The Literary Lamppost

Wuthering Heights: When Ghosts Need Therapy

• Caitlin and Ashley • Season 1 • Episode 5

Share episode

[00:00:00] Hi, and welcome to the Literary Lamp Post podcast, where we analyse books and see what we can learn from them. I'm Caitlin. I'm a math grad student, but I love English and I love analysing literature. And I'm Ashley, an assistant editor and writer. Today we are going to be discussing Emily Bronte's classic Wuthering Heights.

First of all, we would like to say That you don't actually have to have read Wuthering Heights to be able to follow along with our episode and understand the ideas that we're going to be talking about. In fact, we hope that our episode inspires you to go read it. Alright, let us begin then. Wuthering Heights was published in 1847.

And it's classified as a gothic novel, meaning it was designed to horrify and fascinate readers with elements of fear and, you know, death, but also romantic elements, suspense and very high [00:01:00]emotion. What did you think when you read it for the first time? Now, actually, this is the first time either of us have read this book.

We read it just last week. , honestly, I thought there were going to be more ghosts because You know, you hear about Wuthering Heights in pop culture and this, it's this really creepy, um, it's this really creepy book, but there were a lot less ghosts than I thought, and honestly I had a lot less sympathy.

For the characters, than I usually do when I read books. Yeah, I was expecting it to be a lot more sad. I've avoided it for a long time because I don't love reading sad books, but it didn't make me sad to read. It was kind of like, man, these poor pitiful characters and their horrible choices. Yeah, it wasn't really emotional or heart wrenching.

It was almost as if the reader was just an observer watching these. Um, characters kind of wreck their lives and you're just sitting there going, Oh wow, what's, what's going to happen next? And you're just totally enraptured by the story of [00:02:00] crazy people. Yeah. There was some Tumblr posts that really captured this feeling well, so we're going to share a few of them.

So the first one by user Pride Prejudice is as follows. I always recommend Wuthering Heights to people because it's such a unique book, in which none of the characters are even remotely likeable, and yet, you really can't wait to see where their BS is going to take them next. Running away from home? Cool!

Obsessing about revenge for the rest of your life? Hey, everyone needs a hobby! Forcing your kid and the neighbor's kid to get married? Sounds like a plan. Digging up your old lover's grave? Why the F not at this point? You're both pissed off yet fascinated. You will be miserable but love every second of it.

That's actually exactly how I felt when I was reading it. Another one from the same user goes, One of my favorite summaries about this book was given to me by an English major who said, Wuthering Heights is basically a book about a group of awful people who all made a secret promise to ruin as many lives as possible before they effed off and died, and by the end Heathcliff won with a 50 point lead.

[00:03:00] Marvellous. There's also a little review that we found, which rated it one out of five stars and said people are angry and then they die. So without further ado, let us begin Wuthering Heights. All right. So we are going to start off by giving some context and plot details so as to understand the story.

Now the plot of the story is relatively straightforward and the spoilers are really in the details of how the things come to be. And I'm going to give a trigger warning here. We are going to be discussing domestic violence and violence in romantic relationships as well as emotional abuse. And then we're going to move on to talking about power dynamics and the soulmate trope, intergenerational trauma, revenge, and ultimately how some of these characters heal from all of that.

Yeah, there's a lot to talk about in this book. But let's start off with a little bit of context, though we kind of do tell the whole story. The [00:04:00] intrigue in this book is how it all plays out, not just knowing the facts. So Wuthering Heights is the name of a manor in the English countryside and it's an old family home.

And the story is portrayed through the eyes of two outsiders. We have Nellie, who's the housekeeper and has been the housekeeper at Wuthering Heights The neighbouring manor of Thrushcross Grange for many years, telling the story of the last 25 ish years to a Mr. Lockwood, who is the new tenant at Thrushcross Grange.

