Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is a gothic novel, and the only novel by Emily Brontë. It was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second edition was edited by her sister Charlotte.

The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centres (as an adjective; wuthering is a Yorkshire word referring to turbulent weather). The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.

Now considered a classic of English literature, Wuthering Heights met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared, mainly because of the narrative's stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty.[1][2] Though Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was initially considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works, many subsequent critics of Wuthering Heights argued that its originality and achievement made it superior.[3] Wuthering Heights has also given rise to many adaptations and inspired works, including films, radio, television dramatisations, a musical by Bernard J. Taylor, ballet, opera, and song.

Writing in his diary, Mr. Lockwood describes arriving in the winter of 1801, at the manor house of Thrushcross Grange, on the Yorkshire moors in northern England. He soon meets his landlord, Heathcliff, a wealthy man and the master of nearby Wuthering Heights. Despite not being welcome at Wuthering Heights, Lockwood returns for a second visit and is forced to stay overnight, due to a snow storm. Unable to sleep, he finds the diary of a girl named Catherine Earnshaw and reads an entry. Lockwood learns that she was a close childhood friend of Heathcliff. Later, he has a nightmare in which the ghost of a young girl appears at his window and begs to be let in. While Lockwood struggles to keep the ghost out of his room, Heathcliff is awakened by his cries of terror and rushes into the room. Upon hearing of Catherine's ghost, he asks Lockwood to leave the room. Standing outside the door, Lockwood hears Heathcliff sobbing, opening the window, and calling for Catherine to enter.

Upon returning to Thrushcross Grange, Lockwood asks his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to tell him the story of Heathcliff and the others at Wuthering Heights. Nelly begins her story thirty years earlier, when Mr. Earnshaw brings Heathcliff, an orphan boy, home to raise with his own children, Hindley and Catherine. Eventually, Mr. Earnshaw comes to favour Heathcliff over his own children. Both Earnshaw children initially resent Heathcliff, but soon he and Catherine become inseparable. Hindley continues to hate and physically abuse him.

Mr. Earnshaw dies three years later and Hindley, now married to Frances after returning from boarding school, inherits Wuthering Heights. He brutalises Heathcliff, forcing him to work as a hired hand. Catherine becomes friends with the neighboring Linton family who live at Thrushcross Grange, and Mrs. Linton starts teaching her to be a proper lady. She is attracted to young Edgar Linton, whom Heathcliff immediately dislikes.

A year later, Frances dies from consumption shortly after giving birth to a son, Hareton. Hindley takes to drinking and becomes even more abusive to Heathcliff. Some two years later, Catherine informs Nelly that she wishes to marry Edgar Linton, as it will give her status and riches, despite her love for Heathcliff. Heathcliff, upon hearing this, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return three years later, soon after Catherine and Edgar are wed.

Heathcliff has apparently become a wealthy, respectable gentleman and now seeks revenge against all those he believes have wronged him. Heathcliff makes loans to Hindley that he knows cannot be repaid. Intent on ruining Edgar, Heathcliff elopes with Edgar's sister, Isabella Linton, setting himself up to inherit Thrushcross Grange. After their marriage, Heathcliff becomes very cruel and abusive towards Isabella.

Catherine becomes very ill and dies shortly after giving birth to a daughter, Cathy. A few hours before her death, however, she and Heathcliff reaffirm their feelings for one another. After Catherine’s death, Heathcliff becomes more bitter and vengeful towards those around him. Isabella flees to London a month later and gives birth to a boy, Linton Heathcliff.

About this time, Hindley dies. Heathcliff takes ownership of Wuthering Heights and raises Hindley's son, Hareton, with as much neglect as he had suffered at Hindley's hands.

Thirteen years later, Isabella dies and Linton comes to live at Wuthering Heights with his father, Heathcliff. He treats his son even more cruelly than he treated his wife. Three years pass and Heathcliff invites Cathy to Wuthering Heights. He then introduces her to his son, Linton, wishing them to marry which would strengthen his claim on Thrushcross Grange.

Cathy receives news that Linton has fallen ill. She hurries to Wuthering Heights to see if she can be of help. Linton's health declines swiftly and Heathcliff puts Cathy under house arrest, forcing her to marry his son. Soon after the marriage, Edgar dies, followed shortly by Linton. Heathcliff has now gained complete control of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. He forces Cathy to stay at Wuthering Heights and treats her as a common servant. It is at this point in the narrative that Lockwood rents Thrushcross Grange from Heathcliff, and Nelly’s story reaches the present day. Lockwood is appalled and leaves for London.

