“Nelly, make me decent. I’m going to be good.” He worries that he will never compare to Edgar Linton of whom Catherine had recently started to fall for: “I wish I had light hair and a fair skin and was dressed and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will be!”
At the beginning of the novel, all Heathcliff can offer to Catherine is his love and care for her. He hears how Catherine wishes to marry Edgar for his money, security and to increase her position in social hierarchy, and flees Wuthering Heights in search of wealth and happiness. I think that Heathcliff did this partly to get away from things but also to strive to be better than or at least as good as Edgar.
Edgar is all that stands between Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship. I think that he truly loves Catherine, as there is nothing else that he could gain from being with her; he already has money, status in society and a comfortable home and family.
Before Catherine stayed at Thrushcross Grange, she and Heathcliff didn’t like the Lintons. They thought that they were upper class and that they were looked down upon by them for being worse off and uncivilised.
During the time that Catherine spent at Thrushcross Grange, Edgar and the Lintons sought to transform her into a lady. Edgar enticed her with wealth and class, hoping that she would forget her wild and wicked antics with Heathcliff and fall for him instead.
After Heathcliff has returned from his travels, Edgar starts to deteriorate. The one person standing in his way had returned as a gentleman; the one thing that Edgar could use against Heathcliff had been lost.
There grows a rivalry between Edgar and Heathcliff over who should be with Catherine and he delivers to her a final ultimatum:
“Will you give up Heathcliff hereafter, or will you give up me? It is impossible for you to be my friend and his at the same time; and I absolutely require to know which you chose.”
Before Catherine went to stay at Thrushcross Grange, she lived a carefree life at Wuthering Heights with Heathcliff. They both longed for the moments that they would spend together out on the moors, and they soon started to fall in love.
Catherine was quite young and still liked to joke around with Heathcliff, as is shown when they both went to spy on the Linton children at the Grange. They were caught watching the children and Catherine was hurt, forcing her to stay at the Grange to recover.
Catherine underwent a great transformation and after arriving back at Wuthering Heights, she shocked the rest of the Earnshaws with her class and sophistication. She is portrayed by Emily Brontë to be particularly shallow and more concerned with her appearance.
While Catherine was away, Heathcliff had become very untidy and unkempt. She saw how he was and was quite taken-aback: “Why, how very black and cross you look! And how – how funny and grim! But that’s because I’m used to Edgar and Isabella Linton.” She is quite troubled, as she has grown accustomed to the Linton children, ignoring the girl she once was and being more concerned about the young woman she now is.
After settling back into life at Wuthering Heights, she starts to see more of the Lintons. She is torn between the poor but passionate Heathcliff and her desire for social advancement by marrying Edgar Linton. She drives Heathcliff away, hoping to forget him and get on with her new life with Edgar.
She still loves Heathcliff although when she is talking to Nelly Dean, she describes how ‘it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff,’ meaning that by being with him, neither her nor Heathcliff could live a stable life; they would not have enough money to live compared to what her situation would be if she was to marry Edgar:
“Nelly, I see now, you think me a selfish wretch; but did it never strike you that if Heathcliff and I married, we would be beggars? Whereas, if I marry Linton, I can aid Heathcliff to rise, and place him out of my brother’s power.”
Chapter seven is of great importance to the rest of the novel, as it signifies the start of Heathcliff’s deterioration and Catherine’s return to Wuthering Heights from her five-week recuperation period at Thrushcross Grange.
Catherine returned to Wuthering Heights dressed in the finest of clothes, much to the delight of Hindley and his wife, Frances:
“Instead of a wild, hatless savage jumping into the house, and rushing to squeeze us all breathless, there lighted from a handsome black pony a very dignified person, with brown ringlets falling from the cover of a feathered beaver, and a long cloth habit, which she was obliged to hold up with both hands that she might sail in.”
Hindley had been bullying Heathcliff up during the time that Catherine was away, and the girl that Catherine used to be would have cared more about how Heathcliff was being treated. It is almost like her soul has been ‘sucked out’ and she no longer cares for the things she used to love the most; she is more concerned with how she looks and what other people think of her. Heathcliff is hurt at how Catherine approaches him and storms off, declaring that he will be as dirty as he likes.
The next day, the Linton children have been invited for dinner. Nelly helps Heathcliff to wash himself and put on suitable clothes after he declares his intention to be “good”. Mrs. Linton has allowed Edgar and Isabella to attend under the condition that Heathcliff be kept away from them. To satisfy his guests, Hindley orders that Heathcliff be locked in the attic until the end of dinner:
“…keep the fellow out of the room – send him into the garret till dinner is over. He’ll be cramming his fingers in the tarts, and stealing the fruit, if left alone with them a minute.”
