Analysis Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - Professor Dr. Imad Ibrahim

Professor Dr. Imad Ibrahim

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte  for 3^rd Year

          Wuthering Heights is a s tory of unrequited love, loss, disappointment, intolerance of difference as well as a story of the restoration of personal dignity. Heathcliff, a foundling, starts at the bottom of life to rise again like the phoenix to revenge himself against his persecutors, Hindley and the Lintons. By doing this he means to restore his dignity which he had lost in the Earnshaw’s family. These two (Hindley and the Lintons) are the main reason behind the violent and hostile character Heathcliff develops later. Emily Bronte builds up her story on the trick of turning points to create a chain of strongly related events and also a web of human relations, be them negative or positive. In this turning-points technique, each small event counts as it surely leads to more complications and entanglements in the story. Try to remove any small event and you will find yourself standing in the same place with no possible guide to move farther.

          The novelist chooses the first two chapters to be introductory ones where we as readers are tempted to look into the characters and the place very closely. Through these two chapters, we are taught about the past which produced the present Heathcliff.

          Mr. Lockwood, whose name ( lock) does not refer to a wide experience in life, comes to Heathcliff’s abode ( Wuthering Heights) to rent a house. Through his encounter with the dwellers of the place we can imagine the difficult jailing experience they all pass through including their pets. Lockwood lacks true judgments on people and events alike. The moment he sees ( not yet to meet) Heathcliff in Chapter One, he describes him as a “ capital fellow” and a “ gentleman”. However, early in Chapter Two, Lockwood backs out and decides not to call Heathcliff a capital fellow. In these introductory chapters , we meet Joseph, one of Heathcliff’s servants. He is fanatic in his understanding of religion. Actually he strongly clings to the superstitious side of religion and not pious or moral religion itself. For instance, he is horrified to hear cursing or swearing alike as these are against God, yet his reception of Mr. Lockwood as a guest is very bad and is not related to any religious adherence. Joseph’s face is repeatedly described as “ sour” “ vinegar” face to confirm the lack of human goodness and good wishes in his apparently religious character. When Mr. Lockwood cannot find his way back home, Joseph does not let him in the house and he talks to him through a small window. He becomes no longer a human being, but merely a “head” with eyes and a mouth.

           Mr. Lockwood also describes the outward appearance of Heathcliff as a “ dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman…. a squire”. We cannot take Mr. Lockwood’s words for granted as he changes his opinions from time to time. I think this is the reason why Emily Bronte uses another character( Nelly Dean) later to tell the story of the novel because Lockwood is incredible as a story teller.

         The only female character in Heathcliff’s house is no better than the other male characters. What Mr. Lockwood describes as Mrs. Heathcliff is actually Heathcliff’s  daughter-in-law ( Heathcliff’s late son’s wife). Mr. Lockwood as usual is attracted to and deceived by her appearance : she looks “ slender… admirable form and the most exquisite little face” which arouses the “ pleasure of  beholding”; her neck is delicate, her eyes “agreeable in expression”. She is in short an irresistible feminine living image!!. Yet this excellent description is soon shattered when she does not even welcome him with a cup of tea. She actually waits for Heathcliff to tell her to serve a cup of tea or not without herself feeling Mr. Lockwood’s conditions in that cold weather. The black comedy of this scene is worsened when “ Mrs. Heathcliff” stands holding the spoon with tea just over the tea-pot without pouring it into the pot and make tea immediately for the horrified tired guest.      

   

          In these two introductory chapters , we are also introduced to inanimate objects as well as to animals inside Heathcliff’s house. The inanimate object of the chapters is Wuthering Heights itself as a place. Mr. Lockwood describes how strong and old the house is. It was built, in the early years of the sixteenth century, of adamant stones that are arranged in a style to resist the rain and face the violent storms hitting the place continually. The house is built amidst an “ atmospheric tumult”. The description of the house is dreary and it suggests excitement and lack of peace. Those inside the house seem to have changed their characters to meet the melancholy of the place itself. The animals inside are not different from the people who breed and take care of them. The dogs are very violent and unwelcoming to the extent that they put Mr. Lockwood’s safety on a stake when he tries to touch the mother dog. That is a very strange behavior from a pet which is made a pet just because of its living with human beings under the same roof! Heathcliff explains this violent weird behavior of the dogs telling Mr. Lockwood that “ Guests are so exceedingly rare in this house that I and my dogs… hardly know how to receive them”.

