'The Last of Our Fine Days'
Volume II: Chapters I-III (15-17)
Hello! Welcome to Week Five of our Wuthering Heights read-along…
This week’s assignment is: Volume II: Chapters 1-3 (or, 15-17). It is still 1784…
If you have a two-volume edition of the novel, you’re reading One through Three and if you have a single volume edition, you’re reading Fifteen through Seventeen.1
Characters: Mr. Lockwood, Ellen “Nelly” Dean, Heathcliff, Catherine (Earnshaw) Linton, Edgar Linton, Catherine “Cathy” Linton, Isabella (Linton) Heathcliff, Hindley Earnshaw, Joseph, Hareton Earnshaw, Fanny, and Kenneth.
Here, in North America it’s springtime—it’s Spring at the Grange, too—and, Emily Brontë (at last!) is providing the balm which soothes me: Nature.
What Happens in Chapters I-III/1-3/15-17?
This week’s assignment includes some of the most evocative Nature imagery found in the novel. I’ll be the first to admit, after completing these three chapters it becomes infinitely more difficult for me to pay attention to the story.
In the second half of the novel Brontë breaks our hearts. Heathcliff’s world becomes deadened and dull—and only when he returns to the solace of Nature is he soothed. First, Catherine must break his heart by breaking her very own.
‘Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?’
March 19, 1784—Sunday
We arrive to this week’s reading assignment with heavy hearts. Catherine is ill and Nelly has been asked by Heathcliff to help him gain entry to Thrushcross Grange so he may see her. The chapter begins as narrated by Mr. Lockwood, he tells us he will continue Nelly’s story in ‘her own words,’ and he tells us the story of Cathy’s reunion with Heathcliff.
A book lay spread on the sill before her, and the scarcely perceptible wind fluttered its leaves at intervals…
Gimmerton chapel bells were still ringing; and the full, mellow flow of the beck in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage which drowned that music about the Grange when the trees were in leaf. At Wuthering Heights it always sounded on quiet days, following a great thaw or a season of steady rain; and of Wuthering Heights, Catherine was thinking as she listened…
It is Sunday and Edgar has gone to church. Catherine, in a loose, white dress, with a light shawl over her shoulders, is in her chamber…and she is dreaming of the Heights. I want to draw your attention to a sweet sentence Emily—ever an animal lover—tucks into Nelly’s narrative:
…I observed a large dog, lying on the sunny grass beneath, raise its ears, as if about to bark, and then smoothing them back, announce by the wag of the tail that some one approached whom it did not consider a stranger.
Seconds pass and some one the dog ‘did not consider a stranger,’ perhaps someone once deemed, ‘a wolfish man,’ bounds to Catherine’s side. It is of course, Heathcliff.
He neither spoke, nor loosed his hold, for some five minutes, during which period he bestowed more kisses than ever he gave in his life before, I dare say: but then my mistress had kissed him first…
Emily Brontë (through Nelly) is careful to clarify, Catherine invites his affection, she kisses him first; later in the chapter Nelly uses Heathcliff’s desire to protect Cathy’s honor when she instructs him to leave before being discovered by Edgar—“Will you ruin her?” she asks, meaning, ruin her reputation.
Anguished and attempting no disguise of his utter despair: Heathcliff had knelt on one knee to embrace her; he attempted to rise, but she seized his hair and kept him down.
“I wish I could hold you,” she continued bitterly, “till we were both dead! I shouldn’t care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn’t you suffer? I do! Will you forget me—will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, ‘That’s the grave of Catherine Earnshaw. I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I’ve loved many others since—my children are dearer to me than she was, and, at death, I shall not rejoice that I am going to her. I shall be sorry that I must leave them!’ Will you say so, Heathcliff?”
The episode which dominates this chapter is intense. Emily Brontë uses Nelly Dean’s observation of this ‘strange, and fearful picture’ to illustrate the scene and the author recognizes not one of us (who’ve read this far) remain a ‘cool spectator.’
We know these characters. We may not have warmed to them, but we know them.
And before Catherine utters those words, Brontë refers to her clouded brow, ‘her humour was a mere vane for constantly varying caprices.’ Weather-related bits woven into her narration of the scene remind us these two characters are part of the world; a part of the landscape and all its elements. We’ll see this concept return at the end of the novel.
