Chapter 3

Bronte creates tension within the beginning of Chapter three through creating a sense of mystery; Zillah warns Earnshaw to “hide the candle, to not make a noise” as her “master” had an “odd notion” regarding the room he is about to enter.  Naturally, the reader will begin to question Heathcliff’s feelings regarding the room, why will he not let “anyone sleep there willingly?” Zillah even states that there were “so many queer goings on” at Wuthering Heights- through this Bronte hints at the many secrets held within the house’s history, exposing the sense of the unknown, creating an ominous tone, typically Gothic.

Earnshaw describes the furniture in the room as “old fashioned”, describing old “musty” books, again, Bronte resonates the same sense of mystery, the unknown. The reader begins to question why the room has been left to age, to become “musty” and worn; realizing that the furniture dated ‘a quarter of a century back” Bronte evokes the Gothic theme of “looking back” into the past, again creating an ominous tone, building more tension as we begin to find clues regarding the ‘Catherine’ character.

 Lockwood enters Catherine 1’s bed chamber and discovers within the closet a window ledge on which are scratched her various identities; written in the order “Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Heathcliff, Catherine Linton”, we could argue that, as Heathcliff comes before Linton, Heathcliff was Catherine’s ‘first love’. He was there prior to Linton, so in a sense will always be there, triumphing over Linton.

Lockwood notes that Catherine doesn’t use the books for their ‘legitimate’ use, instead of reading them young Catherine chose to write her diary in the margins around the printed work. Symbolically, we can see Catherine as having to write around the ‘male’ print. As literature was a male dominated trade, Catherine is restricted in writing her own prose, instead having to write around the boundaries of the male patriarchy. This relates to the Bronte sisters themselves, having to use a male pseudonym as male patriarchy would their novels to be ignored if they were to use their feminine identity.

Hindley is as a ‘Tyrant’, this links to the conventional gothic character of the oppressive male figure, symbolic of male supremacy within a patriarchal world.

Catherine’s degrading caricature of Joseph acquires the support of the reader, Bronte portrays the character as overly pious, and hypocritical in his religious ways: he forces his beliefs onto Catherine and Heathcliff, sending the pair to “congregation in the garret… groaning and shivering”. He uses his religion to criticize others (over Catherine 2 in chapter 2) rather than enforcing the Christian ways of forgiveness. Bronte’s account of the Joseph exposes her negative attitude towards the “overly zealous” religious figures. This could be a reference to her own childhood, growing up within a strictly religious household.

Bronte begins to explore the Victorian notion of class structure by introducing Hindley as the “master” of the house; in giving the character the title Bronte visualizes the class divide between Hindley, the ‘master’, who resides in “paradise on earth” – as Catherine says mockingly – and Heathcliff who is described as a ‘Vagabond’, a gypsy/beggar figure. Catherine notes that, because of Heathcliff’s lower class, Hindley “wont let him sit with us, nor eat” threatening to reduce him to his “right place” which Hindley believes, because of his social class, not to be within his company. Here Bronte is displaying the Victorian Era’s attitude towards social class, believing in a ‘rigid’ class system set to keep classes from clashing. The wealthy dined with the wealthy and the poor with the poor. Although modern readers may sympathize with Heathcliff’s character, believing he marginalization to be unnecessary, Bronte is portraying the generic attitude towards social class from a Victorian’s perspective; meaning the original reader would share the same values regarding social class as Hindley, rendering his treatment of Heathcliff somewhat justified.

Lockwood’s first dream consists of him visiting a chapel, marginalized by society it resides next to a swamp and is used “embalm corpses” (Gothic). He then sits in on a sermon discussing sin, (more gothic) to which he finds tedious, exposing his distaste in it being split ‘490 times’. Bronte uses the Gothic technique in ‘blurring boundaries’ here; using a dream sequence, Bronte blurs the boundaries between consciousness and Lockwood’s subconscious. Some of the books Lockwood read before falling asleep begin to feature within the dream ‘seventy times seven’. Furthermore, The first and second dreams become connected by sound. Branderham’s ‘shower of loud taps on the boards of the pulpit’ in the first dream become the tapping of the fir-bough on the window pane, which in turn becomes the tapping of ‘fingers of a little, ice cold hand’. The entire time Bronte neglects to specify exactly what is real and what isn’t, again creating a Gothic sense of ‘mystery’ by leaving the reader unknown to what’s exactly going on.

In the second dream Lockwood ‘awakes’ (ambiguous, does he really wake up?) in his room, incorporating a sense of ‘realism’ this dream becomes ultimately more disturbing than the first. The tapping on the window becomes the tapping of the ‘fingers of a little, ice-cold hand” which grabs his arm, making Lockwood shriek out in fear. Again Bronte blurs the boundaries between Lockwood’s consciousness and subconscious as it appears the young girl is “Catherine Linton”, the same character we were just introduced to in the form of a diary entry moments before. The scene becomes more disturbing when Lockwood chooses to sever the young girls wrist on the broken window pain, ‘blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes’, yet another generic Gothic convention of using graphic images of blood and gore to create a sense of unease. Furthermore, Catherine Linton appearing as a spectre, a lonely ‘waif’, incorporates another example of ‘the blurring of boundaries’; we can see that Catherine appearing as a spectre blurs the boundaries between life and death, existing in a state between the two, transgression.