           Please notice that Heathcliff does not say “ I and my family” or “ I and my servants”. He says instead ‘ I and my dogs’ which suggests that he is already degraded to the level of unfeeling animals. Behind this degradation there must be a story which we are going to go through in the coming days.

Professor Dr. Imad Ibrahim

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte  for 3^rd Year

          With Chapter Three, our story begins. In the last chapter, Mr. Lockwood was tired and he caught cold because of staying outside under heavy rain; nobody let him in to protect himself. Having no idea how to get back home, Lockwood has to spend the night in Heathcliff's house. At the beginning, Heathcliff orders him to sleep with the servant as the house does not have a spare room for gusts. However, a servant named Zillah guides Lockwood by mistake to a room which has been locked up for a long time. Nobody is ever allowed to go into it as it embraces Heathcliff's own memories of the past.

          Inside that room, Lockwood finds books piled on top of others. On the walls scratched are the name variations  of Catherine and Heathcliff which one can see everywhere inside the room. When Lockwood leans his heavy head on the window, he then continues looking at those names on the walls. When his eyes are just closed, he dreams of white letters of the names of Catherine and Heathcliff covering the whole atmosphere of the room. He wakes up and with his candle, he starts browsing the books inside the room. They are filled with old memories about when it was cold and children did not go to church and about how Joseph played the role of the preacher for them. There is also a bit of written memory by Catherine about how Hindley calls Heathcliff a vagabond and how he prevents him from sitting together with the family. Lockwood continues to browse those books till he finds a book of a written sermon which he reads with difficulty as he is tires, sick and sleepy.

          When Lockwood is almost a sleep, he hears  a tree branch scratching at the window glass which wakes him up with fear. When he tries to push away that branch, his fingers come to catch a cold hand of a little girl!. Mr. Lockwood is much terrified also to hear the cry of that little girl asking him to let her in. She says that she has been dismissed from this house for twenty years. Lockwood trembles and shouts with fear like someone trying to dismiss bad spirits, before he hears footsteps coming towards his room. Heathcliff comes with a candle in his hand. The presence of Heathcliff at this moment is surprising as he never expects anybody to be occupying that deserted room. Heathcliff's appearance at the scene  appears very pathetic and romantic  as he thinks that Catherine may have come back to him from the dead.

          Heathcliff is holding a candle which is then dripping over his fingers: "  ' is there anyone here?', … Heathcliff stood near the entrance, in his shirt and trousers: with a candle dripping over his fingers" ( P.31). From this scene you can imagine for yourself how Heathcliff  loves the memory of his past beloved, Catherine;  he even does not feel the piercing heat of the candle dripping over his bare fingers. True it is that sometimes the body stops feeling when the soul is living temporarily in another world of imagination or dear memories. You can also imagine how angry and furious Heathcliff becomes when he does not find Catherine in the room, but he finds Lockwood instead. Heathcliff turns to the window and cried very loud with tears covering his cheeks  ' " Come in! come in' he sobbed. ' Cathy, do come. Oh do-- once more! Oh my heart's darling; hear me this time…' "(p.34).

          At this incident, Mr. Lockwood decides to consult a much experienced person in Heathcliff's house to explain to him the privacy of that strange family and its past. That person is Nelly Dean, the oldest, respectable and most reliable servant and story teller in Earnshaw's house, Wuthering Heights.

 A question:

does Mr. Lockwood really see the dead figure of Catherine?  Or is it just the hallucination of a fevered man?

To listen to Mr. Lockwood himself about this question, he says on P.33 " I had never heard the appellation of  ' Catherine Linton' before, but reading it often over produced an impression which personified itself when I had no longer my imagination under control."

Wuthering Heights Chapters. 4 and 5.

Professor Dr. Imad Ibrahim

          As the previous chapters have been set by the novelist as introductory and revelatory chapters for characters, Chapters 4 and 5 set the background of the main events behind the creation of Heathcliff as we see him on Chapters 1, 2 and 3. So who was Heathcliff? Where did he come from? How did he first become rich to buy Earnshaw’s house Wuthering Heights.? All these questions are not answered by the main story teller, Mrs. Dean as she knows nothing about them. The secret is buried with Heathcliff till the end of the novel. We do not know any answers about those questions either.

