Summary: Chapter IX
Heathcliff . . . shall never know
how I love him . . . he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls
are made of, his and mine are the same. . . .
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Nelly is in the midst of hiding Hareton from Hindley when
Hindley bolts in and seizes the boy. Stumbling drunkenly, he accidentally drops
Hareton over the banister. Heathcliff is there to catch him at the
bottom of the stairs.
Later that evening, Catherine seeks out Nelly in the kitchen
and confides to her that Edgar has asked her to marry him, and that
she has accepted. Unnoticed by the two women, Heathcliff listens
to their conversation. Heathcliff hears Catherine tell Nelly that
she cannot marry him because Hindley has cast him down so low; to marry
him now would be to degrade herself. Heathcliff withdraws in a rage
of shame, humiliation, and despair, and thus is not present to hear
Catherine say that she loves him more deeply than anything else
in the world. She says that she and Heathcliff are such kindred spirits
that they are essentially the same person. Nonetheless, she insists,
she must marry Edgar Linton instead.
That night, Heathcliff runs away from Wuthering Heights. Catherine
spends the night outdoors in the rain, sobbing and searching for
Heathcliff. She catches a fever, and soon she nears death. The Lintons
take her to Thrushcross Grange to recuperate, and Catherine recovers.
However, both Mr. and Mrs. Linton become infected and soon die.
Three years later, Catherine and Edgar marry. Nelly transfers to
Thrushcross Grange to serve Catherine, leaving Hareton in the care
of his drunken father and Joseph, the only servant now remaining
at Wuthering Heights.
Noticing the clock, Nelly again interrupts her narrative,
saying that it is half past one, and that she must get some sleep.
Lockwood notes in his diary—the same book in which he has set down
Nelly’s story—that he, too, will go to bed now.
Analysis: Chapters VI–IX
In this section, Nelly brings to conclusion the story
of Heathcliff and Catherine’s childhood, with Heathcliff leaving
Wuthering Heights the night Catherine decides to marry Edgar Linton.
In the climactic scene in which Catherine discusses with Nelly her
decision to marry Edgar, Catherine describes the conflict between
her love for Heathcliff and her love for Edgar. She says that she
loves Edgar because he is handsome, rich, and graceful, and because
he would make her the greatest lady in the region. However, she
also states that she loves Heathcliff as though they shared the
same soul, and that she knows in her heart that she has no business
marrying Edgar. Nevertheless, her desire for a genteel and socially
prominent lifestyle guides her decision-making: she would marry
Heathcliff, if Hindley had not cast him down so low.
Heathcliff’s emotional turmoil is due in part to his ambiguous class
status. He begins life as a lower-class orphan, but is raised to the
status of a gentleman’s son when Mr. Earnshaw adopts him. He suffers
another reversal in status when Hindley forces him to work as a
servant in the very same household where he once enjoyed a life of
luxury. The other characters, including the Lintons and, to an extent,
Catherine—all upper-class themselves—prove complicit in this obliteration
of Heathcliff’s hopes. Inevitably, the unbridgeable gap in Catherine’s
and Heathcliff’s social positions renders their fervent romance
unrealizable on any practical level.
