Wuthering Heights Key Quotes Flashcards
He [Hindley] has been blaming our father (how dared he?) for treating H. [Heathcliff] too liberally; and swears he will reduce him to his right place.(3.30)
Revenge - Hindley started the whole revenge cycle by mistreating Heathcliff in the first place. His envy of Mr. Earnshaw’s love for the orphan sets off a chain reaction of abuse and mistreatment.
Revenge - Hindley loses everything to Heathcliff but must partly blame his own weaknesses and indulgence. He aspires to rob Heathcliff of everything and, like a devil figure, even wants his soul.
“Oh, damnation! I will have it back; and I’ll have his gold too; and then his blood; and hell shall have his soul! It will be ten times blacker with that guest than ever it was before!” (13.63)
Love ❤️ - “Come in! come in!” he sobbed. “Cathy, do come. Oh, do – once more! Oh! My heart’s darling, hear me this time – Catherine, at last!” (3.83)
Just a glimpse of Catherine would assuage the long-suffering Heathcliff, who believes in communication beyond the grave. He is far from afraid of ghosts and has clearly spent a lot of time trying to get Catherine to haunt him.
Love ❤️ - Though she loves him as her own being, Catherine sees Heathcliff as beneath her compared to the social promise of marriage to Edgar. It’s hard to reconcile such profound love with the choice she makes, but somehow she manages to work out the logic in her head.
It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am.
Love ❤️ - To Catherine, she and Heathcliff are one and the same; thus marriage to Edgar does not mean leaving the man she really loves. That Heathcliff sees her marriage as a betrayal is what ultimately divides them.
My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don’t talk of our separation again: it is impracticable. (9.101)
“Tell us where you got your lessons, and you shall have it,” said I.
“Who’s your master?”
“Devil daddy,” was his answer. (11.18-19)
Family - Hindley is too much of a mess to even treat his own son with any decency. Between Hindley and Heathcliff, Hareton is raised like an abused animal, so the fact that he grows up to be decent is truly surprising.
Family - Heathcliff’s promise of fatherhood spells misery and certain abuse for his soon-to-be daughter-in-law. Here, as elsewhere in the novel, family roles are very confused. Heathcliff was a brother but never really treated like one – nor acted like one. Now he will be a “father” who acts like no father should.
I shall be your father, to-morrow – all the father you’ll have in a few days – and you shall have plenty of that. (27.61)
Supernatural - Heathcliff cannot hide his anguish even from his new tenant. This moment is one of the few in which Heathcliff expresses sorrow without rage.
I obeyed, so far as to quit the chamber; when, ignorant where the narrow lobbies led, I stood still, and was witness, involuntarily, to a piece of superstition on the part of my landlord which belied, oddly, his apparent sense. (3.81)
It’s a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by Gimmerton Kirk to go that journey! We’ve braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. (12.52)
Supernatural - As children, Catherine and Heathcliff feared nothing – though violence and rage were an everyday experience. The ghosts that children usually fear were not scary to them because they had each other. Later Heathcliff will yearn for Catherine’s ghost to haunt him.
Supernatural - Heathcliff feels Catherine’s reach beyond the grave, which holds out the promise that their love doesn’t have to die. Brontë really mixes up Gothic conventions by creating a character who wants ghosts to exist.
I have a strong faith in ghosts: I have a conviction that they can, and do, exist among us! (29.24)
Suffering - Because Edgar will never suffer as much as Catherine would like, she will never love him as much as he would like. Edgar’s cool-headedness is one of the qualities that sets him apart from Heathcliff.
“And, Nelly, say to Edgar, if you see him again to-night, that I’m in danger of being seriously ill. I wish it may prove true. He has startled and distressed me shockingly! I want to frighten him.” (11.80)
[Isabella:] “He told me of Catherine’s illness, and accused my brother of causing it; promising that I should be Edgar’s proxy in suffering, till he could get hold of him.” (14.103)
Suffering - Isabella will receive the punishment that Heathcliff intends for Edgar. In the end, everyone is a victim of Heathcliff’s rage. Isabella’s remark here suggests that Heathcliff is in denial about the real reason for his rage.
“Is it not sufficient for your infernal selfishness, that while you are at peace I shall writhe in the torments of hell?” (15.28)
Suffering - As if Catherine could ever rest in peace. Even if she could, Heathcliff would not want her to. He actually wants her to suffer with him, because that means she loves him as much as he loves her.
Social class - After staying at Thrushcross Grange, the untamed Catherine has become a changed woman, now superior to the lowly Heathcliff. This is the future Catherine Linton, now forever out of reach to Heathcliff.
[. . .] instead of a wild, hatless little 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. (7.1)
[Hindley] wished earnestly to see her bring honour to the family by an alliance with the Lintons, and as long as she let him alone she might trample on us like slaves, for aught he cared! (9.152)
Social Class - Hindley has designs on the Lintons’ social status. Nelly resents the treatment she receives from Catherine. Nelly (who is speaking here) may not be a slave, but she is a servant – yet more often than not she acts like a family member.
