How do the characters of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff and Edgar and Isabella Linton reflect the environment in which they were brought up? How are these characteristics revealed in either chapter 8, 10 or 11?

Thrushcross Grange is a world apart from Wuthering Heights, although it is only a few miles away. A much larger place than the Heights, Thrushcross Grange was a huge manor house, a stately home set in its own enormous grounds and maintained by an army of servants, ‘carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers.’ It was more than a household it was a community of its own. Even so it was far less isolated than the Heights, the Lintons themselves were far more involved in society. Guests and parties, an extremely rare event at Wuthering Heights, were commonplace at the Grange. Although the Lintons are the neighbours of the Earnshaws they live in very different environments, especially after old Earnshaw’s death and the descent of Wuthering Heights into Hindley’s tyranny. The little Lintons: Edgar and Isabella were brought up in a genteel world, a cosy cuddly place where they were waited on by household servants, loved dearly by their parents, went to high class parties, mixed with some of the wealthiest and most powerful people of the day and were never exposed to anything bad or ugly, obscene, harsh or brutal, abuse, violence, cruelty, destruction, hard work. They did not know what hardship or poverty or anguish was because they had neither seen it nor experienced it. The result was a pair of spoiled children, immature brats in Heathcliff’s eyes, who fought over nothing, cried over nothing and knew nothing about the real world. Easily frightened, spineless, lazy little babies who ‘fancied the world was made for their accommodation’.

Chapter eight reveals clearly the elements in the characters of Heathcliff and Cathy and Edgar that define them. Heathcliff’s ‘unsociable moroseness’ and his reserved love for Cathy which he ‘ceased to express… in words’, Edgar Linton’s spinelessness and Cathy’s ‘unruly nature’ and violent temper (near fatally for Cathy’s relationship with the Lintons). The contrast between those from the Grange and those from the Heights is made clear, as is Cathy’s ‘double character’ which she has engineered to disguise her wild rudeness and violence in order to gain the respect of the Lintons, especially Edgar who she sees as a way of fulfilling her fantasies of a rich lifestyle. Even though she knows she is like Heathcliff, in the presence of the Lintons ‘she took care not to act like him’. Edgar Linton was obviously aware of the ‘Earnshaw’s violent disposition’, even though he received the warmest possible welcome at Wuthering Heights and Hindley stayed out of his way he ‘seldom mustered the courage to visit’. It so happened that on the day that Hindley was away from the Heights Cathy had arranged a meeting with Edgar Linton and Heathcliff unexpectedly decided to take a day off. When he learned of the planned meeting he became slightly angry ‘do not turn me out for those pitiful, silly friends of yours!’ He thought Cathy spent too much time with the Lintons, he knew she had nothing in common with them, and that he and Cathy didn’t see as much of each other as they used too. But he did not say this to her directly when it occurred to him but marked out the days on the calendar ‘The crosses are for the evenings you have spent with the Lintons, the dots for those spent with me’ His exaggeratedly reserved nature stopped him appealing to Cathy with words, but he certainly ‘took notice’ of how much time he spent with her.

Heathcliff left and Edgar entered ‘Catherine marked the difference between her friends… The contrast resembled what you see in exchanging a bleak hilly coal country for a beautiful fertile valley’. Hindley had ordered Nelly to keep an eye on the visit so she commenced cleaning the plates, Cathy ordered Nelly out of the room but she carried on dusting, Cathy was still angry over the disagreement with Heathcliff. ‘She had failed to recover her equanimity since the little dispute’ Nelly’s refusal to leave pushed her over the edge and she pinched Nelly ‘with a prolonged wrench’, Nelly cried out ‘you have no right to nip me’ The guest heard and was informed of what she had done. She then lied and said ‘I never touched you, you lying creature!’ but the bruise on the arm confirmed it. Edgar was now aware of the blatant lie. Then she lost it completely and, exposing to all present the ‘naughty spirit’ within her, slapped Nelly a stinging blow to the cheek. This ‘double fault of falsehood and violence’ stunned Linton. He was not used to people striking each other. Cathy then turned her rage on Hareton, who was following Nelly around, and began to shake him by the shoulders. Edgar intercepted and tried to stop her injuring Hareton by grabbing her hands. Finally she turned on him and pulling her hand free she slapped him on the side of the head ‘in a way that could not be mistaken for jest’. This was possibly the first act of violence inflicted upon him since Heathcliff threw the apple sauce over him on Christmas Eve. The slap was enough to send ‘the soft thing’, ‘pale and with a quivering lip’, to gather his coat and run away. Catherine then stopped him at the door and he said he was ‘afraid’ of her and that he was ‘ashamed’ of her for telling a lie. That he is afraid of someone physically weaker than himself is evidence of his softness and weakness of character.

In the chapter are things that indicate what will happen in the future. At the beginning it is announced that Hindley’s son Hareton has just been born. His future looks bleak: his mother Frances, the one remaining check on Hindley , the only one he loves, dies soon after the birth. Nelly will be left to raise him alone. Hareton seems destined to a life under Hindley similar to what Cathy and Heathcliff are suffering presently. The household seems destined to destruction from within by Hindley with his drinking and gambling. He ‘gave himself up to reckless dissipation’. Cathy and Heathcliff seem fated to unhappiness as well: Cathy clearly has ambitions to climb the social ladder by befriending the Lintons, she wants the rich and comfortable lifestyle they are offering instead of the abuse and neglect she is receiving at the Heights, even though she knows they are totally incompatible as friends, never mind relatives.

Heathcliff, by now rapidly losing his self respect and esteem, becomes ever more emotionally dependant on Cathy. As everything else falls apart around him, Cathy is the one thing he holds on to. Although Cathy is equally in love with him, she knows that Heathcliff in his present state is useless to her ambitious designs. Heathcliff can see that the only possible outcome of a union between Cathy and Edgar, which seems inevitable now that they have ‘forsaken the disguise of friendship and confessed themselves lovers’, can only be unhappiness for Cathy and himself. As for Heathcliff, as he ‘sinks beneath his former level’ and ‘acquires a slouching gait and ignoble look’ his future looks worse than Hareton’s, a miserable life at Wuthring Heights under Hindley and a descent into ever deeper depths of heathen barbarism. Especially now his only friend and soul mate, the last check on his character, is to leave him.