After this Hindley then picks up Hareton and asks Nelly for a pair of scissors to trim his hair. Hindley then proceeds to take Hareton upstairs and hangs him over the balcony. At this point Hindley hears a sound as Heathcliff comes in then he drops Hareton as a natural instinct Heathcliff catches him. Nelly then comes down and takes Hareton. These events emphasise the tension running in the house. It also shows that Heathcliff has quite an evil nature.
The chapter then moves on to a conversation between Cathy and Nelly. At this point the mood of the chapter changes back form the high tension to a more intimate relaxed feel. This is achieved buy the new setting. It is now dark and Cathy and Nelly are sitting buy the fire and talking quietly this gives I a nonchalant atmosphere. In this part of the chapter Cathy reveals to Nelly that Edgar Linton proposed to her and that she has accepted. She wishes to find out Nelly's opinion on the decision. Bronte uses detailed, descriptive language to get across her feelings about Edgar and Heathcliff.
She says ‘it would degrade me to marry Heathcliff’ this is one of the main reasons why she couldn’t marry Heathcliff, as in these times the wealth category you belonged to was very important and if she marries Heathcliff they would be poor working class which would drop her social status and in this era you wouldn’t have married someone from a lower class. Bronte also uses sentences such as ‘heaven did not seem to be my home’ and ‘I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth’ these are used in context to her being with Edgar, this brings out some of her true feelings whilst adding depth to the text. ‘My love for Linton is like the foliage of the woods. Time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees-my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath.’ This extract really gets across her passionate feelings about Heathcliff and how she is marring Edgar because there is know one else. Cathy also tells Nelly ‘I am Heathcliff-he’s always in my mind’ this further adds to the emotional depth of Cathy really bringing out the true power of her feelings.
This part of the chapter also has some gothic elements to it. These reflect the era the novel was wrote in as at this time gothic stories were popular so Bronte would have been influenced by these as she would of read this kind of book before she started writing her own novels. Cathy tells Nelly about the dream that she had the night before. She tells about how she went to heaven but it didn’t seem to be the right place for her, so she started crying and crying until ‘ the angels were so angry they flung me out, into the middle of the heath of Wuthering Heights.’ This dream reflects the supernatural gothic era that Bronte lived in. The story also has gothic elements as in the begging Lockwood sees the ghost of Cathy.
There are also other key elements that give away the era that the book was wrote in. in the convocation between Cathy and Nelly she say how ‘it would degrade me to marry him.’ This is because there were three different classes in Victorian times and they were a lot stricter than the classes today. These were working class, middle class and upper class. Heathcliff was poor and was a working class citizen these people had to work to live and have no social life. The middle class were people who owned land and farmed it like Cathy has she would be respected for being in middle class. The upper class people would be people like the Lintons these were people who owned land and live off rent. If Cathy married Heathcliff she being a woman would be degraded down the poor to working class, while if she married Edgar she would become highly respected and have a good social life.
The final part of the chapter focuses on the disappearance of Heathcliff. In this part of the chapter Bronte uses pathetic fallacy to emphasize the on the atmosphere of the disappearance. The storm represents the bad feeling between Heathcliff and Cathy also it represents that Cathy is sad that Heathcliff has gone.
Cathy refers to ‘the fate of Milo’ this is a story in which Milo tries to pull a tree up from the roots and split the tree in half, the tree closed on his hands and held him. Wild beasts then devoured him. In ‘Wuthering Heights’ context Cathy is Milo and she is splitting apart Heathcliff and Edgar and is trapped in the middle and then brings on her own sadness. These examples of pathetic fallacy greatly enhance the depth of the text to the reader helping to build feeling for the story. Also, the symbolic splitting of the tree during the storm echoes the story.
Cathy’s reaction to Heathcliff’s disappearance develops her character a lot more. You start to see how deep Cathy’s feelings for Heathcliff are. It says how Cathy ‘beat Hareton, or any child, at a good, passionate fit of crying.’ This shows how much she is upset if she was crying as loud as a young child. The disappearance of Heathcliff makes Cathy become more passionate and even more demanding than she used to be, ‘our young lady returned to us, saucier, and more passionate, and haughtier than ever.’ This is evidence that Cathy’s character develops during this chapter.
This chapter is the hinging chapter for the rest of the book. The whole plot of the remaining story is influenced by the events of the chapter. If Heathcliff hadn’t been listening to the convosation between Nelly and Cathy he wouldn’t have left ‘Wuthering Heights’ so abruptly. Also if he had stayed a little longer to listen to what Cathy had to say, about how much she loves him but cant really be with him, then he would understand how much she loves him. This is why chapter nine of the novel is probably the most important chapter of the whole novel.
