelly encounter Hareton Earnshaw (Heathcliff is away on business)
who, to Nelly’s great anguish, has been made by Heathcliff what Hareton’s
father had made him – a handsome but uncouth, rustic boor, unaware of his own
lineage, rights or place in society. Ironically, Hareton, who has the most
right to feel wronged by Heathcliff, dotes on him. The meeting jars on Cathy’s
consciousness – the realisation that this boor is her cousin is treated by her
with disbelief; it is the first notice she has of the roughness that she will
have to endure.
The death of Isabella Heathcliff when Cathy is about thirteen results in Edgar
bringing her son Linton to the Grange, but Heathcliff claims him as his own
property, and Linton is sent to Wuthering Heights. There is little of
Heathcliff in Linton physically – Nelly describes him as a puny weakling,
lacking his father’s strength or his mother’s wit and spirit, though he has his
uncle’s elegance. But in his mean, vindictive nature is a pale reflection of
his father’s diabolical menace.
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| Cathy reads Linton's letters |
A few years pass in peace until Cathy once again passes by the Heights. This
time she meets Linton and is instantly attracted to him. Heathcliff senses in
this an opportunity to avenge himself completely on his own enemy Edgar, and
encourages this romance. Nelly and Edgar’s efforts to thwart the budding affair
prove to no avail as the children fall into a violent infatuation. Edgar
Linton’s health begins to fail, much to Heathcliff’s pleasure. But so does
Linton Heathcliff’s – and this is a source of worry to his father. Not because
Heathcliff bears any love for his son – he scorns him – but because he cannot
bear that Linton should die before a marriage takes place between him and
Cathy. Finally he resorts to kidnapping the girl and forcing her into a
marriage even as her father lies on his deathbed. Her protestations that she
would marry Linton of her own accord, if only she could be allowed to see her
father one last time are ignored by the brute, as he and his son conspire to
keep her incarcerated at Wuthering Heights. Cathy loves her father – he is the
leading light of her life to the end, and perhaps that is the only comfort
Edgar Linton carries with him when he eventually dies in his daughter’s arms.
The only tinge of regret that Heathcliff has in this whole business is borne
out in his words to Nelly on seeing Hareton’s brutishness – a condition he
himself has consciously engendered, “One is gold put to the use of
paving-stones and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver. MINE
has noting valuable about it; yet I shall have the merit of making it go as far
as such poor stuff can go. HIS (Hindley’s) had
first rate qualities, and they are lost: rendered worse than unavailing. And
the best of it is, Hareton is damnably fond of me!”
The end is swift and despairing for Edgar Linton, as he realises his rival’s
final triumph over him. His nephew follows him a few months later, leaving
Heathcliff sole master of the Heights and the Grange, his triumph over both his
enemies – Hindley Earnshaw and Edgar Linton complete – the property of both in
his hands, the son of the one reduced to a labourer in the house where he should
have been master, and the daughter of the other treated like a house-servant in
the house where she is, by rights, the mistress.
Nelly Dean’s narrative ends here. Lockwood makes a final visit to his landlord
before leaving, where Hareton Earnshaw and Cathy have a physical altercation
over her scorn of him and his mean treatment of her. Almost afraid to fall in
love with a woman with such a past, Lockwood determines to leave the county.
Lockwood’s return a year later brings to a close the story of Wuthering Heights. He
finds Heathcliff dead, Cathy mistress of the estate, Hareton her fiancé and
Nelly re-installed as the housekeeper at the heights.
Nelly’s description of Heathcliff’s final days is a revelation in itself. It is
as though he has finally seen the ghost of his long-dead love. He sees her
phantom everywhere. He starts going alone on rambles across the moors, across
the well-trodden paths that he and she had taken together in happier days. His
conversation too, seems directed at some unknown spirit – he shuns company ever
more than before. Hareton, a living image of his aunt, is unbearable for him to
look at, Cathy, thought but a little like her mother in appearance, is still a
shadow of her. “Those two are the only objects which retain a distinct
material appearance to me,” Heathcliff says of them, “and
that appearance causes me pain, amounting to agony. About HER I won’t speak;
and I don’t desire to think; but I earnestly wish she were invisible: her
presence invokes only maddening sensations. HE moves me differently: and yet if
I could do it without seeming insane, I’d never see him again! In the first
place, his startling likeness to Catherine connected him fearfully with her. O
God! It is a long fight. I wish it were over!”
It does get over soon enough - the end comes suddenly, with Nelly finding him
dead in the little garret where he and Catherine had played together as
children and where Lockwood had first seen her apparition. Even as a spirit,
Catherine’s power over Heathcliff is absolute – the apparition of his idée
fixée leads him on to his death. Perhaps she calls him to her.
Hareton and Nelly are the only mourners at the funeral. The courtship of
Hareton and Cathy, which begins some time before Heathcliff’s death, blooms
into a happy relationship.
It is interesting that even after they are betrothed, Cathy is never able to
turn Hareton against Heathcliff. No stories of his wickedness, of how he as
wronged both her and him can convince Hareton that his idol was false. This
relationship is perhaps the most incomprehensible – the deep love that Hareton
bears for the man who has deprived him of land and lordship and possibly killed
his father. The power Heathcliff exercises over the son of his old enemy is
that of a cunning manipulator over an innocent victim. Yet, for all
Heathcliff’s exultation, he bears a grudging affection for Hareton, seeing in
him a personification of himself when under Hindley’s power, an affection that
he never bears for his own son. Heathcliff’s power over his own son is almost
purely that of a physically stronger
man over a weaker. Filial ties are
non-existent between the two. Hareton, on the other hand, willingly subjects
himself to Heathcliff, and through his own obvious qualities gains a place in
the affections not just of Heathcliff but also Nelly and of course, eventually
Cathy. Linton never earns anyone’s affection – scorned by his father and
Hareton – but Cathy’s, and even that, Heathcliff avers, would not have survived
long if Linton had not died before he showed his wife his true nature.
 |
| Cathy and Hareton |
As Lockwood leaves Wuthering Heights, Nelly tells him of how the country folks
insist that Heathcliff’s ghost still lingers – “Idle tales, you’ll say, and so say I.
Yet that old man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen the two of them (when
he was) looking out of his chamber window, every day since his
death; and an odd thing happened to me about a month ago. I was going to the
Grange one evening, and I encountered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs
before him; he was crying terribly. ‘There’s Heathcliff,
and a woman, yonder, and I dare not pass them!’ he said!”
Lockwood makes his was back to Thrushcross Grange to spend one
last night before he moves on in his travels. As he passes by the Churchyard,
he stops to look over the graves of the three people whose history he is now so
well acquainted with. They lie side by side, together in death as they were in
life - Catherine’s in the middle, grey, covered by heath, Edgar’s only
harmonised by the turf, Heathcliff’s still bare.
“I
lingered around them, under that benign sky, listened to the soft wind
breathing through the grass, and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet
slumbers for sleepers in that quiet earth.”
 |
| Lawrence Olivier and Merle Oberon |
After reading all that, if you’re
still up to buying it, this is where you do it.
