The Absent Mother in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

“‘Nelly, I am Heathcliff…’”(1) Readers of Wuthering Heights remember these words of Catherine Earnshaw. But the meaning of Catherine's striking declaration is problematic. Realizing how hard it must be for Nelly Dean to understand her attitude toward Heathcliff, Catherine offers first to give her “‘a feeling of how I feel’” (71) by recounting a particularly important dream. But Nelly, “superstitious about dreams” (72) and fearful of what they may reveal, refuses to listen. This gloomy, anxiety-laden dream remains suppressed, and Catherine substitutes another which is more obviously wish-fulfilling. She dreamed she was in heaven; but “‘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 me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy’” (72). She compares marrying Edgar Linton, which she has just agreed to do, with being in the unsatisfying heaven of this dream. She then compares her love for Edgar with her love for Heathcliff. Heathcliff, she says, is “‘more myself than I am. Whatever 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’” (72).

Heathcliff, who had been listening unobserved, has left just before this declaration of love, when Catherine said it would “degrade” her to marry him. Although Nelly has seen Heathcliff leave, she conceals this from Catherine. She does, however, try to get Catherine to consider how she will “‘bear the separation’” from Heathcliff if she marries Edgar, “‘and how he'll bear to be quite deserted in the world’” (73). Catherine's response is a vehement denial that