Man, this book was depressing. Really depressing. And it was completely nothing like I expected it was going to be. I wasn’t quite sure what I expected, but I think it was something along the lines of a great, tragic love story, and while this story was most definitely great and tragic, I don’t think ‘love story’ does enough to capture its complexities. It also isn’t very obvious while you’re reading the novel that you are reading a love story— we don’t really get scenes of Cathy and Heathcliff falling in love or expressing their love for each other when they were younger. We do, however, get tons of scenes expressing trauma, anguish, passionate hatred, brutality, and revenge, and the idea that passionate love, or the absence of it, can lead to such extremities was really compelling to read about. It was horrible, definitely, but very compelling. To be frank, this idea only hit me after I had closed the book —while I was reading it, it almost felt like a slog at times because every page was depressing as hell. There was always a new layer of savagery and anguish displayed, and it was running me completely ragged. I was unsettled by the level of trauma that every character was experiencing, the level of savagery Heathcliff showed, and the amount of unending grief and anguish, that I felt so heavy reading about it all. Sometimes when I’d put the book down and take a break, I didn’t want to go back to it because the world Emily Brontë created was just so horrifying. But I was always compelled to come back—I needed to know how it was going to end.
So what is this book about? Well, Mr Earnshaw, resident and owner of Wuthering Heights on the Yorkshire moors, one day adopts an orphan who he calls Heathcliff. He finds this child one day on one of his trips to Liverpool. He raises Heathcliff as one of his own, though both Hindley and Catherine, Mr Earnshaw’s children, take differently to him. While Hindley despises Heathcliff for becoming his father’s favourite and abuses him at every opportunity, Catherine, a wild and free-spirited girl becomes incredibly close to Heathcliff, and together they come to form an unbreakable bond. Both Cathy and Heathcliff fall deeply in love with each other, and when Heathcliff is unable to marry Cathy, he goes on a terrible spree of vengeance, enacting revenge on all those who kept him away from his one true love.
I think something that struck me particularly hard about Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship (because I was trying to understand what they meant to each other and why) was that they were definitely the only two people in the world who have experienced the exact same trauma that they had, and this bounded them very strongly. That’s not to say nobody else had ever felt neglect or abandonment that they had, but rather that there is a kind of individuality and peculiarity that emerges from every single environment that one is in that cannot ever be replicated precisely. I know, for example, that only people who went to the same schools as I did, at the same time, to the same class as I did, from the same town as I did could only have understood what it was like to live through that time. I was bonded to these people whether I liked it or not because they were the only people who could understand my experience since they lived through it too. All this is to say that, experiences can bound and forge people together in ways that is difficult for one to fully comprehend, and I think that was the case with both Cathy and Heathcliff. I can somewhat relate too as the one best friend I have (I have known her since I was about 11) is the only person in the world who completely understands me. We have a similar way of communicating and thinking, and I know that if I were to lose her, I would lose a great part of myself. So, I can understand where Cathy and Heathcliff are coming from.
It was as a result of both Cathy and Heathcliff’s mutual trauma that a kind of kinship, and then something greater, took root and developed. A love, an understanding of one another, emerged from these horrible circumstances that then came to transcend everything—it transcended all their pain, suffering, their grief, and enabled their love to become their hope, their salvation, their guiding compass in life. That is why one could not live without the other, because if one were gone then this transcendental union, this energy that became their life force, the thing that sustained them through trauma and after it, would collapse. There is nothing in the world that they could hope could love or understand them, and that isn’t just a dramatic statement—it is a very real thing as no formative experience, and subsequently the sense of self it creates, can ever be completely replicated . And it isn’t as selfish as it might sound that one needs their other ‘half’ (be it platonic, romantic, etc)—there is something that has changed in one’s psychology and physiognomy irrevocably just by being together with this person. Try to picture, for example, someone you love so much right now and then imagine your life without them. It would be agony right? Besides the fact that you wouldn’t know how to go on living, it be would be agony because whoever you might meet later will never be them. You would have merged your soul with this person, and now that they’re gone, your soul would have an open wound that cannot be sealed unless it were met with the other half that had left it. And I think this is a kind of damage that does cannot be fully understood, which makes it difficult (or at least it was for me initially) to understand why Cathy and Heathcliff were so pained. Even in saying this, I do not think it does the concept enough justice, though Brontë does a brilliant job of trying to show us how extreme this feeling is.
