Aaron Pharr
Fall 2022
The entirety of Emily Brontë’s novel is constrained to the locale around the titular house, Wuthering Heights. The Heights is more than just a setting, it is a focal point from which all of the novel is reflected.
This tragic romance, intertwined with abuse, revenge, and ghosts, is a framed story. The reader does not see the world of the novel through the eyes of those who are in love, nor does the reader directly hear the proclamations of soul-wrenching obsession from the lips of their speakers. The reader is an outsider to the Heights, only understanding it through the gaze of the tenant, Mr. Lockwood.
At the start of the novel, he arrives at the moors and enters the dreary world of Wuthering Heights. Circumstances led him to meet Ellen Dean, a servant who has been in the area for decades. Mr. Lockwood and the reader are to lean back and listen to the woman’s first-person account of the family dramas. Once the narrative of Catherine and Heathcliff unfolds, Lockwood and the reader are unanimously flung into the history of the property and the lives of those who have lived there.
When characters are present in the house of Wuthering Heights, it comes across as having the connotation of a prison, trapping individuals within its walls and locking the reader’s mind there. This unwanted place of residence echoes in both the beginning and ending of the story.
Despite the house’s unsavory atmosphere due to Heathcliff and his dogs, Mr. Lockwood is forced to stay there upon his second visit: “I was sick exceedingly, and dizzy, and faint; and thus compelled perforce to accept lodgings under his roof.” (pg. 18) Lockwood isn’t detained by force, but he has no choice in his staying there, which is important to underscore. As he and the reader see it, no one in their right mind would want to stay in that house on their own accord. Lockwood’s first visit bordered on horror with the image and anxiety of the fangs of Heathcliff’s dogs, which immediately depicted The Heights as unpleasant and oppressive – a first and lasting impression.
Later in the text, when Heathcliff is manipulating his son, Linton, and Cathy to be married, he tricks Cathy and Ellen into entering Wuthering Heights, where he promptly locks the door behind them. When Cathy tries to take the keys and escape, Heathcliff “seized her with the liberated hand, and pulling her on his knee, administered with the other a shower of terrific slaps on both sides of the head.” (pg. 261)
Heathcliff directly detains them within his walls. Overt physical violence is a means to achieve their confinement. Cathy and Ellen, like Lockwood, have no intention to stay at Wuthering Heights, but unlike Lockwood, Heathcliff needs them to achieve his vindictive plans, and therefore violence and confinement aren’t out of the question. Ellen is ‘enclosed’ for five nights in the house with Hareton as a ‘jailor’. (pg. 267)
When people are present at Wuthering Heights, the place is oppressive and constraining.
Heathcliff is essential to this oppression, and while he has a role in some confinement, he is not responsible for all of it. Wuthering Heights itself is an actor in the theme of confinement; its walls are the constraints that physically enclose individuals, and its memory is what traps people in the past.
The house is the setting in which Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff grow up. A chaotic childhood romance buds between them, but due to the social constraints of being a woman and the promise of a comfortable life, Catherine marries Edgar Linton, a man she does not love. A complicated and confusing decision on Brontë’s part, the names in the novel spread across generations, extending trauma and confusion past their original owners. Catherine and Edgar’s daughter is also named Catherine, or Cathy, and Heathcliff and Isabella’s son is named Linton.
These generations are confined to the moors and the world of Wuthering Heights, practically wishing to escape it. Yet when characters are away from it, they have a longing for returning to the Heights. It is a cruel presence in the novel, yet one that no one can shy away from.
This longing for the house can particularly be seen in Cathy, Catherine’s daughter, as she wants to see her cousin, Heathcliff’s son. Ellen observes, “still she sprang on… she was two miles nearer Wuthering Heights than her own home.” (pg. 208)
Ellen’s words describe Cathy’s physical journey towards the Heights, yet they also underscore her emotional yearning. Being closer to the Heights than her own home is put in a way that implies that her heart is truly there. Cathy’s journey is seemingly accidental, she has intentions to see Linton, yet as she crosses the moors, it is as if Wuthering Heights draws her in and pulls her closer and closer.
