Wuthering Heights, xxiv, xxv, xxvi
xxiv
I’m glad that chapter’s over. I know we’re supposed to suffer fools but Lord that chapter about makes me lose my religion.
xxv
Edgar senses he hasn’t long.
The correspondences, negotiating a meeting of Catherine and Linton.
Are you familiar with chess? Heathcliff is maneuvering people as pieces, hey? Gaining control of the board…
xxvi
Come just a little further…
…aaaaaand he’s a quarter mile from the Heights with no horse.
Linton did not appear to remember what she talked of; and he had evidently great difficulty sustaining any kind of conversation. His lack of interest in the subjects she started, and his equal incapacity to contribute to her entertainment, were so obvious that she could not conceal her disappointment. An indefinite alteration had come over his whole person and manner. The pettiness that might be caressed into fondness, had yielded to a listless apathy; there was less of the peevish temper of a child which frets and tease on purpose to be soothed, and more of the self-absorbed moroseness of a confirmed invalid, repelling consolation, ready to regard the good-humored mirth of others as an insult. (208)
[Andersen takes the quill from Brontë and takes over the narrative:
Cathy looks down in resigned disgust as realizes that Linton is indeed a “whey-faced wretch.” She scans the heathered hills, hoping to see no witnesses, and with a wrinkled nose whispers to Ellen, “Can’t we just put him out of his misery or something?”
“Girl! I have waited so long for you to say that!” hissed an electrified Nell, suppressing a jig and producing a shockingly large, long-barreled pistol, Clint Eastwood-like, from under serapé…
ROLL CREDITS
Sigh…]
You see, however, Linton’s terror at his father’s being disappointed with the outcome of the meeting. Heathcliff is apparently quite rough with one of the pieces he’s moving around the board.
Do you have any sympathy for Linton?
Wuthering Heights, xxii, xxiii
Chapter twenty-two starts a second love story — oh what a love story it is!
Catherine is convinced by her father. Phew! Out of danger. But there she is, more “on the fence” than she appears, hey? And she slips over…
The description of the other side of the wall is symbolic, the locked door symbolic, Ellen Dean’s entreaties through said door symbolic…
Nell calls Heathcliff a liar: again, is he lying? (I challenge you to find his lies anywhere in the entire text.)
xxiii
Does anybody sympathize with Linton?
Is anybody not rolling eyes at Catherine?
Is anybody not in Brontë’s pocket at the moment? Dramatic irony much?
Wuthering Heights, xx, xxi
Heathcliff has called for his son Lindon, and as Edgar is a magistrate, he knows well that the law is on the Heathcliff’s side, and bids Nell to take the peevish boy to the Heights.
Here we see directly how Heathcliff is at childrearing. The only “kindness” he gives his son is allowing a substitute to the porridge and that he refuses.
Heathcliff already refers to his son as a “puling chicken” (169) and “whey-faced whining wretch” (170) and his mother as a slut. But Lockwood’s opening query on how Heathcliff came to be landlord of Grange and Heights is becoming clear: “I will be very kind to him you need to fear! ” [Heathcliff] said laughing. “Only nobody else must be kind to him — I’m jealous of monopolizing his affection.”
xxi
Four years later, Catherine is sixteen. She and Nell go exploring and as Catherine is looking for grouse eggs on the property of the Heights — which is poaching the property of others and is a serious crime in that day — she is “arrested” quote by Heathcliff and Hareton.
Catherine had reached her full height; her figure was both plump and slender, elastic as steel, and her whole aspect sparkling with health and spirits. Linton’s looks and movements were very languid, and his form extremely slight; but there was a grace in his manner that mitigated these defects and rendered him not unpleasing. (175)
Well we can guess where this is going.
Have you noted that Heathcliff does not lie to Catherine? On that matter, have you noted him lie?
Ever?
His assessment of Hareton’s character belies much about himself as well as the lad he likes better than his own son: gold used as paving stones, tin polished to look silver (178).
So it comes out that she has visited, and Edgar tells the truth that she had been holding until Catherine was older. Catherine has difficulty comprehending that a human being can be so dark. She asks Nell if she can send a note to Linton explaining why she can’t come, and when Nell forbids it, Catherine enlists the help of the milkmaid’s boy to start a correspondence. Note the Pandora’s Box element: Nellie is the voice of reason, Catherine is Pandora. Perhaps there is also a comparison to be made to the legend of Bluebeard.
