A fortnight after Lockwood left the Grange the previous spring, Nelly was summoned to Wuthering Heights, where she gladly went her job was to keep Catherine out of Heathcliff's way. She was pleased to see Catherine, but sorry at the way she had changed.
One day when they and Hareton were sitting in the kitchen, Catherine grew tired of the animosity between herself and the young man, and offered him a book, which he refused. She left it close to him, but he never touched it. Hareton was injured in a shooting accident in March, and since Heathcliff didn't like to see him, he spent a lot of time sitting in the kitchen, where Catherine found many reasons to go. Finally her efforts at reconciliation succeeded, and they became loving friends, much to Joseph's indignation.
Analysis:
The union of Hareton and Catherine should not surprise the reader, who has been following the symmetrical unfolding of the novel. At the beginning of the story, Hindley and Catherine inhabited Wuthering Heights and Edgar and Isabella inhabited the Grange. The obvious symmetrical plot would have been: Hindley married Isabella producing "Hareton," while Catherine married Edgar, producing Cathy. Then Cathy and "Hareton" would marry, unifying the two houses completely, and Cathy Linton would become Catherine Earnshaw, taking on her mother's maiden name. The harmony of this plot was disrupted by the introduction of Heathcliff, an alien figure who destroyed the potential marital balance. By the end of the novel, however, Heathcliff and his issue will be eliminated, and the unifying marriage between the families of Linton and Earnshaw will take place after all, as though Heathcliff had never existed. Hindley, sent away to college because of the outsider, Heathcliff, married an outsider, Frances, producing Hareton Earnshaw. Catherine Earnshaw married Edgar Linton, producing Cathy Linton, and Isabella Linton married Heathcliff, producing Linton Heathcliff. The union between Isabella and Heathcliff should not have taken place, so naturally Linton Heathcliff was a mistake, an unlikable and weakly being. Cathy Linton's marriage to Linton Heathcliff was likewise a mistake, forced by Heathcliff, and in order to preserve the integrity of the pattern, their marriage was childless. No descendants of Heathcliff must remain by the end of the novel, for harmony to be reinstated. Linton's death eliminated a character who should never have existed, and freed Catherine to marry again. In fact, the nature of their marriage made it particularly easy to forget: it seems unthinkable that the marriage could have been consummated. When Cathy Heathcliff marries Hareton, thus becoming Cathy Earnshaw, she will be a virgin. With the death of Heathcliff and his offspring, and the unifying marriage of the Linton and Earnshaw heirs, it is almost as though Heathcliff had never existed.
In this analysis we looked at one alternate plot that in which Heathcliff never entered the novel. It is not, however, the only possible alternate plot. The other obvious one would involve the elimination (in terms of offspring) of Edgar Linton, or of both Edgar and Hindley. Then Heathcliff would marry Catherine, and Isabella could marry Hindley or an outsider or not at all, and Edgar could marry an outsider or not at all. It is evidently less elegant than the other alternate plot, involving more outsiders and no unification of the two houses but emotional integrity would have been preserved in the unification of Catherine and Heathcliff. As it is, that unification is finally attained when Heathcliff's body merges with Catherine's as they disintegrate into dust, and their spirits roam the moors together.
Another beauty of Brontë's plot is that the three names that Lockwood reads when he stays at Wuthering Heights in chapter 3 Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Heathcliff, and Catherine Linton are all taken on at one point or another by the two Catherines. The first Catherine is named Earnshaw, then Linton when she marries Edgar, then perhaps Heathcliff when she and Heathcliff are finally united in the grave. Her daughter is first Catherine Linton, then Heathcliff, then Earnshaw.
Chapter 33, Summary
The next morning Ellen found Catherine with Hareton in the garden, planning a flower garden in the middle of Joseph's cherished currant bushes. She warned them that they would be punished, but Hareton said he would take the blame. At tea, Catherine was careful not to talk to Hareton too much, but she put flowers into his porridge, which made him laugh, which made Heathcliff angry. He assumed Catherine had laughed, but Hareton quietly admitted his fault. Joseph came in and incoherently bewailed the fate of his bushes. Hareton said he was uprooted some, but would plant them again, and Catherine said it had been at her instigation. Heathcliff called her an "insolent slut," and she accused him of having stolen her land and Hareton's. Heathcliff commanded Hareton to throw her out the poor boy was torn between his two loyalties and tried to persuade Catherine to leave. Heathcliff seemed "ready to tear Catherine to pieces" when he suddenly calmed down and told everyone to leave. Later Hareton asked Catherine not to accuse Heathcliff in front of him, and she understood his position and refrained from insulting her oppressor from then on. Ellen was glad to see her two "children" happy together; Hareton quickly shook off his ignorance and boorishness and Catherine became sweet again.
