Literature Analysis #1 Wuthering Heights

1.      The introduction of the story starts off with Mr. Lockwood becoming a tenant at Thrushcross Grange and going to Wuthering Heights to meet Heathcliff, Cathy, Hareton, and Joseph. After seeing Catherine’s ghost he leaves, frightened, and returns to the grange. There he meets Mrs. Dean who tells him the story of Catherine Earnshaw whose father adopted Heathcliff. Catherine and Heathcliff were playmates and best friends from childhood, but when Catherine met the Lintons of Thrushcross grange a rift began to form between them. After Catherine’s father died her brother Hindley took over and he hated Heathcliff and made him into a servant. Hindley’s wife dies giving birth to his son Hareton, and he disappears into a drunken stupor. Catherine’s relationship with Edgar and Isabella Linton continued, as did her relationship with Heathcliff. When they were well into their teens Catherine began to think about marrying Edgar Linton.

The rising action of the story begins when Catherine marries Edgar Linton, because even though she loved Heathcliff she was a selfish and vain girl and wouldn’t suffer her pride to marry Heathcliff. Heathcliff was a servant and ruffian in her eyes, and though they were two halves of one heart she was cruel and he was a monster bred by the demons in his life. After Catherine marries Edgar, Heathcliff disappears for a couple years and she is heartbroken. Heathcliff returns and he and Catherine are still as in love as before. To get revenge on Catherine’s cruelty in marrying Edgar, Heathcliff runs away with Isabella and marries her. He keeps Isabella prisoner at Wuthering Heights which he bought from the drunken Hindley who is in debt.

The climax of the story occurs when Catherine, who is heartbroken and feels betrayed by Heathcliff marrying Isabella, dies from her own tumultuous emotions leaving behind a newborn baby girl named Cathy. Heathcliff blames himself and wishes her to suffer him from the grave so that they may never be parted.

The falling action of the story follows the tale of Cathy Linton, Catherine and Edgar’s daughter, who lives with Edgar and Mrs. Dean at Thrushcross Grange. She is a lively girl who has none of the mean spirit and cruelty her mother possessed, though she is very headstrong. Twelve years after she escapes from Heathcliff, Isabella dies leaving behind their twelve year old son Linton. Edgar goes to get Linton and bring him home to live with him and Cathy. While he is away Cathy, who was never allowed to go to Wuthering Heights, sneaks off to the heights and meets her cousin Hareton who she is offended to be related to. Heathcliff, in place of the drunken Hindley, has raised Hareton to be an illiterate and ill-mannered boy just to spite Hindley. When Edgar brings Linton back Heathcliff comes to take him away because that is his son. Cathy and Linton keep up a secret correspondence and she is convinced she is in love. Cathy soon learns the true nature of her uncle Heathcliff and of her cousin who is a weak and spiteful boy. Heathcliff imprisons Cathy one day when she and Mrs. Dean are visiting Linton, and he makes her marry Linton. Cathy escapes only to see her father die, and then she is taken back to the heights and Mrs. Dean is told to leave by Heathcliff. Soon after their marriage Linton dies, and Heathcliff’s grand scheme of securing the grange is complete. Hareton tries to learn how to read and better himself because he likes Cathy, but she is scornful towards him and constantly humiliates him because she hates being a prisoner at the heights. After Mr. Lockwood’s initial visit Heathcliff asks Mrs. Dean to come to the heights to be with Cathy.

The resolution begins when Mrs. Dean is finally reunited with Cathy at the heights. After a while Cathy’s conscience begins to eat at her so she tries to make up with Hareton and teach him to read. Heathcliff can’t stand the sight of the two of them who remind him so much of Catherine, and he begins to go crazy thinking he can see Catherine’s ghost and wishing to be reunited with her. In the end Heathcliff doesn’t have it in him to destroy Cathy and Hareton, which was his initial plan, and he leaves them be. After not eating for days and standing out on the cold balcony Heathcliff finally dies and Cathy and Hareton plan to marry. Mr. Lockwood hears this account when he goes to visit Mrs. Dean and he knows that Heathcliff and Catherine are truly at peace.

This narrative serves the author’s purpose of relating a story of lovers whose passion for each other killed them. Catherine loved Heathcliff so much that it killed her when he betrayed her and married Isabella, and Heathcliff hated Catherine and himself for her marrying Edgar. Heathcliff knew that Catherine was cruel and selfish, and yet he suffered himself to love her. Although he couldn’t help but love her, he still hated himself for it because he knew she would suck the life out of him and turn him into a monster without a care in the world. Catherine was selfish and deceptive, and she thrived off of other people’s pain, especially Heathcliff’s. She loved him so much because he allowed her to be cruel to him, and because she knew they shared the same cruel spirit. It was Catherine’s dying triumph to effectively ruin Heathcliff for all eternity by blaming him for her death and knowing that he would never forget her, as was her selfish nature. It was Heathcliff’s torment to love such a woman, and yet hate her with an incomparable ferocity for they were one. As he hated her he hated himself, as he loved her he loved himself, and as she died so did his whole being.