I’ll try not to belabor this point—as its Easter Sunday and I’m certain you have a family gathering or similar recreation on which you’d prefer to focus…
The dialogue now—between Catherine and Heathcliff—like water or a breeze stills and rushes, calms and gusts. Tender at times, turbulent at others.
And, Heathcliff—who we associate with the skeletons of baby birds, hanged dogs and writhing worms—is so overwrought with grief, he will not allow Catherine to see him.
Heathcliff went to the back of her chair, and leant over, but not so far as to let her see his face, which was livid with emotion. She bent round to look at him; he would not permit it; turning abruptly he walked to the fire-place, where he stood, silent, with his back towards us.
While re-reading this episode this week and choosing these beautiful Edna Clarke Hall pieces to accompany my summary, I fell more in love with Hall’s work.
Re-reading the scene and noting Heathcliff walks to the fire-place and stands with his back to us, I believe the artist identifies us not with Cathy and Nelly, but as, the readers—and I absolutely love the interpretation!
After this heart-breaking scene—in which Heathcliff is overcome with grief—comes the most physical reciprocation of love Catherine and Heathcliff have ever shared; it is fortunate for us the housekeeper witnesses it.
It’s wild and violent and brutal, isn’t it? In one moment Heathcliff has finally proven (at least for a moment) he is human: he displays evidence of weeping. A moment later Emily Jane is likening the two to canines—she is lurching at him, he is gnashing and foaming at the mouth. And just as quickly, they exchange the most human sentiments of love and loss, death and grief.
“You teach me how cruel you’ve been—cruel and false. Why did you despise me? 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? What right—answer me—for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart—you have broken it—and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. 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?”
Have you lost someone you love? If you answered yes to this question, you understand the process of grief. Since I was young I’ve read a lot about death and dying, grief and grieving. I read Elisabeth Kübler Ross’ On Death and Dying (1969) when I was fourteen. When I lost my (step)dad thirty-five years later, I read The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss (2022).2
Heathcliff has begun grieving Catherine.
His soul is dying. Catherine knows it. Her demise will end his life on earth. Moments before, she had been cheerful, boasting she will be free from her earthly prison (body); Heathcliff is strong and he will live.
Now she realizes she has accomplished her goal: She has broken both their hearts. She is malnourished, weak and dying from a self-imposed hunger strike. Immediately, she acknowledges that in dying she will be taking Heathcliff with her ‘underground.’
“I forgive you,” she begs him, “Forgive me!”
“I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer—but yours, how can I? Why does Heathcliff say this to her? Do you remember her raw reaction to him when, first, he arrived—Catherine declared, “You and Edgar have broken my heart…you have killed me and thriven on it!”
Heathcliff forgives Catherine for breaking his heart; he will never forgive himself for provoking her to take actions to break her own—he considers himself her murderer.
‘Unless you be a fiend, help her first—’
March 19, 1784—Sunday
This first chapter of the week’s reading assignment is tumultuous. Just as the storm is calming Nelly warns Catherine and Heathcliff that the church service has ended:
I could distinguish, by the shine of the westering sun up the valley, a concourse thickening outside Gimmerton chapel porch. Is it only me, or does this statement remind you of the scene looked out upon by Edgar and Catherine months earlier?
Heathcliff returned to the Grange under an autumn moon. Edgar was inside, upstairs with Catherine; Nelly found them observing a long, winding silvery vapour rising off Gimmerton beck. Heathcliff was outside.
Edgar is now returning to the Grange under a vernal sun. Heathcliff is inside, upstairs with Catherine; Nelly is observing parishioners winding their way toward the Grange from Gimmerton chapel. This afternoon, Edgar is now on the outside.
I can’t help but believe Brontë intended this perfect seasonal imagery and symmetry.
Nelly, it seems, is significantly more anxious than she was the evening of the Harvest Moon—she accuses Heathcliff of potentially damaging Catherine’s reputation if they are caught together. Catherine begs him to stay, and despite Edgar closing in on the house, Heathcliff remains. Catherine is frenzied and hysterical and finally collapses. What Nelly confesses to Lockwood in her re-telling, is illuminating, is it not?
