Wuthering Heights

By Greg -
The books in Wuthering Heights (Joseph's and those in the Linton's library) represent the civilized world, and civilization is defined by the perverse piety of Joseph, and the meek, feckless morality of the Lintons. Joseph, in his stubborn dissatisfaction with the world, is the distillation of the Earnshaws' morality, the family that took in an orphan (Heathcliff) that the civilized world (represented by the Lintons) had abandoned. Nelly, the housekeeper (not a nursemaid) who would oversee the last days of both families, was aligned with neither of them. She both loved and despised everyone equally. Her meddling was the meddling of an author with her characters, and her aim was to celebrate their willfulness, encourage and to chastise it, and, finally, to to see it stilled in the calm of surrender and the finality of death. Lockwood immersed himself in her story, and even fancied himself its hero. In the end, he slipped away through the back door rather than risk being disillusioned of that fantasy.

Nelly was infatuated by Heathcliff, and secretly nurtured the fantasy of being swept up into a world of his making, allegiant to none of society's absurdities. Lockwood, under her spell, returned to London, with a renewed longing for the "stir of society." In the end, Nelly is humming a happy tune while Joseph rails at her lack of piety. Good and evil are turned inside out. Joseph's fanatical fundamentalism is not good, and Nelly's self-righteous contentment is not evil, but neither are they the opposite. Joseph mourns the dead while Nelly dances on their graves, and both are equally false to their natures. But in the fusion of Catherine and Hareton, we, the readers, are given a conclusion that may satisfy us, a climax that reconciles the wild with the worldly and makes for what may fairly be called "a misanthrope's heaven".

Heathcliff's death is our own. The novel is finished, but in its serene conclusion we remain, eyes open and animated, dazzled by the images it aroused, the ghosts it stirred, and even Nelly can't close our eyes and bid us, like her characters, a permanent rest.

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