Wuthering Heights

By Emily Brontë, Alice Hoffman and Juliet Barker

Coming soon to the big screen is Emerald Fennell’s feature film “Wuthering Heights,” which captures the spirit of this epic love story and stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as Catherine and Heathcliff.

“Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same.”

There are few more convincing, less sentimental accounts of passionate love than Wuthering Heights. This is the story of the savage, tormented foundling Heathcliff, who falls wildly in love with Catherine Earnshaw, the daughter of his benefactor, and of the violence and misery that result from their thwarted longing for each other.

A book of immense power and strength, it is filled with the raw beauty of the moors and an uncanny understanding of the terrible truths about men and women. It is an understanding made even more extraordinary by the fact that it came from the heart of a woman who lived most of her brief life in remote rural England. Emily Brontë died a year after this great novel was published.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781101513323

Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights. The novel’s violence and passion shocked the Victorian public and led to the belief that it was written by a man. Although Emily died young (at the age of 30), her sole complete work is now considered a masterpiece of English literature.

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Introduction

WUTHERING HEIGHTS is one of the greatest novels of all time, and arguably the greatest psychological novel ever written. It is a novel that defies definition. In a gothic landscape of moors where ghosts roam and love never dies, there is also a realistic presentation of the social landscape of the turn of the nineteenth century, when the novel is set, and the Victorian era, when it was written. The ultimate rebel’s treatise written by a woman who rarely ventured farther than her own village and whose own life was tragically short, Wuthering Heights is a domestic drama, a ghost story, a romance, a spiritual journey, a diary of dreams and visions, and above all else, an examination of the nature of humanity.

At the novel’s core is the deep and complicated attachment between Heathcliff and Cathy, a remarkable study of guilt, loss, power, and erotic love. Here is a work that is set apart from all other novels of its time, and of ours, by the complexity of the text and the astounding virtuosity and assurance of a master fiction writer. Heathcliff’s great love for Cathy and her passion for him are what elevate the book to greatness: Love is a natural force in Wuthering Heights, wild as the moors, unpredictable as the weather, paradoxical not only to the characters in the novel, but to the reader as well. Love defies all logic and common sense; it is a mystery that is both unanswerable and endlessly fascinating.

That this great novel, so complex in both emotional depth and in structure, was written by a young woman with very little obvious life experience—published when she was twenty-nine, only a year before her death from tuberculosis in 1848—is a literary miracle that has astounded readers since its publication. Several critics were not only amazed by the work but offended by the content and the intensity of Wuthering Heights, shocked that a woman could indeed write so fiercely. In 1850, a reviewer in the Leader said:

Curious enough it is to read Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall [by Anne Brontë], and remember that the writers were two retiring, solitary, consumptive girls! Books, coarse even for men, coarse in language and coarse in conception, the coarseness apparently of violent and uncultivated men—turn out to be the productions of two girls living almost alone, filling their loneliness with quiet studies....

How then did a great feat of creative imagination such as Wuthering Heights arise from such a small life? Born in 1818, at Thorton in Yorkshire, Emily Jane Brontë’s father, Patrick Brontë, was the curate of Haworth; the parsonage was Emily’s universe until the day she died on the couch in the parlor. In this world of ideas and books, Emily lived a sheltered, circumscribed life, and yet one must clearly state: Just as she was no stranger to the moors she wrote of, she was no stranger to grief. Emily’s mother died when she was three, two older sisters died of malnutrition while away at boarding school (the cruelty of such schools echoes throughout Charlotte Brontë’s own extraordinary novel Jane Eyre). Branwell, the only son, of whom so much was expected, wasted his talents, ruined any future he might have had, and became an alcoholic and drug addict.

As children, the Brontës established their own literary society, writing poems, journals, and tales. Charlotte and Branwell created the imaginary epic world of Angria. Emily and Anne created Gondal; only a few poems in the Gondal cycle have survived. Literature was part and parcel of daily life, as was the ever-changing landscape of the moors, which was woven into every inch of Emily’s fiction and poetry. In creating the heroic world of Gondal, Emily constructed an ongoing history that included the prototypes for Heathcliff, Catherine, and Edgar. Through the juvenilia, there are hints of what is to come: Tales of a fair girl and a dark boy who are drawn to each other prefigure the vital and exceptional world of Wuthering Heights.