Now the names in this book can be quite confusing. We're going to be very careful about how we name the characters in this episode. We'll be mostly calling them all by their first name. In the book, they often call them by their first, by their last. We're mentioning this a little bit later, but the names tend to overlap a lot, and so we will just be very specific.

So we've divided this book into three main parts. Part one is the start, the [00:05:00] setup of the whole story. . It begins with Mr. Lockwood spending the night at Wuthering Heights. Now, he knows nothing about the family. He knows no context.

He knows nothing of the family's backstory. He's very new, and he has a dream in which he encounters a ghost through the window. The iconic ghost of Wuthering Heights, if you know anything about this story, saying, I'm Catherine Linton, let me in, it's so cold! And he wakes up with this huge fright, goes back home to Thrushcross Grange, and he gets the story from Nellie, the housekeeper.

And that is basically the rest of the book. Nellie telling the story to Mr. Lockwood. The story starts when old Mr Earnshaw, the owner of Wuthering Heights, brings home an orphan, who he names Heathcliff, to his two children, Catherine and Hindley. Now Hindley ends up hating Heathcliff because Heathcliff is favoured by their father and takes away privileges [00:06:00] Hindley believes should be his, but Heathcliff and Catherine form this intense bond and they roam the moors together.

They have this wild childhood together, wild into their teen years. And then Mr Earnshaw dies and Hindley, out of spite, forces Heathcliff to be a servant. The bond between him and Catherine doesn't change though. At one point, Catherine spends some time at the neighbouring house, the Lintons, with children Isabella and Edgar.

And she becomes a refined young lady and she agrees to marry Edgar, telling Nellie that Heathcliff, though she loves him, is beneath her and it would degrade her to marry him. And Heathcliff overhears her saying this and is rightfully very upset, and he runs away and disappears for three years. And then we have Act Two, in which three years have passed and Heathcliff returns.

He's mysteriously wealthy, we never find out where he gets his money from, and he's educated. He takes over Wuthering Heights, he [00:07:00] ruins Hindley, and seduces and marries Edgar's sister Isabella purely out of spite. And, in order to one day take over Thrushcross Grange where Catherine lives. Now, Catherine at this point is very emotionally unstable, and all this conflict arises between her husband Edgar and Heathcliff, who throughout the book she considers her soulmate.

And she dies right after giving birth to her daughter, also named Catherine, who we are going to call Cathy 2. 0. Hindley then dies, ruined by Heathcliff, who has manipulated Hindley out of all of his money. And Heathcliff takes control of Hindley's son, Hairton, who's only about five years old and starts treating him like a servant.

And then finally we have Act Three, which focuses on the next generation and the resolution of this story. So Kathy 2. 0 grows up with just her father and Nellie. At [00:08:00] around age 12, she finds out that she has a cousin. Isabella, who ran away from Heathcliff due to his cruelty, had given birth to a son who was named Linton, and Linton was quite weak and sickly and not very strong.

Anyway, Isabella dies. Linton is brought to Wuthering Heights and after a few years pass, Heathcliff forces his son Linton to marry Kathy 2. 0 so he will inherit Kathy's money once Linton dies. And so Linton dies and Heathcliff takes over Kathy 2. 0's inheritance and forces Kathy 2. 0 to continue living with him.

Hairton, who Cathy Chippewa first hated because of his rough ways, because Heathcliff had been abusing him and treating him like a servant, and Cathy actually get really close. Heathcliff starts losing it, he starts seeing ghosts, seeing Catherine's face everywhere, he never got over her, he admits to digging up her coffin.

And soon after, he dies in a strange manner and is buried next to her, with the wood of their coffins open on either [00:09:00] side so that they are together. So stupid. What the fuck? Kathy 2. 0 and Hairton heal from what has happened to them, they end up getting engaged, and they move forward into a happy and healthy life.

There are all these rumours about the ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine haunting the Moors together. It does not sound like a very thrilling read, but I promise you, it's interesting. Alright, so Heathcliff is kind of the axis around which the story turns. In the first half of the book, he has a lot of violence and abuse done to him by Hindley.