“She’s fainted or dead,” I thought, “so much the better. Far better that she should be dead, than lingering a burden and a misery-maker to all about her.”
Wow! Show of hands…how many of us are grateful Nelly Dean is not our caregiver?
When Edgar springs to his unbidden guest, Heathcliff surrenders Catherine to her husband, ‘placing the lifeless-looking form in his arms.’ He insists, “Unless you be a fiend, help her first—then you shall speak to me!” and then the young man who has become accustomed to being characterized himself, as a fiend, exits the room.
He will remain in the garden: “I shall be under those larch trees,” he tells Ellen Dean.
‘An unwelcomed infant it was…’
March 20, 1784—Monday
About twelve o’clock that night was born the Catherine you saw at Wuthering Heights, a puny, seven months’ child; and two hours after, the mother died, having never recovered sufficient consciousness to miss Heathcliff, or know Edgar.
In the first paragraph of the second chapter of our reading, we learn the fate of Cathy. After Heathcliff exited and Edgar entered, she never regained full consciousness. We know that when church was dismissed, it was afternoon. We can only assume either the birth of the younger Catherine was a long labor or, Cathy went into labor later in the evening—either way, the infant was born premature and had only Ellen Dean to care for it, as Edgar immediately sunk into bereavement.3
Last week I was reading a collection of essays about Heathcliff, in which one author (I cannot recall who at this moment) observed she has always been a bit disturbed by the rough handling of Catherine by him, despite her pregnancy. Seven months pregnant is no joke—that belly is more than ‘a bump.’ I wonder if Brontë meant to allude to their physical exchange causing an expulsion of the baby? What do you think?
“An unwelcomed infant it was, poor thing! It might have wailed out of life, and nobody cared a morsel, during those first few hours of existence,” Nelly tells Lockwood, “We redeemed the neglect afterwards; but its beginning was a friendless as its end is likely to be.”
Always remember, this rambling narrative is being shared in 1801. The events of this chapter take place in March—March 20—of 1784, but we know Cathy Linton resides (currently) with her father-in-law, Heathcliff, at Wuthering Heights.
Nelly Dean briefly informs readers (in telling Lockwood), old Mr. Linton arranged that if Edgar dies having no male heirs, Thrushcross Grange passes to Isabella. It’s tucked in between the housekeeper’s observation of Edgar’s grief and how unwelcome Cathy was on the day she was born.
“No angel in heaven could be more beautiful than she appeared; and I partook in the infinite calm in which she lay.” Ellen Dean tells Lockwood, “My mind was never in a holier frame than while I gazed on that untroubled image of Divine rest; I instinctively echoed the words [Catherine] uttered a few hours before. Incomparably beyond, and above us all! Whether still on earth or now in heaven, her spirit is at home with God!”
The next few passages were meant to teach us Ellen Dean’s views on faith, humankind and earthly love. She waxes poetic and even poses a question, as to whether Lockwood believes one may transition from sinner to saint; and again we are reminded of their roles in this novel: Lockwood, the researcher and Nelly, the rustic.
‘…he had remained among the larches all night…’
March 20, 1784—Monday
He was there—at least a few yards further in the park; leant against an old ash tree, his hat off, and his hair soaked with the dew that had gathered on the budded branches, and fell pattering round him. 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, busy in building their nest, and regarding his proximity no more than that of a piece of timber. They flew off at my approach, and he raised his eyes and spoke—
“She’s dead!” he said; “I’ve not waited for you to learn that. Put your handkerchief away—don’t snivel before me. Damn you all! she wants none of your tears!”4
I promised I will keep this week’s summary post short, and so I will provide you with a link to my previous essay, “Heathcliff’s Grief: Springtime, Parasitic Love and Heart Rot.”
The essay describes one of my favorite Clare Leighton Wuthering Heights woodcut illustrations—the other being, Heathcliff in the Snow. While I would love to discuss Brontë’s use of elements from the natural world, I’ll save that for another post. As these are general read-along summaries, let’s focus on Heathcliff’s reaction to the news of Catherine’s death.