Nelly exclaims how she thinks that Heathcliff would not touch anything, but Hindley hears nothing of it: “He shall have his share of my hand, if I catch him down stairs again till dark,” cried Hindley.
“Begone, you vagabond! What, you are attempting the coxcomb, are you? Wait till I get hold of those elegant locks – see if I won’t pull them a bit longer!”
Edgar makes a comment about Heathcliff’s hair, therefore provoking Heathcliff, who angrily flings hot applesauce into Edgar’s face:
“They are long enough already,” observed Master Linton, peeping from the door-way; “I wonder they don’t make his head ache. It’s like a colt’s mane over his eyes!”
Edgar, at this point, is shown to be particularly weak and cowardly: (about speaking to Heathcliff) “I didn’t,” sobbed the youth, escaping from my hands, and finishing the remainder of the purification with his cambric pocket-handkerchief. “I promised mamma that I wouldn’t say one word to him, and I didn’t.” It is almost as though Edgar is acting like a child, not the young man he actually is.
After Heathcliff is sent away, Catherine continues to have tea with the Lintons. It’s almost as though she doesn’t really care that Heathcliff is being treated in this way, although she does eventually go upstairs to see him. Nelly Dean herself exclaims how shocked she is to see Catherine this way: (about Catherine) I waited behind her chair, and was pained to behold Catherine, with dry eyes and an indifferent air, commence cutting up the wing of a goose before her.
“An unfeeling child,” I thought to myself; “how lightly she dismisses her old playmate’s troubles. I could not have imagined her to be so selfish.”
However, Catherine breaks into tears as she thinks about Heathcliff and quietly dismisses herself from the dancing after dinner, claiming that “it sounded sweetest at the top of the steps”. She goes up to speak to Heathcliff, climbing through the skylight in order to get into the garret where he was confined.
Nelly Dean follows, and asks that she come out, but Catherine comes out with Heathcliff; she insists that they both go to the kitchen so that Heathcliff can eat. Nelly tells them how she doesn’t encourage their tricks: I told them I intended by no means to encourage their tricks; but as the prisoner had never broken his fast since yesterday’s dinner, I would wink at his cheating Mr. Hindley that once. This shows that Nelly doesn’t like the way in which Hindley treats Heathcliff.
Heathcliff spends his time in the kitchen “wrapt in dumb meditation”. Upon Nelly inquiring the subject of his thoughts, Heathcliff answered gravely: “I’m trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don’t care how long I wait, if I can only do it last. I hope he will not die before I do!” It seems that Heathcliff has been plotting revenge on Hindley for a while now and every bad thing that Hindley does to Heathcliff only fuels his lust for revenge. “God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall,” he returned. “I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I’ll plan it out: while I’m thinking of that I don’t feel pain.” This last comment shows Heathcliff to be almost psychopathic in his beliefs, and the fact that he feels no pain while he thinks of his plan only reinforces this.
After this, the story goes back to Nelly talking to the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, Mr. Lockwood. This is to remind the reader that the story is being told by Nelly to Lockwood.
Lockwood is impatient that Nelly has stopped telling the story, saying how he is “interested in every character Nelly has mentioned, more or less”. Lockwood treats the story as though it is fiction rather than reality.
Nelly tries to carry on telling the story by skipping ahead in time, but Lockwood doesn’t allow this:
“Are you acquainted with the mood of mind in which, if you were seated alone, and the cat licking its kitten on the rug before you, you would watch the operation so intently that puss’s neglect of one ear would put you seriously out of temper?”
Lockwood later talks of Nelly’s class as though they were less important and intelligent than those of a higher class such as he. Nelly laughs at this and explains:
“I have read more than you would fancy, Mr. Lockwood. You could not open a book in this library that I have not looked into, and got something out of it also: unless it be that range of Greek and Latin, and that of French; and those I know from one another: it is as much as you can expect of a poor man’s daughter.”
Nelly continues telling the story from the summer of 1778, which was twenty-three years before.
Overall, I think that Wuthering Heights is useful in gaining information about social class differences of that time through the change of status in Catherine. It is also of great importance in understanding just how far a person can go for whom they love; this is shown in Heathcliff’s undying love for Catherine. Chapter seven is especially important to the rest of the novel and many of the main characters are changed in some way by the events of the chapter.
