How Is Catherine Presented In Wuthering Heights

In Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, the romance between Heathcliff and Catherine drives the story and causes untold pain and suffering for everyone in the story. Heathcliff’s motivations as a character are often unclear and left up for interpretation, especially after his beloved Catherine’s death. Towards the end of the novel there is a scene that is used to great success to showcase Heathcliff’s mental state before his death. However, it does much more than that. Through closely examining Bronte’s word choice and the images she invokes when Heathcliff is talking about Catherine’s corpse, we can decipher what has been driving Heathcliff throughout the whole of the novel. For context, this scene takes place after Heathcliff has been eating
less and acting strangely for a period of time. When Nelly goes to talk to him about his behavior and his inevitable death Heathcliff gives the following monologue:
I got the sexton, who was digging Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there, when I saw her face again—it is hers yet—he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change, if the air blew on it, and so I struck one side of the coffin loose, and covered it up—not Linton’s side, damn him! I wish he’d been soldered in lead—and I bribed the sexton to pull it away, when I’m laid there, and slide mine out too. I’ll have it made so, and then, by the time Linton gets to us, he’ll not know which is which” (Bronte 288).
While this is an extreme scene that may turn the stomach of some readers, it is a pivotal scene that gives us the clearest depiction of Heathcliff as a person that we get throughout the whole of Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff’s actions here are extreme, and Bronte uses this to conjure up some brilliant imagery.
Her work here is not in what is said, but what is implied between the lines. When Heathcliff describes unearthing her coffin “…when I saw her face again—it is hers yet—he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change, if the air blew on it” (288). In this one line Bronte gives us the entire visual story of the scene. The image she paints of Catherine’s decomposing corpse is truly unsettling without being gory or overly vulgar. She uses punctuation to paint a perfect picture of Heathcliff’s grieved reaction to seeing his beloved again after so long without drawing attention to it. Heathcliff continues to say “…I struck one side of the coffin loose…and I bribed the sexton to pull it away, when I’m laid there, and slide mine out too. I’ll have it made so, and then, by the time Linton gets to us, he’ll not know which is which” (288). Here we are given a few lines that show just how extreme Heathcliff’s love is. He wants everything of Catherine’s, to the point where becoming one with her body. The imagery is powerfully symbolic, conjuring up the image of their bodies decomposing, becoming one with the dirt around them and finally mixing together. Their physical selves finally able to be one just like their souls. These lines also give an impressive image of Heathcliff’s rivalry with Edgar for Catherine’s heart. The idea of Heathcliff wanting to become one with Catherine
before Edgar can shows so much of his possessiveness and pettiness, as well as the strength of his love. The word choice also plays a huge factor in the effectiveness of Bronte’s imagery. The word choice here is central to understanding both Heathcliff’s current mental state as well as his motivations as a character.
When he says, “I saw her face again” rather than saying “I saw her again” Bronte is giving us insight into just how fruitless his endeavors have been thus far (288). Since Catherine’s death Heathcliff has made it his mission to claim everything related to her, from Wuthering Heights to Thrushcross Grange, even arranging for his son Linton to marry her daughter. He has worked hard to obtain all of this, and yet it has left him feeling hallow. He has surrounded himself with reminders of his beloved, but he still does not feel her presence. He begins to have a crisis shortly after Linton and the second Catherine’s marriage, stops eating, and is driven to dig up Catherine’s grave. However, even after unearthing her corpse, he is still not satisfied. “I thought…I would have stayed there, when I saw her face again—it is hers yet…” (288.) From this we can gather that as he gazes at her decomposing corpse, he doesn’t see the woman he loved, just her body. This comes as a surprise to him, as can be implied from the moment of pause in his dialogue. It seems he thought in doing this he would clear his mind, to put all he’s done in perspective. It does being him peace, but perhaps not in the way he thought. As he looks at her body he realizes that the body in the ground is just another thing of hers, another reminder, not the real woman. Just as Catherine
herself believed her and Heathcliff’s souls to be made of the same material, Heathcliff believes that Catherine’s soul is the true her, and that it cannot be contained. With this in mind his actions up until now make sense. He has been trying to capture her soul by capturing the things associated with her, and when he tries to take her body back by force he comes face to face with the fact that she is gone, and it becomes apparent to him that the only way for them to be reunited is to die. This is when he decides it is time to die. This scene gives us a rare glimpse into Heathcliff’s mind, allowing us to really see how his thought process works. Through carefully chosen wording and powerful imagery Bronte manages to clearly explain his motives without being too surface with it. Heathcliff is a man ruined by love. He has spent his whole life trying to love this woman, and only in disgracing her grave to allow for their bodies to mend into one does his soul finally find peace with hers. He is a complex human, and without this passage his arc would not have been complete.