ornamental line

Diverting Tales


"But, Mr. Lockwood, I forget these tales cannot divert you. I'm annoyed how I should dream
of chattering on at such a rate . . . I could have told Heathcliff's history,
all that you need hear, in half-a-dozen words" (54).


Points for Reflection

Wuthering Heights, Vol 1, chps 1-11

  1. How do the behavior, words, and thoughts of the frame story's narrator, Mr. Lockwood, ironically serve to indict him?
  2. Compare Mr. Lockwood's reflections on rural life to those of William Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads? "'I perceive that people in these regions acquire over people in towns the value that a spider in a dungeon does over a spider in a cottage, to their various occupants; and yet the deepened attraction is not entirely owing to the situation of the looker-on. They do live more in earnest, more in themselves, and less in surface change, and frivolous external things. I could fancy a love for life here almost possible . . ." (53).
  3. How important is it that we see our protagonists as children as well as adults?  Does Brontë's revelation of their formative years increase the likelihood of our sympathy and understanding, or not?
  4. To what degree are the characters connected w/ nature?
  5. How does the novel's second narrator, the housekeeper Nellie Dean, shape the reader's attitude towards Heathcliff? Does the novel itself lead us to agree with or to question Nellie's own opinions of Heathcliff?


Wuthering Heights, Vol 1, chps 12-14 and Vol II, chps 1-7

  1. To what degree is Heathcliff heroic or villainous?  Which wins out, our sympathy or disgust, awe or abhorrence?
  2. Can we actually reckon Heathcliff by human or ethical standards, or does he lie in some mysterious, animalistic, "natural" world outside the restricting realm of human justice and morality? Is he, not immoral, but amoral?
  3. Is Heathcliff an enigma? Does Brontë's text tightly define his character, or allow us room to shape his character as we will?
  4. Are Catherine (Earnshaw) Linton's various medical problems a product of circumstance, others' mistreatment, or her own will?
  5. Does Heathcliff love Catherine Linton?
  6. Is Isabella Earnshaw's narration of the way Heathcliff treats her meant to alter the reader's opinion of our anti-hero?


Wuthering Heights, Vol II, chps 8-20

  1. Is Cathy II (Cathy Linton's daughter) a carbon copy of her mother?
  2. Linton Heathcliff and Hareton Earnshaw both grow up under the hand of Heathcliff, but he shapes them towards very different purposes. Given their respective characters and conditions, which of these two boys is the more pitiable?
  3. Is Heathcliff's gradual decline the result of delusion, insanity, or a supernatural haunting?
  4. Does this novel wrap up its various narrative threads in sentimental or tragic fashion? Does it have a "happy" ending?
  5. Research the painting by Rossetti imaged on this page, and reflect on its possible resonance with Wuthering Heights.
  6. Consider some of the features of older, Gothic novels which Emily Brontë adopts and/or reconfigures for use in her novel.


painting of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's deceased wife, Lizzie Siddal, in posture of prayer
"Beata Beatrix" (1864-70)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti


Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu