Published in 1847, the year before Emily Bronte’s death at the age of thirty,

Wuthering Heights has tested to be one in all the nineteenth century’s most well
liked, however distressing masterpiece.The inhospitable moors area
and the persistent setting of this tale of love between Heathcliff and
his wealthy benefactor’s female offspring, Catherine.
Incorporating elements of many genres—from gothic novels and ghost stories to
poetic allegory—and transcending them all, Wuthering Heights is a mystifying
work of art.

The story is one of revenge. It follows the lifetime of Heathcliff, a mysterious

gypsy-like person, from childhood (about seven years old) to his death in his
late thirties. Heathcliff rises in his adopted family, and then is reduced to
the standing of a servant, once the miss he loves decides to marry another.
He returns later, made and educated, and sets about gaining his revenge on the
two families that he believed ruined his life.

In the Victorian Era, social class was not solely dependent upon the amount of
money a person had. Rather, the source of income, birth, and family connections
played a major role in determining one's position in society.
And considerably, the majority accepted their place within the hierarchy.
As members of the gentry, the Earnshaws and the Lintons occupy a somewhat
precarious place within the hierarchy of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-
century British society. At the highest of British society was the royalty,
followed by the aristocracy, then by the gentry, and then by the lower classes,
who made up the vast majority of the population. Although the aristocracy,
or higher socio-economic class, possessed servants and often large estates, they
held a nonetheless fragile social position. The social status of aristocrats was a
formal and settled matter, because aristocrats had official titles. Members of
the aristocracy, however, held no titles, and their status was thus subject to
change. A man may see himself as a gentleman. However notice to his
embarrassment, that his neighbors did not share a common view. A discussion
of whether or not a person was a very gentleman would think
about such queries as what quantity of land he owned, number of tenants and
servants he had and so on.

Heathcliff is a supposed orphan. Thus, his station is below everybody else in

Wuthering Heights. It absolutely was exceptional to boost somebody from
the proletariat as a member of the middle-to-upper socio-economic class. Even
Nelly, who was raised with the Earnshaw kids, understood her place below her
childhood friends. When Mr. Earnshaw elevates the standing of Heathcliff,
eventually getting inclined to him than to his own son, this goes
against social norms.

‘‘He drove him from their company to the servants, deprived him of the instructions of the
curate, and insisted that he should labour out of doors instead; compelling him to do so as hard as
any other lad on the farm.’’

-Chp. 6

The combination of elevation and usurpation is why Hindley returns Heathcliff

to his previous low station after the death of Mr. Earnshaw, which is why
Heathcliff relishes within the proven fact that Hindley's son, Hareton is reduced
to the amount of a standard, un-educated working man. And socio-economic
class should be the rationale Catherine marries Edgar. She is interested in the
social comforts he will offer her. No alternative plausible rational reason exists.
Catherine naively thinks she will marry him, then use her position and
his cash to help Heathcliff, however that might ne'er happen.

“…instead of a wild, hatless little savage jumping into the house, and rushing to squeeze us all
breathless, there 'lighted from a handsome black pony a very dignified person, with brown
ringlets falling from the cover of a feathered beaver, and a long cloth habit, which she was
obliged to hold up with both hands that she might sail in.”

- Chp. 7

After staying at Thrushcross Grange, the feral Catherine has become

a modified girl, currently superior to the lowly Heathcliff. This came to be the
long-run Catherine Linton, currently forever out of reach to Heathcliff. The tone
of the statement eventually points out at category distinction, representing the
Victorian era in its true light-weight.
Considerations of class hierarchy typically and crucially inform the characters’
motivations in Wuthering Heights. Catherine’s call to marry Edgar, so she's
going to be “the greatest girl of the neighborhood” is the foremost and obvious
example. The Lintons are comparatively firm in their upper hierarchal standing
of the ‘gentry’, however yet to prove this “status” through their behaviors seems
unacceptable. The Earnshaws, on the opposite hand, rest on a shakier ladder
socially. Deprived of not having a carriage, less land, and their house, as
Lockwood remarks with nice mystification, resembles that of a “homely,
northern farmer” and not that of a ‘Gentleman’. The shifting nature of social
rank is incontestable, most strikingly in Heathcliff’s phenomenon from
homeless orphan to young gentleman-by-adoption, to a common working
person, to a gentleman once more (although the status-conscious Lockwood
remarks that Heathcliff is barely a gentleman in “dress and manners”). The
entire illustration is penned down as-

“…….. a half-civilized ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, but
it was subdued; and his manner was even dignified: quite divested of roughness, though stern for
grace.”

-Chp 10

Though still swarthy, Heathcliff turned out to be a modified man. Gone for
3 years, he returns with some grooming and social graces. Clearly he has
been working up on himself, but that hasn't modified his overall perspective and
presentation of himself.

“Her brother, who loved her tenderly, was appalled at this fantastic preference. Leaving aside the
degradation of an alliance with a nameless man, and the possible fact that his property, in default
of heirs male, might pass into such a one's power …….”

-Chp 10

Heathcliffs motive to fascinate Isabella only lures more problems. That very
action irked her brother, Edgar. Edgar is not blessed with a male heir, hence the
supposed marriage of Heathcliff and Isabella will only further pave the way for
the property to be gone down to the hands of an outsider orphan. When
Heathcliff makes his way back, having money is not considered enough to be
established as a gentleman according to Edgar.

" ………tell her what Heathcliff is: an unreclaimed creature, without refinement, without
cultivation; an arid wilderness of furze and whinstone."

-Chp 10

Catherine's warnings concerning Heathcliff only ignited the flame of tender

affection Isabella harbored towards him. And to be honest, all of the qualities
Catherine cited to induce Isabella to vary her mind to square off the
measure only backfired and turned against her favor. The
emotions that each Catherine and Isabella had for Heathcliff, the
common workman, paved the way to lose favor with their brothers. Hindley
and Edgar cannot settle for the alternatives their sisters built, and so withdrew
their support. Once a lady betrays her social norms, she is revealing her family
and her category — each unacceptable actions.

Wuthering Heights is a social novel about class structure in society as well as a

treatise on the role of women. Bronte illustrates how class mobility is not always
moving in one direction. For Catherine, representing a lower class, social class
plays a major role when deciding to get married. And likewise through the
perceptions of other characters, she presented the illustrious idea of Victorian
Society and the class distinction the era presents.