Again—I have another essay you may read at your leisure. Hoping to keep this post shorter, I wrote a supplemental essay last week—if you’ve not read, “A Double Nature” yet; you may read it now that you’ve completed Chapters I-III (15-17).
‘You said I killed you—haunt me then!’
When Nelly Dean is asked by Heathcliff, “How did she die?” the housekeeper’s ‘like a child reviving’ answer provokes the question, “And—did she ever mention me?”
Emily Brontë (via Nelly to Lockwood) describes the grieving Heathcliff’s demeanor as hesitant, ‘as if he dreaded the answer to his question would introduce details that he could not bear to hear.’
Sadly, because Heathcliff only witnessed Catherine’s torment, its what is last in his mind. Her malnourished rallying and delirious ramblings. Death by starvation is a distressing process to witness. I wonder if Brontë experienced it? Here in America, doctor-assisted suicide is legal in only ten states, and not here in Pennsylvania. If a loved one stops, for example, cancer treatment—and declines nourishment, family must endure a terminal lucidity similar to what is described in Wuthering Heights.
“Her senses never returned—she recognized nobody after the time you left her…her life closed in a gentle dream—may she wake as kindly in the other world!” explains Nelly, likely believing she is soothing Heathcliff with her tale of a Christian passing.
“May she wake in torment!” he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. “Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where?
Heathcliff continues…addressing his tirade toward the soul of the deceased:
“Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And 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! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe—I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. 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!”
While Nelly is appalled by Heathcliff’s words and actions, she remains with him until he thunders a command for her to go—again, Brontë characterizes him as an element of Nature, disconnected from humankind.
‘…strewn with flowers and scented leaves…’
March 21, 1784—Tuesday
The final paragraphs of Volume II: Chapter II (16) detail the custom of laying the body out—in this case, in the great drawing room of Thrushcross Grange. Linton attended to the body during the day, Heathcliff remained present in the garden all night, every night. On the Tuesday before the (Friday) funeral, Nelly Dean opens the window to permit Heathcliff entry.
He did not omit to avail himself of the opportunity, cautiously and briefly—too cautiously to betray his presence by the slightest noise; indeed, I shouldn’t have discovered that he had been there, except for the disarrangement of the drapery about the corpse’s face, and for observing on the floor a curl of light hair, fastened with a silver thread, which on examination, I ascertained to have been taken from a locket hung around Catherine’s neck. Heathcliff had opened the trinket and cast out its contents, replacing them by a black lock of his own. I twisted the two and enclosed them together.
In Victorian England, lockets of hair were a common, sentimental gift exchanged between romantic partners. Hairwork is the word used to describe jewelry or any other form of artwork in which human hair is used (braided, formed into designs and/or encased) as the primary medium.
Mourning jewelry, popular in England and America, featured a lock of a deceased loved one’s hair—kept and worn, in remembrance. Some pieces are very ornate.
In this final scene of the chapter, two things strike me…
Ellen Dean opens a window to permit Heathcliff entry from outside into the death room. I can’t help but think of the tradition of windows being opened to allow the soul of the recently departed to escape outside. In Wuthering Heights, Nelly opens a window—almost as if to permit—Catherine’s soul to reunite with Heathcliff.
It’s also interesting that rather than both men—Edgar and Heathcliff—retaining a lock of Catherine’s hair, she is buried wearing a locket of theirs. It’s as if Brontë is reversing the soul window and mourning jewelry traditions in Wuthering Heights.
‘…on a green slope, in a corner of the kirkyard…’
March 24, 1784—Friday
The place of Catherine’s interment, to the surprise of the villagers, was neither in the chapel, under the carved monument of the Lintons, nor yet by the tombs of her own relations, outside. It was dug on a green slope, in a corner of the kirkyard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry plants have climbed over it from the moor; and peat mould almost buries it.
While today this information may not seem provocative, at the time it would have been the subject of much conversation. I appreciate Edgar, respecting Catherine’s wishes. I love the imagery of the heath and bilberry climbing over the wall to meet with her there— and did you read this sentence, there at the end of Chapter II (16)?
Her husband lies in the same spot now; and they have each a simple headstone above and a plain grey block at their feet, to mark their graves.
