Emily Brontë - Wurthering Heights

• Victorian Novel published in 1847 (19th Century)
• Readers found the book shocking and inappropriate in its depiction of passionate, ungoverned love and cruelty (no sex or blood shed) and the work virtually ignored
• Ghosts appear in Gothic fiction
• Gothic novel in the Victorian Era
• Genre - Gothic Novel (designed to both horrify and fascinate readers with scenes of passion and cruelty; supernatural elements; and a dark, foreboding atmosphere); also realist fiction (incorporates vivid circumstantial detail into a consistently and minutely thought-out plot, dealing mostly with the relationships of the characters to one another)
• Language - English (including bits of Yorkshire dialect)
• Time and Place Written - 1846-1847, Emily Brontë wrote Wurthering Heights in the parsonage of the isolated village of Haworth in Yorkshire
• Date of first publication - 1847
• Publisher - Thomas C. Newby
• Narrator - Lockwood, a newcomer to the locale of Wurthering Heights, narrates the entire novel as an entry in his diary. The story that Lockwood records is told to him by Nelly, a servant, and Lockwood writes most of the narrative in her voice, describing how she told it to him. Some parts of Nelly's story are narrated by other characters, such as when Nelly receives a letter from Isabella and recites its contents verbatim
• Point of view - Most of the events of the novel are narrated in Nelly's voice, from Nelly's point of view, focusing only on what Nelly can see or hear, or what she can find out about indirectly. Nelly frequently comments on what the other characters think and fee, and on what their motivations are, but these comments are all based on her own interpretations of the other characters - she is not an omniscient narrator
• Tone - It is not easy to infer the author's attitude toward the events of the novel. The melodramatic quality of the first half of the novel suggests that Brontë views Catherine and Heathcliff's doomed love as a tragedy of lost potential and wasted passion. However, the outcome of the second half of the novel suggests that Brontë is more interested in celebrating the renewal and rebirth brought about by the passage of time and the rise of a new generation, than she is in mourning of Catherine and Heathcliff
• Tense - Both Lockwood's and Nelly's narrations are in the past tense
• Setting (time) - The action of Nelly's story begins in the 1770's; Lockwood leaves Yorkshire in 1802
• Setting (place) - All of the action of Wurthering Heights takes place in or around two neighboring houses on the Yorkshire moors - Wurthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange
• Protagonists - Heathcliff, Catherine
• Major conflicts - Heathcliff's great natural abilities, strength of character, and love for Catherine Earnshaw all enable him to raise himself from humble beginnings to the status of a wealthy gentleman, but his need to revenge himself for Hindley's abuse and Catherine's betrayal leads him into a twisted life of cruelty and hatred; Catherine is torn between her love for Heathcliff and her desire to be a gentlewoman, and her decision to marry the genteel Edgar Linton drags almost all of the novel's characters into conflict with Heathcliff.
• Rising Action - Heathcliff's arrival at Wurthering Heights, Hindley's abusive treatment of Heathcliff, and Catherine's first visit to Thrushcross Grange set the major conflicts in motion; once Heathcliff hears Catherine say it would "degrade" her to marry him, the conversation between Nelly and Catherine, which he secretly overhears, drives him to run away and pursue his vengeance.
• Climax - Catherine's Death is the culmination of the conflict between herself and Heathcliff and removes any possibility that their conflict could be resolved positively; after Catherine's death, Heathcliff merely extends and deepens his drive toward revenge and cruelty
• Falling action - Heathcliff destroys Isabella and drives her away, takes possession of young Linton, forces Catherine and Linton to marry, inherits Thrushcross Grange, then loses interest in the whole project and dies; Hareton and young Catherine are to be engaged to be married, promising an end to the cycle of revenge.
• Themes - The destructiveness of a love that never changes; the precariousness of social class
• Motifs - Doubles, repetition, the conflict between nature and culture
• Symbols - the Moors, ghosts
• Foreshadowing - Lockwood's initial visit to Wurthering Heights, in which the mysterious relationships and lurking resentments between the characters create an air of mystery; Lockwood's ghostly nightmares, during the night he spends in Catherine's old bed, prefigure many of the events of the rest of the novel
• Chronological timeline of the book
• 1500 - The stone above the front door of Wurthering Heights, bearing the name of Hareton Earnshaw, is inscribed, possibly to mark the completion of the house
• 1758 - Nelly is born
• ~1761 - Heathcliff and Catherine are born
• ~1767 - Mr. Earnshaw brings Heathcliff to live at Wurthering Heights
• 1774 - Mr. Earnshaw sends Hindley away to college
• 1777 - Mr. Earnshaw dies; Hindley and Frances take possession of Wurthering Heights; Catherine first visits Thrushcross Grange around Christmastime
• 1778 - Hareton is born in June; Frances dies; Hindley begins his slide into alcoholism.
