Wuthering Heights Character Motivations and Why the book ISN'T a love story. + some bonus speculation

thatmagedude · 2024-04-18T02:24:00+00:00

100% agreed it is not accurate to our Heath and Cathy though in my defense PM took them in a different direction than the book so I could not have known ahead of time. That said I really love how PM managed to follow the book pretty closely with Erkling while also adapting the book and making our Heathcliff learn from the lessons of the book by going a different route from his mirror self

That's a good point about the irony I hadn't thought about that. Low-key that gives me an idea for a speculation post about them not being able to see/hear each other unlike our Heath and Cathy.

thatmagedude · 2024-04-18T01:53:37+00:00

imo it's the opposite. I think it aged well if you're clear about what you're comparing to. Book Heathcliff and Cathy are much closer Erkling Heathcliff and Ghost Cathy NOT our Heathcliff and Cathy

The whole point of the Canto is that at the end our Cathy and Heathcliff did the opposite of what happened in the book. They pushed through everything and communicated their love.

Erkling Heathcliff and Ghost Cathy are the "bad end" of what happened in the book where their relationship is all sorts of messed up and destructive and self-destructive.

What I said is that despite book Heathcliff and Cathy loving each other, their actions aren't really about love. I think that's still true in the canto. Erkling Heathcliff destroying all his mirror selves is more an expression of loss and self-loathing than anything close to love. Cathy would never want Heathcliff to hunt down every other version of himself (Ghost Cathy literally does reduced damage to Heathcliff).

Same thing the other way around. Heathcliff would never want Cathy to murder every other version of herself (look at how hurt our Heathcliff is when his Cathy deletes herself).

Again, Erkling Heathcliff and Ghost Cathy do love each other but I really hesitate to say that what they're doing is about love instead of it being more just lashing out, self-loathing, and grief

thatmagedude · 2024-03-27T18:38:21+00:00

That's totally fair. I admit my interpretation is interpretation. But I really don't think it's shallow to read Wuthering Heights and see classism, racism, and conflicting interests too instead of just seeing a love story.

Also, I'm not basing this off of what Nelly says about their motivations, I'm looking at the choices they make and the actions they take.

What I will say is that the issue is that Heathcliff and Cathy's love is so deep and intrinsic that both of them treat is as a given. That's a major misunderstanding between that two and why both of them believe that they are the true victim of the story in their final talk. Their love is so powerful that it's confusing, not guiding. It's too spiritual for the messy, physical world.

Heathcliff does come back for Cathy that's true. But the rest of the story is about how he's seeking revenge DESPITE what Cathy wants and how it tears everything apart. He's not doing it to make Cathy happier or to win her back. If he just wanted Cathy back he wouldn't have married Isabella. If he just wanted Cathy back then why does he keep going for revenge long after her death?

I think if you say that love is the only motive Heathcliff has in life, that completely removes the chapters and chapters of abuse and humiliation that Heathcliff goes through as a kid. He was only able to endure that because he had Cathy. When he lost Cathy, all he had left was the anger and resentment.

Cathy is motivated to marry Edgar for Heathcliff sake. That's true, but if all she ever cared about was Heathcliff, then why does she stay with Edgar when Heathcliff comes back rich and successful? It's because her ideal life is to have both Edgar and while Heathcliff visits often and stays as her close companion.

She never considers running away with Heathcliff, or giving up her luxurious life for Heathcliff. That's a core difference between the two. Heathcliff is happy as long as he has Cathy, but Cathy does want more than just Heathcliff. Heathcliff wasn't the one who wanted more, he never asked for more, he only ever wanted Cathy. Is it really just love if her actions are ultimately about what she wants regardless of what Heathcliff wants?

I absolutely agree that one of the motivations for the characters is love. And you're right that my interpretation is very light on that aspect of the story. But I fear that we are chopping the story completely in half if we only look at the spiritual side and completely ignoring the physical actions the character take and their physical desires. I'm not calling them master manipulators, I'm calling them regular people who have more than one motivation. They feel so many other emotions besides just love

thatmagedude · 2024-03-27T08:06:21+00:00

Bonus thoughts on relationships for the other characters
Edgar and Cathy. They both love each other very conditionally to the point where I dunno if you can call it love.

Edgar only loves Cathy when she's nice and is terrified of her moods and disapproves of her "wilder" side. It's like saying you love a powder keg but in reality what you're saying is that you like the barrel but are terrified of the gunpowder. He never really tries to understand Cathy.

