Summary Wuthering Heights PDF

Preview

Summary

This work is an extensive summary of Wuthering Heights. The story itself is summarised, then each theme and motif in the novel is explored, analysed and contextualised. The summary then goes on to pull out key quotes from the novel, analyse them and place them in importance....

Description

Wuthering Heights – Revision Summary: Lockwood moves into Thrushcroft Grange in 1801, and wants to visit his landlord, Heathcliff, who dressed like a gentleman but whose actions are uncouth. Also in the house is a mid-teens girl, Catherine and a man who seems like a member of the family, but dresses like a servant. After being snowed in, Lockwood is forced to stay the night in Wuthering Heights. That night, he has a nightmare where the ghost of Catherine comes to his window and tries to be let in. His panic rouses Heathcliff, who believes him. Heathcliff spends the night looking out the window hoping for her to return. When the sun rises Heathcliff takes Lockwood home. Lockwood asks the maid of the house, Nelly, about the story of Wuthering Heights, and she begins. Mr Earnshaw, the owner of the Wuthering Heights 30 years previously, lived with his son Hindley and his daughter Catherine. Earnshaw returns from a trip to Liverpool with a homeless boy, described as a ‘dark skinned gypsy in aspect’. The boy is named Heathcliff. Hindley dislikes Heathcliff for supplanting his father’s affections, whereas Catherine becomes friends with him. 3 years later, Earnshaw dies and Hindley becomes the head of the house. He lives there with his wife Frances, but only allows Heathcliff to remain as a servant. Heathcliff and Catherine go to spy on the Linton’s but are spotted and try to flee. Catherine is caught by the guard dog and is injured. She is taken into the house to recuperate while Heathcliff is sent home. The Linton’s affect her genteel and mannerisms. When she returns to Wuthering heights, she is more ladylike and laughs at Heathcliff’s appearance. When the Lintons visit soon after, Heathcliff dresses up to impress Catherine, but he gets into an argument with Linton and Hindley humiliates him by locking him in the attic. Catherine tries to comfort Heathcliff, but he vows revenge on Hindley. The next year Frances gives birth to Hareton, who dies shortly after and Hindley descends into drinking. Two more years pass and Catherine and Edgar become friends, while she becomes distant to Heathcliff. Soon after Catherine and Edgar declare themselves lovers. Catherine confesses to Nelly that Edgar has proposed marriage and she accepted, though the love she feels for Heathcliff is more than Edgar, but he cannot marry Heathcliff because of his social standing. Heathcliff overhears her say that ‘it would degrade her to marry him’ and not her saying how much she loves him, and subsequently runs away. Catherine falls ill on his departure. Three years later Catherine and Edgar marry and live together in Thrushcross Grange. Sixth months after, Heathcliff returns as a wealthy gentleman. Catherine is delighted. Soon Isabella, Edgar’s sister, falls in love with Heathcliff, who despises her, but encourages infatuation by a means of revenge. One day he embraces Isabella, and argues with Edgar. Catherine locks herself in her room and begins to make herself ill again. Heathcliff takes up residence in Wuthering heights and spends his time gambling with Hindley and teaching Hareton bad habits. He hears that Catherine is pregnant, and secretly visits her. Soon after she gives birth to Cathy and dies. 12 years pass. Catherine’s daughter has become a beautiful, high spirited girl. Edgar learns that his sister is dying, so leaves to retrieve their son Linton to educate him. Cathy, who rarely leaves home, rides over the heights to discover two cousins. Hareton and Linton. Three years pass and Nelly and Cathy visit Wuthering heights with Heathcliff to see Hareton and Linton. Heathcliff wants Cathy to marry Linton so he is the heir to Thrushcross grange. Linton and Cathy begin a secret friendship, like their parents. Edgar falls very ill the following year, and Nelly and Cathy are held captive in Wuthering Heights by Heathcliff, forcing the marriage between Linton and Cathy. Cathy escapes 5 days later,

seeing her father just before he dies. At this point Nelly’s tale catches up the present day. Time passes, and Lockwood decides to leave Thrushcross Grange. Later, Lockwood returns by chance to the area. He asks Nelly what has happened since he left. Hareton had an accident and was confined to the farmhouse, and Cathy became closer to him because of it. Heathcliff was overcome with visions of Cathy and stopped eating for days, and was eventually found dead in his bed. He was buried next to Catherine. Cathy and Hareton plan to marry on New Years day. As he leaves, he passes the graves of Heathcliff, Cathy and Edgar, and contemplates the quiet of the moors. Themes: 



