Escortgamer Feb 05, PM If Heathcliff truly loved Catherine so much that he could only live in hell while she is dead, then why didn't he just kill himself to join her in the next world??? So perplexing! Well, he did. He wanted Catherine, but his heart craved vengeance too. If he'd committed suicide at the start of the novel, he wouldn't have been able to retaliate Hindley or make Linton suffer.
Once he's done that, at the end of the novel, he stops eating, and I guess he does so because he wants to die. Nelly didn't mention this, but I would deem it suicide, considering that he died of starvation. Write a comment Erika Feb 06, PM 0 votes. I never understood that either.
Like revenge by marrying his son seemed silly, but it did give him Wuthering Heights and Thurshcross Grange. On her 16th birthday, Cathy ends up at Wuthering Heights on an ill-fated walk with Nelly, during which they encounter Heathcliff, who reintroduces Cathy to her cousin.
When Edgar learns about this meeting, he forbids all further contact with the Heights. That evening, Nelly goes to Cathy's room and finds the girl crying. Believing that Cathy is crying because her father has forbidden her to go to the Heights in fact, the soft-hearted Cathy is crying for her cousin's sake, as he will wait in vain for her promised visit the next day , Nelly tells her:. Oh, fie, silly child! You never had one shadow of substantial sorrow, Miss Catherine. Suppose, for a minute, that master and I were dead, and you were by yourself in the world - how would you feel, then?
Compare the present occasion with such an affliction as that, and be thankful for the friends you have, instead of coveting more. With this platitude on being 'thankful for the friends you have', Nelly draws on a conventional 19th-century sentiment regarding the importance of family even though she is not related to Cathy and the fear of losing and thereby being separated from loved ones.
The family replaced both the traditional community and the individual of the late Middle Ages and early modern times. The fear of death, born of the fantasies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was transferred from the self to the other, the loved one.
But what the survivors mourned was no longer the fact of dying but the physical separation from the deceased. The fear of loss of members of her nuclear family would be particularly acute for Cathy, who has almost no human contact other than with her father and Nelly. Nelly's exploitation of such concerns to frighten the girl into forgetting about Linton seems particularly cruel - to both children. Nelly's threat is ultimately self-serving: Nelly is afraid of Heathcliff, but does not wish to be put to the inconvenience of having to keep too close a guard on Cathy.
Nelly is also concerned that she may lose her position at the Grange if she evokes Edgar's displeasure by failing to protect Cathy. Moreover, the reader knows that Nelly has not warned Edgar of Heathcliff's scheme. Nelly's duplicity and culpability are compounded when she later fails to alert Edgar about Cathy's clandestine correspondence with Linton. Presumably, she fails to tell Edgar about the letter-writing not because of Cathy's wishes but, rather, because doing so might land Nelly in trouble - earlier, when Heathcliff secretly paid visits to Catherine, for instance, Nelly did not mind telling Edgar about them, although she had to have known what her tale-bearing would mean for Edgar and Catherine's marriage and the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff, the disintegration of which is the cause of Heathcliff's desire for revenge.
Taking this into account, Nelly may indeed be 'the villain' of Wuthering Heights , as James Hafley asserts - or, at least, a villain, particularly in her unkind and negligent treatment of Cathy.
Later, on a walk on a chilly and damp evening with Cathy amongst the reapers who are gathering the last of the year's harvest, Edgar catches a cold that settles on his lungs and forces him to stay indoors for most of the autumn and winter that follow. Soon, Cathy starts to fear that her father will not get better. Nelly and Cathy discuss Edgar's poor health. When Cathy shows concern for her father and really fears that she will lose him, Nelly's response is again problematic, as well as revealing.
The housekeeper recounts their conversation to Lockwood:. I can't forget your words, Ellen, they are always in my ear. Earlier, Nelly attempted to manipulate Cathy to get her to stop crying about being kept from Linton by presenting the girl's grief as insignificant compared to the misery she would have to endure if she lost Nelly and Edgar and were left alone in the world - she drew on the possibility of Cathy's loss to frighten her.
Now that Edgar actually has fallen ill and Cathy fears that he will die, Nelly dismisses the girl's fear and plays on her guilt by admonishing her to 'be thankful' that her father is not seriously ill, but simultaneously frightens her with the threat that she will invoke harm by 'anticipat[ing] evil'. Nelly's earlier words haunt Cathy.
