How Catherine’s ghost relates to the past

The complex histories and connections to the past these first few chapters describe paired with the appearance of Catherine’s ghost made me wonder about what the novel is trying to say about connections with the past. The scene in which Lockwood encounters the ghost is ambiguous, Lockwood had been dreaming leading up to the encounter and it is not clear to the reader if what he is experiencing is real or another dream. I think this ambiguity adds to the deeper meaning behind the desperation of the figure of Catherine. The stories Lockwood is told about the history of Wuthering Heights and its inhabitants have a melancholy feel. Even the way the physical setting is described invokes an unsettling feeling. Which is mirrored in the appearance of Catherine’s ghost and also in the different poems about child labor we read for last class. In “The Chimney Sweeper” there is a line that reminds me Catherine’s plea to Lockwood, “A little black thing among the snow/Crying weep, weep, in notes of woe!” this is describing a child lost in the starkness of the snow crying because of the labor he is forced to preform. This image coupled with the image of Catherine gives me the same feeling. Desperation. The line that she speaks even echos the child’s weeping, “…but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in—let me in!” I am looking forward to seeing how this theme of melancholy and the past develops as we learn more about these characters and their stories. Right now i would predict that the ghost represents the characters unwillingness to let got of their trauma and cope with life after tragedy so this leaves them in a perpetual state of unrest and sadness.

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