Since F. R. Leavis first characterized Wuthering Heights as a kind of sport (a deviation with some undetectable influences), critics have been trying to place the book within literary traditions. Over the years, many have discussed the book’s “closed” doors. They have interpreted the book as a reaction to the Romantic tradition or as a small depiction of intergenerational friction and a metaphor for class conflict.
That said, there has been a clear (though uneven) shift from this tradition of interpretation over the past fifteen years. According to J. H. Miller, it pushes us to satisfy the mind’s desire for logical order and show the right way to read the novel as a whole. They refer to misinterpretation, a crisis of interpretation, or conflicting possibilities of interpretation. More recent critics also highlight these issues.
Of course, their methods vary: some link the misunderstanding to an unreliable narrator. In contrast, others argue that any attempt to understand the novel leads to reader confusion because of its many perspectives and the surplus of signs revealing its intrinsic plurality.
However, some go further and argue that the language of the book itself creates a lost center, where even the names of characters arbitrarily lose their references, leaving no room for plurality or meaning. According to Miller, no matter how far the reader goes into their interpretation, they will encounter mysterious signs and confusion. It is one thing all reviewers agree on, despite their differences. Miller concludes that the true secret of Wuthering Heights is that there is no secret truth.
There is a lot to be said about today’s generation of critics, who are more likely to let the puzzles and open questions in the book stand on their own. Take the relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, which goes against explicit morals. If there is any external moral code dictating Heathcliff’s erratic behavior, it has not been identified yet.
It is hard to ignore the fact that this novel is really about interpretation itself, even when readers are confused by its puzzles. Despite going through a crisis of interpretation, Emily Brontë tells this story with layers, adding one, two, or even three levels of narration throughout. The readers are the last in line of interpreters because almost every event we hear about is distorted by the perspectives of characters like Lockwood, Nelly Dean, and Zillah.
The topic of interpretation and response is directly addressed in Wuthering Heights, most openly through the characters’ interrogations of each other and also through the novel’s rhetorical structure. Many previous studies have overlooked this.
The book is basically a series of retold stories, each meant for a specific audience. This includes two key moments where Heathcliff and Catherine talk to Nelly about their almost supernatural bond, which Nelly then retells to Lockwood. The novel highlights the act of interpretation itself by structuring these encounters as an ongoing performance of storytelling and listening.
Wuthering Heights is set in the wild English countryside. A man named Lockwood rents a house called Thrushcross Grange. His landlord, Heathcliff, lives in the eerie Wuthering Heights. Curious about Heathcliff and the strange people in his life, Lockwood asks Nelly, the housekeeper, to share their stories, which he then records in his diary.
Nelly remembers her early days working at Wuthering Heights. Hindley Earnshaw, the owner, became jealous when Mr. Earnshaw brought home Heathcliff, an orphan. However, Catherine, Earnshaw’s daughter, quickly grew close to Heathcliff. After their father’s death, Hindley took over Wuthering Heights and treated Heathcliff like a servant. Even though Catherine deeply loved Heathcliff, she chose to marry Edgar Linton after spending time with his wealthy family. Feeling betrayed, Heathcliff disappears for years, only to return rich and determined to get revenge.
To get back at Edgar, Heathcliff forces Hindley into gambling away his property and marries Isabella Linton. After giving birth to her daughter, Cathy Linton, Catherine becomes ill and passes away. Her ghost is said to linger, staying with Heathcliff. Meanwhile, after fleeing to London, Isabella gives birth to Heathcliff’s son, Linton Heathcliff.
Years later, young Cathy, unaware of Heathcliff’s evil plans, meets her cousin Linton. To take control of the family’s estate, Heathcliff forces Cathy to marry Linton. After Edgar and Linton’s deaths, Heathcliff now owns both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. He keeps Cathy trapped at Wuthering Heights and mistreats her.
Hareton Earnshaw, Hindley’s son, and Cathy grow closer over time, breaking the cycle of revenge. Obsessed with memories of Catherine, Heathcliff starts seeing her ghost everywhere. In the end, he dies, seemingly reunited with Catherine’s spirit. With Heathcliff gone, Wuthering Heights finally finds peace as Cathy and Hareton inherit everything and plan to marry.
Like almost all the potential discussion partners in Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff ultimately fails to listen. Because of the book’s dialogic nature, the characters are doomed to stay isolated forever.
When he starts to shift his thoughts to someone else, Heathcliff suddenly stops and admits that it is crazy to keep repeating those thoughts to him. His confession, which does not bring him any relief, is his final statement. Moreover, since Nelly does not really respond, his anger towards her feels like a one-sided catharsis. He only speaks half-heartedly to her, and she stays quiet, not liking to hear him talk. Nelly remembers Heathcliff’s earlier attempts to explain the ghost that haunts him.
