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Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Wuthering Heights, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gothic Literature and the Supernatural
Nature and Civilization
Love and Passion
Masculinity and Femininity
Class
Revenge and Repetition
Summary
Analysis
After three days, Catherine finally unlocks her door and allows Nelly to give her food. Catherine believes that she is dying, and is distraught that Edgar has buried himself in his books instead of coming to her.
Catherine again wants Edgar to act like Heathcliff, to be wild and passionate. But the civilized Edgar buries his grief in books rather than in actions.
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Delirious, Catherine rambles about a time she spent on the moors with Heathcliff as a child, and obsesses over death.
Nelly refuses Catherine's request to open the window—she doesn't want Catherine to catch a chill. Catherine staggers to the window herself and opens it herself. She says that she can see Wuthering Heights and that, though she's going to die, she'll never be rest until she's with Heathcliff.
Like Heathcliff in chapter 3, Catherine opens the window to be close with nature, and with Heathcliff. She sees her connection to Heathcliff as an almost mystical force that will affect her even in death.
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Edgar arrives and is appalled by Catherine's weak and frenzied condition. Nelly goes to get a doctor. When the doctor arrives and examines Catherine, he announces that he is optimistic that she'll recover.
Once again, the civilized Edgar is baffled by the wild excess that is a part of Catherine's essential character.
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That same night, Isabella runs off with Heathcliff. Edgar, furious, refuses to attempt to get Isabella to come back. Instead he says that Isabella is now his sister in name only, "not because I disown her, but because she has disowned me."
Heathcliff has used Isabella's love or him to take revenge on Edgar. Edgar's response is characteristically passive—instead of disowning her, he says she has disowned him.
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