Wuthering Heights (1847): Were Catherine & Heathcliff the ultimate stunt queens?

I graduated from high school in 2013, and I still remember Wuthering Heights2 being my favorite book I read in all 5 semesters of English Lit – partly because of the inherent drama and partly because my AP English teacher turned the unit into an entire production, culminating in a lively in-class showdown between the Earnshaws and Lintons that got even my shy 17-year-old self riled up and ready to argue. With the new film adaptation releasing this weekend, I thought this was the perfect time to revisit the novel with fresh eyes before heading to the theatre.

As soon as I began my reread, I was struck by two thoughts: 1. Heathcliff was doomed from the start, and 2. Everyone in this book is unhinged! I love that Emily gives us two unreliable narrators: Lockwood, who is clearly delusional and self-important even before he falls ill, recounts a 20+ year-old story he heard from Nelly, who openly despises both Heathcliff and Catherine. Their commentary adds a level of humor that would’ve been difficult to pull off if the story were told through anyone else’s point of view.

One thing Emily excels at is giving her characters a distinct voice. My brain initially had to work overtime to understand Joseph’s dialogue, but after a while, I started hearing his tirades in my head loud and clear. I can’t help but wonder if it was like this back in high school, too, or if the decade+ of brain rot since has done irreparable damage to my brain. I had also forgotten that Joseph was a religious zealot, and I kept drawing parallels between his nonsensical diatribes and the evangelical fundies who have hijacked the public consciousness in the US since the global rise of fascism started in the mid 2010s. Nelly’s description of him as “the wearisomest, self-righteous pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake the promises to himself, and fling the curses on his neighbours” still rings true of the ultra-religious types to this day. Good to know that the good sis Emily was clocking the bullshit as far back as 1847.

People rarely talk about Catherine Sr. outside of her relationship with Heathcliff, but she’s such a fun character to me. Young Catherine is very ADHD-coded to me, and it’s refreshing to see a young female character allowed to be rambunctious and shameless. Even though she becomes a bit more cunning in how she expresses her chaos as she grows older, she never fully settles into the role of doting mother and wife expected of young women at the time.

Catherine's flashes of depth are interesting and make me long for a peek inside her brain so we can get a sense of her true feelings and motivations. Most TV and movie adaptations skip over her internal turmoil and paint her as 100% histrionic and superficial – no doubt because this is how Nelly remembers her. And don’t get me wrong, she IS histrionic and superficial. But a brainless ninny could never come up with a banger like “...he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning or frost from fire.” And she was surprisingly pragmatic – she initially planned to marry Edgar not only for money and status, but so she could secretly use his resources to elevate Heathcliff, her One True Love™.

But was he? Are Catherine and Heathcliff even capable of love? Naturally, they’re convinced that they love each other more deeply than anyone else ever could, but how do they define love? I’m inclined to say no, if only because of the way Heathcliff talks to Isabella (bless her heart, the foolish girl), combined with his animal cruelty and the delight he gets in recounting his abuse. He may have deluded himself into thinking he loved Catherine, but it was an obsession (monomania, as Nelly calls it) more than anything. It doesn’t hurt that she’s the only person in the book. As for Catherine – was it love? Was it passion? Or was it that she never really had a chance to grow and develop a sense of self, and so she associated Heathcliff with her childhood freedom and would’ve been unhappy with him once their relationship was no longer forbidden fruit? Catherine loves attention and rule-breaking, and Heathcliff showers her with both. He’s the only person in the entire novel who never judges her selfish whims, but instead encourages her to indulge in them completely. He provided an escape from her responsibilities – first as a daughter and later as a wife.

Heathcliff and Catherine are two sides of one self-centered, mentally ill coin. Heathcliff definitely felt passion for Catherine, or else we wouldn’t have gotten the iconic “Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!” Not even the most star-crossed of traditional lovers would beg to be haunted by their lover’s ghost. However, Heathcliff’s actions seem to be driven more by the desire for revenge and status-seeking than anything else. How else can you explain him doing everything in his power to harm everyone she held dear, including her namesake and only child? His deepest joy came not from spending time with the woman he claims to love but from inflicting as much pain as possible on his rivals.