Nelly confirms Edgar Lintons’ final resting place. Are you familiar with footstones? Here, I occasionally see them in private, Pennsylvania German graveyards. Footstones are used in conjunction with headstones and are small and less ornate; in some cases they bear the initials of the deceased but oftentimes, appear bare.
(Mourning) flowers and scented leaves, heath and bilberries…I promise I’ll come back to these subjects one day…but we must move on to Chapter III (17).
‘…the last of our fine days…’
March 25, 1784—Saturday Afternoon
One editor, Christopher Heywood, suggested Emily Brontë designed her novel to be two seventeen-chapter volumes. This final chapter neatly provides a transition into the second half of The Story of Heathcliff. In our next reading assignment we find ourselves in the future, and are introduced to adolescent Miss Cathy Linton and a young adult, Hareton Earnshaw. But, for right now…
It is the day after Catherine has been buried and the weather has turned dreary and chill ; ‘the primroses and crocuses were hidden under wintry drifts; the larks were silent, the young leaves of the early trees smitten and blackened.’ So, why has Mrs. Isabella Heathcliff appeared at Thrushcross Grange, giggling like a school-girl, in a ‘low frock, with short sleeves and nothing on either head or neck?’
This is the longest chapter in this week’s assignment and there are a number of subtle points to be highlighted, but it is also a holiday weekend for many and I don’t wish to over-write this, so if I fail to illuminate any topic(s) you feel require discussion, please do pop into the comments and start the conversation.
“This is the last thing of his I have about me.”
Isabella has fled Wuthering Heights. When she arrives at the Grange she is bleeding but is careful to explain most of her injuries were sustained running across the moors. Knowing Heathcliff’s rights as her husband, Isabella intends only to stay long enough for the staff to arrange a carriage so she may continue on to Gimmerton. If Heathcliff finds his runaway spouse, he has the legal right to demand she return—remember, in 1784 a divorce was granted only if Isabella can prove he has committed adultery.
When she pulls off her wedding band and cries, “I was not going to sympathize with him—the brute beast!” she claims it is the last thing of his she has about her. By the end of the chapter, we learn she has one other ‘thing of his,’ about her and it’s hinted at when she mentions growing ‘fat and merry,’ and again, when she briefly mentions her hearty appetite on the morning after a violent scene with Hindley.
Isabella is pregnant with Heathcliff’s child.
She has escaped the Heights and intends to keep going—though she would prefer to remain at the Grange, ‘to cheer Edgar and take care of the baby’…and because ‘the Grange is[her] right home.’
Isabella is only nineteen-years-old but she is bravely advocating for herself and her unborn child, taking a carriage to Gimmerton and then onward, to ‘the south, near London.’ We learn at the end of the chapter, the child is born (in September) and is christened Linton. “And from the first,” Isabella describes the child as, “an ailing, peevish creature.”
‘Whether the angels have fed him, or his kin beneath…’
Wuthering Heights is written in a way that the narration is so layered it sometimes becomes confusing. In this week’s reading assignment, remember, Lockwood has taken over the role of narrator, telling readers he’ll continue the story of his landlord ‘in the same manner’ as Mrs. Dean.
Now, Lockwood is telling us Isabella’s story as it was told to him by Nelly Dean—and, keep in mind, these events took place in March of 1784, seventeen or so years prior to Lockwood’s meeting of Mr. Heathcliff, Joseph, Cathy and Hareton.
Isabella, explaining why she feels confident Heathcliff will not chase her throughout England, observes: “…when I enter his presence, the muscles of his countenance are involuntarily distorted into an expression of hatred.” She acknowledges it’s, “partly arising from his knowledge of the good causes I have to feel that sentiment for him, and partly from general aversion.” She confesses, despite all that has transpired, she can recollect how she once loved him.
Isabella goes so far as to admit she could possibly still love him but then, immediately, she calls him a monster and declares: Catherine had an awfully perverted taste to esteem him so dearly, knowing him so well. This, again, is often perceived as sexual. Again, I disagree. I doubt Emily Brontë designed Heathcliff as harboring some sort of kink, enjoyed by both he and his soulmate, Cathy. Perverted, likely refers to distorted behaviors with which the Lintons are not familiar or disapprove—heathenism, rough language, traipsing across moorland all hours of the day and night and, a penchant for violence. Not, Fifty Shades of Heathcliff.