• 1780 - Catherine becomes engaged to Edgar Linton; Heathcliff leaves Wurthering Heights
• 1783 - Catherine and Edgar are married; Heathcliff arrives at Thrushcross Grange in September
• 1784 - Heathcliff and Isabella elope in the early part of the year; Catherine becomes ill with brain fever; young Catherine is born late in the year; Catherine dies
• 1785 - Early in the year, Isabella flees Wurthering Heights and settles in London; Linton is born
• ~1785 - Hindley dies; Heathcliff inherits Wurthering Heights
• ~1797 - Young Catherine meets Hareton and visits Wurthering Heights for the first time; Linton comes from London after Isabella dies (in late 1797 or early 1798)
• 1800 - Young Catherine stages her romance with Linton in the winter
• 1801 - Early in the year, young Catherine is imprisoned by Heathcliff and forced to marry Linton; Edgar Linton dies; Linton dies; Heathcliff assumes control of Thrushcross Grange. Late in the year, Lockwood rents the Grange from Heathcliff and begins his tenancy. In a winter storm, Lockwood takes ill and begins conversing with Nelly Dean.
• 1801-1802 - During the winter, Nelly narrates her story for Lockwood
• 1802 - In spring, Lockwood returns to London; Catherine and Hareton fall in love; Heathcliff dies; Lockwood returns in September and hears the end of the story from Nelly
• 1803 - On New Year's Day, young Catherine and Hareton plan to be married
• Characters
• Heathcliff - An orphan brought to live at Wurthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw, Heathcliff falls into an intense, unbreakable love with Mr. Earnshaw's daughter Catherine. After Mr. Earnshaw dies, his resentful son Hindley abuses Heathcliff and treats him as a servant. Because of her desire for social prominence, Catherine marries Edgar Linton instead of Heathcliff. Heathcliff's humiliation and misery prompt him to spend most of the rest of his life seeking revenge on Hindley, his beloved Catherine, and their respective children (Hareton and young Catherine). A powerful fierce, and often cruel man, Heathcliff acquires a fortune and uses his extraordinary powers of will to acquire both Wurthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, the estate of Edgar Linton.
• Catherine - The daughter of Mr. Earnshaw and his wife, Catherine falls powerfully in love with Heathcliff, the orphan Mr. Earnshaw brings home from Liverpool. Catherine loves Heathcliff so intensely that she claims they are the same person. However, her desire for social advancement motivates her to marry Edgar Linton instead. Catherine is free-spirited, beautiful, spoiled, and often arrogant. She is given to fits of temper, and she is torn between her wild passion for Heathcliff and her social ambition. She brings misery to both of the men who love her.
• Edgar Linton - Well-bred but rather spoiled as a boy, Edgar Linton grows into a tender, constant, but cowardly man. He is almost the ideal gentleman: Catherine accurately describes him as "handsome," "Pleasant to be with," "Cheerful," and "rich." However, this full assortment of gentlemanly characteristics, along with his civilized virtues, proves useless in Edgar's clashes with his foil, Heathcliff, who gains power over his wife, sister, and daughter.
• Nelly Dean - Nelly Dean (known formally as Ellen Dean) serves as the chief narrator of Wurthering Heights. A sensible, intelligent, and compassionate woman, she grew up essentially alongside Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw and is deeply involved in the story she tells. She has strong feelings for the characters in her story, and these feelings complicate her narration
• Lockwood - Lockwood's narration forms a frame around Nelly's; he serves as an intermediary between Nelly and the reader. A somewhat vain and presumptuous gentleman, he deals very clumsily with the inhabitants of Wurthering Heights. Lockwood comes from a more domesticated region of England, and he finds himself at a loss when he witnesses the strange household's disregard for the social conventions that have always structured his world. As a narrator, his vanity and unfamiliarity with the story occasionally lead him to misunderstand events.
• Young Catherine - Young Catherine begins as Catherine Linton and assuming she marries Hareton after the end of the story, goes on to become Catherine Earnshaw. The mother and the daughter share not only a name, but a tendency toward headstrong behavior, impetuousness, and occasional arrogance. However, Edgar's influence seems to have tempered young Catherine's character, and she is a gentler and more compassionate creature than her mother.