The Brontë family was indeed surrounded by literature. It was not a vocation or an avocation, but as much a part of their lives as the charged atmosphere of the moors. A charming bit of Emily’s diary, written when she was sixteen, reveals how closely the real world and her fictional world flowed together:

Anne and I have been peeling apples for Charlotte to make us an apple pudding and for Aunt nuts and apples Charlotte said she made puddings perfectly and she was of quick but limited intellect. Taby said just now Come Anne pilloputate [peel a potato] Aunt has come into the kitchen just now and said Where are your feet Anne Anne answered On the floor Aunt papa opened the parlour door and gave Branwell a letter saying Here Branwell read this and show it to your Aunt and Charlotte the Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine Sally Mosely is washing in the back kitchen. . . .

Just as the domestic and the creative realms reside together in this diary entry, Emily’s imagination was not born only of family life at the parsonage; it was her inner life that brought forth the greatness of her writing. Although the sisters eventually wrote separately, with male names to disguise their gender, the Brontës were first considered to be one author, with Charlotte (writing as Currer Bell) garnering most of the praise for her stirring but more traditional novel Jane Eyre. In her Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell (1850) (Emily and Anne Brontë), Charlotte, the lone surviving progeny, explains the choice they made to keep their identities secret when they began to publish.

We had very early cherished the dream of one day becoming authors. This dream, never relinquished even when distance divided and absorbing tasks occupied us, now suddenly acquired strength and consistency; it took the character of a resolve. We agreed to arrange a small selection of our poems, and, if possible, get them printed. Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because—without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called feminine—we had the vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.

Wuthering Heights is the story of a haunted house—a structure and a family haunted by grief, by sorrow, by memory, by love denied. Heathcliff himself is the ultimate literary stranger, a character whose very presence changes everything and everyone around him, a fierce storm in human form, an elemental force. The novel follows the complicated and commingled fate of the two families with whom Heathcliff comes into contact. The Earnshaws—Mr. Earnshaw, Catherine, and her weak and vicious brother, Hindley—and the Lintons, who are wealthier and favor a more luxurious life—kindhearted Edgar and his headstrong sister, Isabella. Eventually the third generation includes the young Cathy, daughter of Catherine and Edgar Linton; Linton Heathcliff, the spoiled and manipulated son of Heathcliff and Isabella; and Hareton, the debased son of Hindley.

Wuthering Heights is a story set within a story, a nest of tales that come full circle. In many ways, the novel is about the importance of storytelling. The story of Heathcliff and Cathy is revealed to the reader by Lockwood, an outsider who stumbles upon Wuthering Heights; he, in turn, learns the complicated history of the residents of the Heights from Nelly Dean, the faithful servant. Just as Heathcliff may have been shaped in part by Branwell Brontë (whose ill-fated romance with the wife of his employer led to a breakdown, addiction, and much like Heathcliff, a physical wasting away), Nelly may have been modeled upon Tabitha (Taby) Ackroyd, a local woman who was a domestic servant and part of the Brontë family. Taby told the children local gossip, stories, and folk tales, much as Nelly recounts the tales of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. In doing so, Nelly, like her counterpart in the real world, brings to mind the old women who told kitchen tales, known to us as fairy tales—an oral tradition of storytelling passed on by women who might not read nor write, but who could be counted upon to remember, and therefore to keep these deceptively homely, truth-filled tales alive.