In Brontë’s brilliant nested narration, we learn from Isabella how Heathcliff behaves after Catherine’s death. Isabella begins by telling Nelly, “I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death: and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen, and since he has destroyed mine,” she continues, teasing her knowledge of his grieving “I have not the power to feel for him, and I would not, though he groaned from this to his dying day, and wept tears of blood for Catherine!”
Isabella describes the mood of Heathcliff, how she believed he is to be dealt with and the scene after which she found an opportunity to escape. In doing so, Brontë uses a unique visual: “Pulling out the nerves with red hot pincers requires more coolness than knocking on the head.” In other words, Isabella carefully extracted herself from the situation. Imagine: playing the game, Operation.
“Heathcliff—I shudder to name him!—has been a stranger in the house from last Sunday till to-day. Whether the angels have fed him or his kin beneath, I cannot tell; but he has not eaten a meal with us for nearly a week. He has just come home at dawn, and gone upstairs to his chamber; locking himself in—as if anybody dreamt of coveting his company!”
Isabella calls his absence, a ‘season of deliverance from degrading oppression.’
“There he has continued, praying like a Methodist; only the deity he implored is senseless dust and ashes and God, when addressed, was curiously confounded with his very own black father! After concluding these precious orisons—and they lasted generally till he grew hoarse, and his voice was strangled in his throat—he would be off again; always straight down to the Grange.”
Heathcliff is speaking to Catherine—praying to his deity. He curses and damns God.
Elsewhere about the house, Hindley has continued drinking. He attempted to remain sober so that he might attend his sister’s funeral (the day prior) but instead, awoke in ‘suicidal low spirits’ and sat down by the fire to drink gin and brandy all day.
‘Treachery and violence are a just return for treachery and violence!’
March 25, 1784—Saturday (Around Midnight)
Let’s imagine the next episode. Twenty-seven-year-old widower and father, Hindley Earnshaw has lost everything. His parents are dead, his wife Frances is dead, he has lost the respect and loyalty of his only son (Hareton) and now his sister has died.
Isabella Linton now lives at the Heights and she, too, has lost everything. Her parents are dead, she and her brother are estranged and she has lost any opportunity to make amends with her sister-in-law, Catherine. Nineteen-years-old and pregnant with the child of a man she abhors (who likewise despises her), Isabella feels hopeless.
And…Heathcliff? Heathcliff, in his grief, is like an animal caught in a trap. Viscous and unpredictable, his retreat into his own world after Catherine’s death makes him more dangerous.
On the day Isabella escapes from Wuthering Heights, Hindley has barred Heathcliff from entering the house. Isabella is not entirely in agreement with the decision:
“I’d be glad of a retaliation that wouldn’t recoil on myself,” she tells Hindley (a rather cheeky divination of future events), but treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends—they wound those who resort to them, worse than their enemies.”
Hindley is bent on revenge, and so of course, believes, “treachery and violence are a just return for treachery and violence.” Pure, honest Isabella attempts to reason with him and dissuade him from his intention of shooting Heathcliff should he enter—but Hindley fights her and when she recognizes she cannot win, she runs to the window and warns her ‘fiend’ of a husband.
Were you surprised she would aid Heathcliff?
The description of his rage is certainly breathtaking, isn’t it? While Isabella entertains whom Hindley’s death or Heathcliff’s demise might benefit, ‘the window casement behind [her] [is] banged on to the floor’ and Heathcliff appears there: ‘his hair and clothes whitened with snow,’ and, ‘revealed by cold and wrath…his sharp, cannibal teeth.”
Rather than being utterly terrified, Isabella (her self-preservation awoken!) taunts him, observing he’d been absent during the warm weather but now, returns for shelter. She suggests, now that Catherine is gone, he ‘stretch [himself] over her grave and die like a faithful dog.’5
At the same time, Hindley’s attention is raised and he makes a move toward the open window—Heathcliff wrenches the pistol from Hindley’s grasp and its spring-action knife folds back on his wrist. When Heathcliff pulls the gun from Hindley’s grasp, the knife slices Hindley’s flesh as it passes. Heathcliff, enraged, uses a stone to smash the stanchion between the two windows and springs into the room.
