Wuthering Heights (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

4 (p. xxxiii) “This is the interpretation thereof”: Charlotte alludes to a story in the Book of Daniel in which “writing on the wall” appears before King Belshazzar. When “the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers” Belshazzar summons to “shew [him] the interpretation thereof” (5:7) fail to do so, Daniel is brought before the King. He translates and interprets the Aramaic words, stating: “This is the interpretation of the thing. MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians” (5:26-28).

5 (p. xxxiii) terrible effects of talents misused and faculties abused: Charlotte refers to her brother, Branwell Brontë, who showed great promise as a young man but was given to dissipation. He died of alcohol and drug poisoning in September 1848, at the age of thirty-one.

6 (p. xxxiv) very heat and burden of the day: This is an allusion to laborers who “have borne the burden and heat of the day” (Matthew 20:12).

7 (p. xxxv) Neither Emily nor Anne was learned: Emily was, in fact, very learned. Like her siblings, she had access from childhood to a wide variety of books and periodicals, which she absorbed. Besides acquiring a knowledge of French and German, she was also well versed in both Latin and Greek, as well as in classical literature—those learned fields that were predominantly the purview of men at the time. M. Heger, the director of the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels, where Emily and Charlotte studied in 1842, characterized Emily as having “ ‘a head for logic, and a capability of argument, unusual in a man, and rare indeed in a woman’ ” (quoted in Barker, The Brontës, p. 392; see “For Further Reading”).

1 (p. xxxix) “a horror of great darkness”: “And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him” (Genesis 15:12).

2 (p. xli) “harrow the valleys, or be bound with a band in the furrow”: “Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?” (Job 39:10).

3 (p. xli) “laughs at the multitude of the city, and regards not the crying of the driver”: “He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither re gardeth he the crying of the driver” (Job 39:7).

4 (p. xli) a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche: Jove, or Jupiter, was the supreme deity of Roman mythology, corresponding to the Greek Zeus. Pluto was the god of the underworld, or Hades, as it was known to the Greeks. Tisiphone was one of the three Furies who guarded the entrance to Hades; she was sometimes depicted dressed in a bloody robe and carrying a whip. Psyche was the beloved of Cupid. Abandoned by Cupid after she disobeyed his injunction never to look upon him, Psyche wandered the world in search of him until Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, reunited them and immortalized Psyche.

1 (p. 3) In setting the narrative back in time, Emily Brontë was following a practice that was common among nineteenth-century novelists, including Charles Dickens and George Eliot. Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since (1814) provides one of the most popular precedents for this practice, and the work of Scott, widely read by the Brontë family, was influential in shaping Emily’s imagination.

While Wuthering Heights begins in 1801 with Lockwood’s account, the ensuing narrative that is framed within his account details events that occurred in the thirty years from 1771 to the present, which encompasses the years 1801 and 1802, and concludes by looking forward to 1803. Within the complex narrative and temporal structure of the novel, references to time abound, enabling readers to fix the dates of the action with some specificity. The genealogy of the Earnshaw and Linton families provided in this edition of Wuthering Heights offers a starting point for understanding the chronology of events in the novel.

2 (p. 3) Thrushcross Grange: Ponden Hall, near the Brontë home at Haworth Parsonage, has often been cited as the model for Thrushcross Grange. When Emily visited the hall, she would have seen a plaque bearing the date 1801, the year it was rebuilt.

3 (p. 4) Wuthering Heights: One source for Wuthering Heights may be Law Hill, the school near Halifax where Emily taught for several months in the mid-1830s; another may be High Sunderland, a dilapidated house nearby that Emily visited in 1838.

4 (p. 6) “I never told my love”: Lockwood is quoting from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (act 2, scene 4), in which Viola “never told her love, / But let concealment like a worm i’ th’ bud, / Feed on her damask cheek.”

5 (p. 7) “The herd of possessed swine”: The allusion is to a story that Luke tells of a man who was named “Legion” (meaning “multitude”) “because many devils were entered into him” (8:30). Through Christ’s intervention, the devils were transferred to a herd of swine, which subsequently drowned themselves in a lake.

1 (p. 9) my request that I might be served at five: Lockwood is pointedly identifying himself as a southern and urbane gentleman, who typically dined in the evening, in contradistinction to the country people amongst whom he finds himself and whose dinner hour was at midday.

2 (p. 9) Joseph: Emily Brontë became familiar with the Yorkshire dialect Joseph speaks through Tabitha Ayckroyd, a servant at Haworth Parsonage for many years. While Tabby, as she was known, may also have been a living source for some of the superstitions and lore that figure in Wuthering Heights, literary precedents for the combination of dialect and religious cant in Joseph’s utterances can be found in Walter Scott’s Rob Roy (1817) and James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).