2.      The themes of the novel are vast but the one that is most prevalent is that although love can cause great happiness, it can also cause great destruction. Love just like people is imperfect, and that’s what I think Bronte was trying to get at. Not every love story has a happy ending and not all lovers build you up, sometimes they break you down.

3.      The author’s tone is very gloomy and earnest. An example of a gloomy and earnest tone is when Mr. Lockwood is thinking, “A perfect misanthropist’s heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us.” This shows that the author wishes to establish a gloomy tone by depicting the setting to be desolate, and that she’s being earnest in saying that it’s a place desirable for someone who doesn’t like people or society. Another example is, “On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb.” In this quote the author is setting a gloomy tone by using words like “bleak” and insinuating that even the air made people uneasy when they came to the heights. “I got Miss Catherine and myself to Thrushcross Grange and, to my agreeable disappointment, she behaved infinitely better than I dared to expect.” In this quote the author’s tone is very earnest because through Mrs. Dean she reveals her opinion of Catherine’s character in a very straightforward way by saying “to my agreeable disappointment”.

4.      The author used this metaphor to compare Heathcliff’s appearance and countenance to Edgar’s, “The contrast resembled what you see in exchanging a bleak, hilly, coal country for a beautiful fertile valley; and his voice and greeting were as opposite as his aspect.”

This simile is used to describe Catherine’s dreams and fantasies, “…they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.”

An example of foreshadowing is when Catherine is telling Mrs. Dean about her dreams. “I was superstitious about dreams then, and am still; and Catherine had an unusual gloom in her aspect, that made me dread something from which I might shape a prophecy, and foresee a fearful catastrophe.”

An example of hyperbole is used to convey the passion with which Catherine loved Heathcliff. “Every Linton on the face of the earth might melt into nothing before I could consent to forsake Heathcliff.”

An example of a metaphor used to convey the misfortune and disaster that would accompany Heathcliff when he took up residence at the Heights is, “I felt that God had forsaken the stray sheep there to its own wicked wanderings, and an evil beast prowled between it and the fold, waiting his time to spring and destroy.”

An example of imagery is used to set a somber mood and gloomy tone. “On the morrow one could hardly imagine that there had been three weeks of summer: the primroses and crocuses were hidden under wintry drifts; the larks were silent, the young leaves of the early trees smitten and blackened.”

An example of allusion is when Heathcliff is talking about where to bury Hindley’s body, this serves to further express Heathcliff’s character. “…that fool’s body should be buried at the cross-roads, without ceremony of any kind.”

An example of personification is when Cathy is describing a flower to Mrs. Dean. “No, I’ll not touch it: but it looks melancholy, does it not, Ellen?”

Another example of personification is when Mrs. Dean is describing Heathcliff’s malignant nature. “But where did he come from, the little dark thing, harbored by a good man to his bane?”

An example of irony is the ending of the book because it is unexpected that the three people who met unhappy ends would ever be at peace. “I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.”

Characterization:

1.      An example of indirect characterization is when Catherine says, “I wish I could hold you till we were both dead! I shouldn’t care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings.”

Another example of indirect characterization is when Heathcliff is grieving for Catherine’s death. “May she wake in torment!”

An example of direct characterization is when the author says, “She never had power to conceal her passion, it always set her whole complexion in a blaze.”

Another example of direct characterization is when the author says, “He complained so seldom, indeed, of such stirs as these, that I really thought him not vindictive: I was deceived completely, as you will hear.”

The author uses both approaches to further solidify Catherine’s deceitful nature and Heathcliff’s vengeful nature. Catherine is deceitful in her beauty, but she cannot hide her true nature when she is impassioned and she strikes out with her words and hands. Heathcliff at first appears quiet until Catherine betrays him and he gets revenge by marrying Isabella. He also uses his words to express his vengefulness by suffering Catherine to never be at peace as long as he is alive.

2.      When the author switches between Catherine and Joseph she goes from using haughty words such as “ought” and “demand” to using words like “comed” and “nowt”. She does this to show the difference in education and class that is appropriate for the time period.

3.      The protagonist is pretty static throughout because Mrs. Dean knows the true natures of Heathcliff and Catherine from the beginning and she stays true to her beliefs that they are cruel people. Nothing that Catherine or Heathcliff can do will sway her opinion of them, and she always makes that very clear. She also doesn’t change in her occupation or her simple but earnest mind frame that gives the story a touch of religious condemnation.

4.      After reading this book I felt like I discovered a real person in Heathcliff and Catherine. There are so many people who use their looks to deceive people like Catherine did, and Heathcliff was a vengeful spirit born from horrible situations. Their behaviors and reactions are all deliciously human in nature like when Heathcliff is grieving for Catherine and he doesn’t want her to be at rest. Even though he is being selfish in keeping her with him, he doesn’t care. Catherine is the most selfish and deceitful of all because she tricks Edgar into thinking she loves him, and then suffers Heathcliff to watch her flaunt her perfect life in front of him because she won’t choose between either men.