Pleasure and Disquietude in Wuthering Heights Essay Sample

📌Category: Books
📌Words: 1455
📌Pages: 6
📌Published: 11 June 2022

In the human mind, there are 27 distinct emotions. A person who chooses to pick up a 

book and dive into the capturing story has access to each and every one of these feelings. However, these mental responses can easily be divided into two sections: pleasure and disquietude. It does differ from reader to reader, but every book will incite the two a numerous amount of times and with either great intensity or little effect. The novel Wuthering Heights is one example of a story that generates these two emotions and with a large magnitude. Emotion-filled scenes crowd the pages, unstable characters inhabit the scenes, and distressing settings create the atmosphere. Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff are two prominent characters within the novel and because of their unbalanced mentalities, they themselves are the source of many pleasurable and disquietable instances. Together, all of this floods the reader with moments of pleasure, disquietude, and instances where the two go hand-in-hand. Emily Bronte’s 1847 novel, Wuthering Heights, is a story that elaborates on the pleasure found in the torturous love expressed between Heathcliff and Catherine and the disquietude that surrounds the manor, along with the people within it.

Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, two prominent characters in the novel, share a 

relationship that even with its overall distressing atmosphere, contains an innocent and passionate form of love that can be found pleasurable. Proving to become an inseparable pair, they grew up together within the walls of Wuthering Heights, seeking out in each other comfort from the treacherous lives they were subject to in the manor. “We see that the essence of the childhood love between Heathcliff and Catherine is a sharing of the state of exclusion from love…” (Source 1). The more they were punished and beaten for acting out, the more wild they became with each other. Only Heathcliff understood what Catherine truly felt and vice versa. This unruly companionship can be seen as a sort of “innocent” and naive type of love. It pleases the reader to see this take place, because it acts as a refreshing break from the depressive ambiance of the manor. However, as they each grew older and their emotions became more complicated, tension and unspoken feelings would fill the space between them. In one particular scene, Catherine is confessing to the narrator, Nelly, that her lover, Edgar Linton, has proposed. Catherine, unsure about whether she should take back her “yes”, tries to explain how even though Edgar seems to be the perfect man, he could never truly understand her as Heathcliff does. “He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” (pg. 81). While it may hurt to see that Catherine doesn’t really love Edgar, it is pleasurable to see that Catherine still holds her passionate feelings towards Heathcliff, even through the many fights they have had. It brings hope into the book, hope for a real love not fueled by necessity, but by passion. 

Due to the hold that Catherine and Heathcliff’s childhood trauma had on each of them, 

there is pleasure found when they are finally released from their burden of life and able to forever rest together. The entirety of the story of Wuthering Heights is filled with anger, destruction, and torture that holds onto the characters from their birth to their death. Trauma latches onto both Catherine and Heathcliff, leaving the two with disastrous mental states that affect not only each other, but the reader and fellow characters. Thus, the passing of Heathcliff and Catherine provides the reader with a sense of pleasure, because they are, at last, able to rest and lie with each other peacefully. This peace is confirmed towards the end of the novel, when Nelly states, “Yet that old man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen two on 'em looking out of his chamber window on every rainy night since his death,” (pg. 336). This proof that Heathcliff and Catherine are finally happy together shows the reader that all is good in the end, because there is no more anger tormenting the two. It truly is a refreshing and pleasurable realization, because the journey of reading the story is not an easy one and this strange form of a “happy ending” leaves the reader satisfied that there is no longer any suffering for Heathcliff and Catherine.

The relationship between Hilton Earnshaw and Heatcliff serves as a source of cruelty and 

hatred due to their disastrous mix of personalities and tendencies to fight, continuously resulting in various instances of disquietude for the reader. At the arrival of Heathcliff, the Earnshaw family began to experience mixed emotions. Hindley, brother of Catherine, would pick up fights with Heathcliff on numerous occasions. “He would stand Hindley’s blows without winking or shedding a tear,” (pg. 38). Due to Heathcliff giving Hindley little attention, his anger would increase. At one point, Mr. Earnshaw had brought to the manor a handful of colts for the children and since Heathcliff’s fell apart, he asked to switch with Hindley. Hindley refused, stating, “And I pray that he [Mr. Earnshaw] may break your neck; take him, and be damned, you beggarly interloper,” (pg. 39). The tension that stays constant between the two causes the reader to feel immense amounts of disquietude, because a quarrel could break out at any moment and people could get hurt. The two characters have such complex, opposing personalities that when they come together, it ends awfully. Thus, the reader is forced to always be on the edge of their seat, waiting anxiously for a verbal explosion. This certain explosion does happen to occur in chapter 17 of the novel, where Hindley and Heathcliff, now adults, get into a heated argument that quickly becomes physical as Heathcliff attempts to break into the manor after being locked out. Hindly had pulled out a gun and a knife, aiming towards Heathcliff when, “The charge exploded, and the knife, in springing back, closed into its owner’s wrist. Heathcliff pulled it away by main force, slitting up the flesh it passed on,” (pg. 178). This scene is filled with anxiety and uneasiness from the start, creating an atmosphere where the reader has no idea what may happen next. Thus, the reader is left with a feeling of disquietude, because their nerves become more and more unsettled as the fight goes from verbal, to deadly.

Heathcliff, because of his hostile and resentful personality, is a significant source of 

disquietude within the novel. “The child Heathcliff brings disorder into a previously well-organized family, disrupting family ties and forming a focus of extreme emotion.” (Source 3). Heathcliff’s arrival is the beginning of the downfall in the novel. His naturally conflictive nature brings out the other characters’ more extreme sides. Hindley begins to become more hateful, Catherine grows more disruptive, and the Lintons, the neighboring family, become miserable in his prescence. This, in itself, is a large reason for disquietude in the novel due to the fact that Heathcliff is a character who can escalate any situation into a violent one, such as his interactions with Hindley as stated earlier. However, it can be understood why Heathcliff is the way he is. As a child, he was subject to nonstop ridicule that eventually led to him not being able to trust or rely on others. Afterward, he learned to use those punishments given to him as a way of torturing himself and consequently, those around him. “Heathcliff imposes loneliness on others in revenge against the lack of love he himself was forced to endure,” (Source 1). This saddening, rather than scary version of disquietude does also affect the reader. They become uneasy watching Heathcliff grow and evolve into accepting this form of self-punishment, due to the fact that his faults are the result of the trauma he was put through.

Catherine Earnshaw was an unpredictable and ill-tempered child who grew to become an 

unstable woman, causing her to be a source of disquietude. Throughout the story, it is evident that Catherine’s intense and fierce personality does not pair well with the gloomy attributes of those around her. As a child, she constantly runs around the manor and disrupts the peace, leading to her always receiving a lecture or a punishment. Her emotions are large and felt much more deeply than an ordinary person, and this worsens as she grows older. She becomes so absorbed in her love for both Edgar— her husband—and Heathcliff that she forgets that those around her cannot begin to understand the scale to which she feels. “Catherine’s inability to recognize the reality, even existence, of human needs and wishes outside her own is itself a sign of mental disturbance,” (Source 3). This is a source of disquietude, because Catherine is an extremely unstable individual who, due to her own ignorance, badly affects those she cares about. However, there are instances where Catherine recognizes this fault of hers, such as when she explains her issues concerning Edgar to Nelly. “If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years, as I could in a day,” (pg. 148). It is anxiety-filling to watch as she sets herself up for heartbreak and disappointment, because we, as readers, understand what she does not. We understand that Catherine will never be able to be truly happy as long as she lives in the two manors. In there she is caged, not able to run free over the hills or explore the unexplored. 

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