WUTHERING HEIGHTS
A monologue from the
novel by Emily Brontë
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Wuthering Heights. Emily Brontë. New York: Harper
& Brothers, 1848. |
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HEATHCLIFF: She abandoned them under a delusion, picturing
in me a hero of romance, and expecting unlimited indulgences
from my chivalrous devotion. I can hardly regard her in the light
of a rational creature, so obstinately has she persisted in forming
a fabulous notion of my character and acting on the false impressions
she cherished. But, at last, I think she begins to know me: I
don't perceive the silly smiles and grimaces that provoked me
at first; and the senseless incapability of discerning that I
was in earnest when I gave her my opinion of her infatuation
and herself. It was a marvellous effort of perspicacity to discover
that I did not love her. I believed, at one time, no lessons
could teach her that! And yet it is poorly learnt; for this morning
she announced, as a piece of appalling intelligence, that I had
actually succeeded in making her hate me! A positive labour of
Hercules, I assure you! If it be achieved, I have cause to return
thanks. Can I trust your assertion, Isabella? Are you sure you
hate me? If I let you alone for half a day, won't you come sighing
and wheedling to me again? I daresay she would rather I had seemed
all tenderness before you: it wounds her vanity to have the truth
exposed. But I don't care who knows that the passion was wholly
on one side: and I never told her a lie about it. She cannot
accuse me of showing one bit of deceitful softness. The first
thing she saw me do, on coming out of the Grange, was to hang
up her little dog; and when she pleaded for it, the first words
I uttered were a wish that I had the hanging of every being belonging
to her, except one: possibly she took that exception for herself.
But no brutality disgusted her: I suppose she has an innate admiration
of it, if only her precious person were secure from injury! Now,
was it not the depth of absurdity -- of genuine idiocy, for that
pitiful, slavish, mean-minded brach to dream that I could love
her? Tell your master, Nelly, that I never, in all my life, met
with such an abject thing as she is. She even disgraces the name
of Linton; and I've sometimes relented, from pure lack of invention,
in my experiments on what she could endure, and still creep shamefully
cringing back! But tell him, also, to set his fraternal and magisterial
heart at ease: that I keep strictly within the limits of the
law. I have avoided, up to this period, giving her the slightest
right to claim a separation; and, what's more, she'd thank nobody
for dividing us. If she desired to go, she might: the nuisance
of her presence outweighs the gratification to be derived from
tormenting her!
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MONOLOGUES BY EMILY BRONTË |