On the floor, drunken Hindley lies prone. He is bleeding excessively, as the radial artery is located in the wrist. Isn’t it fascinating that Emily Brontë likely knew this when she wrote the scene? So enraged was Heathcliff he, ‘kicked and trampled on him, and dashed his head against the flags,’ holding back Isabella with one hand. Isabella tells Nelly that Heathcliff, ‘exerted preter-human self-denial in abstaining from finishing him completely; but getting out of breath, he finally desisted, and dragged the apparently inanimate body onto the settle.’
What is preter-human self-denial, you may be wondering?
According to editor Janet Gezari, preter-human is another term for what we’d think of as ‘super-human.’ She suggests Brontë may have been familiar with the word from Percy Shelley’s Gothic horror novel, St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian, A Romance (1811).6 And so, what do we make of this: has Heathcliff shown he is capable of self-control—even in grief? Yes. In fact, he bandages Hindley’s wound!
Isabella fetches Joseph and the old man is told to clean up the mess; and ‘mind the sparks of your candle—it is more than half brandy!’ I wonder if this is how Brontë might have imagined the blood-alcohol ratio of her brother, Branwell. As if his very blood was capable of igniting a fire?
Isabella convinces Joseph it was not Heathcliff, but Hindley who was the aggressor, and Hindley awakens, proving no murder, in fact, has been committed. Commitment, threatens Heathcliff, is what he may pursue for Hindley—‘I’ll have him to an asylum.’
‘…in the presence of such grief…’
March 25, 1784—Saturday (11:30 a.m.)
Isabella tells Nelly, watching him in the kitchen the morning after, she contemplated her husband’s features, ‘almost as confidently as if they had been turned to stone’—she knew his attention was taken up with thoughts of Catherine and he would not notice her gazing at him.
“His forehead, that I once thought so manly, and that I now think so diabolical, was shaded with a heavy cloud; his basilisk eyes were nearly quenched by sleeplessness, and weeping, perhaps, for the lashes were wet then; his lips devoid of their ferocious sneer, and sealed in an expression of unspeakable sadness. Had it been another, I would have covered my face in the presence of such grief.”
He is not another. And so, Isabella was pleased to see him weakened. She tells Nelly how she enjoyed seeing him emotionally defeated. Nelly scolds her for her unchristian behavior, and tells her only God has the right to punish. Isabella asks: “What misery laid on Heathcliff could content me, unless I have a hand in it?”
I wonder…did this remind you of the scene in Chapter VII, in which a degraded and bullied adolescent Heathcliff tells Nelly he’s trying to settle how he shall pay Hindley back for his abuses? Nelly tells him it is for God to punish wicked people. Heathcliff declared: “God won’t have the satisfaction I shall.”
Isabella knows she will never have an opportunity to pursue revenge on Heathcliff for his mistreatment of her and she accepts neither revenge nor forgiveness are possible. She informs Hindley that Heathcliff is responsible for what ails him and she takes her final revenge using stabbing words, directed right at Heathcliff’s black heart:
“…It’s enough that he has murdered one of you (Earnshaws). At the Grange, every one knows your sister would have been living now, had it not been for Mr. Heathcliff. After all, it is preferable to be hated than loved by him. When I recollect how happy we were—how happy Catherine was before he came—I’m fit to curse the day.”
Heathcliff—the fiend in him, dimmed and drowned—openly weeps and Isabella takes another shot at him (using her red hot pincers!) after he calls her a wretched idiot:
“If poor Catherine had trusted you, and assumed the ridiculous, contemptible, degrading title of Mrs. Heathcliff, she would soon have presented a similar picture. She wouldn’t have borne your abominable behaviour quietly; her detestation and disgust must have found voice.”
In his final act of aggression toward Isabella, Heathcliff seizes a dinner knife from the table and hurls it toward her head. It strikes her below the ear and she returns it. She rushes out the door, passing six-year-old Hareton, who she tells Nelly, ‘was hanging a litter of puppies from a chair-back in the doorway.’