The lingering question is why the book deliberately uses such an imperfect listening model. Why did Brontë make this perception the focus of the narrative—this skewed prism we use to view every character? Why does it seem like she intentionally included references that are distorted, creating conversations from the perspective of an observer who does not fully understand?
If this distortion leads us to what Miller calls total confusion, what does Brontë expect from us as a response to this interpretative dilemma? In other words, how can we approach the long-standing mystery in this novel—the Gothic themes, the brutality that cannot be explained, the layered narrative structure, the meaning of reading within the story, and Catherine’s famous statement that she is Heathcliff?
Lastly, what do these interpretative struggles say about its nature in Brontë’s world, especially if they are closely tied to the beauty of a novel that’s so hard to understand?
Many scholars have investigated the use of frame narrative in Wuthering Heights, even though the purpose of listening in the novel is rarely mentioned. Others have concentrated on its Gothic elements, like the mystifying hero, the house swathed in haze, the confidential wickedness, and so on.
However, these deconstructions invariably ignore the reality that these Gothic aspects shape the novel’s frame layout. The existence of Gothic iniquity solicits frontage or the revealing of the truth within the convoluted narrative. Brontë repeatedly portrays this evil as something grotesquely inhuman or unnatural, comparing it to a ghost or vampire that needs to be uncovered.
Nelly’s personal opinion of Heathcliff is the source of these descriptions; she calls him an evil beast at one point and continues to see him as a dark creature at the end of the book. Heathcliff is also described as being animated by demon life, a ghoul, by Charlotte Brontë in her second preface to the novel.
In the end, the beast of Wuthering Heights needs to be unleashed rhetorically.
Brontë uses a narrative structure built on false confessions to explore the consequences of these terrible actions. As said before, Heathcliff’s insistence that revealing does not fetch him ease straight rejects the notion of admission itself. Regardless, it is worth citing that he still refers to his stirring blaze as an admission, which connects to a more extensive 19th-century exertion to redefine what admission really denotes.
Many theologians at the time aimed to shift confession from a forced revelation of secret sins into a more reciprocal and introspective process (a two-way dialogue where both the listener and the confessor play a role in interpretation). This relationship is reflected in Wuthering Heights, where both functions are crucial to the form of the apostrophe. Independently, we need to examine each role to understand how this works fully.
Unlike its emphasis on seeking external judgment, the role of the speaker or confessor in Brontë’s book reflects the 19th-century understanding of confession as a form of introspection. According to Michel Foucault, the 19th century reshaped the idea of confession—not as revealing what a person wants to hide from others, but as uncovering what they have been hiding from themselves.
In earlier religious traditions, the role of an outside witness was crucial in interpreting and absolving sin. But in the 1800s, the rhetoric of confession also became a way for speakers to shape their self-awareness, helping them uncover what they had hidden from themselves. When Heathcliff and Catherine consciously try to reveal their secrets, they end up wrapping these mysteries in a way of speaking that requires just as much interpretation from the confessor as it does from the listener.
By using the rhetoric of confession, Brontë suggests that both characters are on a journey of self-discovery—not just expressing themselves to others but also uncovering the truth within themselves.
This analysis not only reflects Heathcliff and Catherine’s past conversations but also helps them recognize themselves in each other. Catherine’s statement to Nelly—in which she insists that she and everyone else must have some existence beyond themselves—is one of the clearest examples of this self-projection. If she were truly trapped within herself, what would be the point of her existence?
Catherine’s idea of existing beyond herself is, on one level, about Heathcliff. She is talking about a connection that refuses to be separated. However, on another level, this moment hints at the ability to go beyond one’s limited existence—to create and find meaning through someone else.
Heathcliff also searches for this externalized sense of self. After hearing about Catherine’s death, he calls out to her, begging her to take any form but not to leave him. He says it is unbearable—without her, he cannot survive. His soul is tied to hers, and now he realizes just how much his life depends on another person—his other half.
According to Catherine, the self in this book is completely defined by Heathcliff and the external conscience he represents. The boundaries or connection that Heathcliff embodies allow her to continue existing. By tying her existence to the universe through him, she validates her being. Just like Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s idea, Catherine finds her sense of existence through having that one absolute object—Heathcliff.
In turn, that object shapes the mental space that defines her place in the universe. She ultimately loses her sense of existence and dies when she temporarily loses this boundary—when Heathcliff leaves. She gives in to a kind of self-erasure brought on by the loss of definition, which Coleridge describes as the formlessness of true love in nothingness.
For Brontë, existence is tied to others—living means keeping someone else in mind. This “other” can also take a collective form in Wuthering Heights, as what she calls society. For example, even though Lockwood claims to be a perfect misanthrope and rejects society, he still ends up sharing his story with Nelly through what he calls a friendly conversation.
