Rafael’s Comment on Chapter 4

Right at the beginning of this chapter the reader is confronted with a series of new information about the two houses and their past residents. Like I predicted, Lockwood ended searching for more information with his servants, and easily learned a lot. We also know now that at least 18 years ago, Catherine was still alive. And it’s clear that she died married to Linton. The question of how Heathcliff gets his money is raised and it was also established that he probably has some sort of emotional attachment to the Wuthering Heights manor, since he could easily live in a much better place. It was also interesting to know that Mrs. Heathcliff’s first name is also Catherine and she is actually Catherine’s daughter. Which makes me wonder is she was the Catherine Heathcliff, whose name was written on Catherine’s room in Wuthering Heights. And her husband was actually not Catherine’s son with Heathcliff, but the son of Heathcliff with Mrs. Linton, who turned out to be Heathcliff’s actual wife. This was really strange. How did Heathcliff end up marrying the sister of the husband of his beloved Catherine? But it is curious that if Heathcliff and Catherine couldn’t be together, at least their sons could. But I still wonder why Catherine Heathcliff is so unhappy? And did she love her husband? And why does Heathcliff hate her so much? The reader also learned that Hareton Earnshaw is probably the son of Hindley and Frances Earnshaw. Which makes me wonder, why is he not the master of the house since his father, grandfather, and probably all the Earnshaws before him owned the house. How did Heathcliff obtain possession of the house? At least we now know how Heathcliff got to the house in the first place. When Mrs. Dean, Lockwood’s maid, mentions that Hareton was “cast out like an unfledged dunnock”, I started thinking about whom supposedly “cast him out”? Was it his own father maybe or Heathcliff? And why was he cast out? Was Heathcliff trying to achieve some sort of revenge over the Earnshaws?

For the first time as well, while Mrs. Dean is telling her story, we hear about Catherine Linton’s mother, Mrs. Earnshaw and about how good of a person Mr. Earnshaw was. When more about Mr. Earnshaw was told is started thinking that Mr. Earnshaw, Hindley, and Heathcliff are probably foils of each other; each having qualities that lack on the other. Particularly Mr. Earnshaw and his son, and how the goodness of the father makes the cruelty of the son seem even bigger.

The issue of race and class was also introduced now. There were a few passages before, when Mr. Heathcliff’s “inferior” background is mentioned, but only now does it become an issue and we see the importance of it. When Heathcliff first appears he is actually described as being as dark as if he “came from the devil” and is vehemently criticized by Mrs. Earnshaw for being a gypsy, and for quite a while he is referred to as “it”. It is then that we realize that race and class is a big deal. I personally think it’s a bit far-fetched that a rich, respectful, and relativity powerful man such as Mr. Earnshaw would simply pick up a gypsy child from the streets and raise it in such a way that he actually becomes the master of the house, but I can’t do anything besides going along with it. It is also interesting how it was established that since they were very young, Hindley despised Heathcliff – who got his name from a son who died in childhood -. In fact it was clear that everyone, even Mrs. Earnshaw disliked Heathcliff. The only two who lacked the hate for the young boy was Catherine – who was also very young at the time – and Mr. Earnshaw, who actually began to treat him like a child. This whole class struggle and the prodigious class jump performed by Heathcliff actually reminded me of the discussion we had about Realism, because if I’m not mistaken this is exactly one of the recurrent themes in realism.