Wuthering Heights

Lockwood writes that he has how heard the entire story from Nelly. He desires to repeat her story, in a condensed version and “in her own words” (113). In the days leading up to Catherine’s death, Nelly observes an “unearthly beauty in the change” (113) in Catherine’s appearance. Nelly gives Catherine a letter from Heathcliff and tells Catherine that Heathcliff wants to see her. When he comes in from the garden, he embraces Catherine “for some five minutes, during which period he bestowed more kisses than he ever gave in his life before” (115). While they blame each other for their tortured lives, Nelly observes that, “to a cool spectator, [they] made a strange and fearful picture” (115). Catherine declares that she will “not be at peace” (116), even in death, and soon, they are “locked in an embrace from which [Nelly]thought[her]mistress would never be released alive” (117). Heathcliff begs her to tell him why she betrayed him for Edgar, as Catherine begs him for forgiveness. Nelly witnesses all and warns them that Edgar will soon be arriving home. Edgar enters the room, as Heathcliff holds the “lifeless-looking form in his arms” (119). Heathcliff leaves but waits in the garden.

Baby Catherine Linton is born, two months early, “and two hours after the mother died” (119). Edgar mourns the death of Catherine, as does Heathcliff, who responds angrily when Nelly tells him the news: “May she wake in torment!” (121). Heathcliff’s hostile tone changes when, moments later, he begs for the ghost of Catherine to haunt him: “Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad!” (122). In front of Nelly, he throws himself against a tree trunk in violent angst, and Nelly observes “several splashes of blood about the bark of the tree” (122).

Later, Heathcliff visits Catherine in her coffin in the drawing-room of Thrushcross Grange and takes Edgar’s hair out of the locket around her neck, replacing it with his own. Hindley does not attend her funeral, and “Isabella was not asked” (122). Her body is buried near the moor instead of in a chapel or with the Linton family.

A few days later, Nelly senses an intruder in the house, who turns out to be Isabella Heathcliff, in soaking wet clothes and bleeding from a cut under her ear. Nelly was able to “obtain her consent for binding the wound” (124), and Isabella throws her wedding ring into the fire. Nelly calms her as they listen to the baby wailing, and Isabella expresses her desire to leave Wuthering Heights and to return to the Grange to “cheer Edgar and take of the baby” (125). Isabella describes her plan to leave Heathcliff while still claiming love and loyalty to him; the bad behavior by Heathcliff and Hindley, since the death of Catherine, has driven her away. Isabella explains what happened to Nelly: Hindley tells Isabella of his intention to kill Heathcliff, so she decides to “warn his intended victim of the fate which awaited him” (128). Hindley overhears Heathcliff, and while they wrestle, Hindley’s gun goes off and he cuts his hand with his own knife. Isabella searches for Joseph, as Heathcliff “bound up the wound with brutal roughness” (129). Heathcliff leaves once he is sure that Hindley is alive. The next morning, Isabella sees Heathcliff, “his lips devoid of their ferocious sneer, and sealed in an expression of unspeakable sadness” (130). She takes the opportunity to feel satisfied at his pain and “taste the delight of paying wrong for wrong” (131). Nelly admonishes Isabella, Heathcliff threatens her, and Isabella leaves Wuthering Heights.

After Isabella tells her story, she leaves “driven away, never to revisit this neighborhood” (133). She moves to London, and “there she had a son born, a few months subsequent to her escape” (133), named Linton Heathcliff. Nelly reports that “its mother died before the time arrived [for him to meet his father], some thirteen years after the decease of Catherine, when Linton was twelve, or a little more” (133).

Nelly reports that Hindley and Edgar are both in mourning for their many losses, and Nelly compares them to each other:“They had both been fond husbands, and were both attached to their children; and I could not see how they shouldn’t have both taken the same road, for good or for evil” (134). To Nelly’s surprise, Hindley is undone by the challenges of his life, and soon she receives a report from Mr. Kenneth that Hindley has “died true to his character: drunk as a lord” (135). Hindley has died in debt to Heathcliff, which means that Heathcliff inherits Wuthering Heights, and Hareton Earnshaw has nothing.