The story of Wuthering Heights originates with an act of kindness: Mr. Earnshaw, the father of two, returns from Liverpool, bringing home an orphan of mysterious origins, Heathcliff. Heathcliff is a puzzle, not only to Lockwood, as he hears the story from Nelly, but to the other characters in Wuthering Heights, to the reader, and quite possibly to Heathcliff himself. What drives Heathcliff and what formed him are mysteries forevermore. He is perhaps the most enigmatic and paradoxical creation in all of fiction, continually fascinating, not only to Cathy, but to the reader. Heathcliff’s strange appearance begins the internal action of the novel; his sudden and unexplained disappearance is the centerpiece (during which time, the abandoned Cathy marries her wealthy neighbor, the more appropriate Edgar Linton); and Heathcliff’s insistence on reappearing yet again, after his absence of three years, brings ruin upon the lives of nearly everyone with whom he comes into contact, including, and most especially, himself.

As the novel is divided into two sections, Heathcliff’s inner being is divided in two as well. He is a torn soul, a man ruled by emotion, much as the moors are ruled by storm and atmosphere. He is the powerless hero in the first half of the novel; the exploitative and wealthy antihero in the second half. Of the first Heathcliff, the as yet uncorrupted boy, Cathy utters the most soulstirring admission of love and erotic desire in all of literature:

My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger; I should not seem a part of it. . . . Nelly, I am Heathcliff!

(p. 80)

Here is a love that defies not only the rules of mankind, but the rules of heaven:

If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable. . . . I dreamt once that I was there ... heaven did not seem to be my home, and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on top of Wuthering Heights, where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret. . . . I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven. . . .

(p. 78)

And yet, hoping for power and wealth for herself and Heathcliff, she does exactly that. To the modern reader, Cathy can seem headstrong and foolish, but she, like Heathcliff, is a divided soul, torn between what she truly desires and what a woman of her time and place should want. When Heathcliff returns to find that Catherine has indeed married Edgar Linton and that the fortune he earned to win her is useless, he is embittered and quick to seek revenge. He is becoming the other Heathcliff, the dark, disturbed specter who seeks only retribution. He marries Linton’s naive sister, Isabella, the deluded creature who believes she knows who Heathcliff is, yet sees nothing of his true self.

Cathy, on the other hand, though nearing death, ruined by nature and by circumstance, clearly understands that this twisted Heathcliff is not the same person she fell in love with: "That is not my Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me—he’s in my soul (p. 155). As for Heathcliff, even Cathy’s death cannot extinguish the single unwavering thread in his life: his great love for her. I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul" (p. 162).

Power corrupts in the world of Wuthering Heights. The notion of class and all it implies is the subtext of the novel, and struggle is everywhere: between the ruling class and the disenfranchised, between men and women, between servants and masters, between man and nature. In the first half of the novel, a pure love is torn apart by class distinctions. Cathy marries Linton in search of power, both socially and economically, in order to help Heathcliff. It is the uses and misuses of power that set in motion the action that will define the present and the future. In the first half of the novel, the cruelty of the social rules and regulations of civilized society induce Heathcliff to seek revenge. In the second half, revenge is put forth; in Heathcliff’s hands, there is the destruction of that civilized, but unfair, world. In repayment for Hindley’s treatment of him, Heathcliff turns Hindley’s son, Hareton, into his own servant. But this abasement of the Earnshaw line fails to bring Heathcliff any more satisfaction than does his humiliation of the young Catherine, whom he forces to marry his progeny, Linton, in order to gain control of Thrushcross Grange. Against the backdrop of degradation and cruelty, young Catherine manages to educate Hareton and in doing so initiates a rebuilding of the civilized world. As Heathcliff wastes away and Hareton and the second Catherine fall in love, a more fair and even sort of world is formed, one that, for many readers, is also a far less interesting section of the tale, but one that brings the story full circle in theme and in structure.

When Heathcliff, the orphan, manages to get his hands on all of the property belonging to the two families, the orphan becomes the master, and in the process, he is ruined. He has become antisocial, selfish, jealous—a man willing to destroy himself in order to destroy others. And yet we understand the humanity of this fierce, pitiless, wolfish man (p. 99) precisely because we know his emotional history. We have seen the cruelty heaped upon him by Hindley. We have been witness to the unfair limits of his place in society and the uncivilized manner in which he has been treated in the civilized world. This is the beginning of the psychological novel, in which we understand how the protagonist’s history and inner life combine to make him the man that he is.