          Mrs. Dean lived for eighteen years with the Earnshaws, that is why she is chosen by the novelist as the best and most reliable story teller for the novel. She tells us that the Mrs. Heathcliff of the previous chapters is actually the late Catherine Earnshaw’s daughter; she is also Heathcliff’s daughter-in-law whose husband ( Heathcliff’s son) is dead. The dirty young man who is turned into a gross farmer in those chapters is the late Hindley’s son.  Heathcliff seems to have owned and imprisoned all for a purpose in his house. As for Heathcliff himself, Mrs. Dean tells us a very interesting strange story. Mr. Earnshaw brought Heathcliff from Liverpool when he was there for a business. Earnshaw said he found him homeless and helpless on the street and out of moral and religious duty he brought him home to live with his children.

          Before Earnshaw sets out to Liverpool, his children Catherine and Hindley ask him for gifts from there ( P.43). Catherine asks him for a “ whip” while Hindley asks him for a “ fiddle”. These two objects “whip” and “fiddle” are deeply contradictory as one is used for torture and inflicting pain ( whip) while the other is to lessen pain (fiddle). These are also suggestive of a deeper spiritual or moral reading of these two children’s characters. It suggests that Catherine’s character is much violent, wickeder and wilder than Hindley’s feminine, meek and weak one. This reading will prove itself true and applicable throughout the coming pages of the novel.

          When Mr. Earnshaw comes back home, he brings neither the fiddle nor the whip but he shows them a surprise of a gypsy-like boy who is totally different from all the images of children the Earnshaws have seen in the neighborhood. Mrs. Earnshaw wishes to throw that boy outside the house as he looks like a dumb silent devil and the children are very angry that their father brings them a strange boy instead of their gifts. For Mr. Earnshaw the case is different: out of good human nature and compassion, Mr. Earnshaw starts loving Heathcliff and caring for him more than he does for his own children. This proves very bad later on as Hindley, the original boy of the family, starts hating him ( Heathcliff). He feels jealous of Heathcliff, who steals Mr. Earnshaw’s heart and sympathy. At the beginning both children refuse even to let him sleep with them in their beds and he has to sleep outside beside the stairs. Hindley beats Heathcliff a lot and the latter never complains at all. He is very patient and he bears his pains silently: “ He seemed a sullen, patient child; hardened, perhaps, so to ill-treatment: he would stand Hindley’s blows without winking or shedding a tear…” (P.45).

          This strategy of silence and patience is not innocent or purposeless. It is very dangerous. We all know when a person does not complain against bad treatment, this does not mean at all that he accepts it. One day that person will explode against his abusers and his explosion will be very loud and devastating to a whole family, a group of people or to a whole society as well. This is what will exactly happen later in the novel.

          On the other side of this picture of human relations, Catherine’s character is wild and careless ; she sings and laughs all the time. She finds in Heathcliff the best mate for her airy soul. She spends most of her time playing with him far away in the open fields: “ she was too much fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment… for her was to keep her separate from him” (P. 51). Joseph makes the best out of this growing intimacy between the two to turn Mr. Earnshaw against Catherine. He wickedly tells Mr. Earnshaw that it is ungodly and against heaven and morals to let Catherine play with Heathcliff, that gypsy, that unknown, that parentless foundling. He also tells him that this is not good for his soul as an old man; “ He [Joseph] was relentless in worrying him about his soul’s concerns… and night after night, he regularly grumbled out a long string of tales against Heathcliff and Catherine” ( P. 50)”.

         Mr. Earnshaw’s death at the end of Ch. 5, must have meant a lot for almost everyone in the house, especially for Heathcliff. Hindley is to become the new man of the house after his father’s death. Heathcliff loses his main protection, support and love in the house and Catherine will miss the wisdom, patience, love, understanding and tolerance in the house. Mr. Earnshaw was like any father in his house, respected, feared and missed deeply when is away.

          Mrs. Dean or Emily Bronte raises two issues at the end of chapter 5.  The first issue is that Mrs. Dean goes to bring the doctor and the priest for the dying Mr. Earnshaw : “ I went, through wind and rain and brought one, the doctor, back with me; the other said he would come in the morning” ( P.53). The doctor comes with Mrs. Dean to examine clinically a dying man but the man of religion, the priest does not; he says he will come in the morning!!! Our question is: will a dying man stay till morning? Who tells the priest that Mr. Earnshaw will stay alive till next morning? The priest ( like in Riders to the Sea) represents the religious institute in any society. However, this man is not doing his duty which is the duty of his institute like the doctor. You, students, have to think a lot about this issue. It is not simple and it is not an arbitrary note by the novelist either.

          The other issue is at the end of this same chapter when Mrs. Dean describes the world of innocent children as they receive news of death and as they try to deal with it as a fact according to their own understanding of fact:

 “  The little souls were comforting each other with better thoughts than I could have hit on: no parson in the world ever pictured heaven so beautifully as they did, un their innocent talk: and, while I sobbed and listened, I could not help wishing we were all there safe together.” ( P.53).