Cathy repeatedly sneaks behind her caretaker’s back to see her lover, later revealing this in a moment of guilt: “I’ve been to Wuthering Heights, Ellen…. It was not to amuse myself that I went; I was often wretched all the time.” (pg. 239)
There were moments of joy to be found between Cathy and Linton, but they weren’t lasting. Their relationship devolves into an unpleasant and constraining contract that is just as undesirable as the setting. However, it is alluring. There is an inescapable allure to return to Wuthering Heights.
Even Ellen, who has no lover to be found, has that connection to and relationship with the Heights. She was a servant there before becoming one at the Grange, and she comments, “Wuthering Heights rose above this silvery vapour, but our old house was invisible.” (pg. 93) Even when the house can’t be directly seen across the moors, it is a presence that rises to the top of one’s mind. The characters and the reader are lured back to the house despite its unpleasant atmosphere, as if it were a black hole that absorbed all possible attention and desire.
The notion of constraints is highly intriguing. Not only is the house a prison, but it is one of only a handful of settings in which the book explores. Wuthering Heights and rival estate Thrushcross Grange are two houses set amidst the English moors. While the nearby town of Gimmerton can be seen in the distance, as well as the golden Penistone Crags, Brontë clearly establishes the physical boundaries of the text as existing between the Heights and the Grange.
For all assumed purposes, the two houses and the moors between them are the entire world within the book.
There are references to other settings within the novel. After witnessing the tragedy of the moors, Mr. Lockwood notes, “I shall set out for London next week.” (pg. 292) And at the beginning of the book, Mr. Earnshaw spoke to his son, “Now, my bonny man, I’m going to Liverpool to-today, what shall I bring you?” (pg. 36) England and the wider world exist, but the characters and text itself never explore it; they never go anywhere on the page. If there is any travel to the outside world, it is done without focus off the page. The novel is trapped within the clearly defined boundaries of the Heights and the Grange.
Almost all of the characters within Brontë’s novel exist completely within these bounds. Hindley Earnshaw, Edgar Linton, and Catherine all live and die at these houses. Cathy, the daughter, as well as Hareton Earnshaw, are born within this constrictive space and choose to remain.
When one thinks of ‘Wuthering Heights’, Heathcliff is one of the strongest mental associations with the text. His character is, importantly, an outsider, not just in terms of his darker appearance, which is repeated throughout the novel, but in terms of his very existence. From cover to cover, “Wuthering Heights” exists between the Heights and the Grange, and unlike almost the entire cast, Heathcliff doesn’t originate there. On Mr. Earnshaw’s aforementioned journey to Liverpool, he scoops up the orphaned boy and brings him literally and figuratively into the space of the novel.
“You must e’en take it as a gift of God; though it’s as dark almost as if it came from the devil.” Earnshaw says this as he unveils Heathcliff. Brontë emphasizes his dark features with the following line: “I had a peep at a dirty, ragged, black-haired child.” (pg 37)
From his very entrance into the space of the novel, Heathcliff’s presence spells doom for the two houses. As his tragic love story with Catherine Earnshaw unfolds, he dominates more and more of the textual space on the page and yearns to physically gain control over those around him.
Perhaps the crux of the entire novel can be balanced on page 107 after Heathcliff returns, disturbing Catherine and Edgar’s marriage as well as their relations with Isabella, Edgar’s sister. Ellen highlights the physical margins of their lives, the literary space in which they occupy, and Heathcliff’s oppressive hold on it all.
“I wanted something to happen which might have the effect of freeing both Wuthering Heights and the Grange of Mr. Heathcliff, quietly; leaving us as we had been prior to his advent. His visits were a continual nightmare to me; and, I suspected, to my master also. His abode at the Heights was an oppression past explaining. I felt that God had forsaken his stray sheep there to its own wicked wanderings, and an evil beast prowled between it and the fold, waiting his time to spring and destroy.”
This oppressive hold tightens. Beginning in the novel as a tragic romantic hero, Heathcliff devolves over time to a vengeful spirit and a tyrannical father obsessed with controlling both houses and thus literally the ‘world’ of his enemies. With his newfound fortune, Heathcliff manages to manipulate Hindley Earnshaw out of ownership of the Wuthering Heights property. To create an heir and own Thrushcross Grange as well, he marries Isabella Linton without an ounce of affection. He marries with the sole purpose of controlling and punishing Edgar Linton for marrying his Catherine.
“The nuisance of her presence outweighs the gratification to be derived from tormenting her.” (pg. 150) and “The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails!” (pg. 151) are both spoken by Heathcliff about Isabella. Their marriage highlights his wicked intentions and sadistic nature, affirming that the belief that he might be the devil’s gift to the moors may be true. He is a dangerous outsider whose very existence is a threat to the aristocratic social structure of these English families and the world in which they inhabit.
One of Heathcliff’s most bizarre and immoral actions involves digging up the grave of his lover so he can get another look at Catherine’s face. “When I saw her face again – it is hers yet!” (pg. 277) This disrespectful and sinful act to the coffin is emphasized by Ellen when she acknowledges that his behavior will “disturb the dead” Catherine. (pg. 278)
One might view the opening of an eighteen-year-old coffin as not just disturbing to the dead but also disturbing to the reader. Heathcliff found no disgust, as Catherine’s face had seemingly not changed, and he comments on the great peace that it brought him to lay eyes on her again: “and yesternight I was tranquil. I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep by that sleeper, with my heart stopped and my cheek frozen against hers.” (pg. 278)
Emily Brontë eloquently poses Catherine and Heathcliff as soulmates, for better or worse, and his calmness at the idea of being dead and ‘frozen’ with her further validates the thematic connection between their souls, or at the very least, is a testament to his tragic love. It is somewhat uncanny that Catherine’s body didn’t decompose after so long. One might expect her corpse to be writhing with worms and be an image of horror, but the open coffin isn’t grotesque.
Ellen calls Heathcliff out on this possibility and questions him, “And if she had been dissolved into the earth, or worse, what would you have dreamt of then?” (pg. 278)
Whether it is beautiful or horrifying, Heathcliff is open to the natural process of both life and death when it comes to Catherine, as he responds with, “Of dissolving with her, and being more happy still.” (pg. 278)
This notion of dissolving into the earth is essential to understanding the soul-mate dynamic between the two tragic lovers as well as coming to peace with “Wuthering Heights” as a whole.
When you dissolve something, like sugar into tea or salt into water, you mix two things together until they are inseparable, until they are the same. In their childhood experiences, Heathcliff and Catherine’s souls were mixed in this way. Catherine can’t imagine separation when faced with the expectation to marry Edgar and exclaims, “Who is to separate us, pray? They’ll meet the fate of Milo! Not as long as I live, Ellen, for no mortal creature.” (pg. 81)
Heathcliff and Catherine are deeply in love with each other, at some level. The moral, social, and economic constraints of the world push them on separate paths and that gaping hole in their lives quite literally consumes both of them with insanity. This consumption is echoed in Catherine’s own words, with the discussion of Milo’s fate, who in Greek mythology, was an individual who attempted to pry an oak tree into two. His action resulted in wolves devouring him. This obvious metaphor relates to the tragic lovers: Heathcliff and Catherine are the one tree, and to tear it in two would be a disgrace to their nature.
In the surrounding passages, Catherine proclaims more love for Heathcliff, which emphasizes the soul-mate relationship Brontë is underscoring throughout the novel: “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.” (pg. 80) As childhood friends, they’ve dissolved themselves together until straining them will reveal no difference.
It was simply not “dissolving” that Heathcliff proclaimed with Catherine, but that this act of dissolving would be “into the earth.” Death is the final step of life, for it is unavoidable. Brontë gives us the conclusion of Heathcliff, Catherine, and Edgar all dead and buried, perhaps before their time had naturally come, but it is the conclusion that would have happened no matter any other events or circumstances.
The final word of the book is ‘earth’, which puts a provoking emphasis on its usage elsewhere in the novel. In the final paragraph, Mr. Lockwood is gazing upon the graves of the aforementioned love triangle and says, “I… wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.” (pg. 326)
What is striking is that Lockwood chooses to view the dead trio as “sleepers,” which is exactly what Heathcliff called Catherine after viewing her unchanged form in the coffin. Heathcliff’s conception of a tranquil peace was sleeping frozen next to Catherine, and in the end, that is what the narrator and Brontë give him.
Even if this sleep is temporary and their bodies do dissolve into the earth with time, Heathcliff is content with that as well.
The earth is one form. Imagine two corpses dissolving and becoming one with the surrounding soil. After time, there are not two bodies but one earth. In the end, the sameness that Catherine proclaimed is what they will become.