The issue of identity reverberates throughout the novel. Who is Heathcliff? What is the true nature of Cathy’s desire? Written on a window ledge at the Heights are the names Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Heathcliff, Catherine Linton. Read forward, these names outline the story of the first Catherine, Heathcliff’s beloved. Read backward, they follow the story of the second Catherine, her daughter, who is born a Linton, marries a Heathcliff, and then finds love with Hareton Earnshaw. The shifting nature of personal identity and the powerful result of erotic attachment can be read in this list of names. One person, yet another. A man who is both the beloved and the harbinger of ruin. A woman who is both real and a ghost, who gives and yet denies love. The dual nature of humanity is echoed in the structure of the novel and in the questions Brontë raises and never answers. In Wuthering Heights, are we privy to a nightmare or a dream? Is Heathcliff’s love for Catherine the stuff of heaven or hell? Are we given a proper history of the characters? Or is the past transmogrified and rewritten by Nelly, by Lockwood, and perhaps by the players in the drama themselves?

It is no wonder that this visionary tale, so complicated in form, structure, and psychology, was so misunderstood by early critics. The reviews were generally dismal, and reviewers were often repulsed by the characters and the action. In January 1848, a reviewer in the Atlas declared:

Wuthering Heights is a strange, inartistic story. There are evidences in every chapter of a sort of rugged power—an unconscious strength—which the possessor seems never to think of turning to the best advantage. The general effect is inexpressibly painful. We know nothing in the whole range of our fictitious literature which presents such shocking pictures of the worst forms of humanity. . . . There is not in the entire dramatis personae a single character which is not utterly hateful or thoroughly contemptible. If you do not detest the person, you despise him; and if you do not despise him, you detest him with your whole heart.

The reaction to Wuthering Heights was so intense, the debate over its merit so heated, that Charlotte Brontë wrote a preface to the 1850 edition to resolve the history and mystery of authorship after Emily’s death. In essence, she was also writing an apology of sorts, doing her best to explain the brutality and beauty of Wuthering Heights:

Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master—something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. . . . Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you—the nominal artist—your share in it has been to work passively under dictates you neither delivered nor could question—that would not be uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor changed at your caprice. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame.

It is Emily Brontë’s imagination that is the true hero of Wuthering Heights. Her unearthly ability to be inside a character, and to allow the reader to feel that character’s fears and desires, is a triumph of the greatest order. Brilliant and brutal, a dark and vivid dream, Wuthering Heights presents us with nothing less than a map of the soul. The mesmerizing world of the moors, so like the subconscious of a human being, contains all elements: natural and supernatural, the real world alongside the dreamworld, erotic love as well as the practical domain of domestic life. At the close of the novel, Heathcliff and Cathy are spiritually reunited in death, but ultimately, it is the power and originality and raw beauty of Emily Brontë’s storytelling that lives on. However circumspect her personal life, Emily Brontë knew humanity at the deepest level. In creating this single work of genius she has left behind an entire universe, a remarkable work of imagination that has the power to move, to illuminate, and to astound at each and every reading.

—Alice Hoffman

Chapter 1

1801—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist’s Heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name.

Mr. Heathcliff? I said.

A nod was the answer.

Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant, sir. I do myself the honour of calling as soon as possible after my arrival, to express the hope that I have not inconvenienced you by my perseverance in soliciting the occupation of Thrushcross Grange; I heard yesterday you had had some thoughts

Thrushcross Grange is my own, sir, he interrupted, wincing. I should not allow anyone to inconvenience me, if I could hinder it—walk in!

The walk in was uttered with closed teeth, and expressed the sentiment, Go to the Deuce; even the gate over which he leant manifested no sympathizing movement to the words; and I think that circumstance determined me to accept the invitation; I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself.

When he saw my horse’s breast fairly pushing the barrier, he did pull out his hand to unchain it, and then sullenly preceded me up the causeway, calling, as we entered the court.

Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood’s horse; and bring up some wine.

