Social Classes in Wuthering Heights

Social Classes in Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights, a gothic novel written by Emily Bronte in the early

nineteenth century, describes the conflict and the passionate bond

between Catherine Earnshaw and her rough but romantic lover,

Heathcliff. In the beginning of the book, Heathcliff, an orphan is

made a part of the Earnshaw family. This adoption is not readily

accepted by the older brother, Hindley, who sees the new child as a

rival to his claim of dominance in the family. However, Catherine, the

sister is quickly attracted to young Heathcliff, so different from

anyone she had ever known. As the two grow older, Heathcliff finds

himself falling in love with Catherine. Mr. Earnshaw soon dies,

leaving Hindley in charge of the Wuthering Heights manor. Hindley

treats Heathcliff abusively as revenge for taking his spot in the

family. Heathcliff accidentally overhears a conversation between

Catherine and Nelly (the maid) where Catherine says that it would

degrade her to marry Heathcliff. After hearing this, Heathcliff

strives to make himself more acceptable to Catherine by moving up in

the social system. Emily Bronte herself grew up in rural English

society where the classes were rigidly segregated. By making the plot

of her novel the impossible (for those times) love between an orphan

and the daughter of a well to do landowner, she is clearly suggesting

that social classes were not meant to be set in stone - that people

could move about them and in doing so they could create a stronger,

more genuine and honest society. She seems to want to show that love

is possible between the social classes, a love that is enduring and

real.

Bronte takes her argument so far as to appear to show Heathcliff's

challenge...

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...tory ends tragically. He gains the wealth

needed to achieve social standing, but in so doing he destroys himself

and his family, including Catherine's daughter whose own happiness he

disregards. Instead of the love that he wanted so much, he finds that

others now fear him and his anger.

Bronte again is telling the readers a moral lesson, to follow the

heart and one's deepest desires, ignoring what society tells you is

the only 'right' way to lead your life. Only in death can Heathcliff

and Catherine be free again as when they were children, to love one

another no matter what others think of them. She suggests that in

death they have at last freed themselves from society's restrictions,

and can finally be together again, walking along the moors, as they

did when they were children, and ignorant of the unspoken 'rules'

which would keep them apart in life.