Lockwood admits that he needs social interaction after just two days at the Grange, even pointing out Heathcliff’s dislike of conversation. Of course, Heathcliff longs for Catherine’s presence more supernaturally. However, almost every character in the book shares the same need for human connection as Lockwood. Cathy, Nelly, and even Joseph mention different forms of friendship, companionship, or union.
The search for friendship represents a socially connected self in each case. For example, when Catherine pursues a union with Heathcliff, she is really trying to find her place in society. She wants to avoid what Lockwood calls the “eternal isolation” of being “banished from the world” by securing her existence through human interaction.
Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of polyphonic discourse—where someone puts their whole self into dialogue, and that dialogue becomes part of human life—fits with this need for social connection. Because of this, Brontë’s idea of self is deeply social and multifaceted. According to Bakhtin, the self has to find itself within a complex web of interactions.
Brontë’s views on life and social interaction become clearer through Bakhtin’s ideas on the dialogic nature of self-awareness. However, we do not have to stick to modern theories to explore this idea of consciousness in relation to others.
Coleridge, whose aesthetics are often linked to the Romantic elements of Wuthering Heights, is a writer who embodies the 19th-century focus on an externally defined self and multiple layers of self-awareness. Even though his use of an external other differs from Brontë’s, he also portrays this ontological companion as an unreliable listener, especially in poems like Christabel and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Let us take a closer look at Coleridge’s take on this concept. We can get a clearer understanding of how the novel portrays existence, conscience, and being—beyond just its Romantic tendencies. Both Brontë and Coleridge talk about existence in relation to what Coleridge, like Bakhtin, refers to as consciousness.
According to Coleridge, defining the self requires embodying this consciousness through conscience. He often wondered why consciousness continues to exist and why it will always be there. For him, conscience exists for the sake of another conscience—its duty and feelings are directed toward others, not itself.
In his view, the self should not exist in isolation because the definition itself implies boundaries, and boundaries suggest an environment that can only be known through relationships. Coleridge defines the self as an awareness of others—a boundary made up of intimate connections. Individual consciousness is shaped and made knowable by these relationships.
The sense of boundaries and definition comes from Catherine’s love and duty toward Heathcliff. He is the only one who truly embodies what she calls existence. It is important to consider how Catherine describes this imagined being—he is her greatest inspiration in life.
She says he would still exist even if everything else died and she remained alive, but if everything else died and she died too, the universe would be left with a total stranger. He always exists in her mind, not as a source of pleasure—just as she does not always please herself—but as a part of her being, so she cannot separate herself from him.
Catherine suggests that her true identity in the novel is defined by Heathcliff and the external “conscience” he represents. The boundaries or relationships embodied by Heathcliff allow her to keep existing. Through their connection, which she sees as a link to the universe, she essentially affirms her existence. Catherine might have echoed Coleridge’s idea that “the self gains its sense of being from having one absolute object.”
Heathcliff, as her “object,” shapes the mental space that ultimately defines where she belongs in the universe. She loses her sense of self and eventually dies when she temporarily loses that boundary after Heathcliff leaves. She gives in to the fading of the self that happens when definition is lost—what Coleridge calls the absence of true love in nothingness.
This projection of the self is ultimately responsible for the fading reputation of the second-generation couple at the end of the book. Not only do aspects of Catherine and Heathcliff persist, but their rhetorical process of openness also inevitably carries over to this new pair. Young Cathy is carving out her sense of openness—her definition of conscience, self, love, and duty toward others—when she finally asks Hareton to listen. In doing so, she validates the legacy of the listener.
References
- Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (M. Holquist, Ed.; C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). University of Texas Press.
- Bersani, L. (1976). The Narratorial Voice in Wuthering Heights. ELH, 43(4), 677–704
- Brontë, E. (1847). Wuthering Heights. Thomas Cautley Newby.
- Coleridge, S. T. (1798). The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Joseph Johnson.
- Coleridge, S. T. (1816). Christabel, Kubla Khan, and The Pains of Sleep. John Murray.
- Eagleton, T. (1975). Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Marxism and Wuthering Heights. New Left Review, 90, 3–31.
- Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge (R. Hurley, Trans.). Pantheon Books.
- Hoeveler, D. L. (1992). Wuthering Heights as a Gothic Novel. Studies in the Novel, 24(1), 18–30.
- Leavis, F. R. (1948). The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad. Chatto & Windus.
- Miller, J. H. (1982). Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels. Harvard University Press.
- Winnifrith, T. J. (1977). The Brontës and Their Background: Romance and Reality. Modern Language Review, 72(3), 527–529.