Catherine’s trauma consisted of her being persistently reminded by her father how much he disliked her mischievous nature, and how much he disliked her far more than he had ever disliked Hindley.
“That made her cry, at first; and then, being repulsed continually hardened her, and she laughed if I told her to say she was sorry for her faults, and beg to be forgiven”
Nelly Dean
Heathcliff could relate to this—in fact he definitely got worst end of the stick with regards to abuse and trauma— as he was consistently abused, mentally and physically, for being an outsider, a gypsy. Practically everyone he had ever come across has shunned him and degraded him violently:
“He [Heathcliff] seemed a sullen, patient child; hardened, perhaps, to ill-treatment: he would stand Hindley’s blows without winking or shedding.”
“Hindley….shoved him back with a sudden thrust.”
Nelly Dean
“…yet, the villain scowls so plainly in his face, would it not be a kindness to the country to hang him at once, before he shows his nature in acts, as well as features?”
Mr Linton on Heathcliff
Being the only two people, at the time, who could truly understand each other, it is no surprise that they sought comfort from one another other. There is a scene which demonstrates this beautifully—it was after Mr Earnshaw died and both Cathy and Heathcliff were sobbing and comforting one another. It made my heart ache from how pure it was, and it was definitely one of the most heart-warming parts of the book. It reminded me of the importance of companionship, of being so wholeheartedly understood, and that there is a kind of boundless love one can give in childhood that is quite remarkable in its depth and purity.
“The little souls were comforting each other with better thoughts than I could have hit on; no parson in the world ever pictured Heaven so beautifully as they did, in their innocent talk; and while I sobbed, and listened, I could not help wishing we were all there safe together.”
Things begin to take a sharp turn, however, when Cathy makes the decision to marry Edgar Linton. The reasons she gives to marry Edgar are probably where I take the biggest issue. She claims it is because she knows a future with Heathcliff would be impossible, that he would be stuck under the jurisdiction of her brother who hated him, and they would be poor. Again, I don’t feel like that’s a good enough reason for one two separate from their other half, but I can’t really bring myself to hate Cathy about this. After all, she went to Nelly conflicted. She did agree to marry Edgar, but she could’ve changed her mind. How could we know what she might’ve done? Unfortunately, however, it is this mistake which drives Heathcliff to flee, and then Cathy is robbed of the chance of ever being able to change her mind. Plus, I don’t know that I could blame Cathy any more than I could blame somebody I cared about for making a stupid mistake. Everybody has errors in judgement—these things are not so black and white. It is interesting to note the message Cathy’s death puts forward which is that tearing oneself away from their soul, from authenticity, can and will kill you. Cathy did not follow her heart, and so died as a result of this, and I think that is quite a bold statement for Brontë to make.
I liked Cathy overall, which surprises even me because in the margins of the book, I would write ‘God, she’s annoying’, whenever she would do something irritating or cruel. The more I thought about it however, the more I saw myself in her. She was not without her flaws. The way I see it is that she was one that felt passionately, so passionately in fact that it caused her great suffering that she did not always know how to deal with. So, she would take out her passion in other ways—either through the use of her tongue or her fists (though she was never seriously abusive, and she would always be shocked afterwards and repent). It was this trait of hers, this sensitivity, though that enables her to love Heathcliff so fervently—after all he says of her:
“And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have: the sea could be as readily contained in that horse-trough as her whole affection be monopolised by him…”
Heathcliff
It is this characteristic that too, sadly, contributes to her death. In the pain she endures over the mistake she made, the pain she feels in knowing her husband did not love her as Heathcliff did, her pain over Heathcliff’s suffering and her own, Catherine refuses to eat— overtaken by misery as she is—and dies.