Lockwood returns six months later to visit Nelly. She tells him that in his absence, Cathy gradually softened toward her rough, uneducated cousin Hareton, just as Catherine was tender towards Heathcliff. Having originally mocked Hareton for his illiteracy, she now teaches him to read. He allows her to open up again after becoming so bitter from Heathcliff's brutal treatment.

When Heathcliff is confronted by Cathy and Hareton's love, he seems to suffer a mental breakdown and begins to see Catherine's ghost. He seemingly abandons his life-long vendetta and dies, having "swallowed nothing for four days". Nelly describes finding Heathcliff lying on the bed, stiff with rigor mortis. Only Hareton mourns Heathcliff's death. He is buried next to Catherine in the graveyard. Cathy and Hareton inherit Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange and plan their wedding for New Year’s Day. Upon hearing the end of the story, Lockwood leaves Nelly and on his walk home he visits the graves of Catherine and Heathcliff.

Heathcliff: Found, and presumably orphaned, on the streets of Liverpool, he is taken to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw and reluctantly cared for by the rest of the family. He and Catherine later grow close, and their love becomes the central theme of the first volume; his revenge and its consequences are the main theme of the second volume. Heathcliff is typically considered a Byronic hero, but critics have found his character, with a capacity for self-invention, to be profoundly difficult to assess. His position in society, without status (Heathcliff serves as both his given name and surname), is often the subject of Marxist criticism[citation needed].
Catherine Earnshaw: First introduced in Lockwood's discovery of her diary and etchings, Catherine's life is almost entirely detailed in the first volume. She seemingly suffers from a crisis of identity, unable to choose between nature and culture (and, by extension, Heathcliff and Edgar). Her decision to marry Edgar Linton over Heathcliff has been seen as a surrender to culture, and has implications for all the characters of Wuthering Heights. The character of Catherine has been analysed by many forms of literary criticism, including: psychoanalytic and feminist.
Edgar Linton: Introduced as a child of the Linton family, who reside at Thrushcross Grange, Edgar's life and mannerisms are immediately contrasted with those of Heathcliff and Catherine, and indeed the former dislikes him. Yet, owing much to his status, Catherine marries him and not Heathcliff. This decision, and the differences between Edgar and Heathcliff, have been read into by feminist criticisms.
Nelly Dean: The second and primary narrator of the novel, Nelly has been a servant of each generation of both the Earnshaw and Linton families. She is presented as a character who straddles the idea of a 'culture versus nature' divide in the novel: she is a local of the area and a servant, and has experienced life at Wuthering Heights. However, she is also an educated woman and has lived at Thrushcross Grange. This idea is represented in her having two names, Ellen—her given name and used to show respect, and Nelly—used by her familiars. Whether Nelly is an unbiased narrator and how far her actions, as an apparent bystander, affect the other characters are two points of her character discussed by critics.[4]
Isabella Linton: Introduced as part of the Linton family, Isabella is only ever shown in relation to other characters. She views Heathcliff as a romantic hero, despite Catherine warning her against such an opinion, and becomes an unwitting participant in his plot for revenge. After being married to Heathcliff and abused at Wuthering Heights, she escapes to London and gives birth to Linton. Such abusive treatment has led many, especially feminist critics, to consider Isabella the true/conventional 'tragic romantic' figure of Wuthering Heights.
Hindley Earnshaw: Catherine's brother who marries Frances, an unknown woman to the family, and only reveals this when Mr Earnshaw dies. He spirals into destructive behaviour after her death and ruins the Earnshaw family with drinking and gambling.
Hareton Earnshaw: The son of Hindley and Frances, initially raised by Nelly but passed over to in effect Joseph and Heathcliff. The former instilling a sense of pride in his name as the Earnshaws perish, even though has none of the rights or properties of it and the latter teaching him all sorts of vulgarities in revenge toward Hindley. He speaks with a similar accent to Joseph and works as a servant in Wuthering Heights, unaware of his true rights. His appearance regularly reminds Heathcliff of Catherine.
Catherine Linton: The daughter of Catherine Earnshaw and Edgar Linton, she is spirited and naive to her parents' history. Edgar is very protective and as a result she is constantly looking beyond the confines of the Grange.
Linton Heathcliff: The son of Heathcliff and Isabella, he is a very weak child and his character bears resemblance to Heathcliff but without its only redeeming feature: love. He marries Catherine, but only under the direction of his father, who he discovers only as he enters his teens.
Joseph: A servant at Wuthering Heights who is a devout Christian. He speaks with an almost unintelligible accent, though Bronte is regularly commended on her very accurate transcription of it.
Lockwood: The narrator of the book, he comes to rent Thrushcross Grange from Heathcliff to escape society but finally decided he prefers company rather than end up as Heathcliff.
Frances: A generally amiable character, her marriage to Hindley is unrevealed until Mr Earnshaw dies.

