Wuthering Heights - Neoteric

Emily Bronte

If you need to read up on the movements this work belongs to you can click the following links: Romanticism / Gothic Literature

Book beginning: page 19

A strange concept is how the reader sees everyone talking about how Wuthering Heights and the moors are haunted and how frightening that was, and then eerily you see one person take comfort in it: the violent serious man no one really likes, Heathcliff.
The book is like the land of the walking dead, especially by the end. It shows stories of haunting and being haunted; Linton’s illness that made him such a feeble character always on the verge of death; so many more colds and illnesses from being outside in bad weather, never knowing if they would make it through or not; even the reason for the story being told is because Mr Lockwood finds himself bedbound due to illness.
Cathy is the enchantingly beautiful girl on the outside who at first glance appears perfectly evil on the inside, and can to a certain extent be compared to a lifeless creature such as a vampire. However, as the story goes on, we learn how her life used to be thoroughly different and with it her humour, but the character we are introduced to shows signs of her marriage to Linton having sucked all life from her.

You have to wonder if Heathcliff would have been different towards Catherine if they had got married, even if only unintentionally harming her, as Isabella thought would be the case (p159). Although Catherine says that he had never hurt her in his life, this was expressed just moments after Heathcliff had grabbed her with too much force for her frail condition and left four blue imprints on her arm (p142).
Catherine was pregnant throughout all her final illness and died from giving birth (p146), meaning she was pregnant with Edgar’s child while professing her love to Heathcliff.
The night Catherine died Heathcliff had stayed in the garden and given how he was described by Nelly, it was as if he had ceased living and become a part of nature, as she was to become when buried: “He had been standing a long time in that position, for I saw a pair of ousels passing and repassing scarcely three feet from him […] regarding his proximity no more than that of a piece of timber” (p147).
Heathcliff says “don’t torture me till I am as mad as yourself” (p142), and that is exactly how he died and he was content with it. He did later give her permission to drive him mad by haunting him, so long as she didn’t abandon him now that she was dead (p148).
It was a sad turnout to Catherine’s funeral (p149) but most likely all she ever needed. Heathcliff wasn’t invited but was probably nearby as always.

When any of the characters resolve on doing something, even if it were seemingly out of their control, they invariably succeed. Heathcliff for example, put together a plan for revenge and saw it out to the fullest, no matter how much it depended on others falling in love, or persuading lawyers to help him out, nothing got in his way; Mr Earnshaw wanted to raise Heathcliff as part of the family (chapter IV), and despite Heathcliff’s dark complexion, both inner and outer, he was close to most of the household; Catherine meant never to rest in the afterlife until Heathcliff was with her (p117), which some would account for as being true.
Nelly believes that “people who do their duty are always finally rewarded” (p217).

The lineage was restored to its rightful place in the end, so it was as if Heathcliff’s revenge was just a blip in time. There was nothing he could have done to prevent restoration forever, and once all of his own generation was gone, he lost interest in revenge (p268). By this time, Cathy and Hareton were nothing more than an agony to look at, not only because he recognised Catherine in their faces and personalities, but also in their way of interacting with one another.
If in the end Heathcliff and Catherine were truly together on the moors, then where does that leave Edgar? The last thing he said was that he was going back to her (p238), but if people only have one soul, then how was this possible?

Catherine says to Edgar, shortly before dying: “What you touch at present you may have; but my soul will be on that hill-top before you lay hands on me again.” (p118). And this is in fact how the story pans out, maybe resolving the conflict, as his remains were laid to rest by hers but Catherine’s soul is found wandering with Heathcliff.

The stronger the marriage the stronger the children born from it: Mr and Mrs Earnshaw had Hindley, Catherine and adopted Heathcliff, all fine specimens of children if not somewhat too strong willed; Hindley and his wife had Hareton, who reared closely by Heathcliff, turned out much the same way; Edgar and Catherine had Cathy who showed much of her mother’s sauciness; and Heathcliff and Isabella had Linton, the only match without love, bearing the only pathetic child, not only in physical aspects but also in inner strength.

Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Penguin Popular Classics, 1994.