Heathcliff is absolutely heartbroken and destroyed by Cathy’s ill health and her rapid decline, and he pours his heart out, his agony to her as she is dying, and it was quite difficult—yet mesmerising—to read just how much he was witnessing his own personal Hell.
“Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they’ll blight you—they’ll damn you. You loved me—then what right had you to leave me?…Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you—oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?'”
Heathcliff
“He turned to her, looking absolutely desperate. His eyes wide, and went, at last, flashed fiercely on her; his breast heaved convulsively…Catherine made a spring, and he caught her, and they were locked in an embrace from which I thought my mistress would never be released alive…on my approaching….he gnashed at me, and foamed like a mad dog, and gathered her to him with a greedy jealousy.’
This was a gut-wrenching scene in the book, and yet the worst was far from over (see how depressing this book is?) The worst is what happens to Heathcliff after she dies. He is so maddened by her death, and so utterly driven to such anguish that while it was amazing to read of how passionate his love was, it was also utterly, utterly frightening. It made me wish I never had to experience what he had to go through, though I know that no one is exempt from death.
“Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!’ He dashed his head against the knotted trunk; and, lifting up his eyes, howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast getting goaded to death with knives and spears.”
Heathcliff
“The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!”
Heathcliff
“Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where?”
Heathcliff
See what I mean? Anyway, it gets even worse if that were possible. Heathcliff is completely subsumed by his obsessive desire for revenge (in a way that is perhaps as obsessive as his love was), and his deepening anguish furthers his moral degradation in ways that are shocking to read about. Every time Heathcliff did something horrible, I was left wondering how he could possibly sink even lower, and yet it always seemed to be possible.
Heathcliff begins his revenge plot by forcing Hindley to gamble his house away to him. He then takes vengeance on Hindley’s son, Hareton, by making him dumb and illiterate and therefore unable to ever become a gentlemen. Heathcliff then blights Edgar by taking his sister, Isabella, away from him by marrying her and then treating her poorly to get back at Edgar. Heathcliff then blackmails his own son, Linton, to marry Catherine and Edgar’s daughter, Catherine (I’ll call her Cathy II) in order to acquire Thrushcross Grange, which Cathy II would’ve inherited upon her father’s death were it not for Heathcliff’s interjection. In order to make this marriage possible, Heathcliff terrorises Linton and kidnaps Cathy II and Nelly Dean, and once the marriage between Cathy II and Linton is secured, he urges Linton to treat Cathy II badly upon marriage to spite Edgar even more. Heathcliff also lets Hindley and his own son, Linton, die without calling the doctor, despite their obviously degrading ill health. His propensity for brutality and despicable vengeance has no bounds whatsoever—it is not constrained by any moral, social, cultural, nor religious boundaries.
“Besides, he’s mine, and I want the triumph of seeing my descendent fairly lord of their estates”.
Heathcliff
‘The ruffian kicked and trampled on him, and dashed his head repeatedly against the flags; holding me with one hand, meantime, to prevent me summoning Joseph.”
Heathcliff attacking Hindley
Heathcliff is so tormented by Cathy’s loss and having been tormented himself as a child perpetually, never being shown affection from others apart from his father and Cathy, I believe he did not know how else to be. The only thing he had in his armoury was to be unscrupulous, fiercely protective, vicious, and these characteristics were heightened and morphed upon Cathy’s death.
