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He neither spoke nor loosed his hold for some five minutes, during which period he bestowed more kisses than ever he gave in his life before, I daresay: but then my mistress had kissed him first, and I plainly saw that he could hardly bear, for downright agony, to look into her face! The same conviction had stricken him as me, from the instant he beheld her, that there was no prospect of ultimate recovery there—she was fated, sure to die.
In this moment from Chapter 15, Heathcliff is as overjoyed to be with Catherine as he is agonized to know that she will soon die. This moment speaks to the profound suffering her death will cause him for the remainder of the novel.
‘You loved me—then what
right had you to leave me? . . . I have not broken your heart—you ¬ have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you—oh, God! wouldyou like to live with your soul in the grave?’
In Chapter 15, Heathcliff and Catherine’s cyclical conversation over who is to blame for her current condition underscores the idea that they are essentially the same person. Their love is such that they consider themselves halves of a whole.
About twelve o’clock that night was born the Catherine you saw at Wuthering Heights: a puny, seven-months’ child; and two hours after the mother died, having never recovered sufficient consciousness to miss Heathcliff, or know Edgar. The latter’s distraction at his bereavement is a subject too painful to be dwelt on; its after-effects showed how deep the sorrow sunk.
Catherine dies in Chapter 16 two hours after the premature birth of her baby, Cathy, whom Linton has met as a young woman in the present day. Edgar’s grief does not receive much description, a contrast to Heathcliff’s all-consuming anguish later in the text, which she describes as a “sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion.”
He recalled her memory with ardent, tender love…And he had earthly consolation and affections also. For a few days, I said, he seemed regardless of the puny successor to the departed: that coldness melted as fast as snow in April, and ere the tiny thing could stammer a word or totter a step it wielded a despot’s sceptre in his heart.
In Chapter 17, Nelly describes Edgar’s grief as a quiet melancholy; his memories of Catherine are fond and full of love. This characterization serves as a stark contrast to Heathcliff’s tumultuous, terrifying sorrow, and with his memories of Catherine that intermingle love and rage. Edgar, Nelly explains, did not have much regard for baby Cathy at first, as she reminded him of his late wife, but eventually he came to love and cherish her immeasurably.
‘I’ll be
very kind to him, you needn’t fear,’ he said, laughing . . . ‘my son is prospective owner of your place, and I should not wish him to die till I was certain of being his successor. Besides, he’smine , and I want the triumph of seeingmy descendant fairly lord of their estates . . . I despise him for himself, and hate him for the memories he revives!’
In Chapter 20, Heathcliff makes it clear he despises the weak and feeble Linton, and plans to use him to gain control of Thrushcross Grange. Heathcliff derives perverse pleasure from the idea of Linton, his progeny, ruling over their home after the way the Lintons treated him, but his ultimate plan is to take it for himself.
