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Lecture Three for Wuthering Heights: I Cannot Live Without My Life (Ch. 12-20) (Patreon)

Published:
2022-01-24 17:21:59
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

This was quite an emotional stretch of the novel.

We're discussing mirror justice ("an eye for an eye"), the widowhood effect, the etymology of "haunt" and "pity", Wuthering Heights as morality play, and much more.

We'll also draw in poetry from Tennyson, Milton, Wordsworth, and Emily Brontë herself.

Video Timestamps:

  • 0:00 opening with poetry appreciation
  • 8:50 Heathcliff and Satan from Paradise Lost
  • 12:20 Catherine, Dickens, and Shakespeare
  • 15:40 Edgar vs Heathcliff (and primal passion)
  • 18:00 Catherine’s dying need for love
  • 21:20 the problems of consciousness
  • 24:00 the eternal love of Catherine and Heathcliff
  • 25:00 Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’
  • 25:45 Heathcliff and Isabella
  • 27:00 “Is Mr Heathcliff a man?”
  • 28:00 Wuthering Heights as morality play
  • 31:45 Isabella meeting Hareton and Hindley
  • 33:00 Hindley’s plans to murder Heathcliff
  • 36:00 vengeance and forgiveness
  • 37:00 “I should have torn his heart out”
  • 39:00 the life of Lord Byron
  • 41:00 the value of pity in literature
  • 47:00 tragedies vs comedies
  • 48:00 pity and piety
  • 49:00 “I love my murderer”
  • 51:00 hauntings, hell, and prayer
  • 52:30 how to examine a work’s semantic field
  • 54:00 the birth of Cathy, and death of Catherine
  • 55:00 “I cannot live without my life.”
  • 56:00 the etymology of “haunt”
  • 59:00 the widowhood effect
  • 1:00:00 how men and women deal with pain
  • 1:01:00 a chance to break the cycle
  • 1:03:00 an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth
  • 1:04:00 meeting Linton Heathcliff
  • 1:06:00 Cathy and Hareton at the Penistone Crags
  • 1:10:00 reading Wordsworth’s Ode
  • 1:13:00 questions and chapter reading assignment

Reading Assignment:

Our next lecture will cover up to chapter twenty-seven, so you may wish to read at least that amount of Wuthering Heights before listening.

Questions to Consider:

1) Does Emily Brontë have a moral purpose with Wuthering Heights? Should she?

2) Do you find reading poems to be a useful compliment to the novel?

3) What prison(s) do the characters find themselves in?

And let us know your reaction to the novel thus far. Has it engaged you or enraged you, amused you or bemused you? Do you have any favourite lines, passages, or symbols?

Happy reading, everybody!

Files

Previews only

Lecture Three for Wuthering Heights: I Cannot Live Without My Life (Ch. 12-20)

0:00 opening with poetry appreciation 8:50 Heathcliff and Satan from Paradise Lost 12:20 Catherine, Dickens, and Shakespeare 15:40 Edgar vs Heathcliff (and primal passion) 18:00 Catherine’s dying need for love 21:20 the problems of consciousness 24:00 the eternal love of Catherine and Heathcliff 25:00 Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ 25:45 Heathcliff and Isabella 27:00 “Is Mr Heathcliff a man?” 28:00 Wuthering Heights as morality play 31:45 Isabella meeting Hareton and Hindley 33:00 Hindley’s plans to murder Heathcliff 36:00 vengeance and forgiveness 37:00 “I should have torn his heart out” 39:00 the life of Lord Byron 41:00 the value of pity in literature 47:00 tragedies vs comedies 48:00 pity and piety 49:00 “I love my murderer” 51:00 hauntings, hell, and prayer 52:30 how to examine a work’s semantic field 54:00 the birth of Cathy, and death of Catherine 55:00 “I cannot live without my life.” 56:00 the etymology of “haunt” 59:00 the widowhood effect 1:00:00 how men and women deal with pain 1:01:00 a chance to break the cycle 1:03:00 an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth 1:04:00 meeting Linton Heathcliff 1:06:00 Cathy and Hareton at the Penistone Crags 1:10:00 reading Wordsworth’s Ode 1:13:00 questions and chapter reading assignment