I don’t think, however, that Heathcliff was completely cruel for cruelty’s sake —though he was definitely vengeful and that often lent itself to cruelty. I say this because there would be occasions where he would hold back, or he would somehow justify his actions, which I could understand even though I didn’t agree with him. For example, he only ever attacked Hindley when the latter tried to murder him with a pistol. Also, in the case of Linton’s death, it makes sense Heathcliff didn’t call for a doctor because it was quite clear the boy was going to die anyway. Plus, I feel that in the case of Hareton’s degradation, perhaps half of this was done to spite Hindley but I also think his subconscious is making him repeat the trauma he endured as a child. I was given an indication to this when Heathcliff said to Nelly:
“I can sympathise with all his feelings, having felt them myself—I know what he suffers now, for instance, exactly—its is merely a beginning of what the shall suffer, though. And he’ll never be able to emerge from his bathos of coarseness, and ignorance.”
Heathcliff
This statement indicates to us just the level of suffering Heathcliff had to go through. It shows us how much it pained him to be so set apart and made ignorant, and the level of isolation he felt because of these things. So, perhaps he did do this on purpose to spite Hindley ,but perhaps he also did it because he could not help to unconsciously repeat his own trauma. He was making Hareton himself without realising.
Heathcliff also justifies his actions by criticising the character of Cathy II and Linton— he tells Nelly that they are arrogant and lack compassion and implies this justifies his actions in some way. And he isn’t all that wrong either—readers can see these characteristics themselves exhibited in Linton and Cathy II when they both make fun of Hareton for not being able to read and write, and Cathy II does this repeatedly. Linton is also spineless and manipulates Cathy II to marry him to appease Heathcliff, though he says he claims he loves her. Selfishness is another character of Linton’s as he allows Cathy II to take the blame for his own actions (we know Heathcliff would never do this to Catherine). In talking to Nelly about this, Heathcliff implies that Cathy II and Linton are like doubles of Edgar and Isabella when they were younger—the latter treated him, Heathcliff, without compassion just as the former two treat Hareton without compassion, and so in some twisted sense he argues that this justifies his behaviour towards them. I don’t necessarily agree with Heathcliff here. I don’t think their cruel personality traits absolve him or makes them deserve the way in which he treats them. Cathy II could be arrogant and maybe she didn’t love as deeply as Catherine did, sure, but she still loved. She loved her father deeply and Nelly too. And Catherine wasn’t a saint either. And Linton, though he was a pathetic creature from the start, was highly traumatised by Heathcliff, so it is not entirely fair for the latter to treat him so harshly, though I can see why he did it, and that doesn’t mean it didn’t fail to horrify me every time.
‘I doubt whether I am not altogether as worthless as he calls me, frequently; and then I feel so cross and bitter, I hate everybody! I am worthless, and bad in temper, and bad in spirit, almost always…”
Linton
Morality and who is right, then, isn’t the thing to be gained here. You could argue endlessly about why you hate Heathcliff, whether or not think he could be absolved in some way, whether or not you think Cathy II and Linton weren’t that bad. The thing to gain from this, I feel, is that generational trauma is a vicious cycle. I was perpetually struck by how much pain and suffering all these characters had gone through, and I felt remorseful about the fact that it was being carried over to the children in such bucket-loads. So you can imagine, then, how overjoyed I was then when Cathy II and Hareton were able to break the cycle of their trauma.
With regards to Heathcliff’s character and why he did what he did, I think the most telling line about this was this:
“I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn too crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething, and I grind with greater energy, in proportion to the increase of pain.”
Heathcliff’s behaviour was an externalisation of all the internal torment he felt. And the longer he lived without Cathy, the greater his torment, and therefore the greater his brutality. I think this is an interesting commentary on human beings—the more they feel trapped in pain and suffering, the more they will do anything to relieve it, crossing whatever moral, social and religious boundaries if they need to. So, I can’t say that it excuses his actions, but I can at the very least understand it. And once one can understand, sympathy is pretty close behind whether you want it to be or not. But maybe that’s just me.
“Mr Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty rises from your greater misery! You are miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you—nobody will cry for you, when you die! I wouldn’t be you!”
