Tracy,

It's official. This sad book is making me sad. It's so very, very bleak. Do you want to know when the grimness hit me? Way back in chapter 17 when Hindley dies. Remember good old Hindley, the heir to Wuthering Heights? Let me recap: He was snubbed by his father, who preferred the foundling,Heathcliff. When his father died, he took off and came back a while later with Francis, his tubercular wife. Upon his return, he made probably the biggest mistake of his life when he threw Heathcliff out of the house, demoted him to being a servant for the family he was once a part of, and degraded him thoroughly. Of course poor Francis died, but not before giving birth to little Hareton. Hindley was devastated by grief and was an easy target for Heathcliff who extracted his revenge by encouraging Hindley's alcoholism and gambling addiction to the extent that Heathcliff ended up owning Wuthering Heights and ensuring that Hindley's son would remain poor, illiterate, and dependent. Hindley's sister Catherine died and six months later Hindley died. All of that is sad, of course, but you know what the kicker was for me? Hindley was 27 when he died. 27! All of these horrific things happened to people who weren't even 30. Sigh.

And even though our original cast of characters is still so young, here we are with the next generation. At 16, Cathy Jr. is still content to romp in nature (when is the last time you saw a sixteen-year-old "bound" anywhere?) and she is too naive to see through Heathcliff's plan for her to marry the sickly Linton, effectively making Heathcliff the heir to Thrushcross Grange, thus completing his revenge scheme. You would think that Nelly and Edgar would have learned something about trying to keep infatuated teenagers away from each other, but no. They repeat the original Catherine/Heathcliff forbidden love scenario with Cathy Jr. and Linton (let's remember it didn't work well on Isabella either) and actually try to keep apart two bored teenagers with nothing but five miles of moors between them. Hijinks ensue, including love letters smuggled by milkmen, servants bribed with books, and of course the climbing of garden walls. I'm convinced if they'd just let Cathy spend as much time as possible with Linton she would have fallen cooly out of love because boy howdy what a self-obsessed whiner he is! 

But as usual Tracy, you take a more sophisticated, literary approach to all of this... you asked me if I think that Catherine (first gen) could be considered a madwoman in the attic. I definitely agree with you that she meets the criteria. You then point out that perhaps she was driven to her mad state by the injustice of the expectation for her to be the "angel of the house" in a household she was essentially forced to marry into, despite her love for another man. The more we read, the more this feels like the crux of the story. Brontë hammers us over the head with the problems created by the idea of inheritance, be it financial or the intelligence, manners, and grace that are assumed to come through fine breeding. Again and again she pushes back on the 19th century idea of nature over nurture.

Nelly spells it out for us when she experiences Heathcliff's awfulness and regrets that she didn't get to keep Heathcliff and raise him so that he would have grown into a sympathetic adult. Whatever his origins, she believes the right care could have made him a better person.

Heathcliff is even less subtle when he explains of Hareton and Linton: "one is gold put to the use of paving stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver". Indeed, this demolition of the rules of inheritance is Heathcliff's entire purpose. He enters the story as a stray who was found on the street and does everything he can to destroy the wealthy family he joined and prove that despite their breeding and background, he is able to gain control of all of their assets, as well as their children. For me some of the most heartbreaking scenes are when Cathy and Linton mercilessly bully their illiterate cousin Hareton, who was pushed into illiteracy and servitude by Heathcliff. They are privileged, entitled snobs, and we already know that their story doesn't end well, for if there's one thing Heathcliff cannot abide, it's snobbery.

So here we are, approaching the end of this sad tale, where the person who was born the lowest has effectively flipped the tables, using the strict social structures and rules of inheritance to take everything from the family who initially took him in as a son, and then forced him to be a servant. The snobs are brought low and the foundling wins, but he's still stuck with them and what a miserable lot they all seem to be. Is that really winning? Let's wrap this thing up and decide if our Heathcliff really is a Byronic hero – if anyone can explain that to me, I'm confident it's you. Take us home, Tracy. 

Posted by Eliane