The novel Wuthering Heights was published by Emily Bronte in 1847, and it is considered to be one of the best-written novels of the Victorian Age. Emily Bronte published the novel under the pseudonym of Ellis Bell. “In the century since its publication, Wuthering Heights, like the play of Shakespeare with which it has often been compared, has been the subject of many diverse criticism and interpretations.” (Watson 87).
The theme of hatred singularly stands out in the novel, and the momentum of the events is ingenuously weaved around it. The depiction of cruelty and passion, so well fused into the single theme of hatred, very much resembles the themes of the Greek Tragedies. It is this very quality that makes the novel stand out in English literature.
Heathcliffe, the prime character of the novel, is depicted as the source of the hatred that spurns the novel. It is the intense hate that he holds against the Earnshaws and the Lintons that make him carry out such actions, which ultimately ruins the two families, and heathenish ghosts are left to haunt the center stage of the novel, the Wuthering Heights.
The hate element enters the novel when the young lad Heathcliff is first brought to the household by the Old master Mr. Earnshaw. Hindley, the son of Mr. Earnshaw resentful of his father’s protective attitude towards Heathcliff. As the narrator of the novel, Nelly Dean, relates, “…the young master had learned to regard…Heathcliff as a usurper of his parent’s affections and his privileges…” (Bronte 46). The hatred Hindley had towards Heathcliff made him ill-treat the boy when he came to inherit Wuthering Heights when his father expired, and in a way transposed the passion into the heart of a boy, who was, as Nelly Dean plainly describes him, “…was not insolent to his benefactor, he was simply insensible; though knowing perfectly the hold he had on his heart, and conscious he had only to speak and all the house would be obliged to bend to his wishes.” (Bronte 47).
The hate that was imbibed in the Moorish and heathenish character of Heathcliff takes a more tormented character when his only ally and companion Catherine, sister of Hindley, decides to marry a young and prosperous boy called Edgar Linton. Heathcliff departs from Wuthering Heights only to return as a man of some means later so that he can revenge for the betrayal played upon him by Catherine. To complicate the situation, he entices Isabella, sister of Edgar Linton, and when confronted about it by Edgar, he gives vent to the immense hatred he holds against the man by saying, “I’ll crush his ribs in like a rotten hazel-nut before I cross the threshold! If I don’t floor him now, I shall murder him some time…” (Bronte 108).
Heathcliff’s hatred for Edgar and intense passion for Catherine (which borders between love and hatred), expressed by him during her illness: “I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer- but yours! How can I?” (Bronte 144). Torn between such an intense desire he elopes with Isabella. Heathcliff uses Isabella as a tool to torment Catherine and complete his revenge on Edgar. The waste he puts Isabella’s love to, as she asserts “I gave him my heart, and he took it and pinched it to death, and flung it back to me,” (Bronte 152), turns her love into intense hatred.
The plot takes a new turn when Catherine expires after giving birth to a baby girl, later christened Catherine. The passing away of Catherine adds a new furor to the revenge-seeking soul of Heathcliff. It distorts his countenance to such an extent that he drives Isabella to flee Wuthering Heights, and in this flight, she falls ill and gives birth to a frail baby boy-Linton. The birth of two people is hence countenanced in the plot out of sheer hatred, in Heathcliff and Isabella’s case, and out of indifference (almost resembling hatred) in Catherine’s case. The third character who assumes an important role here is the son of the deceased Hindley, Hareton. The hate theme of the novel, with its unlikely human passion, is given fresh vigor surrounding the three characters, whom fate ties and brings together.
After Catherine’s death, Edgar dotes all his love on young Cathy. But Heathcliff’s evil design makes him use his own son, Linton, as a tool against Edgar and avenge his loss of Catherine to Edgar’s hand. Thus he plans his move “My design is as honest as possible…That the two cousins may fall in love and get married…his property would go to me, but to prevent disputes, I desire their union and am resolved to bring it about.” (Bronte 185). The property was just an excuse for Heathcliff; his main intention was to inflict the pain of loss on Edgar and make him lose Cathy, a part-flesh and blood- of Catherine. He avenges his humiliation in the hands of Hindley by treating his son, Hareton, in the same manner as he was treated by Hindley. He thus ruminiscitates, “Do you know that twenty times a day, I covet Hareton, with all his degradation?” (Bronte 187). This seems to satisfy his revenge on the father of the son, Hindley, who had treated him so.
Fulfilling Heatcliff’s design, young Cathy marries her cousin Linton after her father’s death. This is where Heathcliff seeks reconciliation with his unresting spirit, eager for revenge. The marriage, however, proves futile because hatred undertook a new form with the fate of mutual hatred entangled themselves (that of Heatcliff’s for Cathy and Hareton, that of Cathy for Heathcliff and Hareton, and that of Hareton for Heathcliff) at the fateful hearth of Wuthering Heights.
Hate this so far weaves the characters, and their fates are brought together in the most dramatic manner. The somber atmosphere gives the unnaturally cruel character of Heathcliff a justification. Through his venomous hatred, he brings many fates together and pours his venom into their lives. But it brings him no satisfaction as he later laments, “I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.” (Bronte 268). Though hate weaves the plot of the story, it, however, ends with the happy note where all the wrongs done by Heathcliff to the cosmic order were restored by the happy union of two lovers, as phantoms and as living beings.
Bibliography
Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights. England: Cox &Wyman Ltd., 1847.
Watson, Melvin R. “Tempest in the Soul: The Theme and Structure of Wuthering Heights.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1949): 87-100.