• Hareton Earnshaw - The son of Hindley and Frances Earnshaw, Hareton is Catherine's nephew. After Hindley's death, Heathcliff assumes custody over Hareton, and raises him as an uneducated field worker, just as Hindley had done to Heathcliff himself. Thus Heathcliff uses Hareton to seek revenge on Hindley. Illiterate and quick-tempered, Hareton is easily humiliated, but shows a good heart and a deep desire to improve himself. At the end of the novel, he marries young Catherine.
• Linton Heathcliff - Heathcliff's son by Isabella. Weak, sniveling, demanding, and constantly ill, Linton is raised in London by his mother and does not meet his father until he is thirteen years old, when he goes to live with him after his mother's death. Heathcliff despises Linton, treats him contemptuously, and by forcing him to marry the young Catherine, uses him to cement his control over Thrushcross Grange after Edgar Linton's death. Linton himself dies not long after this marriage.
• Hindley Earnshaw - Catherine's brother, and Mr. Earnshaw's son. Hindley resents it when Heathcliff is brought to live at Wurthering Heights. After his father dies and he inherits the estate, Hindley begins to abuse the young Heathcliff, terminating his education and forcing him to work in the fields. When Hindley's wife Frances dies shortly after giving birth to their son Hareton, he lapses into alcoholism and dissipation.
• Isabella Linton - Edgar Linton's sister, who falls in love with Heathcliff and marries him. She sees Heathcliff as a romantic figure, like a character in a novel. Ultimately, she ruins her life by falling in love with him. He never returns her feelings and treats her as a mere tool in his quest for revenge on the Linton family.
• Mr. Earnshaw - Catherine and Hindley's father. Mr. Earnshaw adopts Heathcliff and brings him to live at Wurthering Heights. Mr. Earnshaw prefers Heathcliff to Hindley but nevertheless bequeaths Wurthering Heights to Hindley when he dies.
• Mrs. Earnshaw - Catherine and Hindley's mother, who neither likes nor trusts the orphan Heathcliff when he is brought to live at her house. She dies shortly after Heathcliff's arrival at Wurthering Heights.
• Joseph - A long-winded, fanatically religious, elderly servant at Wurthering Heights. Joseph is strange, stubborn, and unkind, and he speaks with a thick Yorkshire accent.
• Frances Earnshaw - Hindley's simpering, silly wife, who treats Heathcliff cruelly. She dies shortly after giving birth to Hareton.
• Mr. Linton - Edgar and Isabella's father and the proprietor of Thrushcross Grange when Heathcliff and Catherine are children. An established member of the gentry, he raises his son and daughter to be well-mannered young people.
• Mrs. Linton - Mr. Linton's somewhat snobbish wife, who does not like Heathcliff to be allowed near her children, Edgar and Isabella. She teaches Catherine to act like a gentle-woman, thereby instilling her with social ambitions
• Zillah - The housekeeper at Wurthering Heights during the latter stages of the narrative
• Mr. Green - Edgar Linton's Lawyer, who arrives to late to hear Edgar's final instruction to change his will, which would have prevented Heathcliff from obtaining control over Thrushcross Grange.
• Themes
• The Destructiveness of a Love that Never changes - Catherine and Heathcliff's passion for one another seems to be the center of Wurthering Heights, given that it is stronger and more lasting than any other emotion displayed in the novel, and that it is the source of most of the major conflicts that structure the novel's plot. As she tells Catherine and Heathcliff's story, Nelly criticizes both of them harshly, condemning their passion as immoral, but this passion is obviously one of the most compelling and memorable aspects of the book. It is not easy to decide whether Brontë intends the reader to condemn these lovers as blameworthy or to idealize them as romantic heroes whose love transcends social norms and conventional morality. The book is actually structured around two parallel love stories, the first half of the novel centering on the love between Catherine and Heathcliff, while the less dramatic second half features the developing love between young Catherine and Hareton. In contrast to the first, the latter tale ends happily, restoring peace and order to Wurthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The differences between the two love stories contribute to the reader's understanding of why each ends the way it does. The most important feature of young Catherine and Hareton's love story is that it involves growth and change. Early in the novel Hareton seems irredeemably brutal, savage, and illiterate, but over time he becomes a loyal friend to young Catherine and learns to read. When young Catherine first meets Hareton he seems completely alien to her world, yet her attitude also evolves from contempt to love. Catherine and Heathcliff's love, on the other hand, is rooted in their childhood and is marked by the refusal to change. In choosing to marry Edgar, Catherine seeks a more genteel life, but she refuses to adapt to her role as wife, either by sacrificing Heathcliff or embracing Edgar. In chapter XII she suggests to Nelly that the years since she was twelve years old and her father died have been like a blank to her, and she longs to return to the moors of her childhood. Heathcliff, for his part, possesses a seemingly superhuman ability to maintain the same attitude and to nurse the same grudges over many years. Moreover, Catherine and Heathcliff's love is based on their shared perception that they are identical. Catherine declares, famously, "I am Heathcliff," while Heathcliff, upon Catherine death, wails that he cannot live without his "soul," meaning Catherine. Their love denies difference, and is strangely asexual. The two do not kiss in dark corners or arrange secret trysts, as adulterers do. Given that Catherine and Heathcliff's love is based upon their refusal to change over time or embrace difference in others, it is fitting that the disastrous problems of their generation are overcome not by some climactic reversal, but simply by the inexorable passage of time, and the rise of a new and distinct generation. Ultimately Wurthering Heights presents a vision of life as a process of change, and celebrates this process over and against the romantic intensity of principal characters.