Here we have the whole establishment of domestics, I suppose, was the reflection, suggested by this compound order. No wonder the grass grows up between the flags, and cattle are the only hedge-cutters.

Joseph was an elderly, nay, an old man; very old, perhaps, though hale and sinewy.

The Lord help us! he soliloquised in an undertone of peevish displeasure, while relieving me of my horse; looking, meantime, in my face so sourly that I charitably conjectured he must have need of divine aid to digest his dinner, and his pious ejaculation had no reference to my unexpected advent.

Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling. Wuthering being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed; one may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. Happily, the architect had foresight to build it strong; the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones.

Before passing the threshold, I paused to admire a quantity of grotesque carving lavished over the front, and especially about the principal door; above which, among a wilderness of crumbling griffins and shameless little boys, I detected the date 1500, and the name Hareton Earnshaw. I would have made a few comments, and requested a short history of the place from the surly owner; but his attitude at the door appeared to demand my speedy entrance, or complete departure, and I had no desire to aggravate his impatience previous to inspecting the penetralium.

One step brought us into the family sitting-room, without any introductory lobby or passage; they call it here the house pre-eminently. It includes kitchen and parlour, generally; but I believe at Wuthering Heights the kitchen is forced to retreat altogether into another quarter; at least I distinguished a chatter of tongues, and a clatter of culinary utensils, deep within; and I observed no signs of roasting, boiling, or baking, about the huge fireplace; nor any glitter of copper saucepans and tin cullenders on the walls. One end, indeed, reflected splendidly both light and heat from ranks of immense pewter dishes, interspersed with silver jugs and tankards, towering row after row, on a vast oak dresser, to the very roof. The latter had never been underdrawn: its entire anatomy lay bare to an inquiring eye, except where a frame of wood laden with oatcakes and clusters of legs of beef, mutton, and ham, concealed it. Above the chimney were sundry villainous old guns, and a couple of horse-pistols: and, by way of ornament, three gaudily painted canisters disposed along its ledge. The floor was of smooth, white stone; the chairs, high-backed, primitive structures, painted green; one or two heavy black ones lurking in the shade. In an arch under the dresser, reposed a huge, liver-coloured bitch pointer, surrounded by a swarm of squealing puppies; and other dogs haunted other recesses.

The apartment and furniture would have been nothing extraordinary as belonging to a homely, northern farmer, with a stubborn countenance, and stalwart limbs set out to advantage in knee-breeches and gaiters. Such an individual seated in his armchair, his mug of ale frothing on the round table before him, is to be seen in any circuit of five or six miles among these hills, if you go at the right time after dinner. But Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living. He is a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman: that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire; rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome figure; and rather morose. Possibly, some people might suspect him of a degree of underbred pride; I have a sympathetic chord within that tells me it is nothing of the sort; I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling—to manifestations of mutual kindliness. He’ll love and hate equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or hated again. No, I’m running on too fast: I bestow my own attributes over liberally on him. Mr. Heathcliff may have entirely dissimilar reasons for keeping his hand out of the way when he meets a would-be acquaintance, to those which actuate me. Let me hope my constitution is almost peculiar; my dear mother used to say I should never have a comfortable home; and only last summer I proved myself perfectly unworthy of one.

While enjoying a month of fine weather at the seacoast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I never told my love vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears; she understood me at last, and looked a return—the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame—shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp. By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.

I took a seat at the end of the hearthstone opposite that towards which my landlord advanced, and filled up an interval of silence by attempting to caress the canine mother, who had left her nursery, and was sneaking wolfishly to the back of my legs, her lip curled up, and her white teeth watering for a snatch.

My caress provoked a long, guttural snarl.

You’d better let the dog alone, growled Mr. Heathcliff in unison, checking fiercer demonstrations with a punch of his foot. She’s not accustomed to be spoiled—not kept for a pet.

Then, striding to a side door, he shouted again.

Joseph!

Joseph mumbled indistinctly in the depths of the cellar, but gave no intimation of ascending; so his master dived down to him, leaving me vis-à-vis the ruffianly bitch and a pair of grim shaggy sheep dogs, who shared with her a jealous guardianship over all my movements.