This is powerful when put alongside other mentions of the earth. During Catherine’s confession, she makes a comparison between her feelings for Edgar and those for Heathcliff. She notes how her love for Edgar is like the “foliage in the woods” and how “winter changes the trees.” It is fleeting, seasonal, and temporary. Catherine compares Heathcliff more to the earth itself, the stone and soil that compose everything and are permanent: “My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath, a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!” (pg. 82)
Catherine tops off her confession with the most powerful, and perhaps the most confusing, line of the entire book. She is Heathcliff, affirming their inseparable souls, their uniformity, and ‘oneness’ in this fleeting life. It is therefore very fitting that if they do dissolve into the earth, they will become the ‘eternal rocks’ which she related her love and their souls to.
If Catherine and Heathcliff are one and the same, it poses concerns about the well-being of their souls in the Christian landscape of the novel. Catherine, by all the standards of Brontë’s time, is a wicked woman, not solely because of her outspoken nature but also because of her vindictiveness towards Isabella and her devotion to the crude Heathcliff.
Heathcliff himself is nearly irredeemable after his manipulative and cruel actions towards Hareton, Linton, and the second Catherine. Upon his deathbed, Ellen says, “You are aware that from the time you were thirteen years old you have lived a selfish, unchristian life; and probably hardly had a Bible in your hands during that period.” (pg. 322)
Heathcliff is adamant in his denial about having a minister of any kind save him, and after likely having seen Catherine’s ghost, he claims, “I have nearly attained my heaven.” (pg. 322) He is eager to die, ready to leave the living and enter the earth with Catherine. He dies a sinner, and if heaven were real, it is impossible to argue that he will go. With Catherine’s soul being his mate, or made of the ‘same’ as his soul, it is presumable that she would also be locked out of heaven. (Or perhaps she wouldn’t want to be there.)
At the beginning of the novel, when Mr. Lockwood stays at Wuthering Heights, he undeniably encounters Catherine’s ghost. “I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching my arm out to seize the importunate branch; instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense horrible nightmare came over me…. a most melancholy voice sobbed ‘let me in-let me in!’” (pg. 25)
Brontë shows the reader Catherine’s ghost before Catherine’s story is told. That early moment can almost be forgotten as the tragic love unfolds, but the presentation of the supernatural and unholy returns at the conclusion of the book. After Heathcliff is buried in the ground, the country folks “swear on the Bible that he walks: there are those who speak to having met him near the church, and on the moor, and even within this house.” (pg. 325)
The bounds of the novel are Wuthering Heights and the moors that surround it. In his lifetime, Heathcliff dominates the physical and legal space of these moors as an oppressive and tyrannical villain. In this death, he continues to haunt and control this space. Lockwood believes that Heathcliff and Catherine are ‘sleepers’ in the final passage, but the inhabitants believe in the ghost stories – that Heathcliff and Catherine wander the moors together in death as they did in life. Lockwood suggests that the phantoms were raised from human thinking, but this might be easy for him to suggest.
It was mentioned that Heathcliff was an outsider to the space of the novel, an invader into the boundaries of the moors, The Heights, and the Grange. Unlike the other characters, he was not born there. He controlled the space, and then he died there, forever attaching his name to the area’s legacy. Mr. Lockwood, the framed narrator who gets much of the story from Ellen Dean, is also an outsider. He is a temporary tenant on the property, and in the end, he has the choice to leave the space and the novel as easily as he entered it. The other characters never had this choice.
It is up to the reader to decide if Heathcliff and Catherine are sleepers in the earth, dissolving together into nature, or if they are damned sinners who have created their own heaven in the moors of England, haunting it forever as ghosts.
Regardless of personal belief, Brontë gives strong evidence that Catherine and Heathcliff are undeserving of the Christian notion of heaven. However, she has crafted them so intricately, that despite all their flaws, the reader feels for them and understands their painful and delicate humanity. The repetition of ‘earth’ as something that is permanent and the bed for death, yet also as something close to the lovers, is intriguing and powerful. It all connects to a dream that Catherine had: (pg 80)
“I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I woke sobbing for joy.”
Citations:
Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights.
Photo by Chris Gilbert on Unsplash