The housekeeper knows just as well as Cathy that Edgar may indeed die, but she neglects to assist Cathy in coming to terms with her father's impending death. Her rebuke that it is wrong to fear the event adds to Cathy's anxiety, showing that Nelly is as unfeeling now as she was before, when she drew on the girl's attachment to, and fear of, losing her loved ones to get her to forget about Linton. Nelly's comment, which Lockwood uncritically reports, is typical of the housekeeper's relating her tale in such a way as to present herself as 'the moral, rational hub of the tale, holding everything together' Whitley x.
Presumably, she depicts herself in this light to lend credibility to what she relates to Lockwood: she portrays Cathy as childish, impressionable, overly emotional and demanding, in order to draw Lockwood, as an adult male listener who is possibly less sympathetic to children's concerns, into acquiescing in Nelly's lukewarm support for Cathy later.
Her strategy appears to be successful, as Lockwood, who is 'gullible' and 'weak' Hafley , neither questions the truthfulness of Nelly's remarks about Cathy nor rebukes Nelly for the unsympathetic and unsupportive way in which she admits she reacted to Cathy's grief on this and other occasions.
Cathy disagrees with Nelly, asserting that it is not wrong of her to foresee her father's death, pointing to the death of her aunt, who was younger than her father. In this manner, Nelly reinforces 19th-century emphasis on the value of nursing:. In a characteristically Victorian adaptation of the moral assumptions underlying the previous century's cult of sensibility, the shedding of tears over human distress was not in itself sufficient to attest to one's benevolence but required instead the practical demonstration of compassion that nursing affords.
Bailin By responding in this way to Cathy's observation about Isabella's death, Nelly contrasts Edgar's situation with his sister's: she implies that Cathy need not concern herself over her father's well-being, because, unlike Isabella, he is neither alone nor without loved ones who can perform their duty towards him by nursing him back to health.
This is disingenuous: like everyone else in Gimmerton, with the exception of Edgar, Nelly knows little, if anything, about Isabella's illness and final hours. Moreover, both Frances and Catherine died under Nelly's care and Cathy is too inexperienced to tend Linton and make him a little more comfortable in the last days before his inevitable death from consumption.
Nelly thus again attempts to dismiss the girl's fears, which are not unfounded. Nelly mendaciously portrays herself as a reliable and competent nurse and servant, when her record tells a different story. Once again, Lockwood fails to register the inconsistency in Nelly's account, suggesting that he is not astute enough to perceive Nelly's unreliability, self-interest and incompetence when it comes to looking after Cathy and nursing.
Although Nelly might have set Cathy at ease by highlighting this contrast between Isabella's and Edgar's circumstances untruthful though her claim is , she cannot resist a didactic rider in the hope of nipping in the bud any ideas of future visits to Wuthering Heights:. Instead of comforting Cathy, Nelly threatens that Cathy might kill her father if she were 'wild and reckless' enough to continue to cry over Linton, increasing Cathy's misery, adding to the guilt and anxiety she already experiences at being torn between her love for her father and her affection for Linton.
This manipulation is again intended to protect Nelly's position at the Grange: Nelly's sinister insinuation that Cathy would be to blame if Edgar died diverts Cathy's and Lockwood's attention from Nelly's own inabilities and culpability, reinforcing the illusion of herself as sensible, knowledgeable and irreproachable.
This method of ensuring Cathy's compliance with Nelly's wishes amounts to blatant psychological blackmail and exploits Cathy's naivety, as the girl has hitherto been surrounded by love and her father's protection and has little sense that anyone might lie to her or wish her anything but good.
The possibility of losing Linton. Cathy is similarly manipulated by Heathcliff and, to a lesser degree, by Linton, who exploit her affection for Linton for their own objectives. Heathcliff's and Linton's manipulative behaviour and Cathy's and Nelly's responses to it shed some light on the characters of Heathcliff, Linton, Cathy and Nelly.
Heathcliff lets Cathy know that Linton is very sick and likely to die soon, hoping that her affection for Linton will compel her to visit the Heights. Accompanied by a reluctant Nelly, Cathy does what Heathcliff anticipated: she visits Linton. Both women see that Linton is very ill, but they react very differently to his plight.
Cathy's response to her cousin's suffering reveals the depth of her youthful capacity for empathy and sympathy. Her response is deeply emotional: she pities him and wishes to comfort him - the loving and humane response that should underpin the conventions surrounding care for the sick and dying. Nelly's reaction, on the other hand, is far more cynical, even heartless. Having witnessed Linton's tendency to complain and be selfish, Nelly quickly begins to dislike him.