3 (p. 18) smacked of King Lear: Shakespeare’s Lear announces:

I will have such revenges . . .

That all the world shall—I will do such things—

What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be

The terrors of the earth! (King Lear, act 2, scene 4)

1 (p. 20) every morsel of blank that the printer had left: Emily, too, used every blank space of paper for writing, including the margins of books.

2 (p. 22) “Th’ Helmet o’ Salvation”: While this is apparently a fictitious religious tract, the title echoes Ephesians: “And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (6:17).

3 (p. 22) “T’ Brooad Way to Destruction”: The title of another fictional tract, this one alludes to Matthew: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat” (7:14).

4 (p. 23) “Seventy Times Seven”: When Peter asks, “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?” Christ replies, “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:21-22).

5 (p. 23) “First of the Seventy-First”: This is the unforgivable sin. See previous note.

6 (p. 24) “that the place which knows him may know him no more!”: “He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more” (Job 7:10).

7 (p. 24) “Thou art the man!”: “And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.” (2 Samuel 12:7).

8 (p. 24) “the judgment written”: “To execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all his saints” (Psalm 149:9).

9 (p. 25) every man’s hand was against his neighbour: “His hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him” (Genesis 16:12).

10 (p. 29) Grimalkin: A term for an old she-cat, “Grimalkin” can also be a derogative expression for an old woman or hag. “Gray malkin” is the name of one of the familiars, or spirits, that serve the Witches in Macbeth (act 1, scene 1). Lockwood’s remark, at the end of the previous paragraph, that “a brindled, grey cat . . . saluted me with a querulous mew” echoes Macbeth: “Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed” (act 4, scene 1).

1 (p. 34) “her husband was her cousin also”: Marriage between cousins was acceptable throughout much of the nineteenth century, when such arrangements consolidated family property. Realistic in this regard, the quasi-incestuous relationships represented in Wuthering Heights are also typical of Gothic literature.

2 (p. 35) “It’s a cuckoo’s”: Cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. Thus, the cuckoos that hatch are, in effect, both orphans and interlopers.

3 (p. 36) she commenced: The device of having a faithful retainer narrate a family saga is also present in Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (1800), in which the devoted Thady Quirk tells the story of three generations of the Rackrents, a family of Irish landowners. Both a historical and a regional novel, Castle Rackrent was an important precedent for the work of Sir Walter Scott. See above, chapter 1, note 1.

4 (p. 37) Liverpool: Liverpool, situated where the River Mersey meets the Irish Sea, became a major center for the British slave trade in the eighteenth century. The port was extensively populated by transient foreigners and was also a refuge for the Irish, who fled famines in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

1 (p. 41) curate: A curate is a low-ranking clergyman. A perpetual curate, on the other hand, is comparable to a vicar, or parish priest, in that he holds a living, or a post that provides revenues from an endowment. The curate to whom Nelly refers appears to be of the latter type. Emily Brontë’s father, Patrick, was perpetual curate at the Church of St. Michael and All Angels in Haworth from 1826 until his death in 1861.

1 (p. 49) “She did not yell out”: Emily herself was bitten by a stray dog when she was fifteen. Fearful of contracting rabies, she cauterized the wound with a hot iron and then remained silent about the incident until the danger of infection had passed. Charlotte Brontë used the episode in Shirley (1849), which presents a romanticized portrait of Emily.

2 (p. 50) magistrate: A magistrate is a justice of the peace. Outside London, country gentry held the office of magistrates, as does Mr. Linton and then his son, Edgar.

1 (p. 54) songs: In Joseph’s stern creed, songs were for the idle and the sinful.

2 (p. 55) a Christmas-box: Given on the first weekday after Christmas, or Boxing Day, a Christmas box was traditionally a gift of money enclosed in a small box and presented to servants and others who had been of service throughout the year, as well as to the poor.

1 (p. 68) loading lime on the further side of Penistone Crags: Penistone Crags is a quarry near Haworth. (It is also called Penistone Quarry.) Lime is used to improve the soil for farming.

1 (p. 81) the fate of Milo: Milo was a mythical Greek athlete whose hands became trapped in the oak tree he was attempting to tear apart and who was then devoured by wolves.

2 (p. 82) “the universe would turn to a mighty stranger”: Catherine’s speech, culminating in the famous assertion, “Nelly, I am Heathcliff!” echoes Emily Brontë’s earlier poem “No Coward Soul Is Mine” (1846):

Though Earth and moon were gone,

And suns and universes ceased to be,

And thou wert left alone,

Every Existence would exist in thee. (lines 20-24)

“No Coward Soul Is Mine” was among the poems that Charlotte selected for the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights.