Not anxious to come in contact with their fangs, I sat still; but, imagining they would scarcely understand tacit insults, I unfortunately indulged in winking and making faces at the trio, and some turn of my physiognomy so irritated madam, that she suddenly broke into a fury, and leapt on my knees. I flung her back, and hastened to interpose the table between us. This proceeding roused the whole hive. Half-a-dozen four-footed fiends, of various sizes and ages, issued from hidden dens to the common centre. I felt my heels and coat-laps peculiar subjects of assault; and, parrying off the larger combatants as effectually as I could with the poker, I was constrained to demand, aloud, assistance from some of the household in re-establishing peace.

Mr. Heathcliff and his man climbed the cellar steps with vexatious phlegm; I don’t think they moved one second faster than usual, though the hearth was an absolute tempest of worrying and yelping.

Happily, an inhabitant of the kitchen made more dispatch: a lusty dame, with tucked-up gown, bare arms, and fire-flushed cheeks, rushed into the midst of us flourishing a frying-pan; and used that weapon, and her tongue, to such purpose, that the storm subsided magically, and she only remained, heaving like a sea after a high wind, when her master entered on the scene.

What the devil is the matter? he asked, eyeing me in a manner I could ill endure after this inhospitable treatment.

What the devil, indeed! I muttered. The herd of possessed swine could have had no worse spirits in them than those animals of yours, sir. You might as well leave a stranger with a brood of tigers!

They won’t meddle with persons who touch nothing, he remarked, putting the bottle before me, and restoring the displaced table. The dogs do right to be vigilant. Take a glass of wine?

No thank you.

Not bitten, are you?

If I had been, I would have set my signet on the biter.

Heathcliff’s countenance relaxed into a grin.

Come, come, he said, you are flurried, Mr. Lockwood. Here, take a little wine. Guests are so exceedingly rare in this house that I and my dogs, I am willing to own, hardly know how to receive them. Your health, sir!

I bowed and returned the pledge, beginning to perceive that it would be foolish to sit sulking for the misbehaviour of a pack of curs; besides, I felt loath to yield the fellow further amusement at my expense, since his humour took that turn.

He—probably swayed by prudential considerations of the folly of offending a good tenant—relaxed a little in the laconic style of chipping off his pronouns and auxiliary verbs, and introduced what he supposed would be a subject of interest to me—a discourse on the advantages and disadvantages of my present place of retirement.

I found him very intelligent on the topics we touched, and before I went home, I was encouraged so far as to volunteer another visit tomorrow.

He evidently wished no repetition of my intrusion. I shall go, notwithstanding. It is astonishing how sociable I feel myself compared with him.

Chapter 2

YESTERDAY afternoon set in misty and cold. I had half a mind to spend it by my study fire, instead of wading through heath and mud to Wuthering Heights.

On coming up from dinner, however (N.B.—I dine between twelve and one o’clock; the housekeeper, a matronly lady, taken as a fixture along with the house, could not, or would not, comprehend my request that I might be served at five)—on mounting the stairs with this lazy intention, and stepping into the room, I saw a servant girl on her knees, surrounded by brushes, and coal scuttles, and raising an infernal dust as she extinguished the flames with heaps of cinders. This spectacle drove me back immediately; I took my hat, and, after a four miles’ walk, arrived at Heathcliff’s garden gate just in time to escape the first feathery flakes of a snow shower.

On that bleak hilltop the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb. Being unable to remove the chain, I jumped over, and, running up the flagged causeway bordered with straggling gooseberry bushes, knocked vainly for admittance, till my knuckles tingled, and the dogs howled.

Wretched inmates! I ejaculated mentally, you deserve perpetual isolation from your species for your churlish inhospitality. At least, I would not keep my doors barred in the daytime. I don’t care—I will get in!

So resolved, I grasped the latch and shook it vehemently. Vinegar-faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the barn.