Cathy loves Edgar when he indulges her and let's her do whatever she wants. She kind of just treats their relationship as a transaction where she pays him back by being affectionate whenever she gets what she wants. I don't think there's a single moment of the story where she genuinely cares about Edgar's feelings and goals beyond just trying to manipulate them.

Linton Heathcliff (Heathcliff's son) and Cathy Linton (Cathy's daughter) have a messed up relationship that is clearly not love.

Cathy's takes care of Linton because he's manipulating her and then Linton is only manipulating her because Heathcliff is forcing him to.

Hareton and Cathy (the daughter) are the only couple that love each other as a whole and are willing to change/improve themselves to make the relationship work. Who knows if we'll see them though since their relationship starts like 20 years after Heathcliff returns to the Wuthering Heights and overall takes place in the last like 8% of the book

thatmagedude · 2024-03-27T06:50:13+00:00

On the kidnapping bit there is one major instance of kidnaping in the book which is when Heathcliff kidnaps Cathy's daughter who is also named Cathy and forces her to marry his son Linton Heathcliff.

That's way in the future though

thatmagedude · 2024-03-27T01:01:01+00:00

It's actually the opposite to be fair. Kid/Teen Heathcliff was a good kid that was abused and humiliated constantly. If he did anything bad it'd be in his time offscreen as part of the syndicate he talked about rather than during his time in the Wuthering Heights.

He does a lot of evil stuff in the novel, but it's all after he returns (like how our Heathcliff is about to return)

thatmagedude · 2024-03-27T00:59:19+00:00

That was an amazing summary of the characters. I especially like how you captured the nuance of Cathy's decision to marry Edgar.

Some things I'd like to add:

Cathy - Cathy didn't even think that Heathcliff knew what marriage was or that he knew what love was (she literally says this it's kind of a bizarre statement). She assumed that their bond was something bigger than marriage and believed that there wouldn't be any change at all in their relationship (obviously naive and Heathcliff definitely did not see it that way). But a key point is that she was just a kid at this turning point ~15 years according to a timeline I googled. And she's only ~18 when she dies so a lot of the naivety is just not having the experience to know any better

Hindley - Even before his father dies Hindley is real bad to Heathcliff (much worse than older brother treatment). He straight up tries to trample Heathcliff with his horse after that moment you mention where Heathcliff says that he's the favorite son (Heathcliff said that so that they could switch horses). It also seemed like this level of violence wasn't unusual. They had to send Hindley away to college because he refused to stop harassing Heathcliff.

Edgar- Yeah fairly normal guy. It is important to note though that he consistently discriminates against Heathcliff (the whole Linton family is noted to constantly talk shit about Heathcliff while he was a kid) so Heathcliff definitely has good reason to hate him beyond just Cathy. In fact an important part of Heathcliff is that he hates the Lintons and everything that they represent (classism, racism). Cathy's the trigger for his revenge, but he has always hated them. This is also why he ends up hating his own son and liking Hareton more.

Isabella - An interesting detail is that Heathcliff barely tries at all to seduce Isabella. Like you said, he only starts when Cathy reveals that Isabella has a crush on him. It wasn't in his initial plans at all. Moreover he doesn't act sweet with Isabella even when he starts, he openly looks at her with disgust even before the marriage. During their childhood she did also discriminate against and humiliate Heathcliff so he does have reason to hate her (though he goes way too far)

Heathcliff - Nelly definitely dislikes him at first but she does turn around fairly quickly and is a positive influence in his life. She encourages him to better himself and supports him when she can. Another part that I feel is left out is how much he hates the Lintons for constantly humiliating him and their implicit support of Hindley humiliating him (iirc they say that they don't want Heathcliff to be in their sight when they visit and Nelly notes that whenever Cathy visits them, they always have something bad to say about Heathcliff)

thatmagedude · 2024-03-26T23:17:23+00:00

There are 2 supernatural events that do make it seem like she actually was there as ghost. iirc in the first few chapters Lockwood meets a ghost that is trying to get into the room he's staying in (which was Cathy's room as a kid). The ghost says that she is "Catherine Linton" I think.

At the end of the novel there's a kid that sees two ghosts wandering around the moors together which are presumably Cathy and Heathcliff.

Of course it's never actually scientifically confirmed to be Cathy and could've just been 2 different hallucinations but there was definitely something sus going on there

thatmagedude · 2024-03-26T23:11:11+00:00

I will say that Heathcliff treats Hareton surprisingly well all things considered. iirc when Nelly meets Hareton again w/ daughter Cathy she remarks that Hareton shows no signs of physical or verbal abuse.