           This is a very beautiful description of how children think of where human souls would go after death. Mrs. Dean does not tell us the children’s exact words about heaven, but we can understand that she has heard the best and most innocent description. Dean says that even the best and cleverest parson in the world could not describe heaven as the children did at that moment. She, after listening attentively to their description, even wishes to be there in that very heaven which those “little souls” (Catherine, Hindley and perhaps  even Heathcliff) describe.

Wuthering Heights Chapters . 6 and  7.

Professor Dr. Imad Ibrahim

          The death of Mr. Earnshaw has left a deep emptiness in the lives of the dwellers of Wuthering Heights, especially Heathcliff who has lost both protection and support altogether. Hindley, who has been away for his study, is now home for the funeral of his father. He has married a young girl while he was away. His wife is named Francis. Nelly Dean tells us that there is something very distinctive about this new character; Francis is always terrified by the idea of death and weakness. She feels so delighted of the smallest details of life around her that Nelly describes her as “ silly”. Actually this phobia from death turns Francis into a psycho, though a calm harmless one. She feels restless at the scene of Mr. Earnshaw’s burial and the sight of mourners who come for the funeral. In short, Francis “ felt so afraid of dying” ( P. 55). She is weak, thin and she coughs too much. She  feels terrified at hearing loud voices or sudden shouts, too.

         As for Hindley, Nelly tells us, he is changed entirely for the worst. The moment he comes back home, he orders all to live in the kitchen and leave the house for him and his wife only. He “ became tyrannical” (P. 55). He does his best to separate Catherine from Heathcliff. He often flogs Heathcliff, prevents him from food and forces him to sleep at the barn with the animals. He degrades him beyond limits of tolerance.  However, it seems useless to separate the two from one another. A big turning point in the course of events takes place in chapter 6 when Catherine and Heathcliff decide to break Hindley’s new instructions.

          Catherine and Heathcliff see the many beautiful lights of the Grange where the Lintons live. They go there and amuse themselves by looking at the Lintons’ children through the window. Heathcliff laughs loudly at Isabella who lisps when she speaks. The Lintons--thinking that there is a thief in the backyard--set out their dog which catches Catherine by the ankle. When the Lintons catch Heathcliff too, they look at him with astonishment and make fun of his strange dirty appearance. They put him under a candle light and start examining him from head to toe. Mrs. Linton “ placed her spectacles on her nose and raised her hands in horror” ( P.60): she calls Heathcliff a wicked boy with indecent and filthy language. Isabella Linton, when seeing Heathcliff for the first time , says “ Frightful thing! Put him in the cellar, papa”. ( P.60). Heathcliff in his turn listens to all these very bad and insulting comments without being able to answer back or defend himself. This situation will add a lot to the theme and feelings of social and class discrimination against Heathcliff as a helpless human being.

          At that incident, Catherine is wounded by the dog’s bite and she has to stay with the Lintons for recovery. Heathcliff is set free. When he comes back to Wuthering Heights, you should imagine the bitterness and pain he has to suffer by Hindley, his old enemy and rival and the new master of the house as well.

Professor Dr. Imad Ibrahim

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte  for 3^rd Year

          Chapter 7 tells us that Catherine has stayed with the Lintons for five weeks during which she has never met Heathcliff or heard about him. Her stay there has changed her for the better in manners, self-respect, cleanness and style of dressing. When she comes back home to Wuthering Heights, she comes in a totally new different appearance. Nelly Dean describes this new change on Catherine’s  character: “ instead of a wild, hatless little savage” , now she looks “ a very dignified person with brown ringlets… and a long cloth.” (P. 63). In short, Catherine comes back like a princess. It is important to notice that the dogs in the house come waving their tales in welcome too. This is the original inborn behavior of pets which we do not see in Heathcliff’s house in the previous chapters. This tells us that the hardships and persecution Heathcliff passed through when he was young affected even his way of breeding dogs that appear unwelcoming and dismissive as their master.