And in the second half of the book, he turns around and is violent and abusive to everyone in his family and his violence in particular. Was something that was shocking to Emily Bronte's readers when the book was first published. According to Melissa Black's Very British History, the link to this resource is in our description, old British traditions widely held that a husband could actually strike his wife in [00:10:00] order to correct her.

as the husband was held legally liable for his wife's conduct. And this continued until roughly the mid 19th century. And in the latter half of the 19th century, so in the time after this novel was published, wife beating became a serious issue and the standard of treatment changed. Nonviolent correction took its place.

By 1857, cruelty was considered as part of grounds for divorce, but it was still a major issue in society, and one writer actually claimed at the time, there is not any class in the world so subjected to brutal personal violence as English wives. So this book was published right around that turning point where domestic violence emerged as a social concern.

All right, so let's just take a brief look at all of the relationships in the book. Most of them are abusive or violent in one way or another. First we have Hindley and Heathcliff. Foster brothers, right? So Hindley abuses Heathcliff terribly when they're growing up. He's [00:11:00] jealous of his father's treatment towards Heathcliff and he has his own prejudice for seeing Heathcliff as other.

For Heathcliff's background and identity is unknown and he's an outsider and Hindley uses that against him. Then we have Heathcliff towards Hindley in the latter part of the book. Heathcliff then becomes the abuser as revenge. At the start of the book, He actually tells Nellie, I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back.

I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do. I only wish I knew the best way. Let me learn and I'll plan it out. While I'm thinking of that, I don't feel pain. And then he follows through on his promises in the latter half of the book. And one major way that he does this is through his relationship with Hairton, who is Hindley's son.

I know, all these H names. So Heathcliff makes Hairton a servant in his own home. He deprives him of education and emotionally abuses him [00:12:00] after Hindley has died. And then we have the relationship between Heathcliff and his wife, Isabella. Isabella says, after Heathcliff has mistreated her and she has escaped from him, Catherine had an awfully perverted taste to esteem him so dearly, knowing him so well.

Monster! Would that he could be blotted out of creation and out of my memory. And then we have the relationship between Heathcliff and his own son, Linton. He emotionally abuses him terribly, he calls him weak and worthless, manipulates him, forces him to go beyond his strength, remember that Lynton was sick all the time, to fulfill his will, and Lynton turns out pretty horrible for all of this, and he doesn't really seem to have any good traits to begin with.

And then we have Heathcliff and Cathy 2. 0, who's Catherine's daughter. Heathcliff essentially kidnaps her and forces her to marry Linton so he can take control of her property and he hits her [00:13:00]repeatedly among other acts of cruelty. So, Heathcliff is pretty much violent and abusive to everybody in his life.

Yep. He engages in physical and emotional abuse to all of the characters. And the question is, why? Is he the villain or is he the victim? And we can see, actually, as the book progresses, that Heathcliff goes From being the victim to the villain, his behavior is not excused because of his past. Maybe it explains it to a degree, but that does not make his actions okay, and the book kind of takes that stance.

And then there's this final relationship that is really the core of the book. It is the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine. And their relationship is not physically violent for the most part, but it is very emotionally violent. Both of them talk about each other with these huge emotional feelings.

And as time [00:14:00] goes on, once Catherine gets married and Heathcliff comes back into her life, he unsettles her by coming to see her, and this brings on a mental illness that she ultimately dies from. Their final embrace is characterized as quite violent, although not abusively violent. And she dies soon after.

The book does not romanticize their relationship and we as the readers know that it's unhealthy and it's written so that you know. It's actually not the heart wrenching love story it's portrayed as, often in pop culture. They are very enmeshed, unhealthily so. He says, I cannot live without my life. I cannot live without my soul.