Cathy II to Heathcliff
I know there is a lot of criticism of these characters— a lot of people say they couldn’t stand Heathcliff and Cathy, and the rest of the characters, but I don’t believe Emily Brontë created this characters for you to like them. I don’t think that’s the point of her book, and I think her not creating these characters for you to like them is the strongest aspect of the book because in that way it is brutally honest. Brontë is merely trying to tell you the story. She’s telling you how these characters came to be, what happened to them, what they did as a result of this and the ends they meet. She doesn’t claim any kind of moral high ground through any of the narrators. She is showing you the extreme sides of human nature, of human behaviour. So whether one pities Heathcliff or not, or whether one despises him (or any character for that matter), I think Emily leaves up to the readers. I personally cannot bring myself to despise Heathcliff (I know it would be a different story if he did those things to me), and I also cannot help but pity him and feel some sympathy for him too. Plus, I believe Brontë is trying to make an apt point here about how utterly bottomless the grief and anguish is when one loses the one they love—it kills Cathy, and Heathcliff goes mad, loses his humanity and eventually ends his life.
I came across this interesting statement of Charlotte Brontë on Heathcliff:
‘Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is.’
And it really got me thinking. Was it right to create Heathcliff? I think it was not only right, but admirable. And I believe it is precisely the fact that he is capable of such brutality that has contributed to the longevity of this book. Human beings are capable of wicked cruelty, and Brontë is demonstrating a way in which this could come about. Dostoevsky says in part wicked cruelty is formulated by excessive intelligence and the dehumanisation of others. Brontë here is saying it can also be made possible as a consequence of trauma and deep love. And I think it’s important we face these aspects of ourselves so we can learn more of what it means to be human and to see how one might avoid eternal suffering, such as the suffering subjected to Heathcliff because he refused to stop his quest for vengeance.
“Treachery, and violence, are spears pointed at both ends—they wound those who resort to them, worse than their enemies.”
Nelly Dean
One of the last things I would like to discuss is the beautiful description Catherine gives about what Heathcliff means to her. It’s probably one of the most quoted passage of the book:
“He [Heathcliff]…is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
“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: I should not seem a part of it.”
“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 each; and the angels were angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke up sobbing for joy.
I think there’s something extremely powerful in the idea of two people who couldn’t care less about the rest of the world, and would rather be damned eternally if it meant that they could be together. It is really beautiful, and yet unnerving, to know that that no matter how much humans claim to be morally driven, there is something in our most primal nature that would have us fiercely love and protect that which we love above all else. This idea completely strips away our ego and reduces us down to our bare emotion and instinct, and I believe this is another reason that explains why this book has stayed around for so long.
“If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”
Heathcliff
Finally, I have to talk about the part that almost made me tear up, which is the scene in which Catherine tells Nelly she wishes she were a child again at Wuthering Heights. When I was reading this part, I couldn’t help but sympathise deeply with Catherine. It seemed as though she desperately wished for the innocence associated with childhood as much as she wished for the love itself. The way in which she despaired over how she would never get back that time before she had suffered tremendous anguish, and said she would rather die now than continue to live this life of regret and misery tore at my heart. She openly admits here that she doesn’t recognise herself and she doesn’t recognise her life, and the image of her running across the moors as a child and around Wuthering Heights is so powerful to me. It represents freedom of the soul, and an alignment to it, as opposed to the catastrophic split she creates in rejecting Heathcliff. Below is a quote from this passage and it is definitely one of the best quotes in the book for me:
“Oh, I’m burning! I wish I were out of doors—I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free…and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed? why does my blood rush into a hell of tumult at a few words? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills. Open the window again, wide, fasten its open! Quick, why don’t you move?
To conclude, this book was a rollercoaster of misery. And I absolutely loved it. I admit I didn’t love it as much while I was reading it because of how depressing it was, but once I closed the book and really thought about what I read, I was struck by how utterly brilliant it was. I’m sure with a second reading, I will appreciate this book even more.
Rating: 5/5
This Written Path 