The gothic. Themes of death and the supernatural. o The images of Catherine’s ghost haunting Heathcliff, eventually causing his death. o Isolated Moor of Wuthering Heights. o Ghosts in the novel are manifestations of the past permeating the present. Whether they are ‘real’ or not remains ambiguous, but they stand as a way memory effects people in the novel. o The Heights themselves are dangerous and infertile, as they are moors. People can drown on them. Perhaps a symbol of the dangers of nature and natural, unmoving love, like that of Heathcliff’s and Cathy’s? The destructiveness of Love that never changes o Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is the destructive force behind the novel. It is stronger and longer lasting than any other relationship and the source of many of themes and conflicts in the plot. o Nelly condemns their passion as immoral, but the passion is the most compelling part of the book.  Does Bronte was us to blame them for the outcome of the novel or praise them for a love that transcends social norms and boundaries? o Two parallel love stories, Catherine and Heathcliff and Hareton and Cathy. The latter succeeds. An anti-class boundary message? Two similar couples, one is happy because of their social allowance whereas one is sad until the day they die?  Cathy’s and Hareton relationship is rooted in change, with Hareton growing as a person. Whereas Catherine and Heathcliff’s is rooted in childhood and refusal to change. Catherine seeks a more genteel life, but refuses to embrace being a wife, so sacrifices Heathcliff and embraces Edgar. She says in chapter 12 that the last 12 years have been blank for her, and she longs to return to the moors of her childhood. Heathcliff possesses a supernatural ability to maintain grudges and the same attitude over many years. o Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is based off the idea that they are one and the same. Catherine famously exclaims ‘I am Heathcliff’, while Heathcliff, on Catherine’s death, says he cannot live without his ‘soul’. Their love denies difference. In the end, what unites them is the passage of time and the rise of the next generation, not them changing within themselves. o Wuthering Heights as a message for change over the backdrop of its two principle characters.



Class o

o

Heathcliff begins life as a homeless boy, and rises to gentility, but never obtains real social standing, nor is he allowed happiness. Is your birth more important than how you spend your life?  Heathcliff’s money comes from dubious sources, rendering him a fauxgentlemen. He will never obtain aristocracy, and he will never earn his money from the land he owns. Ergo, other gentlemen of the era, who severely disliked merchants and other self-made men, would not accept him as one of their own. Heathcliff is only a gentlemen in ‘dress and manners’.  Mirrored in the two relationships of the novel. Catherine and Hareton allowed a happy life as they are the same class. Heathcliff and Catherine not, even though they are a similar paring. Their class difference prevents their love.  Heathcliff trying to dress up to fit in with Catherine and the Lintons and forced back into his rightful place by Hindley. Catherine wants to marry Edgar simply to become the most powerful woman in the neighbourhood. She wants to move from the shaky gentlemancy of the Earnshaws to the more secured stature of the Lintons.

Quotes: 







So, from the very beginning, he bred bad feeling in the house; and at Mrs. Earnshaw's death, which happened in less than two years after, the young master had learned to regard his father as an oppressor rather than a friend, and Heathcliff as a usurper of his parent's affections and his privileges; and he grew bitter with brooding over these injuries. o Nelly telling Lockwood on how Hindley felt on the introduction of Heathcliff to the household – Chapter 4 [. . .] they forgot everything the minute they were together again: at least the minute they had contrived some naughty plan of revenge. o Nelly on Heathcliff letting Catherine being his relief for the difficulties in his childhood, and early signs of them being joined – Chapter 6 The ledge, where I placed my candle, had a few mildewed books piled up in one corner; and it was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small—Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton. o Lockwood unwittingly looks into Catherine’s entire life story. It also demonstrates the class mobility that she seeks. Moving from her semi-lowly Earnshaw name, to the faux-gentlemen Heathcliff, to her marriage with Edgar Linton. – Chapter 3 "Come in! come in!" he sobbed. "Cathy, do come. Oh, do—once more! Oh! My heart's darling, hear me this time—Catherine, at last!" o Heathcliff trying to talk to Cathy as Lockwood sees her at the window. Demonstrates utter despair and desperation. He wants Catherine to haunt him. Anything is better than nothing. – Chapter 3













She was much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him: yet she got chided more than any of us on his account. – Chapter 5 I suppose that she wanted to get another proof that the place was haunted, at my expense. Well, it is—swarming with ghosts and goblins! You have reason in shutting it up, I assure you. No one will thank you for a doze in such a den! – Chapter 3 Mr. Hindley came home to the funeral; and—a thing that amazed us, and set the neighbours gossiping right and left—he brought a wife with him. What she was, and where she was born, he never informed us: probably, she had neither money nor name to recommend her, or he would scarcely have kept the union from his father. – Chapter 6 o Clearly the wife is unwanted because of the lack of money or name she has. The whole neighbourhood gossips about her illegitimate marriage. He drove him from their company to the servants, deprived him of the instructions of the curate, and insisted that he should labour out of doors instead; compelling him to do so as hard as any other lad on the farm. o Hindley in forcing Heathcliff to work as a farmhand, the lowest of positions. Important, as he is stripping Heathcliff of any gentility he may have. The Gentry do not work with their hands. A half-civilized ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued; and his manner was even dignified: quite divested of roughness, though stern for grace. – Chapter 10 o Heathcliff is a changed man upon his return, but his overall attitude has not changed. Her brother, who loved her tenderly, was appalled at this fantastic preference. Leaving aside the degradation of an alliance with a nameless man, and the possible fact that his property, in default of heirs male, might pass into such a one's power. . . – Chapter 10 o Edgar’s disgust at the thought of his sister marrying Heathcliff and his property eventually becoming the Heathcliff’s.