Comments

Scott W

Does Emily Brontë have a moral purpose with Wuthering Heights? Should she? I think she was incredibly aware of how our formative years, and our attachments and treatment, shape us in the long term and how this can form a repeating cycle through the generations. I don’t know if later we see something to make us think Emily was imploring us to see this for ourselves in our own lives and do something to break the cycle. I don’t know if she believed such cycles could be broken.. I believe they can and I’ve worked with a counsellor over the last couple of years to make sure some of them are broken, but I wasn’t aware of such things until very recently myself. To know it in 1850 strikes me as incredible. If the book ends with people who have behaved badly to others getting some kind of comeuppance, I’m not sure that would even support the view she had a moral purpose with the book, it would seem rather vengeful, I don’t think you could be as aware of how pain can be passed and the damage it does as it echoes through generation as Emily was and believe in something like ‘just desserts’. I don’t think she did have a moral purpose. I do think she had seen first-hand the way these cycles are passed down, and some violent scenes somewhere, perhaps at home. I've seen working men fight and threaten one another, and I've seen violence in the home when I was growing up. There is the ring of truth in Emily's writing of these scenes that I don't sense in most other writers who tackle such things, it's too authentic for her not to have really been there in my opinion. What do we know about her father and brother? 2) Do you find reading poems to be a useful compliment to the novel? Yes! I am really enjoying her poems. The ones that deal with weather and landscape naturally remind me of where she loved to be and what lands inspired the setting of the novel. The tragic elements to those dealing with life remind he she knew great pain and loss many times in her life, and so helps me to understand how she could write so much pain into WH. 3) What prison(s) do the characters find themselves in? Heathcliff is in a prison made of his own pain. He is so hurt and angry and bitter that he never knew his parents and was treated so poorly and so unloved and abused when he was growing up. I don’t think it’s conscious on his part, but it shaped him the way he is. He simply can not help but treat people this way, he was never shown or taught any other way to behave. Cathy and Isabella of course find themselves in prisons of marriage to men they do not love and who arguably do not love them (although someone could persuade me Edgar loved Cathy, I don’t think they were a happy match). Joseph seems to be in a prison built of both ignorance and religious zealotry. Hareton is imprisoned by Heathcliff who made sure he would be raised coarse and uneducated and cheated of the freedom and options his rightful inheritance would have granted him. The list goes on.. I wonder what prisons Emily felt she was trapped inside? Grief? Gender? Anorexia? I don’t think geography.. I think she truly loved the moors and would not have left if she could help it. I don’t know if people knew how unhealthy Haworth was in terms of what its issues were and that moving a mile or two could have saved them? And let us know your reaction to the novel thus far. Has it engaged you or enraged you, amused you or bemused you? Do you have any favourite lines, passages, or symbols? I am loving the book. I didn’t know if I had time to fit it in along with everything else but I had a feeling it was going to be special and speak to me and I was right. It is compulsive reading, for the pain and behaviour of everyone, but there is also something strangely comforting about ‘going there’, you feel you are taken away because they are all so isolated up on the heights. I love stories that span multiple generations too. Emily seems to have been just so observant of what shapes people and how they pass it on. The scene where Heathcliff is in pain because Cathy has died have me chills. I sat in my kitchen imagining losing someone I loved with all my heart, knowing they are not anywhere in the world anymore, knowing I could walk the earth my whole life and never find them again; that they’re just gone, and I truly felt like it would be the end of me. I don’t know how people get over that. I think I would be one of those men who does not. Lesser books can not stop me in my tracks like that and make me consider my own mortality. I do believe you can die of heartbreak, but I did not believe that fully before I read Wuthering Heights.

Emma Yap

Thanks so much for this video, Ben! It really opened up a lot of new avenues for me and made me think about the novel in different ways. 1) Does Emily Brontë have a moral purpose with Wuthering Heights? Should she? I don't think so. I feel that, in order for this novel to have a moral purpose, we would need to have the sense that Heathcliff/Hindley etc. COULD have acted differently. That the negative outcomes in the story would need to be, to some extent, the result of a character flaw. But it doesn't feel to me like Heathcliff in particular really is a realistic human figure with flaws - he feels more like a primal force, the embodiment of revenge etc. There is one line spoken by Nelly which sounded to me like it could be coming from Emily, and felt like it pretty much summed up the novel: 'we MUST be for ourselves in the long run; the mild and generous are only more justly selfish than the domineering'. It made me think that in the world of Wuthering Heights, there isn't really morality. It feels like a Hobbesian world in which everyone's doing what they can to survive - and that nature is built on the principle of destruction, as Emily Bronte puts it in 'The Butterfly' 2) Do you find reading poems to be a useful compliment to the novel? Yes, definitely! It's not something that I'm used to doing, but I definitely feel like Wuthering Heights is an extension of Emily's poetry. Her poems help to illuminate some of the novel and what Emily's philosophy may have been. There's a bit in the novel (I can't remember which bit!) where Catherine is talking about how she misses the heather on the moors, and it led me to Emily's poem: 'High waving heather'. This line: 'man's spirit away from its drear dungeon sending/bursting the fetters and breaking the bars' seems particularly apt when thinking about Cathy's character 3) What prison(s) do the characters find themselves in? I think Cathy finds herself trapped by the civilisational mode of living represented by Lintons. Perhaps she finds it oppressive to live according to Victorian ideals of morality and this causes her to repress her true, wild nature. (However, I don't think Wuthering Heights is overtly critical of Victorian morality in the same way that Tess of the D'Urbevilles is'.) Edgar 'loves' Cathy according to a Victorian morality - Heathcliff says he is an 'insipid, paltry creature attending her from duty and humanity! From pity and charity! He might as well plant an oak in a flower pot, and expect it to thrive!' A lot of Emily's poetry also seems to centre around the idea of being trapped and yearning to 'walk where my own nature would be leading' - did Emily see something of herself in Catherine? Could her desire to escape from her prison somehow be linked to her anorexia? And let us know your reaction to the novel thus far. Has it engaged you or enraged you, amused you or bemused you? Do you have any favourite lines, passages, or symbols? This novel is so incredibly rich, I'm really enjoying it. I am finding it difficult because I think I'm much more used to reading novels in a 'conscious' way - this novel is requiring me to tap into my unconscious to understand it. I was really intrigued by Virginia Woolf's comment that the meaning of the novel lies in the mood that it creates. I definitely think I'll need to immerse myself more in Emily's poetry, and re-read the novel, possibly straight after finishing it! One thought I've had is that describing this novel as a love story is actually a bit misleading. It's actually much more complex than that. I wouldn't say this is Romeo & Juliet set on the Yorkshire moors. I really liked Nate's comment earlier in the thread, where he talks about Heathcliff simultaneously loving and hating Catherine. I definitely agree!