I’m sorry to spam you, but I’ve read chapters 5-10 and my thoughts are overflowing. I need to get them to you so you can tell me if I’m going a little nuts, because right now I feel like Brontë’s masterpiece is starting to feel like it’s a horoscope for the world. We read the first five chapters, which dwelled on themes of isolation, just as we were all locked in, learning how to sew masks and absorbing new concepts like ‘social distancing’. Now, as America explodes with violence and protests in a reckoning of 400 years of racial inequality and oppression, we read chapters about class and race and privilege. Is it like reading the horoscope pages for you, too? Is this just proof that what we’re reading is great literature – poignant and applicable across distance and time?
Let me start by saying I’m thrilled that Mr. Lockwood has basically handed the narration over to the delightful Nelly Dean to tell us the juicy story within his story. While I find him to be a bit of a boring, pretentious whiner, I think she’s direct, down-to-earth, and just the right level of judgy. She’s like that one friend you have who has a crazy story each time you meet and knows exactly how to tell it, so you’re totally absorbed and don’t care that she’s hogging the conversation.
Nelly, the well-read servant, is keenly aware of the impact of class and privilege, and starts this part of her tale by pointing out that when Hindley returns to Wuthering Heights with his tubercular wife, Frances, he wastes no time in throwing Heathcliff out of the house to live and work like a servant. In one fell swoop, Heathcliff is demoted from being the adopted favorite of a wealthy man to being the servant of that man’s children. It’s something that Hindley could never have done if Heathcliff were his blood brother, but as a dark-skinned foundling, Heathcliff had neither power, nor claim to the family assets. For her part, Catherine remains his best friend, that is, until she gets attacked by the Linton’s dog, spends five weeks with them at Thrushcross Grange, and gets tamed by nice clothes.
When she returns, she laughs at Heathcliff and calls him dirty, and suddenly they are friends from two different worlds, divided by class. Heathcliff loves her, and in a final attempt to bridge the growing gap, he begs Nelly to make him “decent”. He wants to be lighter, blonder, well-dressed, well-behaved, and rich. Despite his efforts, Edgar Linton insults him, and at that point, he knows that despite feeling that Catherine is “immeasurably superior…to everybody on earth” she has become unobtainable. After Frances dies and Hindley becomes an abusive, unpredictable alcoholic, Catherine devolves into a spoiled, mean, lying brat, yet still Edgar Linton proposes.
Catherine says yes, but is tormented so Nelly takes her through a love catechism – Why do you love him? How do you love him? It seems that Catherine accepted Edgar’s proposal simply because he’s handsome and rich. Heartbreakingly, as she expands to explain the true worries of her soul, we learn that she loves Heathcliff deeply, but because her brother degraded him too far and he’s no longer a suitable match, she said yes to Edgar to play the long game. As she puts it, “…if Heathcliff and I married, we would be beggars, whereas, if I marry Linton, I can aid Heathcliff to rise, and place him out of my brother’s power”. Catherine’s plan is to use the privilege and power she obtains through marriage to help Heathcliff because she loves him. How sad is that? As rich white dudes, Hindley and Edgar have all the power here. Hindley pushes Heathcliff down to the servant class, making him no longer a viable partner for his sister. Catherine knows Heathcliff is her soulmate but settles for Edgar so that at least she can try and make Heathcliff’s life a little better. It’s awful. And Heathcliff will have none of it. He disappears, leaving them all to their upper-class misery.
Catherine starts her marriage as gunpowder that everyone tiptoes around, but she eventually seems to accept her fate and settles into some form of stable happiness with Edgar. That stability is immediately shattered when Heathcliff comes back after three and a half years away. From the first moment, Catherine tries to close the class gap, telling her husband to set a separate table for her and Heathcliff, since they’re from the “lower order”. But she underestimates Heathcliff. He has come back a changed man. Dignified. Rich. He moves into Wuthering Heights with Hindley in order to be close to Catherine (and maybe get some kind of revenge?), and Nelly leaves us with a nice plot twist when we learn that Edgar’s sister, Isabella, is in love with him. It only took 3.5 years for Heathcliff to turn himself from an unviable partner for Catherine into a suitable love interest for Isabella. What a difference a little money can make!
So tell me Tracy, are race, class and privilege on your mind? I find it interesting that as a woman of at least some means, Catherine is still more limited in her choices than a man who is a servant. After all, she doesn’t have the option to disappear for three years and make (steal? con her way to? find? sleep her way to?) her fortune. She’s as trapped as Nelly, who is forced to abandon a child she loves and has raised to move to another house when Catherine gets married. Combined with everything that’s going on in real life around us, all of this is another slap-in-the-face reminder of how privileged I am. In so many ways.
Your friend for more than just the present,
Eliane