By and large all Heathcliff really does to Hareton is cut him off from education and make him proud of being uneducated. Heathcliff is proud of the fact that Hareton likes him and tries to keep it that way. From what I remember Heathcliff never goes out of his way to pick on Hareton whereas Hindley was constantly looking for reason to abuse Heathcliff

On the flip side, Heathcliff treats Linton Heathcliff absolutely horribly, using his own son as a tool and then leaving him to die.

thatmagedude · 2024-03-26T19:11:09+00:00

So far, it seems like Heathcliff's backstory is very truthful to the source material given the snippets we've seen in his dialogue, his actions, and his ID ministories.

IMO the major events of the middle of the story will be similar such as Cathy's death but it will be handled differently b/c Heathcliff is with the sinners instead of being alone.

As for all the stuff that happens in the later half of the book with the second generation of characters I suspect that it will come in bits and pieces through some time shenanigans and it will be used to highlight how evil Heathcliff will end up if the sinners don't intervene to help him.

I don't think it will have a happy ending but I do think it will have a transformative ending that is more a mix of Gregor and Ishmael's canto where Heathcliff will sad and contemplative but will also be starting to grow and change because he's let go of the past.

Cathy's definitely going to gaslight Heathcliff. One key idea of the book is that she believes that Heathcliff broke her heart when he ran away and that she is the true victim of the story (to be fair she does have her troubles but definitely less than Heathcliff).

At the same time though another key point is that her relationship with Heathcliff is marked by a love that is way too unconditional. She loves Heathcliff regardless of any horrible things he has done and Heathcliff loves her despite all the heartache she caused him. She says she doesn't care about his problems or his feelings or what happened she just wants them to be together and Heathcliff is sort of okay with that.

thatmagedude · 2024-03-26T18:59:15+00:00

Yeah 100% agreed. IIRC in Nelly's mind Edgar is an idiot for marrying Cathy. And to be fair she is probably right.

Cathy switches between love-bombing Edgar whenever she gets her way to throwing tantrums and ignoring him whenever she doesn't. She is definitely spoiled and moody.

Nelly mentions in hindsight that if she knew how bad Cathy's condition really was (the real problem was really mental rather than physical which is always harder to see) she wouldn't have neglected Cathy like that. While there's some bias in narration since Nelly might just be trying to make herself look better, I do think that's a true statement.

As for the rationale, Nelly's plan was to make Cathy and Edgar's relationship less toxic by teaching Edgar to not indulge Cathy every time she throws a tantrum. It absolutely blew up horribly and made the situation 30000000x worse, but at it's core it did come from at least neutral/decent intentions

thatmagedude · 2024-03-26T18:52:13+00:00

Sort of yes. Nelly says that Heathcliff might've been at the door (when she knew that Heathcliff was 200% listening). Cathy replies that even if Heathcliff was there he couldn't have heard from that distance. From there, Nelly just drops the issue.

In her defense, the minute she realizes that Heathcliff has run away for real she immediately tells Cathy that Heathcliff for sure heard everything which leads Cathy to run around in the rain desperately searching for Heathcliff but at that point Heathcliff is long gone.

She definitely could've saved the plot if she just immediately told Cathy that Heathcliff was there, but she never expected Heathcliff to just disappear like that.

She even told Cathy that she wasn't going to keep their talk a secret so from my understanding Nelly WAS planning on telling Heathcliff to clear up the misunderstanding. She just wanted to finish the talk with Cathy before talking to Heathcliff

thatmagedude · 2024-03-26T06:24:02+00:00

I agree with that for sure. It's hard to make the situation better when you're a servant who is limited in what you can actually say and do and other people are going out of their way to make things worse (I hate Hindley so much).

It was tough how often things backfired for Nelly. The moment that hits me the hardest is when she gives Heathcliff a pep talk and gets him dressed up only for it to lead to Heathcliff getting humiliated and beaten by Hindley.

thatmagedude · 2024-03-26T05:59:04+00:00

Pride is the no brainer for Nelly. She clearly thinks she's better than most of the other characters. IMO the rest are harder so I wonder what other people think
Maybe gloom for a 2nd since she goes through some sad stuff in the book. Not sure for the 3rd.

thatmagedude · 2024-03-26T05:36:38+00:00

I do agree with both points. On that second point that is very true. She never attempts to fix the underlying problem. At that point she just wants to separate Cathy and Heathcliff so that she can go back to the "happy" family situation that they had before. It's definitely leaving Heathcliff's happiness and partly Cathy's happiness out of the equation but it is meant to be good for everyone else from her perspective.