Several times they reiterate that they are the same person. Catherine says, I am Heathcliff. Not even like I'm like Heathcliff, but I am Heathcliff. So that brings us to the topic of the soulmate trope, which is very popular in romance novels, in fantasy, and Wattpad, if any of you went down that rabbit hole in [00:15:00] high school.

I went I went through a bit of a soulmate phase in high school, and Pinterest definitely fueled that in an unhealthy way, and I'm sure I came across this quote at least once back then. Yeah, and thought it was super romantic. And the quote we're talking about is, Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

And this is Catherine talking about Heathcliff. Sounds beautiful, doesn't it? But the context behind her words are incredibly problematic. And she's actually very well aware of Heathcliff's faults. She's able to articulate them to other people and she warns Isabella to not marry him. She still holds this false, idealised image of him in her head, and after Heathcliff displays violence, Catherine says, That's not my Heathcliff.

I shall love mine yet, and take him with me. He's in my soul. So the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff is abusive in that it's overtly [00:16:00] controlling and domineering on both sides. Which is not necessarily common, and it can be violent, there's a moment where he grasps her so tightly that he leaves bruises on her arms, and their final embrace is described as an embrace from which Nellie didn't think Catherine would ever be released alive from.

Heathcliff is described as greedy and jealous of Catherine. Yeah, and you know, I've talked a lot about Heathcliff, but Catherine was no picnic either. Less force and violence maybe, but very emotionally controlling and manipulative. She wants to frighten him and her own husband with threats of illness, her own death.

I thought it was interesting that she seems to see her own body as one of the only things that she can control and uses it in order to control others. And honestly, she's a spoiled brat who often seems to have zero feelings and sympathy for those around her. She laughs at others pain, while at the same time unable to deal with her own.

Yet, you know, Heathcliff still [00:17:00] loves her because she's his soul. And this raises a critique of the soulmate trope. If you believe you have a soulmate, you might stay with them through abuse, with that whole mindset of, there's no one else for me. And you think it's worth enduring terrible things because, oh, they're the only one for me.

And often in today's society, we have what we call the one. And while there's really nothing wrong with staying with someone and calling them your soulmate and the one, if it's healthy, the problem is when it transfers over to abusive relationships, when there's already this cycle where people feel as though they can't leave, you know, it's this cycle of hurting, apologies, and repeating, which can contribute to domestic violence.

So, some statistics regarding domestic violence in Australia today and the sources for this are in the description. One in four women and one in 14 men have experienced violence by an intimate partner [00:18:00] since the age of 15. One in four women and one in seven men had experienced emotional abuse by a current or previous cohabiting partner since the age of 15.

And 1 in 5 women and 1 in 16 men had experienced sexual violence since the age of 15. It's so sad, and the soulmate trope can actually contribute to romanticising domestic violence. Something that is extremely unhealthy but unfortunately prevalent in modern literature and pop culture. And a really good example of this can actually be found in The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Myers.

Now we haven't read Twilight, we also don't recommend it necessarily, but it's worth commenting on because the third book titled Eclipse is based on Wuthering Heights, and we did some research around this. The main character, Bella, says Wuthering Heights is her favourite novel, and Edward, who is her [00:19:00] vampire love interest, compares the two of them to Heathcliff and Catherine, which is majorly problematic as this is not a good relationship.

But yet, in these novels, their relationship is portrayed in a positive light. There was a study done by Victoria E. Collins and Diane C. Carmody. And, they say, a content analysis of the popular four book Twilight series provided evidence of behaviours and attitudes that are conducive to dating violence.

Cases of physical and sexual abuse, stalking, threats and intimidation were identified in the text. And it's all romanticised! For example, there's a lot of violence in their intimacy with Bella being left bruised after their encounters. And Emily Boyton in her essay, Comparing Wuthering Heights to Eclipse, says, Meier's word choice depicts Bella's bruises as beautiful embellishments to her skin, aestheticizing Edward's abuse as enhancing Bella's body [00:20:00] instead of injuring it.

