Lockwood went to Wuthering Heights to see Heathcliff and tell him he didn't want to stay at the Grange any longer. He noticed that Hareton was "as handsome a rustic as need be seenLockwood visited Wuthering Heights to see what had changed. He noticed flowers growing around the old farm house, and overheard a pleasant lesson from indoors. Catherine, sounding "sweet as a silver bell," was teaching Hareton, now respectably dressed. The lesson was interspersed with kisses and very kind words. Lockwood was loth to disturb them, and went around to the kitchen to find Nelly singing and Joseph complaining as usual. She was glad to see Lockwood and told them that he would have to settle the rent with her, since she was acting for Catherine. Heathcliff had been dead for three months. She told him what had happened.
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.
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.
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.