At this point we think back to our first meeting of Catherine Jr. on Lockwood’s second visit to the Heights, her character much changed. How did she become so?
Read on!
Wuthering Heights: Thrushcross Grange
I recommend that you read first, always, and allow your imagination to form the image of character and place. Once that is established, then look at the images that others have created to suit their imaginations.
Visit http://www.wuthering-heights.co.uk/index.php for a source of Brontë’s life and times, the photos and locations of the actual places that likely inspired her, pronunciations, pertinent essays, and more.
Here is that author’s rendering of the layout of Thrushcross Grange:
Wuthering Heights: the house
I recommend that you read first, always, and allow your imagination to form the image of character and place. Once that is established, then look at the images that others have created to suit their imaginations.
Visit http://www.wuthering-heights.co.uk/index.php for a source of Brontë’s life and times, the photos and locations of the actual places that likely inspired her, pronunciations, pertinent essays, and more.
Here is that author’s rendering of the layout of Wuthering Heights:
Wuthering Heights, xviii, xix
Twelve years beyond Cathy’s death.
“Catherine” now refers to the daughter: she is “the most winning thing that brought sunshine into a desolate house” (155), but is also saucy and petulant.
Catherine wants to wander beyond what is known, but her father forbids it for the avoidance of Heathcliff. One wonders why Ellen Dean did not suss the meaning of “crossing the Desert with caravan” (157).
Catherine Jr. attempts making Penistone Crags, but encountering Hareton near the Heights, and the unsuing dog battle, undoes the plan. A panicked Nell finds her at the house.
Catherine a wonderful time with Hareton until he tells her he’ll be damned to be her servant (157). She is further shocked to learn they are cousins. Hareton is described as althletic and healthy, “good things lost in a field of weeds” (161).
Edgar returns with a weak Linton who cries and cries. He’s not there a whole day before Joseph shows up, on behalf of Linton’s father Heathcliff, to claim him as parent and guardian.
Wuthering Heights, xvii
The ambiguity of Isabella:
“I’ve recovered from my first desire to be killed by him. I’d rather he’d kill himself! He has extinguished my love effectually, and so I’m at my ease. I can recollect yet how I loved him; and can dimly imagine that I could still be loving him, if – no, no!” (143).
“…I’d be glad of a retaliation that wouldn’t recoil on myself; but treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends – they wound those who resort to them, worse than their enemies” (145).
Wuthering Heights, xvi
“Poor wretch!” I thought; “you have a heart and nerves the same as your brother men! Why should you be so anxious to conceal them? Your pride cannot blind God! You tempt Him to ring them, till He forces a cry of humiliation!”
Catherine dies. Catherine is born.
Atmospherics: how Heathcliff is dew-soaked to match his tears, and is so still the birds build a nest in the tree quite close to him. Birds building a nest may be symbolic, yes?
Ousel
Wuthering Heights, xv
Heathcliff sneaks a visit while Edgar and servants are at church to see How ill Catherine is, and is dismayed to see “no prospect of ultimate recovery is there – she was fated, sure to die” (132).
“Vindictive,” she asks him how long he means to go on living after she is dead. Here, the characters finally trade speeches of the depth of love — indeed, laced with the symbolism of the torments of hell — to the ears of us readers (133).
Catherine is described in ghostly, perhaps vampiric imagery, Heathcliff in animal, perhaps demonic; the novel is in the gothic genre, indeed.
Cathy refuses to let go despite Nell’s warning of Linton’s approach. Heathcliff hands over an unconscious Catherine to Edgar’s arms.
Wuthering Heights, xiv
Nell visits the Heights at Isabella’s request. The latter is hoping for a letter from Edgar, but Edgar has disowned her.
Heathcliff regales Nell with an account of how the marriage is going: he delights in degrading Isabella and marveling at how she “crawls back.” Perhaps one line the best sums it up: “I have no pity! The worms writhe, the more I want to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething, and I grind with greater energy, in proportion to the increase of pain” (128).
Isabella counters that she had tried to leave at his invitation, and dares not try again for the insinuated abuse that resulted from the attempt. Heathcliff refers to her as property and her guardian, and refers to her as “child.”
Heathcliff threatens Nell with confinement unless she agrees to facilitate a visit to Cathy. He threatens otherwise to overpower Linton and hold off servants with pistols if need be.
Nell weighs the consequences, and acquiesces.
Kingsley Andersen 