Comparisons Quotes

Nota:

• He does in both homes.

1. "completely removed from the stir of society"

   Nota:

   • Wuthering Heights is free of societal conventions. It is a no man's land, no rules and no normality. It's wild.
   1. "a perfect misanthropist's heaven"
      1. "the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather"

         Nota:

         • Everyone in the house is raised to endure storms and fits of passion unlike at Thrushcross, where they succumb to it. Cathy is mad at Wuthering Heights but her illness is a cold, not her madness.
         1. "I observed no signs of roasting, boiling or baking...nor any glitter of copper saucepans"

            Nota:

            • It's no home. There's no comfort, no sense of unity like at Thrushcross. Everyone is "eternally divided" even inside of the house.
         2. "as if we lived in an ancient castle"

            Nota:

            • GOTHIC
      2. "seated in worse than solitude"
2. "We don't generally take to foreigners here...unless they take to us first"

   Nota:

   • Thrushcross have the opposite manner. They embrace strangers, Cathy, before she took to them, not that she ever did.
   1. "How did you contrive to preserve the common sympathies of human nature when you resided here?"

      Nota:

      • Again, removed from societal conventions.
      1. "Handily became tyrannical"
3. "he lets her grow up in absolute heathenism"

   Nota:

   • Everyone who grows up at Wuthering Heights becomes some sort of villain. Is it nature or nurture? In Cathy's case it seems to be nature.
   1. "though everybody despised and hated each other"

      Nota:

      • Everybody at Wuthering Heights hates each other, it's common for the house to be in discord. But at Thrushcross, no such things happen. The Height's is wild and unharmonious. Thrushcross is the opposite. 

1. "Just go and see whether the Lintons passed their Sunday evenings standing shivering in corners, while their father and mother sat eating and drinking, and singing and laughing, and burning their eyes out before the fire. Do you think they do?"

   Nota:

   • The contrast of a home. They are united and in a 'home', Wuthering Heights is a wild, empty, loveless place where the only two united are Cahty and Heathcliff who are constantly pulled apart.
   1. "We should have thought ourselves in heaven"

      Nota:

      • Cathy and Heatchliff grew up in a loveless home, save the love they had for each other. In a home like Thruscross, they would have been eternally grateful for the opportunity to be able to love openly. So it's understandable why Cathy does pick Edgar, because she knows her and Heathcliff will be banished, forced to hide their love and eternally away from a home and therefore, a heaven. Later she says she would be miserable in heaven, because she realises she only needs Heathcliff to be happy.
2. "It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn"

   Nota:

   • The Lintons embrace her but she, like Heathcliff to Mr Earnshaw's affection, is almost indifference. They are spoilt because at the Heights, embracing a thorn would not be considered. They would exclude that person.

Nota:

• Heathcliff now betters Edgar in looks. "Foliage"

Nota:

• Edgar could not walk away from Cathy, nor make himself a man enough to match her. Heathcliff could. Heathcliff's love is stronger and more controlled/directed because of his strength against a Linton.

Nota:

• Cathy is a Linton to Edgar, but to Heathcliff, never.

Nota:

• Heathcliff, to the other occupants of Withering Heights was found and unwanted but not to Cathy. He is everything but. And so, when she says this to Edgar, it seems backwards because to everyone else the person she should be saying this to is Heathcliff. Also, to Cathy, Heathcliff is a treasure, a gem she found, but Edgar is no such thing when again it should be reversed.

1. "He never struck me as such a marvellous treasure"

Nota:

• A lot of what Isabella feels during her infatuation for Heathcliff is similar to what Cathy feels. Cathy's heart will always be at WH, not TG. Her fiery spirit, her "gunpowder" dwindles at TG without Heathcliff, her home or the moors. She too, could also have thought she was insane when she married Edgar, especially during her breakdown after their fight. Cathy could also be said to have married Edgar under delusion, unaware to how much her own soul needed Heathcliff and of course, how she would feel if and when he returned. She may have thought Edgar the more romantic choice.

1. "My heart returned to Thrushcross Grange in twenty four hours after I left it"
2. "I think the concentrated essence of all the madness in the world took up it's abode in my brain the day I linked my fate with theirs"
3. "She abandoned them under a delusion...picturing in me a hero of romance"

Nota:

• Similar to the way Heathcliff wouldn't dream of being Edgar, Cathy wouldn't dream of being Isabella. Whilst the other has who each of them want, they wouldn't want each other on the same terms. Cathy and Heathcliff need each other on their own wild, independent and earned terms, and therefore, they wouldn't switch their misery but strong, free will for the Linton's 'stolen' happiness and softness. They would rather endure their own pain with what the Linton's don't have which is what makes the other attractive.

Nota:

• The contrast between Cathy and Isabella. Isabella is weak, a Linton, fragile, but Cathy, an Earnshaw, is strong, hardy and fiery so only she could survive Heathcliff.

1. "He'll crush you like a sparrow's egg"

Nota:

• Cathy's daughter, who is born and bred Thrushcross, is trapped at Wuthering Heights, much like Cathy was at Thrushcross. It seems you belong to only one of the homes and any interchangeability causes grief and heartache and a change in character which is ruining.

1. "we are eternally divided"

   Nota:

   • The two are eternally divided and never unite, despite marriages, love and alliances. It's impossible to belong to both.

Nota:

• Nelly says this to Heathcliff, however it's more true of Cathy. Like Lady Macbeth, Cathy's strength is not physical but emotional. She has an extreme power of Edgar which surpasses his love for her and is actually his desire to contain her which is impossible because she is the embodiment of the wildness of Wuthering Heights. All it takes is Cathy to put on a fit and Edgar is at her beck and call. In fact, Edgar's weakness is not his lack of weakness against Heathcliff but his love for Cathy and the power he lets that have over himself.

Nota:

• This is ironic since he marries Cathy who is basically Wuthering Heights and therefore takes Wuthering Heights to Thrushcross Grange, expanding the reach of her storm and giving himself no option but to always be int he presence of Wuthering Heights.

1. "It was a very dark evening for summer"
   1. "there was a violent wind, as well as thunder, and either one or the other split a tree off at the corner of the building, a huge bough fell across the roof"
      1. "She beat..any child at a good passionate fit of crying"
2. "She and her husband both took the fever"
3. "The gunpowder lay as harmless as sand"

   Nota:

   • Until Heathcliff, the catalyst for the storm at Wuthering Heights and Cathy, returns and 'strikes the match' proving that Cathy is Wuthering Heights and Heathcliff the one who generates a storm, who sets her off.