And so Isabella Linton’s relationship with Heathcliff ends, and she leaves him. When Heathcliff learns his estranged wife named the baby born, ‘a few months subsequent to her escape,’ Linton, he remarks: “They wish me to hate it too, do they?”
We learn Isabella lived, ‘some thirteen years after the decease of Catherine,’ and while her brother and she reunited through letters, immediately after Catherine’s death, Edgar rarely ventured outside the confines of the Grange.
‘One hoped, and the other despaired…’
September 1784
‘But he was too good to be thoroughly unhappy long. He didn’t pray for Catherine’s soul to haunt him.’ Edgar Linton lifted himself up out of his sadness and warmed to having a little girl. He trusted God, Nelly tells Lockwood, and God comforted him. When Hindley Earnshaw lost his wife, everything fell into chaos.
One hoped, the housekeeper observed, while the other despaired…and, drank a lot.
Hindley Earnshaw dies six months after his sister, at ‘barely twenty-seven.’ When Nelly Dean receives word from the doctor she is heartbroken. Her old master and foster brother, she believed had a claim on her services. When she goes into town to speak to a lawyer on Edgar’s behalf—regarding custody of Hareton—Nelly learns Hindley died in debt. She goes on to the Heights where Heathcliff observes, “That fool’s body should be buried at the cross-roads,” suggesting Hindley’s death was a sort of suicide-by-alcohol and according to custom he does not deserve a Christian burial. Joseph’s account of Hindley’s death leads Nelly to question the validity of it being natural; no one can say for sure—according to Heathcliff, Hindley was ‘dead and cold and stark’ by the time Kenneth arrived.
Do you think Heathcliff had anything to do with the death?
‘The guest was now the master of Wuthering Heights’
Our reading assignment ends where I believe Emily Brontë wished the first half of her novel to end—Heathcliff is the sole guardian of Hareton Earnshaw and he is now the owner of Wuthering Heights.
“Now, my bonny lad, you are mine!” Heathcliff announces to Hareton, “And we’ll see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!” When Nelly hears this and attempts to argue—telling him, Hareton (as Catherine’s nephew), should live at the Grange—Heathcliff threatens he will demand his newly born infant, Linton, from Isabella. Edgar concedes, leaving young Hareton in Heathcliff’s care—at Wuthering Heights—where we know the young Earnshaw still resides in 1801.
Next week’s assignment includes four chapters (Volume II: Chapters IV-VII/18-21).
Cathy Linton meets her cousins, visits a Fairy Cave, exchanges letters and gets caught plundering by her father’s worst enemy. Reach out anytime—comment, chat or tag me on Notes! Share. Restack & Recommend. Thanks for being here with me! ♡
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In 1847 Thomas Newby printed a three-volume edition of Emily Brontë and her sister, Anne Brontë’s novels. Newby—it is believed—split Wuthering Heights into the two volume form and offered it with a third volume: Anne’s novel, Agnes Grey.
Editor Christopher Heywood has suggested Emily Brontë designed her manuscript as two seventeen chapter volumes and Newby published the novel as fourteen chapters (Volume I) and twenty chapters (Volume II) plus, Agnes Grey. If Heywood is correct, the three chapters we read this week near perfectly complete the story of the novel’s older generation, paving the way for a second volume focused on the next generation.
A beautiful collection of poetry on the subject, The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (2010), has been compiled by Kevin Young.
While the painting below is titled, Mother and Child, it has a Nelly and child vibe to it.
He knows Catherine wants only Heathcliff’s tears.
Did you know? Keeper, Emily Brontë’s faithful dog, was greatly affected by the death of his companion. He followed the coffin during her funeral procession and moaned outside her bedroom door for weeks after her death (The Oxford Companion to The Brontës).
Gezari, Janet. The Annotated Wuthering Heights. The Belknapp Press of HUP, 2014
So much is so brutal in these chapters. I don't see anything I would call love, even between Catherine and Heathcliff. The bits of nature are a relief.
Interesting that you note that this is the end of the first volume - and perhaps the place it was intended to end. This first half of the novel is stronger by far - and it’s the part people tend to remember best, partly due to the film versions.
And I was grateful to be reminded how many years have passed between the events and their (partial and not quite honest) retelling. Memory and time playing games.