Wuthering Heights: Chapters 26-34
Everyone's horrible, but don't worry - (almost) everyone dies!
Edgar has agreed that Cathy and Linton can get married, even though it almost definitely means that Heathcliff will become the owner of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Edgar is very ill, but doesn’t know that Linton is almost as ill as he is. Nelly has mentioned that perhaps Lockwood will fall in love with Cathy, and will no longer be a stranger she is recounting this history to, and he muses on the idea. Spoilers ahead, here we go!
Cathy and Nelly go to meet Linton - on the moors, as Edgar has asked - but he isn’t there. They find him at Wuthering Heights, almost unable to stand, but promising that he’s better than he looks. Cathy arranges to see him the following week. A week later, Cathy is reluctant to leave Edgar, who is dying, but she goes to see Linton on the moors. Linton confesses that Heathcliff is pushing him into marriage to Cathy, and that he’s afraid of what Heathcliff might do if they don’t get married. Heathcliff arrives, and tells Nelly that he thinks Linton might die before Edgar does. He invited Nelly and Cathy to go back to Wuthering Heights, and Cathy agrees - even though Edgar has forbidden her to go - because Linton is so frightened to go home with his father without her.
As soon as they are at Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff locks Cathy and Nelly in, and will not allow them to leave until Linton and Cathy are married. They are kept at Wuthering Heights for five days before Nelly is freed by the housekeeper. She searches for Cathy, but instead finds Linton, who tells her that the two are married. High on his sudden approval from Heathcliff, Linton has transformed from his formerly pathetic self, and gloats that he now owns everything of Cathy’s, including Thrushcross Grange, as Edgar is close to death.
Nelly rushes back to the Grange and tells Edgar that Cathy is safe, and married. Edgar, hoping to save her inheritance from Heathcliff, sends for his lawyer, in order to name a trustee of his estate, but he dies before the lawyer arrives. Nelly insists that Edgar be buried next to Catherine, instead of in the chapel, as he would have wished. After the funeral, Heathcliff comes to collect Cathy, expecting her to earn her keep at Wuthering Heights, as Linton’s wife.
It transpires that while Edgar’s grave was being dug, Heathcliff bribed the sexton to open Catherine’s coffin, to see her face again. He has also convinced the sexton to remove the opposite side of Catherine’s coffin, so that when he dies and is buried on her other side, he’ll also have the facing side of his coffin removed, so they can be together at last. Heathcliff tells Nelly that Catherine has haunted him for eighteen years.
Cathy begs for Nelly to go with her to Wuthering Heights, but Heathcliff will not allow it. Cathy refuses to bend under Heathcliff’s cruelty, and tells him that their revenge will be the knowledge that he acts as he does because of how miserable and loveless his life has been. Heathcliff bans Nelly from Wuthering Heights, and Nelly tells Lockwood that she hasn’t seen Cathy since that last day at Thrushcross Grange. She gets news of her from the housekeeper, who says that Cathy nursed Linton herself until his death, and that unless Cathy can somehow be saved by another marriage, she is, for all purposes, Heathcliff’s prisoner at Wuthering Heights.
Here, Nelly’s story is finished, and Lockwood has recovered from his fever at last, so he begins to make preparations to leave Thrushcross Grange, planning to first visit Wuthering Heights to tell Heathcliff of his departure, before he goes away from these two strange places and the strange people who live in them.
Lockwood’s arrives at Wuthering Heights and inadvertently sets off a fight between Cathy and Hareton which ends with Hareton throwing Cathy’s few remaining books into the fire, ashamed that he cannot read them. Heathcliff arrives and admits that Hareton looks so much like Catherine that he can’t bear to be around him. Lockwood shares a final meal with Heathcliff and Hareton, before leaving, thinking about the life he could have given Cathy if she had fallen in love with him.
The following year, Lockwood is in the area on a business venture, and realises how close he is to Wuthering Heights. He goes to the house, and is surprised to find Nelly living there. She catches him up on the previous six months, telling him that she is now the housekeeper at Wuthering Heights, and that Cathy and Hareton have made amends, and are hoping to get married. Heathcliff has admitted to Nelly that he cannot sustain his promises of revenge any longer, despite being tormented by constant reminders of Catherine. He withdraws to his room and refuses to eat. He tells Nelly that he is “within sight” of heaven. His actions begin to mirror Catherine’s before her death. He refuses all food, locks himself in his room, and then - finally - begins to see Catherine, and speak to her. After days of this, Nelly breaks into his room and finds him dead and soaking wet, having opened the windows and let the rain in on himself.
Heathcliff is buried on Catherine’s opposite side, as he wished, and Cathy and Hareton make plans to marry and move to Thrushcross Grange. Lockwood wanders through the churchyard, and finds the three gravestones, wondering how “anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.”
Oof.
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