Passion, particularly unnatural passion, is a predominant theme of Wuthering Heights. The first Catherine's devotion to Heathcliff is immediate and absolute, though she will not marry him, because to do so would degrade her. "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire." Although there has been at least one Freudian interpretation of the text, the nature of the passion between Catherine and Heathcliff does not appear to be based on sex. David Daiches writes, "Ultimate passion is for her rather a kind of recognition of one's self — one's true and absolute self — in the object of passion." Catherine's passion is contrasted to the coolness of Linton, whose "cold blood cannot be worked into a fever." When he retreats into his library, she explodes, "What in the name of all that feels, has he to do with books, when I am dying?"


Heathcliff's devotion to Catherine, on the other hand, is ferocious, and when frustrated, he conceives a plan of revenge of enormous proportions. Catherine's brother Hindley shares her passionate nature, though he devotes most of his energies to degrading Heathcliff. In some respects the passion that Catherine and Heathcliff share is so pure that it approaches a kind of spirituality. "I cannot express it," says Catherine, "but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be an existence of yours beyond you." In the characters of Heathcliff and Hindley, who both feel slighted in love, Brontë draws a parallel between the need for love and the strength of revenge.


Closely tied to the theme of revenge, but sometimes independent of it, are themes of cruelty and sadism, which are a recurring motif throughout the novel. Cruelty can be manifested emotionally, as in Mr. Earnshaw's disdain for his natural-born son, or in the first Catherine's apparent rejection of Heathcliff in favor of Edgar. The characters are given to physical cruelty as well. "Terror made me cruel," says Lockwood at the outset of the story, and proceeds to rub the wrists of the ghost Catherine against a broken windowpane in an effort to free himself from her grasp. Hindley torments Heathcliff, as Heathcliff will later torment Hareton. And although he has no affection for her, Heathcliff marries Isabella and then treats her so badly that she asks Nelly whether he is a devil. Sadism is also a recurring thematic element. Heathcliff tries to strangle Isabella's dog, and Hareton hangs a litter of puppies from the back of a chair. The first Catherine's early refusal of Heathcliff has elements of masochism (self-abuse) in it, as does her letting him back into her life, since her divided heart will eventually kill her.


To the characters of Wuthering Heights, property 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 her husband's money to raise Heathcliff's social standing, thus freeing him from Hindley's domination. Her plan is foiled when Heathcliff disappears after hearing Catherine say that to marry him would degrade her. When he returns, he exerts great efforts to do people out of their property: first Hindley, then Isabella, then the second Catherine Linton. He takes revenge on Hareton by ensuring that the boy is raised in ignorance, with loutish manners, so that he will never escape his station. The story comes full cycle when Catherine Linton teaches Hareton to read, thus winning his love. The understanding at the end of the novel is that the couple will move to Thrushcross Grange.


"Wuthering" is a Yorkshire term for roaring of the wind, and themes of nature, both human and nonhuman, are closely associated with violence throughout the story. The local landscape is as storm-tossed as are the hearts of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights; cycles of births and deaths occur as relentlessly as the cycles of the seasons. The characters feel themselves so intrinsically a part of their environment that the first Catherine compares her love for Edgar to "foliage in the woods," and that for Heathcliff to "the eternal rocks beneath." In detailing his plan to debase Hareton, Heathcliff says, "We will see if one tree will not grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!" The novel opens with a snowstorm, and ends with the flowering of spring, mirroring the passions that fuel the drama and the peace that follows its resolution.


There are many references in the novel to the supernatural, and even when the references seem fairly literal, the characters do not seem to think them odd. When Lockwood first arrives, he encounters the ghost of the first Catherine Linton, and his telling of the event to Heathcliff arouses not disbelief but a strange passion. The bond between the first Catherine and Heathcliff is itself superhuman, and after she dies, Heathcliff implores her spirit, "I pray one prayer — I repeat it till my tongue stiffens — Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest, as long as I am living! You said I killed you — haunt me then!" At Edgar Linton's death, Heathcliff persuades the gravedigger to open Catherine's coffin, and later confesses to Nelly that he has been haunted by Catherine's spirit for eighteen years. At the end of the novel, after Heathcliff's death, Nelly reports to Lockwood a child's claim that he has seen Heathcliff and a woman walking on the moors.

