Wuthering Heights Chapter 2

Summary

Lockwood returns to Wuthering Heights the next day. He encounters the rest of Heathcliff's family ― sullen Cathy and rough Hareton. The weather turns bad and, after being injured by the dogs, Lockwood is forced to remain at the Heights overnight.




Analysis

The character of the natural setting of the novel ­ the moors, snowstorms ­ begins to develop, and it becomes clear that the bleak and harsh nature of the Yorkshire hills is not merely a geographical accident. It mirrors the roughness of those who live there: Wuthering Heights is firmly planted in its location and could not exist anywhere else. Knowing Emily Brontë's passionate fondness for her homeland, we can expect the same bleakness which Lockwood finds so disagreeable to take on a wild beauty. Its danger cannot be forgotten, though: a stranger to those parts could easily lose his way and die of exposure. Heathcliff and the wind are similar in that they have no pity for weakness. The somewhat menacing presence of the natural world can also be seen in the large number of dogs who inhabit Wuthering Heights: they are not kept for pets.

The power dynamics that Lockwood observes in the household of Wuthering Heights are extremely important. The girl is evidently frightened of Heathcliff and scornful of Hareton; Hareton behaves aggressively because he is sensitive about his status; Heathcliff does not hesitate to use his superior physical strength and impressive personality to bully other members of his household... The different ways in which different characters try to assert themselves reveal a lot about their situation. Most notably, it is evident that sheer force usually wins out over intellectual and humane pretensions. The girl is subversive and intellectual, an unwilling occupant of the house, but she can achieve little in the way of freedom or respect.

Lockwood continues to lose face: his conversational grace appears ridiculous in its new setting. Talking to Heathcliff, for example, he refers to the girl as a "beneficent fairy," which is evidently neither true nor welcome flattery. This chapter might be seen, then, as a continuation of the strict division between social ideals (grace, pleasant social interactions, Lockwood) and natural realities (storms, frost, dogs, bluntness, cruelty, Hareton, Heathcliff). If the chapter was taken by itself, out of context, the reader would see that while social ideals are ridiculed, it is clear that the cruel natural world is ugly and hardly bearable. Fortunately we are only at the beginning.

• In Chapter 2 we realise that Mr.Lockwood is a gentle man by his dialect, 'you deserve perpetual isolation' which contrasts to the servant Joseph 'Whet are ye for?'. This could introduce the theme of Social status.
  
  

  ·         We are aware that it is the year of 1801, the same year Linton Heathcliff dies the husband of Catherine Linton Heathcliff (Cathy) who lives in Wuthering Heights as a ‘servant-girl’. She appears to be scornful ‘She flung the tea back’. Lockwood mistakes her for Mr.Heathcliff’s wife as he is not educated on the background history on the Heathcliff’s family tree.  

  ·         During that time period, as readers we begin to see that the working class were given animalistic characters ‘drinking his tea out of a basin’, ‘growled the other’.

  ·         Setting: ‘Misty and cold’, ‘sky and hills mingled in one bitter whirl of wind and suffocating snow’ – pathetic fallacy is used to set the scene of the Gothic. The weather has made a major impact on the characters attitude ‘ the youth grew crimson, and clenched his fist’

  ·         Gothic Imagery: ‘Suffocating snow’. As if it is quick sand and it’s forming above the human head.

  ·         Gothic Imagery: ‘Mrs Heathcliff leaning over the fire’. As if she’s slipping to hell, could be that she murdered Linton Heathcliff and that’s her judgement.

  ·         Gothic Imagery: ‘I’ll ask your abduction as a special favour’, ‘dark book’ = Witchcraft

  ·         Religious references: ‘devil’, ‘may the lord deliver us from evil’ , ‘praying’, ‘You’ll go with him to hell!’

  ·         Gothic imagery: ‘beasts…devouring me alive’, ‘bleeding at the nose’. It seems as if Mr Lockwood has been put under a trance .‘I was sick exceedingly , and dizzy and faint’