Cathy’s mourning in Emily Brontë’s &lt;i&gt;Wuthering Heights&lt;/i&gt;

J Albert Myburgh

doi:10.4102/lit.v38i1.1359

Abstract

In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, illness and death cause characters to foresee, fear and react to other characters’ deaths. In this article, I explore the significance of Cathy’s anticipatory mourning of, and response to, the eventual actual deaths of her ailing father, Edgar, and her sickly cousin, Linton. Core 19th-century perspectives and fears relating to illness and death are both evident and contested in the representation of Cathy’s anxiety and suffering. I also investigate how Cathy’s grief is exacerbated by and affects the behaviour of other characters, notably Nelly, Linton, Heathcliff, Zillah and Hareton. The depiction of these characters’ responses to Cathy’s misery enriches their portrayal, implying that Cathy’s fear and grief are integral to both the novel’s plot and its character development.

Highlights

When Heathcliff asks his daughter-in-law, Cathy, a new widow at the age of 17, how she feels that her young husband, Linton, is dead after his illness, this is the response that Zillah reports to Nelly:‘He’s safe, and I’m free,’ she answered, ‘I should feel well – but,’ she continued with a bitterness she couldn’t conceal, ‘You have left me so long to struggle against death, alone, that I feel and see only death! I feel like death!’ (Brontë [1847] 2003:294)Her response shows relief, but no grief, and her overriding emotion is ‘bitterness’
The depiction of Cathy’s anticipating and later mourning Edgar’s and Linton’s deaths, refracted as it is through the narrative voices of Zillah, Nelly and Lockwood, draws attention to some of the reactions to death and feelings and expectations surrounding death and mourning in Wuthering Heights
His much-vaunted love for Catherine cannot excuse the means he uses to achieve his ends

Summary

Introduction

When Heathcliff asks his daughter-in-law, Cathy, a new widow at the age of 17, how she feels that her young husband, Linton, is dead after his illness, this is the response that Zillah reports to Nelly:‘He’s safe, and I’m free,’ she answered, ‘I should feel well – but,’ she continued with a bitterness she couldn’t conceal, ‘You have left me so long to struggle against death, alone, that I feel and see only death! I feel like death!’ (Brontë [1847] 2003:294)Her response shows relief, but no grief, and her overriding emotion is ‘bitterness’. I consider Cathy’s responses to the anticipated and actual deaths of her father (Edgar Linton) and her cousin (Linton Heathcliff).

Results

Conclusion