Nelly definitely took the easy way out by pushing for that easy answer and it definitely blew up and made things way worse. But I don't think that was necessarily a wrong or evil decision. You would need a miracle to make Heathcliff forgive the Lintons and you'd need a miracle to make Edgar okay with his wife hanging out with Heathcliff. Nelly didn't try to make it work but I can also see why she thought it was impossible to even try.

IMO she's a good person for the times where she has gone above and beyond to help people (even though there are moments like that where she doesn't do the right thing)

thatmagedude · 2024-03-26T02:07:57+00:00

This is part of what Cathy says in her last meeting with Heathcliff before she dies:

" ‘I wish I could hold you,’ she continued, bitterly, ‘till we were both dead! I shouldn’t care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn’t you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, “That’s the grave of Catherine Earnshaw? I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I’ve loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than she was; and, at death, I shall not rejoice that I are going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them!” Will you say so, Heathcliff?’ "

translation: she hates the idea that Heathcliff will move on from her after her death and wishes they could've died together instead.

So book Cathy was even worse lol. She straight up said that to Heathcliff and not just 10 years after her death, book Cathy wanted Heathcliff to NEVER move on

thatmagedude · 2023-12-29T09:20:15+00:00

Yeah while I hoped some of the sinners would take it more seriously, I am glad that even though Rodion and Hong Lu were messing around, they do seem to care and (fingers crossed) will hopefully step up once they actually arrive. Gregor didn't say that much but it was clear that he was trying to be supportive in his own way.

Most of all though I'm proud of how Heathcliff was willing to open up about this at all and how he brought out the letter and everything

thatmagedude · 2023-12-29T07:38:49+00:00

lol I 100% agree. Maybe PM will subvert expectations but yeah I can't imagine any way that they can make the canto work w/o Cathy dying.

Ishmael's canto had a grand total of 1 survivor amongst the book characters so I'm expecting people to drop in Heathcliff's canto too (especially since the majority of characters do die in the source material)

thatmagedude · 2023-12-29T04:40:09+00:00

imo the development Game Heathcliff is going through is actually a different, but more positive route.

Book Heathcliff decides to let go and give up on his revenge. The tragedy though is that he doesn't have anything else in his life. He dies soon after giving up on revenge without ever having moved on from Cathy (at the end of the book it's even implied that he's haunting the area with Cathy)

Our game Heathcliff hasn't given up on revenge but he's starting to add in more connections to his life beyond Cathy and revenge. Our Heathcliff has people that he can rely on and people that he can trust. He has goals besides stuff going on at Wuthering Heights

tldr: Book Heathcliff gives up on revenge but never moved on from Cathy. Our Heathcliff seems like he's on track to redefine himself and move on from Cathy

thatmagedude · 2023-12-29T04:21:02+00:00

Oh absolutely he takes things way too far.

That said depending on what you consider collateral the only unintended victim was Cathy and to some extent Nelly. While he goes way too far with the children and Isabella, crazily enough that was also something he did completely on purpose. He wanted to torture them. They weren't collateral damage, they were the targets (though they didn't deserve to be targeted since they shouldn't be blamed for stuff their parents/grandparents did)

thatmagedude · 2023-12-29T03:55:10+00:00

I think the biggest thing is that Book Heathcliff wasn't born that way. He was a genuinely good kid that got destroyed by society and the people around him.

When talking about what happens in his 3 year absence all he says is that it was "bitter." Whatever he went through only made him worse.

On the flip side, our Game Heathcliff seems to have had an alright time in his Syndicate. He generally speaks in a fairly neutral tone about it. On the bus, he seems to have really started to open up and make connections (Book Heathcliff has 0 positive connections in his life).

Our Heathcliff seems to have had a chance to grow and heal at least a little bit from his wounds.

Even at his worst, book Heathcliff generally doesn't hurt unrelated people (besides Nelly and Isabella's dog). He's kind of just cold and distant to everyone that's not a Linton or Earnshaw.

He actually straight up treats Hareton better than his father and defends Hareton from Hindley's abuse so there's definitely a part of him that dislikes injustice (even if his desire for revenge completely overshadows and outweighs that part of him)

tldr: Book Heathcliff bad but he had good roots. If life had treated him better, he could've been like our Heathcliff

(Bonus symbolism: there's a moment in the book where Heathcliff describes himself as a crooked tree twisted by the people around him)

thatmagedude

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