Symbols/motifs The Moor, Nature and Weather  





Both beautiful and terrifying. They are at the same time a place of romance and mystery, and a place of the dark and foreboding. Setting for the drama that unfolds in the novel, and are portrayed as such. They are dramatic and untamed, and extremely natural. They stand as an image of conflict between nature and civilisation. ‘Wuthering’ is ‘a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather’ Mean different things to different people. For Lockwood they mean confusion and getting lost. The moors are impossible to cross when it’s snowing, for example. Perhaps the reflection of Lockwood’s outsider status to the story in the novel? He does not how to approach it, and gets lost in its complexity. They also mean freedom for Catherine, as it is her childhood place of happiness and where she wishes to be buried. Heathcliff feels the same, spending the majority of his childhood there. He is also seen to be ‘wandering the moors’ by people nearby after his death, indicating his love for the open space. Both Heathcliff and Catherine have an intense



identification with the unruliness and brutality of nature. Heathcliff is often described as natural aswell, ‘eternal rocks’ and ‘bleak hilly coal country.’ o Linton on the other hand is described as a ‘fertile valley’, indicating the difference between them. Like her other, Cathy also yearns to escape the house and play on the moors, and Hareton earns her trust by offering her guided tours of them, just as Heathcliff played and helped Catherine.

The Oak Panelled bed 

The bed is a terrifying object. It is the centre of Wuthering heights, both the novel and the house, and provides the setting for two of the rooms most dramatic events. o The "ghost story" is set into action the night Lockwood spends in the oak-paneled bed. Before his nightmares, Lockwood sees it as a place where he can feel "secure against the vigilance of Heathcliff and everyone else" o And Heathcliff dies there, transforming the bed into a sort of coffin that unites him and Catherine after death.

Windows, doors and other boundaries 







While Lockwood wants to enter Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff most certainly wants to keep him out. o Even the gate to the garden does not want to let him in: ‘Even the gate over which [Heathcliff] leant manifested no sympathizing movement’ Lockwood notes the unwelcoming architecture even as he gets to the house o Happily, the architect had foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, the corners defended with large, jutting stones. The window in the Oak Panelled bed, though having Catherine’s name carved into it, is a place of violence from the outset, with Lockwood running Catherine’s wrists over the broken glass. o Cathy later in the novel escapes Heathcliff’s capture through the same window. Crossing over boundaries in this house results in violence. Wuthering heights is often portrayed as a prison, with its occupants as inmates. o When Lockwood returns at the end of the novel he finds that the whole prison vibe has gone, with none of the inhabitants or the building itself resisting his entry or exit.

Doubles and Opposites 

Wuthering Heights vs Thrushcross Grange, Civilisation vs Nature, Edgar Linton vs Heathcliff, Catherine vs Cathy o The family trees mirror eachother, but become more blended in the novel. o

Ghosts

Characters describe themselves literally as one another, famously ‘I am Heathcliff’ is said by Catherine.





Take Catherine's ghost at the beginning. This paranormal figure with the icy hand who claims to have been "a waif for twenty years" (111.55) could just be a figment of Lockwood's nightmares. Still, when Heathcliff demands an explanation for the commotion in the oakpanelled bed (which he clearly thinks involves Catherine's ghost), Lockwood answers that Wuthering Heights is "swarming with ghosts and goblins!" Ghosts in Bronte’s novel take on more of a romantic theme though, rather than the gothic. Heathcliff wants Catherine to haunt him, simply as a way of staying connected to her.

Dogs 



Play a pretty big role in portraying the plot. These dogs figure in several major scenes and tend to be symbolically linked to Heathcliff. For example, when Lockwood tries to enter Wuthering Heights at the beginning of the novel, he finds not only several locked gates but also a pack of dogs preventing entry. "[T]wo hairy monsters" with the names Gnasher and Wolf attack Lockwood, and their lack of hospitality seems to reflect that of their master. Catherine is also bitten by ‘Skulker’, the Linton’s dog, and is forced to remain behind with the Lintons, which changes her relationship with Heathcliff forever.

Houses  

The plot is strangely driven by real estate, with Heathcliff’s revenge plot based around acquiring Thrushcross Grange. The two houses also sit in opposition to eachother. The Heights lacks hospitality and domestic comforts: chairs lurk; meats hang from the ceiling; and the kitchen, like unwelcome guests, is "forced to retreat altogether". Even the name is gloomy. "Wuthering," as Lockwood tells us, is "descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather”. Thrushcross Grange, on the other hand, represents refinement, class, cultivation, and propriety. It's the house Catherine aspires to socially, the house that will make her a "lady." The Heights sits exposed on a stormy hilltop, but the Grange is calm and protected down in the valley....