And teenagers are reading these books. It seems Stephanie Meyer kind of, you know, missed the point of Wuthering Heights as a critique of violence and instead wrote these books. That could have the potential effect of glorifying that violence and retroactively glorifying the original novel Wuthering Heights and painting Heathcliff as this grand romantic hero, like Edward, which is so incredibly harmful.

It encourages people who identify with the soulmate trope to ultimately stay in abusive relationships. I genuinely think Emily Bronte would be rolling in her grave if she knew that this is how Wuthering Heights is being used today. I agree. So violence is often a way to express powerlessness and characters try to express and assert power in order to take back what they see as having been taken from them.

And Catherine and Heathcliff both fall into this pattern due to the [00:21:00] restraints that their society has placed on them. Catherine succumbs to societal expectations, she marries another man. Who she doesn't love, because she feels that she cannot marry Heathcliff. And Heathcliff's ability to express his own self is suppressed by his being other.

He is described as having dark hair, dark eyes. He's described as a gypsy, which is a slur for the Romani people, and a Laskar, which is the word for an Indian sailor or soldier. And in the book he wishes that he had light hair and eyes like Edgar, the man Catherine ultimately marries. And Heathcliff also doesn't have any family ties to give him status.

He spends his entire life trying to gain power by acquiring land and taking over from everyone. So being put down to a lower status in his childhood leads to this dynamic of him wanting more. [00:22:00] And more and never being satisfied and Nellie actually comments, It is strange, people should be so greedy when they are all alone in the world.

But I think Heathcliff is really just lashing out and trying to make sense of the power that was taken from him as a child. And his actions are a very twisted and unhealthy way of him trying to take that power back. And while Catherine and Heathcliff are in different social positions, they are both held back by people above them, so to speak.

Heathcliff by all others because of his origins, and Catherine because she is a woman in Victorian society who has to marry. Both end up incredibly unhappy and die in the midst of mental breakdowns. So the two of them are ultimately unable to cope with the challenges society has placed on them and their treatment of other people is an expression of this and unfortunately Violence is a [00:23:00]function of and a vehicle of trauma that is passed down from generation to generation.

So one of the ways Bronte portrays this is through their overlapping names. Catherine and Heathcliff share many of the same letters. And then first and last names are passed on and mixed up in other characters, and this is symbolic of the trauma overlapping. So Catherine's daughter, Cathy 2. 0, grows up overprotected and loved, and she falls straight into Heathcliff's trap of a marriage that she doesn't want because she cares about her cousin and she wants to make him happy.

Hairton, who is actually also Cathy, And Linton's cousin grows up mistreated and uneducated, and is kind of a symbol of the family dynamics being passed down to the next generation. And we can actually see that the violence of Heathcliff rubs off on Hairton. There's one instance where Heathcliff [00:24:00]tries to hang his wife's dog.

And Hairton mirrors that later in the novel by hanging a litter of puppies. This is unfortunately reflected in real life. Now it's very commonly believed that all maltreated children become perpetrators. I want to say first that's not completely true. There is not enough evidence for just that statement.

It's too simplified. There are a lot of other factors that go into intergenerational trauma. However, this being said. And I quote from a study. The rate of abuse among individuals with a history of abuse is approximately six times higher than the base rate for abuse in the general population. And obviously different people are going to be affected differently by their circumstances.

And we actually see this with Herten and Linton. Herten ultimately grows up to be a good, kind person, whereas Linton is the [00:25:00] opposite. And Herten is initially impacted in this negative way, but we see him recover from this later on. Now, the term intergenerational trauma is a bit of a blanket statement, often used without fully understanding, so we're going to try and break it down a bit.

