Isabella Linton

Isabella Linton enters the world of Wuthering Heights as the sheltered younger sister of Edgar Linton, a resident of the refined Thrushcross Grange. Her first appearance, glimpsed through a window by Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, shows her at eleven years old, a year younger than Catherine, screaming and shrieking as if witches were running red-hot needles into her, while her brother Edgar stood weeping silently on the hearth. The scene, which the two intruders witness with contemptuous laughter, establishes Isabella as a creature of the drawing-room, one of the 'petted things' whose childish quarrels over holding a heap of warm hair seemed absurd to the wild children of the Heights. This early portrait of her as a pampered, emotional child of privilege sets the stage for her later, catastrophic attraction to the dark outsider Heathcliff, a man whose very nature was anathema to everything her world represented.

Youth and the Fatal Attraction

By the time Heathcliff returns to the neighborhood a wealthy man, Isabella has grown into a charming young lady of eighteen, described as infantile in manners though possessed of keen wit, keen feelings, and a keen temper when irritated. Her sudden and irresistible attraction towards the tolerated guest at Thrushcross Grange becomes a new source of trouble for her brother Edgar, who loves her tenderly and is appalled at this fantastic preference. Edgar comprehends Heathcliff's disposition with painful clarity, knowing that though his exterior was altered, his mind was unchangeable and unchanged, and he dreads that mind, shrinking forebodingly from the idea of committing Isabella to its keeping. He would have recoiled still more had he been aware that her attachment rose unsolicited and was bestowed where it awakened no reciprocation of sentiment, for the minute he discovered its existence he laid the blame on Heathcliff's deliberate designing. Isabella's growing infatuation manifests as a fretful pining; she grows cross and wearisome, snapping at and teasing Catherine continually, dwindling and fading before the household's eyes, her complaints ranging from rejecting her breakfast to accusing the servants of letting the parlour fire go out on purpose to vex her.

Elopement and the Letter to Nelly

Isabella's rash step comes while Catherine lies dangerously ill at Thrushcross Grange, her mind threatened by the prospect of permanent alienation of intellect. In the chaos of Catherine's illness, Isabella elopes with Heathcliff, and some six weeks after her departure she sends her brother a short note announcing her marriage. The note appears dry and cold, but at the bottom is dotted in with pencil an obscure apology and an entreaty for kind remembrance and reconciliation, asserting that she could not help it then, and being done, she had now no power to repeal it. Edgar Linton does not reply, and in a fortnight more Ellen Dean receives a long letter from the bride just out of her honeymoon, a letter she keeps as a precious relic of the dead. In this letter, Isabella reveals the full horror of her situation at Wuthering Heights. She writes that she came last night to the Heights and heard for the first time that Catherine has been, and is yet, very ill, and that she must not write to her, her brother being either too angry or too distressed to answer. The letter's closing lines are a cry of despair: 'I do hate him—I am wretched—I have been a fool! Beware of uttering one breath of this to any one at the Grange.' She describes Heathcliff's ingenious and unresting efforts to gain her abhorrence, confessing that a tiger or a venomous serpent could not rouse terror in her equal to that which he wakens, and that he has told her of Catherine's illness, accusing her brother of causing it and promising that she should be Edgar's proxy in suffering till he could get hold of him.

Escape from Wuthering Heights

Isabella's escape from Wuthering Heights is a scene of violent desperation. During a confrontation, Heathcliff snatches a dinner-knife from the table and flings it at her head, the blade striking beneath her ear and stopping the sentence she was uttering. Pulling the knife out, she springs to the door and delivers another missile of her own, which she hopes went a little deeper than his. Her last glimpse of him is a furious rush checked by the embrace of his host, both falling locked together on the hearth. In her flight through the kitchen she knocks over Hareton, who was hanging a litter of puppies from a chair-back in the doorway, and then bounds, leaps, and flies down the steep road, quitting its windings to shoot direct across the moor, rolling over banks and wading through marshes, precipitating herself towards the beacon-light of the Grange. She declares she would far rather be condemned to a perpetual dwelling in the infernal regions than, even for one night, abide beneath the roof of Wuthering Heights again. Upon reaching the Grange, she kisses Edgar's and Catherine's portraits, bestows a similar salute on Ellen Dean, and descends to the carriage accompanied by her dog Fanny, who yelps wild with joy at recovering her mistress. She is driven away, never to revisit the neighbourhood, establishing a regular correspondence with her brother when things are more settled. Her new abode is in the south, near London, where a son is born to her a few months subsequent to her escape, christened Linton, and reported from the first to be an ailing, peevish creature.

Aftermath and Legacy

After her escape, Heathcliff inquires where Isabella lives, and when Ellen Dean refuses to tell him, he remarks that it is not of any moment, only she must beware of coming to her brother: she should not be with him, if he had to keep her himself. Though Ellen gives no information, Heathcliff discovers through other servants both her place of residence and the existence of the child, yet he does not molest her, a forbearance she might thank his aversion for. He often asks about the infant, and on hearing its name, smiles grimly and observes, 'They wish me to hate it too, do they?' Isabella's son Linton, raised in the south, becomes the instrument of Heathcliff's later revenge, reclaimed by his father and used to ensnare Catherine Linton. Isabella herself fades from the narrative, her fate sealed by her single disastrous choice. Her story stands as a cautionary counterpoint to Catherine Earnshaw's: where Catherine's wild nature finds its echo in Heathcliff, Isabella's refinement and sentiment are crushed by him, her heart given and 'pinched to death' and flung back to her. Her escape, however, marks her as one of the few characters who successfully removes herself from the toxic inheritance of Wuthering Heights, even as her son is drawn back into its destructive orbit.