When Heathcliff saw them together he was struck by their resemblances to his Catherine, and told Ellen that he had lost his motivation for destruction. He no longer took any interest in everyday life; Catherine and Hareton didn't appear to him to be distinct characters of their own, but sources of past associations to his beloved. He also felt Hareton to be very much like himself as a youth. But most importantly, his Catherine haunted him completely: "The most ordinary faces of men, and women my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!" He told Nelly that he felt a change coming that he could no longer exist in the living world when he felt so close to that of the dead, or the immortal. Nelly wondered whether he was ill, but decided that he was in fine health and mind, except for his unworldly obsession.
Analysis:
We are given an extraordinary window into Heathcliff's mind in the chapter. Whenever he looks at something, he sees Catherine in it he hears her voice in every sound. This is Brontë's conception of true haunting, which seems to bear far more resemblance to madness than to scary noises in the dark. It is mainly an interior phenomenon: if the ghost of Catherine is at work, she has found her home in Heathcliff's mind and her vocation in distorting his perception and his ability to communicate with the outside world.
Chapter 34, Summary
In the next few days Heathcliff all but stopped eating, and spent the nights walking outside. Catherine, happily working on her garden, came across him and was surprised to see him looking "very much excited, and wild, and glad." Ellen told him he should eat, and indeed at dinner he took a heaped plate, but abruptly lost interest in food, seemed to be watching something by the window, and went outside. Hareton followed to ask him what was wrong, and Heathcliff told him to go back to Catherine and not bother him. He came back an hour or two later, with the same "unnatural appearance of joy," shivering the way a "tight-stretched cord vibrates a strong thrilling, rather than trembling." Ellen asked him what was going on, and he answered that he was within sight of his heaven, hardly three feet away. Later that evening, Ellen found him sitting in the dark with the windows all open. She was frightened by the pallor of his face and his black eyes. Ellen half-wondered if he were a vampire, but told herself that she was foolish, since she had watched him grow up. The next day he was even more restless and could hardly speak coherently, and stared fascinatedly at nothing with an "anguished, yet raptured expression." Early the next morning having spent the night outside or pacing in his room, he declared he wanted to settle things with his lawyer. Ellen said he should eat, and get some sleep, but he replied that he could do neither: "My soul's bliss kills my body, but does not satisfy itself." Ellen told him to repent his sins, and he thanked her for the reminder and asked her to make sure he was buried next to Catherine: "I have nearly attained my heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued, and uncoveted by me." He behaved more and more strangely, talking openly of his Catherine. Ellen called the doctor, but Heathcliff wouldn't see him. The next morning she found him dead in his room, by the open window, wet from the rain and cut by the broken window-pane, with his eyes fiercely open and wearing a savage smile. Hareton mourned deeply for him. The doctor wondered what could have killed him. He was buried as he had asked. People said that his ghost roamed the moors with Catherine: Ellen once came across a little boy crying amid his panicked lambs, and he said that Heathcliff was "yonder" with a woman and that he didn't dare pass them.
Catherine and Hareton were to be married, and they would move to the Grange, leaving Wuthering Heights to Joseph and the ghosts. Lockwood noticed on his walk home that the kirk was falling apart from neglect, and he found the three headstones, Catherine's, Edgar's, and Heathcliff's, covered by varying degrees of heather. He "wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for sleepers in that quiet earth."
Analysis:
An essential question for thinking about this novel is: does it end happily or not, and why? Is the novel on the side of the Grange and civilization, since Catherine and Hareton move there after Heathcliff dies? Or should we miss the intensity of the passion in Wuthering Heights? Who wins? It seems at first that the Grange wins, and yet we should remember that Heathcliff achieves his version of heaven as well. Several film versions of Wuthering Heights prefer to delete the whole second half of the novel, ending dramatically with Catherine's death they find that the restabilizing second half detracts from the romance and the power of the first part. Is this the case? Did Emily add the second half because society would not have accepted the first half alone?
The answer to the last question must be negative: the symmetrical structure of the novel is too carefully designed and too deeply imbedded to be the product of outside social pressures. This might lead to the conclusion that civilization really does win, since the marriage of Catherine and Hareton is the final and necessary conclusion to two generations of unrest, and all traces of Heathcliff disappear, at least in genetic terms. In another sense, however, Catherine and Hareton resemble the earlier Catherine and Heathcliff, purified of their wilder and more antisocial elements: so one might assume that their marriage is an echo of the marriage that never took place between Catherine and Heathcliff. This is supported by the fact that the story begins and ends with a Catherine Earnshaw, and that the name Hareton is very similar to Heathcliff.
In another reading, one might remember that the first Catherine and Heathcliff belonged above all to the natural and immaterial world, whereas the Lintons belonged to a material society. Then the reunion in death of the two lovers constitutes their achievement of complete freedom and it hardly matters what happens on earth.
One might also conclude that Emily Brontë was really more drawn to her wild characters Catherine and Heathcliff but realized that they posed a great threat to the existence of peaceful life on earth. Perhaps she eliminated them because she was unwilling to sacrifice the rest of the world for such a wild ideal but with Heathcliff's death the novel ultimately had to end because it no longer captured her interest. In this case the ambiguous conclusion of the novel represents an inner conflict in the author herself.
