Impossible Desires

The Passions of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw

A Close Study of Emily Jane Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

When I read Wuthering Heights—which I do, on a loop—I usually do so with a close study theme in mind. Throughout the Autumn of 2025, my study theme was Nature and Folklore; I wrote 34 chapter summaries to accompany my close reading of the novel. I framed it as a read-along but honestly, it was more of a personal project…

My everyday carry (most of you know) is the Norton 5th, but when I began to consider a close study of Emily Jane’s portrayal and presentation of male grief, I had little room to fit new annotations and marginalia. Not to worry, I own forty-three others…

I pulled a clean copy of the novel off my bookshelf: the 2003 Penguin Classics edition.

Wuthering Heights (Penguin Classics, 2003)
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Pauline Nestor 
Preface by Lucasta Miller

The Penguin Classics paperback edition includes a really moody detail from Turner’s watercolour on paper, Figures in a Storm. I wonder: was it chosen to depict Heathcliff and Catherine as children, taking shelter under the dairy woman’s cloak or, might it represent shades of the two, haunting the moors on a moonless, stormy night?

Let’s Examine its Back Cover…

Wuthering Heights is commonly thought of as “romantic,” but try rereading it without being astonished by the extremes of physical and psychological violence.

This honest observation by Jeanette Winterson (printed as a sort of block quote on the back cover) assumes we’ve all read this classic. And if not, she encourages us to give it a (re)read keeping in mind, her accurate portrait of what Emily Jane’s novel reveals.

What does the back cover blurb tell a first-time reader about the novel?

Emily Brontë’s novel of impossible desires, violence and transgression is a masterpiece of intense, unsettling power. It begins in a snowstorm, when Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter at Wuthering Heights. There, he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before: the intense passion between the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, her betrayal of him and the bitter vengeance he now wreaks on the innocent heirs of the past.

You know, I can be rather critical when it comes to back cover blurbs. This one pretty much hits the mark, though. These are the words and phrases I want to comment on…

Impossible Desires

• Largely accurate, as the two main protagonists are rather young when initially separated; also, given Catherine’s rash decision (to break everyone’s hearts), she and Heathcliff are provided no opportunity to consummate their sexual desire.

• Lockwood’s attraction to young Cathy is entirely unrequited (if even noticed?).

• And poor, dear Isabella…‘it was a marvellous effort of perspicacity to discover [Heathcliff] did not love her.’

Violence and Transgression

• Oof. Yea, It’s violent. The Earnshaw children are like honey badgers, spitting at, and striking young Heathcliff; in adolescence, the Earnshaw siblings behave no better and by the time poor Heathcliff is an adult man, he is struck a blow to the throat that literally fells him.

• A lifetime of violence begets more violence; and, the foundling Heathcliff, who has been conditioned to assume spitting, pinching, striking, slapping and smacking are appropriate ways to handle ‘big emotions,’ continues the cycle.

• Transgressions are committed by everyone from the lowly horse groom to the daughter of the local magistrate.

Intense, Unsettling Power

• At Wuthering Heights a wide-eyed, quiet foundling, ‘[bore] his degradation well,’ and learned from a foster brother, power over others is rooted in the constant and unwavering threat of violence.

• While Catherine stuns with her outrageous tantrums, hers is an outward, chaotic rage. Heathcliff wields the intense, unsettling power.

Tempestuous Events

• Stormy sibling strife and romantic rivalries…Emily Jane Brontë’s characters (apparitions and all) are born of and inhabit, a virtual tempest.

• The property, described as wuthering—Wuthering Heights— is ‘descriptive of [an] atmospheric tumult.’

Intense Passion

• Passionate romantic affection and sexual desire—yea, we feel it; though it’s subtle.

• More so though, Heathcliff and Catherine exhibit their passion as devotion.

Betrayal

• Ah! A statement I wish was included in every back cover blurb: her betrayal of him.

• Catherine Earnshaw betrays Heathcliff by choosing to marry Edgar Linton.

Bitter Vengeance

• Not only vengeance, but bitter vengeance. Relentlessly determined, according to Merriam-Webster. Intense, severe, and rancorous…is bitter vengeance.

• Heathcliff is determined to express intense, unrelenting, severe, and rancorous vengeance…but if we closely examine the text, his ire spans only a single year.

Closely reading a back cover blurb: I had no idea it could be so satisfying!

Preface | Passion

I believe every part of a published work is valuable and each author deserves for her individual contribution to be read. I always read the extras—do you? Lucasta Miller, author of The Brontë Myth wrote the Preface to this new (in 2003) updated edition.

Cathy and Heathcliff’s mutual passion may have become a byword for the archetypal love affair. But it is, in fact, a quasi-incestuous, oddly unerotic relationship, more Romantic than romantic, which threatens to undermine certainties as basic as that of individual identity.