So there's a saying, trauma is passed down generations until someone has the resources to deal with it. So not everyone has had in the past or has access to today, psychological support. For example, counselling. Severe trauma impacts emotional development and if someone doesn't have the words to express what's happened to them.

or resources available to help them if they did, or if someone simply doesn't have the capacity to process what's happened, they never heal. This impacts their relationships with their children and their children grow up often bearing the brunt of that lack of emotional [00:26:00] development. and inability to communicate or to talk about things, the lack of language to be able to grieve something, to have real conversations around something, and then it can get passed on to their children.

Often there's silence around trauma. This may bring on severe consequences, depression, alcoholism, even violence. Not saying every case, but unfortunately in many. So a real life significant example of intergenerational trauma and its effects here in Australia is what happened to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the 20th century.

Between 1910 and 1970, the government took children away from their families and sent them to boarding schools, otherwise known as missions. Under the guise of being trained for domestic service, but really in order to decimate the indigenous population and to quote unquote breed them out. It was horrific.

There were severe consequences and it was one of the most devastating [00:27:00] practices since white settlement began in Australia. And we don't even know how many children were removed. The estimate is between 10 and 33 percent of indigenous children. And while officially it ended in the 70s, the last mission closed in 1987.

Wow, that's not that long ago. No, and there are still people alive today who don't know their own history, their own language, or their family. So, the Australian Human Rights Commission inquiry found that the children who were forcibly removed from their families during this time were disadvantaged in the following ways.

They are more likely to come to the attention of the police as they grow into adolescence. They are more likely to suffer low self esteem and depression and mental illness. They have been almost always taught to reject their indigenous culture. They are unable to retain links with their land. They cannot take a role in the cultural and spiritual life of their former communities.

They are unlikely to be able to establish their right to [00:28:00] native title. And the pain of families being forcibly torn apart and unhealthy coping mechanisms get passed along as well. Just because something is in the past doesn't mean the consequences don't linger. And the Australian government has thankfully formally apologised for what happened and it's really good that they did this.

But unfortunately saying sorry. doesn't erase the past. And it's really good that the Australian government is continuing to work towards supporting Indigenous families as they move forward from this collective generational trauma. And we still have work to do in this regard. Healing from generational trauma requires resources such as psychological support and education.

which the government needs to continue to work towards providing. And there is an element of personal responsibility, but it is insufficient with the lack of these resources. And we see this play out in Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff had neither the resources nor the personal [00:29:00] responsibility because of his childhood trauma and lack of love, but he's also determined to continue doing this through revenge.

He's aware of what he's doing. He's aware that he's deliberately being hurtful and abusive. He was fully aware that the people who he's inflicting it on don't actually deserve it, but he just doesn't care. He also has this inability to get over Catherine. I learned a fun new word in This book called Momomania, which was in the 19th century psychiatry known as a form of partial insanity conceived as a single psychological obsession in an otherwise sound mind.

Thank you Wikipedia. That sounds like Heathcliff. Honestly, it's like he's stuck. He has this inability to grieve and get over her and move on. He has zero understanding of emotions and trauma. Like, I think it's 18 years or something. He [00:30:00] doesn't have the emotional language he needs. So he does crazy things like digs up her coffin and tries to hack it open.

This is why therapy is good, people. Go to therapy. And because he never healed, he ended up seeking revenge, and he let it completely consume him, and he led a really miserable life. Don't let revenge consume you, people. It's not worth it. Did Heathcliff find peace? No. No. Catherine also lacks the adequate resources and doesn't take personal responsibility for the challenges that she faces.

She, quote unquote, broke her own heart by caving to the social norms that led her to marry Edgar. for social hierarchy instead of Heathcliff, who she truly loved. And she didn't realize the consequences of her own actions and how they would affect those around her. Kathy 2. 0, Catherine's daughter, remember raised with love, albeit overprotected.

Did have the resources and emotional [00:31:00] ability to deal with what happens, but she goes on a bit of a journey first. When she's kidnapped by Heathcliff in order to marry Linton, she becomes kind of awful because she's been treated awfully. A quote from the book says, the more hurt she gets, the more venomous she grows.