• The Precariousness of Social Class - As members of the gentry, the Earnshaw's and the Linton's occupy a somewhat precarious place within the hierarchy of late eighteenth - and early nineteenth Century British society. At the top of British society was the royalty, followed by the aristocracy, then by the gentry, and then by the lower classes, who made up the fast majority of the population. Although the gentry, or upper middle class, possessed servants and often large estates, they held a nonetheless fragile social position. The social status of aristocrats was a formal and settled matter, because aristocrats had official titles. Members of the gentry, however, held no titles, and their status was thus subject to change. A man might see himself as a gentleman but find, to his embarrassment, that his neighbors did not share this view. A discussion of whether or not a man was really a gentleman would consider such questions on how much land he owned, how many tenants and servants he had, how he spoke, whether he kept horses and a carriage, and whether his money came from land or "trade"--gentleman scorned banking and commercial activities. Considerations of class status often crucially inform the characters' motivations in Wurthering Heights. Catherine's decision to marry Edgar so that she will be "the greatest woman of the neighborhood" is only the most obvious example. The Linton's are relatively firm in their gentry status but nonetheless take great pains to prove this status through their behaviors. The Earnshaw's, on the other hand, rest on much shakier ground socially. They do not have a carriage, they have less land, and their house, as Lockwood remarks with great puzzlement, resembles that of a "homely, northern farmer," and not that of a gentleman. The shifting nature of social status is demonstrated most strikingly in Heathcliff's trajectory from homeless waif to young gentleman-by-adoption to common laborer to gentleman again (although the status-conscious Lockwood remarks that Heathcliff is only a gentleman in "dress and manners").
• Motifs
• Doubles - Brontë organizes her novel by arranging its elements--characters, places, and themes-- into pairs. Catherine and Heathcliff are closely matched in many ways, and see themselves as identical. Catherine's character is divided into two warring sides: the side that wants Edgar and the side that wants Heathcliff. Catherine and young Catherine were both remarkably similar and strikingly different. The two houses, Wurthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, represent opposing worlds and values. The novel has not one but two distinctly different narrators, Nelly and Mr. Lockwood. The relation between such paired elements usually quite complicated, with the members of each pair being neither exactly alike nor diametrically opposed. For instance, the Linton's and the Earnshaw's may at first seem to represent opposing sets of values, but by the end of the novel, so many intermarriages have taken place that one can no longer distinguish between the two families.
• Repetition - Repetition is another tactic Brontë employs in organizing Wurthering Heights. It seems that nothing ever ends in the world of this novel. Instead, time seems to run in cycles, and the horrors of the past repeat themselves in the present. The way that the names of the characters are recycled, so that the names of the characters of the younger generation seem only to be rescramblings of the names of their parents, leads the reader to consider how plot elements also repeat themselves. 
• The Conflict between Nature and Culture - In Wurthering Heights, Brontë constantly plays nature and culture against each other. Nature is represented by the Earnshaw family, and by Catherine and Heathcliff in particular. These characters are governed by their passions, not by reflection or ideals of civility. Correspondingly, the house where they live -- Wurthering Heights -- comes to symbolize a similar wildness. On the other hand, Thrushcross Grange and the Linton family represent culture, refinement, convention, and cultivation.
• Symbols 
• Moors The landscape is comprised primarily of moors: wide, wild expanses, high but somewhat soggy, and thus infertile.
• Ghosts

Byronic Hero - Catherine Earnshaw - first female Byronic Hero
Supernatural - hands through the window
Heathcliff hurts everyone he chooses
reliable narrator or not?
Byronic - make a woman feel special but narcissist doesn't know how to love.
Anti-victorian
narrow line between life and death.

Most of these notes gathered from Sparknotes