heathcliff description
-heathcliff is generally unhappy and it shows. he's also obsessive (with regards to catherine, and her ghost), ill-tempered (towards everyone) and cruel (towards hareton and little catherine as well as zillah). he is a horribly unpleasant, borderline sociopathic older man now. heathcliff is brutally stoic and has his guard up 24/7. the one instance so far of his showing any signs of weakness is after he discovers lockwood in the hidden chamber inside wuthering heights that zillah showed him too. the room of course is haunted by catherine.
"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!" (pg. 24).
-lockwood describes the scene using words like "anguish" and "grief." it is clear heathcliff put much of his hopes into catherine long ago. mr. earnshaw (catherine's dad) was the one who brought heathcliff into their home to begin with (he was nothing more than a gipsy baby in the streets w/ no home). catherine's brother hindley was extremely abusive towards heathcliff growing up, but he was okay w/ that as long as he got what he wanted (his horse, catherine's affections). his emotionally and physically abusive upbringing shaped his adult personality.
class notes (sequence of events from ch's 3-10 + analysis)
-ch.9 catherine feels she should marry edgar (not heathcliff) b/c it would ruin her name
"it would degrade me to marry heathcliff, now; so he shall never know how i love him; and that, not because he's handsome, nelly, but b/c he's more myself than i am" —> heathcliff hears catherine say this (but not the part about her loving him), gets up and leaves
-catherine feels she's more herself around heathcliff and she's feels physically stronger and has more fun w/ heathcliff. despite this, instead, catherine goes off and marries edgar for her reputation's sake (she really conformed to social expectations). bronte does a good job of creating real characters (& moral ambiguity), which clouds who is right and who is wrong —> partial explanation for why critics have had so much difficulty pinning down definitive analyses of the book, it's so authentic.
-three years into catherine and edgar's marriage, heathcliff returns and is rich (catherine is grateful for this) —> then isabella falls in love w/ him (they later marry). hindley ends up being a drunkard who gambles all his $ away to heathcliff. nelly in ch. 11 talks about going up to wuthering heights and visiting hareton to save him from his horrible upbringing (nelly dean is now the narrator).
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