WUTHERING HEIGHTS NOTES

LOVE & PASSION Passion (particularly unnatural passion) predominant theme Catherine’s devotion to Heathcliff is immediate & absolute  Although C will not marry H because it would degrade her

LOVE & PASSION Their passion does not appear to be based on sex. “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.”

LOVE & PASSION Ultimate passion for C is “a kind of recognition of one’s self—one’s true and absolute self—in the object of passion.”

LOVE & PASSION C’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?”

REVENGE H’s devotion to C is ferocious, and when frustrated, he conceives a plan of revenge of enormous proportions.

REVENGE Hindley shares C’s passion, but he devotes his energies to degrading H.

REVENGE The passion that C & H share is so pure that it approaches a kind of spirituality. “I cannot express it, but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be an existence of yours beyond you.”

VIOLENCE AND CRUELTY Recurring motif are the themes of cruelty and sadism. Emotional cruelty  Mr. Earnshaw’s disdain for his natural-born son  C’s rejection of H for Edgar

VIOLENCE AND CRUELTY Physical Cruelty  Hindley torments H, as H will later torment Hareton.  Although he has no affection for her, H marries Isabella and treats her badly.

VIOLENCE AND CRUELTY Sadism  H tries to strangle Isabella’s dog.  Hareton hangs a litter of puppies from the back of a chair.

VIOLENCE AND CRUELTY C’s early refusal of H has elements of masochism in it, as does her letting him back into her life, since her divided heart will eventually kill her.

CLASS CONFLICT Property ownership and social standing are inextricable. Earnshaws and Lintons both own estates. H has nothing. C plans to use Edgar’s money to raise H’s social standing.

CLASS CONFLICT Her plan is foiled when H disappears after hearing C say that to marry him would degrade her. H goes through great effort to take property from Hindley, Isabella, and then the second Catherine.

CLASS CONFLICT H takes revenge on Hareton by ensuring that he is raised in ignorance, with loutish manners, so that he will never escape his station.

CLASS CONFLICT Story comes full circle when C teaches Hareton to read, thus winning his love.

NATURE “Wuthering” roaring of the wind. Nature, both human & nonhuman, are closely associated with violence throughout the story.

NATURE Local landscape is a 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.

NATURE Characters feel themselves so intrinsically part of their environment that C compares her love for Edgar to “foliage in the woods,” and that for H to “the eternal rocks beneath.”

NATURE Detailing his plans to debase Hareton, H says, “We will see if one tree will not grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!”

NATURE 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.

SUPERNATURAL Lockwood encounters the ghost of the first Catherine. When told, H does not display disbelief but a strange passion.

SUPERNATURAL Bond between C and H is itself superhuman. “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!”

SUPERNATURAL Heathcliff persuades the gravedigger to open Catherine’s coffin and confesses that he has been haunted by Catherine’s spirit for eighteen years.

SUPERNATURAL Nelly reports a child saw H and a woman walking on the moors.

NARRATION Complex narrative structure and ingenious device of having two conventional people relate a very unconventional tale. A narrative within a narrative

NARRATION Lockwood is used to open and end the novel in the first person present tense. Nelly picks up narrative, also in the first person.

NARRATION Strength of story relies on Nelly’s familiarity with the main characters. “fascinating counterpoint” of “end retrospect and present impression”