Hatton? On the other hand, himself is not so much a villain as a victim. He had a mind owning better qualities than his father ever possessed, despite his roughness and lack of education. And when Heathcliff takes Hairton after his father dies, Heathcliff says to him, Now my bonnie lad, you are mine, and we'll see if one tree won't grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it.

Heathcliff also describes Hairton as, Gold put to the use of paving stones. Heathcliff takes pleasure in depriving Hairton of education, saying, If he were born a fool, I should not enjoy it half so much. But he's no [00:32:00] fool, and I can sympathize with all his feelings, having felt them myself. I know what he suffers now, for instance.

Exactly, it is merely a beginning of what he shall suffer, though. He'll never be able to emerge from his coarseness and ignorance. That passage in particular makes me think of the quote that says, there are two kinds of people, those who think I don't want anyone to suffer like I did, and those who think I suffered, why shouldn't they?

And Heathcliff is definitely the latter. And Heathcliff takes pride in knowing that despite his abuse of Hairton, Hairton would defend him as his only friend in the world. And this isolation of quote unquote loved ones from the rest of the world is unfortunately very common in abuse cycles. However, that does not mean that healing isn't possible.

Now it's important to note you cannot fix someone. It doesn't work like that. It's unhealthy. But people can help each other heal regardless whether or not they end up together. Now Cathy [00:33:00] 2. 0 has the resources to heal. And she's able to share this with Hairton, but he also supports her. He's a willing partner in this healing journey, and because of the specific circumstances they have come out of together, they are able to find healing with each other.

So in order to achieve this healing, Cathy 2. 0 actually makes the first move and she apologizes to Hairton. for her actions in hurting him and she realizes that he stood up for her at times despite her sneering at and despising him. And together they determined to stop hurting each other, but she took the first step.

But he reciprocated it. It took both of them to do this, intentionally setting aside the disagreements between them. And they were able to strengthen each other through this. Kathy 2. 0 helping Herten gain an education, forming a safe relationship, and they start gardening together, [00:34:00] planting flowers, which is symbolizing the growing of this kind relationship between the two of them.

And they ultimately build a relationship based on kindness, the total opposite to What has been going on around them? This all begins to take place while Heathcliff is still alive. He dies fairly soon after, but the beginnings of their healing begins with him still a threat in their lives. But they've made this conscious choice.

This intentional step forward to be different and move beyond this trauma that's been inflicted on them. And through Cathy 2. 0 and Hairton, we see that generational trauma can only be healed through both intentionality and resources such as inner strength and education. So are Catherine and Heathcliff romantic heroes like pop culture would have us think?

Or are they villains? [00:35:00] We have these two love stories outlined. The first one, incredibly destructive. The second one, ultimately, restorative. Wuthering Heights is filled with these plot twists and crazy things that happen, and we've only really touched on a very small number of the wildness that is this story.

Yeah, there are many other aspects and plot points we did not touch on. So, if you're interested, go to your local library or bookshop and pick up a copy. It really draws you in, honestly, in a way that I wasn't expecting, and I can see why it's considered a classic. Yeah, when I finished it, I texted my best friend and I said, I finished Wuthering Heights.

Horrible, really. I couldn't put it down. And on that note, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the Literary Lamp Post. Next episode, we have Another Bronte sister, Charlotte, and her well known novel, Jane Eyre. Make sure to follow us on [00:36:00] Instagram and TikTok at The Literary Lamp Post, as well as subscribing on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast platform to make sure you don't miss any of our new episodes.

Thanks for listening and see you next time! This podcast includes brief excerpts from literary works for the purpose of commentary, criticism and analysis, which we believe constitutes fair use under copyright law. Our audio engineer is Joshua Ibbett, who also created our theme music for exclusive use by the Literary Lamp Post podcast. 

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.

Pod and Prejudice Artwork

Pod and Prejudice

Molly Burdick
Who Did What Now Artwork

Who Did What Now

Katie Charlwood