The power of Wuthering Heights owes much to its complex narrative structure and to the ingenious device of having two conventional people relate a very unconventional tale. The story is organized as a narrative within a narrative, or what some critics call "Chinese boxes." Lockwood is used to open and end the novel in the present tense, first person ("I"). When he returns to Thrushcross Grange from his visit to Wuthering Heights sick and curious, Nelly cheerfully agrees to tell him about his neighbors. She picks up the narrative and continues it, also in the first person, almost until the end, with only brief interruptions by Lockwood. The critic David Daiches notes in his introduction of Wuthering Heights the "fascinating counterpoint" of "end retrospect and present impression," and that the strength of the story relies on Nelly's familiarity with the main characters.


The novel is set in the Yorkshire moors of England, even now a bleakly beautiful, sparsely populated area of high rolling grassy hills, few trees, and scattered rocky outcroppings or patches of heather. The lowlands between the hills are marshy. The weather is changeable and, because the area is so open, sometimes wild. The exposed location of Wuthering Heights high on the moors is contrasted with the sheltered calm of Thrushcross Grange, which is nestled in a soft valley. Both seats reflect the characters of those who inhabit them. The descriptions of both houses also reflect the influence of the local architecture at the time of Brontë's writing, which often incorporated a material called grit stone.


Emily Brontë's poetic vision is evident in the imagery used throughout Wuthering Heights. Metaphors of nature and the animal kingdom are pervasive. For example, the first Catherine describes Heathcliff to Isabella as "an arid wilderness of furze and whinstone," and as Catherine lies dying, Heathcliff foams "like a mad dog." References to weather are everywhere. A violent storm blows up the night Mr. Earnshaw dies; rain pours down the night Heathcliff runs off to London and again the night of his death. There are many scenes of raw violence, such as the bulldog attacking Catherine and Isabella crushing her wedding ring with a poker. The supernatural is evoked in the many references to Heathcliff as diabolical (literally, "like the devil") and the descriptions of the ghost of the first Catherine Linton. David Daiches points out in his introduction to Wuthering Heights that the references to food and fire, and to what he calls domestic routine, help "to steady" the story and to give credibility to the passion.

One of the major strengths of Wuthering Heights is its formal organization. The design of the time structure has significance both for its use of two narrators and because it allows the significant events in the novel to be dated precisely, though dates are almost never given explicitly. The triangular relationship that existed between Heathcliff, Catherine, and Edgar is repeated in Heathcliff's efforts to force young Catherine to marry Linton, though its resolution is ultimately different. On his arrival at Wuthering Heights, Lockwood sees the names "Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Linton, Catherine Heathcliff scratched into the windowsill. In marrying Hareton, young Catherine Heathcliff will in turn become Catherine Earnshaw, thus completing the circle.

In the following essay, Woodford, a doctoral candidate at Washington University, explores how an examination of the patterns that recur throughout Wuthering Heights provide a useful way of reading and interpreting the novel. Wuthering Heights was the only novel Emily Brontë ever published, and both it and the book of poetry she published with her sisters were printed under the pen name, Ellis Bell, a name which Emily chose because she was afraid works published under a woman's name would not be taken seriously. Emily Brontë died shortly after her book was published and just prior to her thirtieth birthday, but her single novel remains one of the classics of English literature. Wuthering Heights is a complex novel, and critics have approached it from many different standpoints. Feminist critics have examined the strong female characters and their oppression by and resistance to violent men. Marxist critics have pointed to the class differences that set in motion the primary conflicts of Wuthering Heights, and psychoanalytic critics have analyzed the dreams that fill the book. While all of these approaches are useful and valid, Wuthering Heights is, above all, a book of repeating cycles and recurring patterns, and perhaps the simplest way to begin an examination of this book is by tracing the course and resolution of some of these patterns.