As Nelly later reports to Lockwood, she and Cathy discuss Linton on their way back to the Grange after their visit, and when Cathy asks her whether she likes Linton, she exclaims:. However, instead of tactfully alerting Cathy to these disagreeable qualities in Linton in order to steel her against his emotional blackmail, she horrifies the girl by expressing an utter disregard for Linton's life, describing his imminent death - or 'drop[ping] off' - as a 'small loss to his family'.
Moreover, she contradicts herself, now dismissing the 19th-century duties towards the dying that she herself implied earlier, in unfairly dismissing Cathy's concern about Edgar. She thus alters her stance on issues whenever it suits her. The scene suggests that, at best, Nelly tends to be 'self-contradictory' Tytler , and at worst, colludes, wittingly or unwittingly, in Cathy's future suffering at Heathcliff's hands.
She thus inadvertently reveals that she knows how much her words upset and hurt Cathy, but she does not appear to feel any remorse at her own callous if not vindictive remarks.
By her own admission, she bullies Cathy by drawing on her affection for Linton. Again, Lockwood appears to be uncritical of Nelly's narrative, as he does not reprimand her for her cruelty, and uncritically accepts her version of events.
Subsequently, when Nelly's illness keeps her in bed for 3 weeks, Cathy begins to visit Linton. When she finds out about Cathy's visits to Linton, Nelly, angry about being disobeyed, tells Edgar, who forbids Cathy to go and see Linton again.
These symptoms are typical of advanced tuberculosis. It caused fever and cough with slow progression to weakness, weight loss, increasing shortness of breath and, towards the end, coughing up of blood. The consequence of this illness was understood by the physicians and the general public and the inevitability of the outcome was accepted.
Considering the prevalence of this disease, Nelly may be assumed to know that the 'coughing up of blood' indicates that the illness is well advanced and that Linton's death is imminent. Her failing to tell Edgar about this reveals not so much a tendency to be 'slow-witted' or 'uncomprehending', as Tytler supposes, but a lack of feeling. Given that Edgar honoured his dying sister's wishes, acting in keeping with 19th-century thought concerning duty towards the dying and attachment to loved ones, he might have attempted to find a way to let Cathy see her cousin, had he known about Linton's declining health.
By keeping this information to herself, then, Nelly deprives Cathy and Edgar of the chance to support and care for their dying relative.
Her actions expose her own hypocrisy again, considering the views she expressed earlier on the importance of caring for the dying. Nelly's failure to alert Edgar to Heathcliff's plan to have Cathy marry Linton, combined with her silence on the imminence of Linton's death, makes her partly to blame for the eventual success of Heathcliff's strategy.
Persuaded both by Cathy and by Linton, with whom he has established a regular correspondence, Edgar agrees to let the cousins meet at some distance from the Heights from time to time, but this well-intended concession allows Heathcliff cynically to exploit Edgar's decency and Cathy's innocent sympathy. Because the boy is dying, Heathcliff has to force the marriage through as quickly as possible if he hopes to gain access to Cathy's future inheritance.
To do this, he terrorises Linton, in ways that are never described in detail, to ensure that his son is so afraid of him that Linton will do whatever he demands. During one of Cathy's visits to Linton, Heathcliff arrives and Linton is instantly overcome with such terror that he can barely stand up.
As a result of her sympathy for her terrified cousin, Cathy cannot bring herself to refuse Heathcliff's request, knowing a refusal will increase Linton's anxiety and subject him to further abuse at Heathcliff's hands.
Once they are at Wuthering Heights, however, Heathcliff imprisons Cathy and Nelly, and tells them that he will let them go only if Cathy marries Linton. In this manner, then, Heathcliff unscrupulously exploits Cathy's affection for Linton. Geerken claims that Heathcliff's:. This may be true, but it is made clear that Heathcliff is willing to abuse his own son if doing so will help him gain possession of the Grange. She is distraught that she is dying and Edgar has not come to her, begging forgiveness.
In a state of delirium, Catherine talks about her childhood with Heathcliff and speaks of her impending death. When Nelly refuses to open the window, Catherine staggers to it, throws it open, and claims to see Wuthering Heights. In her next breath, she speaks of being buried but not at rest until she is with Heathcliff. Edgar finds Catherine in such a weakened condition and admonishes Nelly for not calling him sooner.
She in turn goes to seek medical attention. During this same night, Isabella runs away with Heathcliff. The doctor arrives and predicts that Catherine will not survive this illness. Edgar, when hearing about his sister's actions, says she is now a sister in name only.
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