3 (p. 85) Noah and Lot . . . spare the righteous: God “spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness,” and “delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked” (2 Peter 2:5, 2:7).

4 (p. 85) Jonah: Like Noah and Lot, Jonah is a figure from the Old Testament. He was swallowed by a huge fish after being thrown overboard by sailors who were trying to appease Jehovah. Jonah survived in the belly of the fish for three days and then was delivered to dry land.

1 (p. 91) sizar’s place at college: A sizar is a scholarship student.

2 (p. 91) drawing blood from his foster-country: The American War of Independence ended in 1783.

3 (p. 102) bird of bad omen: Among the many kinds of birds said to augur good or bad fortune are the albatross and the raven. Considered by sailors to be an auspicious sign, the albatross in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798) becomes a symbol of sin and guilt precisely because this bird of good omen is slain by the mariner. On the other hand, because ravens are carrion eaters, they have been represented as foretelling death and destruction, as in Macbeth, where it is “the raven . . . / That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan” (act 1, scene 5).

4 (p. 103) “grand ‘sizes”: The Grand Assizes were highly ceremonial biannual sessions in which judges from London traveled to the country to try cases that were too serious or complicated for local magistrates. As the subsequent allusion to the Apostles Paul, Peter, John, and Matthew indicates, however, Joseph uses to the term figuratively to suggest the Last Judgment.

5 (p. 103) “t’ broad road”: “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction” (Mathhew 7:14).

6 (p. 104) a justice meeting at next town: Like his father, Edgar Linton is a magistrate, or justice of the peace. Outside London, magistrates traveled to towns where cases were tried in assizes, or quarterly meetings.

1 (p. 112) “if you fancy I’ll suffer unrevenged”: The intensity with which Heathcliff dedicates himself to revenge recalls John Milton’s Satan, who devotes himself to the “study of revenge” with “unconquerable will” (Paradise Lost, book 1).

1 (p. 122) fairy cave: This was probably the famous Yordas Cave, situated in Thornton on Lonsdale.

2 (p. 124) “an exile, and outcast”: Catherine’s speech echoes the fallen angel Moloch’s in Paradise Lost: “What can be worse / Than to dwell here, driv’n out from bliss, condemned / In this abhorred deep to utter woe” (book 2).

3 (p. 125) “I wish I were out of doors!”: “My sister Emily loved the moors,” wrote Charlotte in her preface to the poems by Emily which were published in the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights. “She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best loved was—liberty. Liberty,” Charlotte continued, “was the breath of Emily’s nostrils; without it, she perished.”

4 (p. 125) “Why am I so changed?”: Catherine’s question again echoes Paradise Lost: “O how fall’n! how chang’d!” (book 1), cries Beelzebub to Satan after their expulsion from heaven.

5 (p. 125) “a sad heart to travel it”: The phrase alludes to a song in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale: “A merry heart goes all the day, / Your sad tires in a mile-a” (act 4, scene 3).

1 (p. 143) “Weel done, Miss Cathy!”: In this sarcastic remark, Joseph may be either suggesting a similarity between Isabella and Catherine or congratulating the absent Catherine for bringing about the present situation or doing both.

1 (p. 149) labour of Hercules: A hero in Greek mythology, Hercules performed twelve superhuman tasks.

1 (p. 158) “I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world”: “The Prisoner” (1845), a poem by Emily which was published in the Brontë sisters’ 1846 volume of poetry, expresses a similar feeling:

My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels—

Its wings are almost free, its home, its harbour found;

Measuring the gulph, it stoops and dares the final bound! (1ines 54-56)

1 (p. 162) left without an heir . . . securing his estate to his own daughter: According to the practice of primogeniture among landed families in Britain, an estate was passed down to the eldest son in order to ensure that the property remained in the family. Daughters were unlikely to be named heirs to estates since, upon marriage, they relinquished their property to their husbands. Nelly’s subsequent remark concerning Mr. Linton’s estate is somewhat ambiguous, since it suggests that he may have taken the unusual step of “securing his estate” to Isabella, rather than to Edgar. If that were the case, however, Heathcliff would already have gained possession of Thrushcross Grange at this point in the narrative and not much later, when Lockwood becomes his tenant. At the moment of Catherine’s birth, though, the crucial point is that because Edgar’s child is a girl, on his death the estate will be passed on to the closest male relative.

2 (p. 165) “drive me mad!”: Heathcliff’s longing for Catherine recalls Manfred’s longing for the dead Astarte in Lord Byron’s Manfred (1817), a tragedy in verse:

Speak to me! though it be in wrath;—but say—

I reck not what—but let me hear thee once—

This once—once more! (act 2, scene 4)

1 (p. 171) praying like a Methodist: Methodists were popularly regarded as an especially fanatical sect of Dissenters whose creed emphasized hellfire and damnation.