Yes! This is why I am interested in (re)reading the novel. I wanted a clean copy of the novel so I may study it closely, focusing my thematic lens on how Emily Jane presents evidence of male grief and grieving resulting from attachment and continuing bonds.

…to undermine certainties as basic as that of individual identity…

Individual identity relates to Catherine’s “I am Heathcliff!” speech. Her soul in the grave, according to Heathcliff, amounts to his own being buried. I think about these things quite a bit…

Catherine and Heathcliff were raised like sibling-playmates and he left the Heights at sixteen. They slept in the same bed and from a very young age, he absolutely treasured her. She only mistreated him. Catherine, at twelve-years-old, smitten with the Grange and Edgar Linton pulls away from Heathcliff to pursue a life of privilege.

At fifteen, declaring to Nelly she is doing it for Heathcliff, disloyal Catherine agrees to marry another. Heathcliff learns at sixteen: position and property may be gained if the proper union is established. That is all well and good, but Heathcliff has established a bond with Catherine based on the initial attachment he formed at seven-years-old. He cannot easily shed his bond with her.

To her, Heathcliff was simply the substitute for that whip she desired their father to bring home from Liverpool—Heathcliff is a plaything. Her diary entry regarding her brother’s mistreatment of Heathcliff illustrates fleeting empathy—but, she never truly attempts to protect Heathcliff from Hindley’s abuse nor even, speak up on his behalf. She callously carries on—sipping negus or eating her Christmas goose.

Catherine loves herself; she correlates it with loving Heathcliff: ‘I am Heathcliff.’

When Heathcliff’s ‘other half’ is threatened, he lashes out. He is willing to fight a mad dog or smash through glass. He will risk a flogging rather than endure separation from Catherine. He will tempt being shot by Edgar: ‘I’d expire with a blessing on my lips.’

Heathcliff loves Catherine, with no regard for himself.

Thinking about individual identity: I wonder, does Catherine legitimately end her life because she wishes to punish others? Does she wish to take Heathcliff to the grave as she claims—can she possibly know how it will destroy him? Or, is her suicide an act of selfishness, to escape the unfulfilling existence she chose?

‘Hardened, Perhaps to Ill-Treatment’ | Embittered By Fate

I am pondering the absence of the maternal caregiver, sibling closeness and rivalries, male versus female adolescence, bonds forged within a traumatic upbringing, while always considering Emily Jane Brontë’s own attachments, bonds and upbringing.

As I (re)read Wuthering Heights I cannot help but think of something Colin Murray Parkes observed in his insightful book, Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life:

Trust in others and trust in the world can be cemented or shattered by experiences at any stage in life, and literature abounds with tales of people who have been embittered by fate.

Usually the happy ending comes when faith is restored by the love of another.

But there are those who seem doomed to disappointment, and too often one finds that these people lack that basic trust which should arise in early childhood: intolerant of separation or change, they cling too hard to what they have, or, losing it, avoid all human involvement for fear of further disappointment.

Heathcliff was rescued from poverty by Mr. Earnshaw and abruptly spat on by six-year-old Catherine. Her father struck her as a result, ‘to teach her cleaner manners.’

This was Heathcliff’s introduction to life at Wuthering Heights. And, Catherine.

Soon, ‘Miss Cathy and he were…very thick.’ But Hindley hated him and so did, Nelly. ‘He seemed a sullen, patient child, hardened, perhaps to ill-treatment: he would stand Hindley’s blows without winking or shedding a tear, and [Nelly’]s pinches moved him only to draw in a breath…’

When Catherine ultimately betrays him—by marrying Edgar and leaving him in this abyss where he cannot find her—is it any wonder Heathcliff loses trust in the world? Hindley attempts to murder him; Isabella leaves. He does his best to avoid all human involvement—until Linton Heathcliff comes north.

Reading the novel on a loop illuminates the structure of the story. (Re)reading Chapter One, already knowing the story’s end, is perpetually enlightening. On Saturday I spent an afternoon reading and (re)reading the first three chapters, paying special attention to how Brontë presents Lockwood describing Heathcliff. Especially in Chapter Three…

He got on to the bed, and wrenched open the lattice,
bursting as he pulled at it, into an uncontrollable passion of tears.

‘Hardly more than a year ago,’ Heathcliff was carrying out that bitter vengeance for which he is so famous—tolerating his progeny in an attempt to secure Thrushcross Grange.

Having succeeded, he remains alone at Wuthering Heights…living only with ghosts. ♡

Subscribe for FREE or $7/month or Make a One-Time Donation!

Thank you for supporting Symbolism & Structure.