Catherine and Heathcliff both let their imaginations run wild and, because of the distance, built deified versions of each other and their relationship in their heads. They both appreciated that the other never tried to change them or encourage them to grow mentally and emotionally. Heathcliff let Catherine be a petulant child without protest. Catherine let Heathcliff be a hateful imp with much encouragement. Perhaps that’s why I’m still #TeamCathcliff (#TeamHeatherine?) if only because allowing them to be together from the start would have saved everyone at Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange a world of pain. The chaos goblin in me also loves that Catherine and Heathcliff are both equally insane and equally The Drama™. Disappearing for three years because the girl you have a crush on (who happens to also be your adoptive sister) won’t marry you? Working yourself into such a fit to scare your husband only to accidentally drive yourself mad and die? Digging up your old bae’s corpse and starving yourself to death chasing her ghost? Unhinged. Iconic. We have no choice but to stan.

As for Edgar, I can’t help but wonder if he was a real loverboy or just a loser with a capital L. Honestly? I can’t tell. I usually ADORE a man who is down bad for his wife and waits on her every whim (Gomez Addams, anyone?), but Edgar is so bland and one-dimensional that even his devotion seems to lack passion and charm. Part of it is that his affection doesn’t really seem specific to Cathy, and he’s openly afraid of her whims and tirades. He clearly isn’t with her for her personality – most likely, she was simply the closest suitor to the Grange that he happened to meet as a child. All in all, I just can’t help but feel that he’d be better off with a nice, bland girl from Gimmerton. We do get a few glimpses of fire in his personality when Heathcliff succeeds in goading him a few times (“Your presence is a moral poison that would contaminate the most virtuous” is a banger of an insult), but ultimately, he’s just…too mentally stable to stand out.

What really blows my mind is how young everyone in the story is during the peak of the drama. Catherine Sr. died as a teen, and Hindley at 27. Even Edgar and Heathcliff only made it just shy of 40’s door. Back in high school, I always pictured a bunch of adults making bad decisions. Now that I’m thirty, I just see a bunch of mentally ill kids fucking life up for EVERYONE! Themselves, their house staff, their children (babies having babies!), their pets…EVERYONE! Even though they were considered “of age” in the story’s setting, they were all really young, with SO much to learn about life and love.

The real tragedy, to me, takes place in volume two with the second generation – neglected Hareton, sickly and abused Linton, and abused Cathy Jr. Far be it from me to diagnose book characters with personality orders whose diagnostic criteria I don’t fully understand (if only others would do the same!), but there is something seriously wrong with Heathcliff. He said, “Can I get a number 5 with an extra side of child abuse and neglect, por favor?” Not content to keep his beef with his original adversaries, he was determined to ruin their entire bloodlines purely out of spite. Although everyone who crossed Heathcliff’s path suffered, I can’t help but pity poor Hareton the most. With a dead mother and two abusive, neglectful father figures, the poor boy really didn’t stand a chance.

Still, Hareton’s post-Heathcliff transformation from an isolated, brutish misanthrope into a curious, doting partner does beg the question…how might things have been different if Hindley, Catherine Sr., and Heathcliff had been raised by stable, emotionally mature parents who neither fostered resentment and sibling rivalry by showing blatant favoritism (Mr. Earnshaw) nor treated a small child as a leper solely because of his appearance and racial/ethnic background (Mrs. Earnshaw)? Could they have been well-adjusted, mentally healthy members of society? Or would they have been inevitably stunted by their isolation at Wuthering Heights and lack of integration with broader society? Wherever you stand on the Nature vs. Nurture debate, it’s clear that their volatile upbringing did them no favors. And, of course, perfectly stable, rational characters would make for quite a boring novel.

Thirteen years after my first exposure to the Lintons, Earnshaws, and Heathcliffs, I can’t help but love Wuthering Heights even more than before. It provides the perfect balance of delicious drama, humor, and suspense, and I had a lot of fun reading it this week. I will say that the ending felt a bit flat to me, after all of the care taken to detail Heathcliff’s schemes and chaos in the rest of the book. I have so many more thoughts that I could add to this post, but for brevity’s sake, I’ll keep it at this: Emily Brontë, honey…you ate that. They could never make me hate you!

I haven’t really read any of the “classics” since I was a teen, and Wuthering Heights proves that some of them really are worth the hype. Now, I’m curious about revisiting another old favorite from my high school curriculum – Great Expectations. Who knows? Maybe you’ll catch me posting from Satis House in a few weeks.

Have you read Wuthering Heights (or any other Gothic fiction) recently? What are your faves of the genre? How do you feel about the residents of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange? Let me know in the comments below!

Yours in chaos,

Mina

P.S. You can purchase your own copy of Wuthering Heights here: Wuthering Heights at Bookshop.org (affiliate link - see footnote 2 below).

P.P.S. For my fellow library card holders, follow the link below to see if your local library has a digital copy in the (free) Libby app: Wuthering Heights on Libby.