          Opposite to this drastic change in Catherine’s manners and look is Heathcliff who remains as he is; dirty, uncouth and barbarian. Nelly also describes to us Heathcliff after the five weeks of Catherine’s absence: “ Heathcliff was hard to discover, at first. If he were careless, and uncared for, before Catherine’s absence, he had been ten times more so, since” ( P.64). Catherine herself does not recognize him among others and exclaims: “ Is Heathcliff not here?” ( P. 64). Hindley orders Heathcliff to greet Catherine “ like other servants” ( P. 65). This phrase must have been the toughest one Heathcliff has ever heard so far in front of his love or best friend. Heathcliff feels deeply wounded when he hears that he is only a servant and he is deeper wounded, too, when wants to shake hands with Catherine. He discovers that his hands are dirty in comparison with the new princess’s; “ you needn’t have touched me!... I shall be dirty as I please: and I like to be dirty, and I will be dirty”, Heathcliff says ( P.65). As you all know, no reasonable person likes to be dirty or insists on being dirty. Therefore Heathcliff’s words here surely fall into an empty defensive behavior; it is a kind of respecting his present identity which everyone disdains and rejects. He is, in other words, saying that he accepts who he is and how he looks.

          From these two chapters, you can see for yourself how heavily Emily Bronte depends on turning points. When the story was about to stop at Mr. Earnshaw’s death, Bronte moves the main two characters to the Lintons where Catherine stays to recover from a dog’s bite. The novelist creates this turning point in order to send back Catherine in a new character different from the one Heathcliff used to know and love. From now on the real comparison between the two starts and new directions of the story line emerge. These new directions all betray or foreshadow another big or maybe even bigger loss in Heathcliff’s life.

Professor Dr. Imad Ibrahim

Wuthering Heights Chapters .  8 & 9

          An important event ( a turning point) in chapter 8 is the death of Francis, Hindley's wife, an event which changes Hindley's life upside down.  It is very interesting that Francis meets a very quiet unnoticed death like her quiet weak character. As she coughed while hanging by her husband's neck, she dies and that is all. For her, it is an uneventful death but for Hindley it is more than a death of a wife. Hindley " grew desperate…. He neither wept nor prayed: he cursed and defied; execrated God and man".( P.79).  Hindley's behaviour becomes much evil with everybody. Besides, he starts keeping very bad friends with whom he gambles and loses his fortune. At those days, Nelly tells us, the house looks as if haunted by Satan himself to the extent that even " the curate dropped calling, and nobody decent came near us." ( P.80).

          While Hindley loses himself to the ways of the devil, he neglects all his duties in the house except for making Heathcliff suffer all day long. At the age of 16, Heathcliff appears much degraded and uncouth than before: " he had lost the benefit of his early education; continual hard work, begun soon and concluded late, extinguished … any love for books or learning." ( P.82). As for Catherine, she  is now fifteen years old and she looks like a queen of the countryside; " she had no peer; and she did turn out a haughty, headstrong creature". as Nelly describes her on P. 80.

          These two antithetical pictures of Heathcliff and Catherine are pinpointed by the novelist so as we can make comparisons and guesses about the destiny of the old relation between the two. She ( Emily Bronte) does not let us wait for a long time to see what is coming next in that old relation. She actually brings them together in one of the most decisive encounters; it is in fact the last encounter between the two characters who are now adolescent and very sensitive. On P. 84, Heathcliff seizes the opportunity of Hindley's absence from home and asks Catherine to join him for a private talk.

          Heathcliff, in a very pathetic and heart-rending moment, shows Catherine a calendar ( almanac)  on which he has drawn  crosses (×) and dots (•). He shows her that almanac with deep bitterness in his heart but Catherine does not understand what he actually means by that . He explains to her his long suffering that the crosses mean the days she has spent away from him ( with Edgar Linton) while the dots refer to the days she has spent with him. Of course the days she has spent with Edgar are bigger in number than those she has spent with Heathcliff. To make sure she understands what he means, he asks her " Do you see? I've marked every day" (P.84). Unfortunately Catherine does not have the big heart and care Heathcliff has for her. Her answer to his question is very very cold and ungrateful: " Yes—very foolish: as if I took notice…. And where is the sense of that?" (P.84). Indirectly,  her answer means that what Heathcliff has marked on the almanac is just nonsense.

                    This is literally the last serious face-to-face meeting between Heathcliff and Catherine, his old love and soul mate. In Chapter 9, Emily Bronte puts an end to this uncertain relation. On P.98, Catherine talks to Nelly about her marriage to Edgar Linton not to Heathcliff. She is very angry and loud when she says " it would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now". This is very tough for Heathcliff who is listening to their conversation while in hiding. He never expects such words to come from Catherine, his old love. He understands without any further doubts that he has lost Catherine for ever in his rivalry with a rich, white aristocratic man like Edgar. Upon hearing that Catherine herself looks down upon him, Heathcliff sneaks away stealthily and disappears since then.

