Wuthering Heights

As Walter Allen has observed, Wuthering Heights "is utterly unlike any other novel."' Historically, the most celebrated aspect of its uniqueness concerns the portrayal of character. According to E. M. Forster, "the emotions of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw function differently to other emotions in fiction."2 But the psychological strangeness of these two figures has undermined their intelligibility. Bernard Paris points out several critics who do not regard Heathcliff as "a mimetic character"-that is, …

…there is an unconscious method to her madness. After the separation that inevitably follows their elopement and her own impregnation, Isabella establishes a home in London where she creates a world of extreme Overlove at whose center is her sickly son, Linton. The third way of perpetuating Overlove after childhood is to provide it to oneself through self-pity for the misery of loneliness. As we have found, this is the course unwittingly pursued by Lockwood.