Heathcliff disappears for three years after Hindley Earnshaw takes over Wuthering Heights and humiliates him; he returns as a changed, wealthy man, but Emily Brontë's novel never explicitly states where he went, leaving it a mystery, though theories suggest the military, America, or Liverpool, possibly as a slave trader.
How has Heathcliff changed during his absence of three years? His appearance and manners are greatly improved, and he seems to be better educated. Underneath his new appearance, though, his hatreds are more intense and his emotions are more cruel.
No other hints are given about where Heathcliff was and how he made his fortune over the course of his three-year absence. On returning, he is ruthlessly determined to destroy those who degraded him and prevented him from being with Catherine, cementing his status as an anti-hero, rather than a romantic hero.
While the grave was being dug, Heathcliff persuades/pays the sexton to remove the earth from her coffin and he opens it. He replaces it to prevent decomposition and removes the side of her coffin (away from Edgar's position) and covers it up.
Catherine marries Edgar Linton, while Heathcliff marries Edgar's sister, Isabella. Both couples have children; Catherine and Edgar have Cathy and Heathcliff and Isabella have Linton. Cathy and Linton get married when they grow older, but Linton dies and Cathy remarries Hareton, the son of Hindley and Frances.
His connection with Catherine is forged in the fires of their childhood, evolving into a tempestuous passion that consumes their souls. It is in the depths of this all-encompassing love that the true essence of Heathcliff's psyche is laid bare.
Catherine gives birth to a daughter, Cathy, delivering her two months early—the baby is born at midnight, and Catherine passes away two hours later. Upon hearing the news from Nelly, Heathcliff seems to already be aware.
Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights doesn't fit a single modern diagnosis but exhibits traits of severe personality disorders, including Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), marked by entitlement, lack of empathy, and grandiosity, alongside obsessive-compulsive traits and signs of monomania (obsession with one idea, Catherine) and extreme emotional dysregulation (akin to Bipolar Disorder or psychosis). His behavior stems from deep trauma, a Byronic dark romantic archetype, and a consuming, destructive obsession with Catherine, driving his vengeful, self-destructive path.
Cathy and Heathcliff do not sleep together in Wuthering Heights. They are shown to hold each other and to kiss, but that is the extent of their physical intimate relations.
Despite Brontë's decision to portray Heathcliff as a person of color, she leaves his specific race ambiguous. Some instances make it seem as though Heathcliff could be Black, while other times it sounds like he could be Asian.
Catherine and Heathcliff are very close in age, essentially childhood companions, with Catherine being slightly younger; she's around 6 when Heathcliff arrives, and they grow up together at Wuthering Heights, though Catherine dies at almost 19, while Heathcliff lives much longer, seeking revenge.
My soul's bliss kills my body, but does not satisfy itself. ' In these final words before his death, Heathcliff talks to Nelly about his current physical and mental state. He explains that he cannot rest because he struggles to feel fully satisfied despite succeeding in his revenge.
Cathy tells Nelly (a servant) about how she cannot marry Heathcliff because her brother's abuse of Heathcliff has degraded him (at this point it has destroyed all of Heathcliff's passion and self-esteem).
Catherine claims that both Edgar and Heathcliff have killed her by breaking her heart. She is angry that they both act pitiful when it was their own fault.
It is only after being taunted by Catherine that Edgar physically attacks Heathcliff, but even then, he retreats for backup immediately afterwards. Thus, Edgar is overwhelmed by the aggressive, stereotypically masculine traits of Catherine and Heathcliff.
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
"I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fl uttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."
Edgar has died by the time Heathcliff has the sexton open Catherine's grave. In fact, the sexton is digging Edgar's grave at the time. Heathcliff has been feeling Catherine's ghost every night for eighteen years, but he wants physical closeness to her. He can never reach her, and it is tormenting him.
In Season Three, Catherine becomes pregnant with Vincent's child and is captured by Gabriel. She is later murdered by Gabriel who has his "tame" doctor overdose her with morphine.
Heathcliff's abuse of Isabella is sometimes physical, but more often psychological. He takes care, as he tells the family servant Nelly Dean, to “keep strictly within the limits of the law” to avoid giving Isabella “the slightest right to claim a separation”.
However, life experiences have warped Heathcliff and driven him to be a cruel man who is in many ways a victim of circumstances beyond his control. Heathcliff had a traumatic early childhood, and even after being adopted by the Earnshaws, he is never fully accepted by the family.
Emily Brontë's depiction of Catherine and Heathcliff has much in common with the themes of limerence, amigeist, twin flames, and extreme love in general.
Edgar is devastated too, but by burying Catherine near her beloved moors, Edgar demonstrates both the depth of his love for his wife as well as insight into understanding her character. He wants Catherine to be happy and at peace, and this is one final gesture he can give to show his love.
1 Unwittingly, we must presume, the great neurologist extended his disdain to one of the great English novels, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, where the heroine, Catherine Earnshaw, died of a disease diagnosed as "brain fever".
Read as an expression of Emily Brontë's ambivalence about her sexual identity, Wuthering Heights is both a representation of homosexual energy and an attempt to contain or imprison it for fear of its social unacceptability and perhaps also of its sheer power.