Whet are ye for? he shouted. T’ maister’s dahn i’ t’ fowld. Goa rahned by th’ end ut’ laith, if yah went tuh spake tull him.

Is there nobody inside to open the door? I hallooed responsively.

They’s nobbut t’ missis; and shoo’ll nut open ’t an ye mak yer flaysome dins till neeght.

Why? Cannot you tell her who I am, eh, Joseph?

Nor-ne me! Aw’ll hae noa hend wi’t, muttered the head, vanishing.

The snow began to drive thickly. I seized the handle to essay another trial, when a young man without coat, and shouldering a pitchfork, appeared in the yard behind. He hailed me to follow him, and, after marching through a wash-house, and a paved area containing a coal-shed, pump, and pigeon-cote, we at length arrived in the huge, warm, cheerful apartment where I was formerly received.

It glowed delightfully in the radiance of an immense fire, compounded of coal, peat, and wood; and near the table, laid for a plentiful evening meal, I was pleased to observe the missis, an individual whose existence I had never previously suspected. I bowed and waited, thinking she would bid me take a seat. She looked at me, leaning back in her chair, and remained motionless and mute.

Rough weather! I remarked. I’m afraid, Mrs. Heathcliff, the door must bear the consequence of your servants’ leisure attendance; I had hard work to make them hear me!

She never opened her mouth. I stared—she stared also. At any rate, she kept her eyes on me in a cool, regardless manner, exceedingly embarrassing and disagreeable.

Sit down, said the young man gruffly. He’ll be in soon.

I obeyed; and hemmed, and called the villain Juno, who deigned, at this second interview, to move the extreme tip of her tail, in token of owning my acquaintance.

A beautiful animal! I commenced again. Do you intend parting with the little ones, madam?

They are not mine, said the amiable hostess, more repellingly than Heathcliff himself could have replied.

Ah, your favourites are among these! I continued, turning to an obscure cushion full of something like cats.

A strange choice of favourites! she observed scornfully.

Unluckily, it was a heap of dead rabbits. I hemmed once more, and drew closer to the hearth, repeating my comment on the wildness of the evening.

You should not have come out, she said, rising and reaching from the chimney-piece two of the painted canisters.

Her position before was sheltered from the light; now, I had a distinct view of her whole figure and countenance. She was slender, and apparently scarcely past girlhood: an admirable form, and the most exquisite little face that I have ever had the pleasure of beholding: small features, very fair; flaxen ringlets, or rather golden, hanging loose on her delicate neck; and eyes—had they been agreeable in expression, they would have been irresistible; fortunately for my susceptible heart, the only sentiment they evinced hovered between scorn and a kind of desperation, singularly unnatural to be detected there.

The canisters were almost out of her reach; I made a motion to aid her; she turned upon me as a miser might turn if anyone attempted to assist him in counting his gold.

I don’t want your help, she snapped; I can get them for myself.

I beg your pardon, I hastened to reply.

Were you asked to tea? she demanded, tying an apron over her neat black frock, and standing with a spoonful of the leaf poised over the pot.

I shall be glad to have a cup, I answered.

Were you asked? she repeated.

No, I said, half smiling. You are the proper person to ask me.

She flung the tea back, spoon and all; and resumed her chair in a pet, her forehead corrugated, and her red underlip pushed out, like a child’s, ready to cry.

Meanwhile, the young man had slung onto his person a decidedly shabby upper garment, and, erecting himself before the blaze, looked down on me, from the corner of his eyes, for all the world as if there were some mortal feud unavenged between us. I began to doubt whether he were a servant or not: his dress and speech were both rude, entirely devoid of the superiority observable in Mr. and Mrs. Heathcliff; his thick, brown curls were rough and uncultivated, his whiskers encroached bearishly over his cheeks, and his hands were embrowned like those of the common labourer; still his bearing was free, almost haughty, and he showed none of a domestic’s assiduity in attending on the lady of the house.

In the absence of clear proofs of his condition, I deemed it best to abstain from noticing his curious conduct, and, five minutes afterwards, the entrance of Heathcliff relieved me, in some