          Heathcliff's departure is a very eventful one that even nature sympathizes with it. When he leaves, at midnight, a storm " came rattling over the Heights in full fury. There was a violent wind, as well as thunder, and either one or the other split a tree off at the corner of the building: a huge bough fell across the roof…. We thought a bolt had fallen in the middle of us." ( P.103). This tells us that Nature is conspiring with Heathcliff as he is wronged by Catherine. Nature expresses the deep anger, fury and discontent which Heathcliff feels at the moment. This conspiracy between a human being and the outside Nature is called in Literature an " Objective Correlative" which means the sympathy Nature has for all those who are wronged unjustifiably. We also understand from this situation that God stands with the weak and poor. Thus, the disappearance of Heathcliff is the biggest turning point in the novel.

          Perhaps you may find it difficult to understand what is meant by the ( Objective Correlative). here I would like to draw an example from our Muslim culture to make this point clear. In the day of Ashoora ( the Martyrdom of Imam Hussein), it is said that after killing Imam Hussein it rained blood and a big sand storm covered the whole place. That anger of Nature came down because Imam Hussein was murdered unjustifiably. God is always there and looking at whatever we do.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte / Chapter 10

Professor Dr. Imad Ibrahim

          From Chapter 10 onward, Emily Bronte stops describing the characters' mentalities, their ways of thinking, their old relations and their psychological lives. The remaining chapters are dedicated to Heathcliff's hideous journey back into the Heights after a three-year absence from the scene. It is a journey of revenge against all his persecutors one by one. When he reappears at the Thrush Cross Grange, Nelly Dean fails to recognize him as he has gained a new look with a face of a newly recruited soldier , she says. Now his body becomes huge and his face gains mustaches. Although she warns him against visiting Catherine, who is now married to Edgar, Catherine herself lets him in, even though against her husband's will and approval. She is still stubborn, careless and wild; she, again, calls him her old comrade and soul mate.

          This is a big turning point in the novel. Heathcliff flatters Isabella( Edgar's younger sister) whom he takes as a scapegoat for further revenge. By his wily and cunning character, he kidnaps her heart and allures her into loving him. Catherine warns Isabella against this love as she describes Heathcliff as a " wolfish" person. If Heathcliff is a wolf, there must be a lamb to hunt; that is definitely Isabella. Catherine is the only character in the novel whose comments on Heathcliff's character are reliable and accurate. She has spent the bigger bulk of her life with him since they were children. This description seems to be the only truth Catherine knows about Heathcliff, but she hides it for a  long time just to keep him as a temporary companion for her careless childhood. She is as selfish as Heathcliff.

          This great moment of truth and exposition is not received positively by Isabella who thinks that Catherine wants to distance her from Heathcliff for feelings of jealousy. Under false pretexts of love, Heathcliff manages to persuade Isabella to elope with him and marry him. She does this against her brother's will and Catherine's too. Heathcliff's plan is that Isabella is the only legal heiress to her brother, Edgar, and in case the latter dies, all the fortune will turn to her and to Heathcliff indeed. And that becomes true when both Catherine and Edgar die of fever. Now the whole Thrush Cross Grange property turns to Isabella and Heathcliff.

          At the Heights, Heathcliff also has plans for his main enemy, Hindley, who, after the death of his wife, loses wisdom and sensibility. Hindley loses all the money he has with his bad friends who  come to Weathering Heights for gambling every night. Heathcliff rents a room there and starts lending money to Hindley in returns of I.O.Ys ( I Owe You). At the end, unable to pay back his heavy debts , Hindley loses the house ( Weathering Heights) to Heathcliff. After Hindley's death, Heathcliff does not feel that his revenge is fully paid;  he owns Hindley's son ( Hareton) too, the dirty young man who appears in the first chapters. After full vengeance is taken, Heathcliff appears in the opening chapters as a squire owning lands.

           Though Heathcliff looks like a gentleman, as Mr. Lockwood describes him in the opening chapters, yet he is a totally broken-hearted sad man. Even though he revenges himself against his persecutors, yet he gains nothing of a great moral value. All the years following Catherin's death, he goes every night to sleep beside her grave with deep cries into the dark nights. From that moment, he keeps the door of the room, where they first met, locked. That room represents the reservoir of their memories of love and comradeship. He keeps Catherine's memory alive and thinks that one day she will come out of her grave and meet him again. He kills himself at the end as he has lost all that which has had meaning in life when he had lost Catherine.

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