When Lockwood spends the night at the Heights, he finds the window ledge covered with "a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small — Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton." Indeed, the repetition and variation of these four names, Catherine, Earnshaw, Heathcliff, and Linton, fills the book just as the writing fills the window ledge. The original Catherine begins life as Catherine Earnshaw. In what Terry Eagleton in Case Studies In Contemporary Criticism: Wuthering Heights calls "a crucial act of self-betrayal and bad faith," she rejects the opportunity to become Catherine Heathcliff and instead becomes Catherine Linton. She then gives birth to another Catherine Linton, who enters the world only hours before her mother leaves it, and this second Catherine first marries Linton Heathcliff, becoming Catherine Heathcliff, and finally, at the end of the book, becomes engaged to Hareton Earnshaw. The cycle of names thus comes full circle as this final marriage will give the second Catherine the original name of the first.

At the same time, Catherine's marriage with Hareton completes another cycle — the union of souls for which the reader has longed. The second Catherine is in many ways a reincarnation of her mother. Though she is softened by the characteristics which she has inherited from her father, she has "the Earnshaw's handsome, dark eyes" and, as Nelly states, she has the same "capacity for intense attachments" as her mother. Similarly, Hareton is a gentler version of his oppressor and foster father, Heathcliff. Though Heathcliff does his best to make Hareton a tool of his revenge against the first Catherine's brother Hindley Earnshaw, he succeeds instead in creating a reproduction of himself. He reveals his own knowledge of this strange turn of events when he tells Nelly, "Hareton [seems] a personification of my youth . the ghost of my immortal love, of my wild endeavours to hold my right, my degradation, my pride, my happiness, and my anguish." Thus, even more than the reunion of Catherine's and Heathcliff's ghosts, the union of their spiritual descendants gives the reader the impression that a great wrong has finally been set right.

In addition to being later versions of Heathcliff and the first Catherine, Hareton and the second Catherine are the last in a long line of orphans and outcasts. In an article in American Imago Philip K. Wion has observed that the absence of mothers in Wuthering Heights has a profound effect on the identities of the orphaned children, and certainly the book is full of orphaned and abandoned characters seeking fulfillment through union with others. Heathcliff, of course, is a foundling taken in by Mr. Earnshaw, and after the old man's death Hindley makes him an outcast. The first Catherine, also orphaned by Earnshaw's death, becomes still more isolated after Heathcliff's departure. Heathcliff has been her one true companion, so much a part of herself that she tells Nelly, "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." The loss of her soul mate thus leaves her alone in the world, and her death, likewise, orphans him for a second time, leaving him "lonely, like the devil, and envious like him." The next generation fares no better. Linton Heathcliff loses his mother and is raised by a father who despises him; Hareton's mother dies shortly after his birth, and the death of his alcoholic and abusive father leaves him penniless and at the mercy of Heathcliff. Likewise, the second Catherine is born only hours before her mother's death, and the death of her father leaves her "destitute of cash and friends." Once again, it is the marriage of Hareton and Catherine that will bring this cycle of orphanhood to a close. The housekeeper, Nelly, proudly tells the tenant Lockwood that they are both "in a measure, [her] children," and the union of her two charges finally ends the progression of lonely, isolated, orphaned individuals.

Heathcliff's death and the second Catherine's gaining control of the property also bring to an end the series of tyrannical men who rule the Heights with violence and curses. The first Mr. Earnshaw is easily vexed, and "suspected slights of his authority nearly [throw] him into fits." Hindley, Mr. Earnshaw's successor, is still worse. He threatens to "demolish the first who puts [him] out of temper," and his abuse of Heathcliff is "enough to make 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 christens him. He takes pleasure in inflicting on Hindley's son the same abuse which Hindley had given Heathcliff because he wants to see "if one tree won't grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it," and he values his own son only because he wants "the triumph of seeing [his] descendent fairly lord of their estates; [his] child hiring their children, to till their father's lands for wages." Thus, even Heathcliff's plot to reverse past patterns by making his child lord of the Earnshaws and Lintons, only results in the reestablishment of an old pattern. Heathcliff, the former victim of tyranny, becomes yet another tyrannical man ruling Wuthering Heights. This cycle is only broken when, after Heathcliff's death, the property is granted to the second Catherine, the first woman in the book to own her own property. Her marriage to Hareton will, of course, make her property his, but it seems unlikely that his "honest, warm, intelligent nature" will allow him to become a tyrant like his predecessors. The pattern of violent men ruling the Heights, like so many other patterns in the book, ends with the death of Heathcliff and the marriage of the second Catherine and Hareton.

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

[1]维基百科 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuthering_Heights

[2] http://www.answers.com/topic/wuthering-heights-novel-7