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EBEmily Brontë

Emily Brontë

Life dates: 1818 AD — 1848 AD

Emily Brontë’s novel gives memorable words to different generations and narrators. Read Catherine’s declaration about Heathcliff beside Nelly’s response to the younger Cathy, preserving the distinction between feeling and conduct.

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Life and writing

The catalogue identifies Emily Brontë with lifetime years 1818–1848 and credits David Price for the electronic text. Wuthering Heights places stories inside other people’s recollections, so a sentence’s speaker matters. This checked English edition supplies local context for two existing extracts. Its catalogue HTML ISBN identifies the digital edition; neither the print publisher nor a composition date for the archive passages is established here.

In Chapter IX, Catherine Earnshaw tells Nelly that she and Heathcliff share a nature. Heathcliff leaves after overhearing an earlier part of the conversation, before hearing this declaration. Chapter XXII concerns the younger Catherine and her ill father: Nelly asks that promises made in fear be supported by deeds. The selected extracts match this text under limited normalization. They belong to different speakers and generations, rather than a single statement of the author’s personal advice.

Reading this voice

Read Chapter IX through Heathcliff’s departure, then Chapter XXII through Nelly’s reply. Keep Catherine Earnshaw distinct from her daughter. Notice how an overheard fragment and a fearful promise change what words can accomplish in their scenes.

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Quotations and sayings

10c. 1833 AD
I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung my out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, but because he's more myself than I am. What ever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.'Ere this speech ended, I became sensible of Heathcliff's presence. Having noticed a slight movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise from the bench, and steal out noiselessly. He had listened till he heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and then he stayed to hear no further.
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