Heathcliff and Catherine’s struggle in the Wuthering Height Society
Introduction
‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Bronte is novel that looks at the Victorian age and the social and cultural aspects of that era. The book is set in the year 1801 a time when the old irregular farming culture that was based on a certainly male-controlled family life was staring to change defied by social changes. The people in this Victorian class had a different consciousness and un-natural ideal of propriety and this is what Bronte tries to bring out in her novel using the characters of Catherine and Heathcliff.
The struggle between the social classes is very well illustrated in the novel through the lives of Catherine and Heathcliff. It is very easy for readers to sympathize with Heathcliff who throughout his life was oppressed by a rigid class system. Throughout his life he does not experience a sense of parental care or love from the society except from Catherine who later betrays him, Heathcliff grows up with the perception that the society has no room for him and he basically classifies himself as an outcast (Meier 2013, p. 116). The main drive of the novel is class conflict, both Catherine and Heathcliff love each other but they do not have a chance to develop their love because of the society’s perception of matters of social class. Catherine and Heathcliff can be defined as creatures of the wild moorland because they fall in love with one another not caring about the conventional social standards (Como 2018, p. 134). Catherine at the beginning does not care about the race or origins of Heathcliff and she sees herself in him but this concept is later changed with her decisions to choose wealth over Heathcliff. It is the issue of social class and need to be recognized in the society that led Catherine to choose wealth over love for Heathcliff and she ends up marrying Edgar, an individual from a wealthy family rather than Heathcliff the person that she truly loves (Pykett 1993, p. 84).
This decision greatly widens the gaps between social classes; Edgar is a wealthy man who is highly regarded in the society while Heathcliff is a poor man who has no social status because he has no assets. Catherine chooses material wealth over love because she is more concerned about the way that the society will perceive her. She makes the decision to marry Edgar so that she will be classified as ‘the greatest woman of the neighbourhood’ (Bronte 1992, p. 94). Another illustration is with the Lintons that are relatively wealthy and they are very determined in keeping their gentry status and take great pains to prove their status through their behaviours. On the other hand the Earnshaws are in a different social status, they cannot even afford to have a carriage, they have very little land and their house resembles that of a poor farmer. Bronte greatly portrayed the different social classes through different environments as well as settings and this can be reflected by the different houses. Granges’ house is a mansion while Wuthering Heights is just as big but it is simpler as compared to Grange (Bronte 1992, p. 64).
The struggle between social classes is represented by the different settings in the novel where Heights is a depiction of simplicity while Grange is a depiction of wealth and each of the houses is associated with various behaviours that befit their description. A good illustration of this is when Catherine goes into the Grange and she describes her experience as a drastic change and she automatically changes her identity from a savage to a lady and she starts to see the difference between the Grange world and the world of Heathcliff (Bronte 1992, p. 96). On the other hand Heathcliff is a representation of the lower class, because he is not wealthy and does not hence qualify to possess qualities that the people at Grange have. It is however interesting that Bronte does not only concentrate only on the greed for wealth because Isabella chooses to marry Heathcliff for his personality and she loves him for who he is despite the fact that he is from a lower social class from hers. This was just a way of Bronte illustrating that the social classes were not as rigid as they looked. Through her novel, Bronte also tries to make a statement about the women in the novel and the issue of gender roles. In the 1800, women had no identity, and they had no respectable roles in the society rather than being housewives and mothers. The Victorian era however brought about the development of change and identity for women and this is evident from most of the female characters in the novel for instance Catherine, Nelly and the young Cathy who are defined as strong willed women with opinions (Cory 2005, p. 103).
Catherine as a major character is a central female essence that triumphs throughout the novel. She is a character that is controlled by fascination and her supreme fascination is her affection for Heathcliff which controls her life and offers it a sense of significance and tenacity. She is presented as a loving, gentle, affectionate, passionate but at the same time violent character. Her rebelliousness is brought out in her role as a daughter and an emotional wife at the Grange. She can be characterized as a wild daughter, one who does not yield to her father’s authority showing her feminine side of defying male control (Cory 2005, p. 88). She can further be described as a status-conscious social climber who makes a great contribution in destroying Heathcliff with her marriage to Edgar. Though Catherine dies before the ending of the novel, she still continues to rage in Wuthering Heights.
Heathcliff on the other hand can be described as the protagonist in the novel as he tries to fight the social class issue in the society that has rendered him to feel more like an outcast in the society. He is portrayed as a tormented spirit that is obsessed with his love for Catherine (Khair 2006, p. 90). After her death, Heathcliff is devastated and his lust for love is crushed and he turns his focus on revenge. As the novel is almost ending and Heathcliff is approaching his passing, he admits to Nelly the hold that Catherine had on his life "I cannot look down into the floor; her features are shaped in the flags...in every cloud, in every tree" (Bronte 1992, p. 187). The personality that is developed by Heathcliff in his adult life can be attributed to his childhood and it is formed as response to the deprivation of his childhood. Growing up he is constantly reminded of his lesser status an example is when he rejected and made fun of when he visits the Grange. This is further emphasized when he considered unfit to play with the Linton children and the last final condemnation is when Catherine chooses to marry Edgar over him because of his social status (Khair 2006, p. 110). Despite all this things, Heathcliff is proud and hardworking and he does not allow the society to determine his future. He is able to make something out of himself and even though he was brought up as a low class person, he works hard enough to acquire the gentleman title in this society (Meier 2013, p. 160). The character of Heathcliff as a child can be described as that of sullenness and fiery temper but as an adult he returns as a villain that is motivated by revenge and biased by the sense of the injustices that were done to him as a child. This later Heathcliff is characterized by an all-consuming desire for vengeance against those who maltreated him as well as his unification with Catherine his love (Pykett 1993, p. 88).
Conclusion
Both the characters of Catherine and Heathcliff try to defy the perceptions of the society that tries to shape their lives. Heathcliff is made to feel like an outcast because of his poverty state and the fact that he was adopted with no known history of his parentage. He tries to defy these perceptions by working hard and getting some wealth of his own, where he now gets to be recognized as a gentleman. Catherine on the other hand defies the society in her own way in defying the traditional gender roles that expected her to bow to everything that her husband and the society requested of her which helped her to become the dominant woman in the novel. Though Catherine and Heathcliff are able to defy the odds of the society, they still do not lead fulfilling happy lives because they did not fulfil their love for one another.
References
Brontë, E. (1992). Wuthering heights. Hong Kong, Oxford University Press.
Cory, A. L. (2005) ‘“Out of My Brother’s Power”: Gender, Class, and Rebellion in
Wuthering Heights’, Women’s Studies, 34(1), pp. 1–26. doi: 10.1080/00497870590903469.
Khair, T. (2006) “” LET ME IN—LET ME IN!”,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 42,
- 2, pp. 155-64
Meier, T. K. (2013) ‘Wuthering Heights and Violation of Class’, Bronte Studies, 38(4), pp.
309–312. doi: 10.1179/1474893213Z.00000000086.
Pykett, L, (1993) ‘Gender and Genre in Wuthering Heights’ in Stoneman, P. (ed.) Wuthering
Heights, New Casebooks, Basingstoke, Macmillan, pp. 86-99.