2 (p. 171) saved “so as by fire”: “If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire” (1 Corinthians 3:15).

3 (p. 173) his black countenance looked blightingly through: The scene is reminiscent of one in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) in which the creature Victor Frankenstein brings to life and then seeks to elude appears before him. As Frankenstein reports, “I saw, by the light of the moon, the demon at the casement. A ghastly grin wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me” (chapter 20).

4 (p. 174) “so don’t judge”: “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7:1).

5 (p. 177) “If God afflict your enemies, surely that ought to suffice you”: Nelly paraphrases Psalm 55: “God shall hear, and afflict them” (19), and “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee” (22).

6 (p. 177) “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”: Isabella echoes Exodus: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (21:24).

7 (p. 183) buried at the cross-roads: Until 1823, it was customary for criminal suicides to be buried at a crossroads. Burial in such a location was supposed to dilute the evil influence of the dead by spreading it in four directions. A stake through the heart was further supposed to prevent the ghost from walking.

1 (p. 210) his young chit has no expectations: According to the practice of primogeniture, Catherine cannot inherit Thrushcross Grange. See above, chapter 16, note 1.

1 (p. 223) Michaelmas: September 29, a day celebrating the Feast of Saint Michael, also marked one of the quarters of the calendar, or quarter-days, when rents came due, servants began a period of employment, and so on.

2 (p. 227): Slough of Despond: In Paul Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), the Slough of Despond is a stage of depression and fear through which the character Christian passes on the allegorical journey through life.

1 (p. 260) Lees: Hareton has gone with the cattle to an area of high ground in the Pennines, a mountain range that crosses Yorkshire.

2 (p. 264) felony without benefit of clergy: The term “benefit of clergy” refers to the practice of trying clergymen charged with felonies in ecclesiastical courts, rather than in secular ones, thus enabling them to evade harsher sentences. The practice was outlawed in 1827.

1 (p. 270) “everything she has is mine”: Linton is correct. Catherine may have property of her own before marriage (in the form of goods and money, in contradistinction to land), but upon marrying Linton, she relinquishes this property by law. See above, chapter 16, note 1.

2 (p. 272) he felt that his will had better be altered: Edgar considers changing his will so that Catherine will no longer own property, in the form of goods and money, but still retain access to it through a trust. Without such a change to his will, her property would come under Heathcliff’s control upon her marriage to Linton, since Linton is still a minor. See above, chapter 16, note 1.

1 (p. 278) through eighteen years: In a poem by Emily Brontë, which begins with the lines “Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee! / Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave,” the speaker remembers her beloved, who has been dead for fifteen years:

No other Sun has lightened up my heaven;

No other Star has ever shone for me:

All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given—

All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee. (lines 17-20)

The well-known poem, originally entitled “R. Alcona to J. Bren zaida” (1846), also appears under the title “Remembrance” or “Cold in the Earth.”

2 (p. 278) dissolved into the earth: While Heathcliff’s opening of Catherine’s grave certainly smacks of Gothic fiction, the preservation of her body after eighteen years is not far-fetched, since peat in the soil in the area around Haworth had precisely this effect. In chapter 3, Lockwood refers to this fact when he describes a chapel that is “near a swamp, whose peaty moisture is said to answer all the purposes of embalming on the few corpses deposited there.”

1 (p. 284) plain as a Quaker: The Quakers, or Religious Society of Friends, were known for their plainness of speech and clothing. Jane describes herself as “Quakerish” in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (chapter 24).

1 (p. 290) Chevy Chase: Dating from the fifteenth century, “Chevy Chase” is one of the oldest ballads in English. The rivalry of two families described in this ballad comes to be associated with the larger conflict between England and Scotland.

1 (p. 298) “Fairy Annie’s Wedding”: There is no known song with this title. It may be drawn from both or either of two popular Irish ballads entitled “Fair Annie” and “Sweet William and Fair Annie,” respectively. (See Edward Chitham, The Brontës’ Irish Background, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986.)

1 (p. 314) conscience had turned his heart into an earthly hell: The allusion is again to Milton’s Satan:

. . . for within him Hell

He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell

One step, no more than from himself, can fly

By change of place. Now Conscience wakes Despair

That slumber’d; wakes the bitter memory

Of what he was, what is, and what must be

(Paradise Lost, book 4)

The remark also echoes Frankenstein, in which the monster explicitly compares himself to Satan in Paradise Lost: “I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me” (chapter 16).