Catherine's diary

Catherine's diary is the fragmentary, handwritten record that Mr. Lockwood discovers in an old oak-panelled bed at Wuthering Heights, and it serves as the novel's first direct glimpse into the childhood world of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. Written in a childish hand across the blank pages of religious books, the diary reveals the brutal domestic tyranny of Hindley Earnshaw, the rebellious bond between Catherine and Heathcliff, and the origins of the emotional and psychological forces that drive the entire narrative. It is both a historical artifact that unlocks the past and a symbolic object that establishes the novel's central themes of identity, memory, and the fusion of two souls.

Discovery and Physical Form

Mr. Lockwood, the novel's initial narrator, stumbles upon the diary during his first night at Wuthering Heights, when he takes refuge in a large oak case that serves as a bed. The ledge of the enclosed window, which he uses as a table, holds a few mildewed books piled in one corner, and the paint is covered with writing scratched into it. This writing is nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small—Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton. The three names trace the possible identities of a single woman, foreshadowing the novel's central preoccupation with how Catherine's life could have unfolded differently.

When Lockwood opens the books, he finds they are Testaments in lean type, smelling dreadfully musty, with a fly-leaf bearing the inscription 'Catherine Earnshaw, her book' and a date some quarter of a century back. The library is select, and its state of dilapidation proves it to have been well used, though not for a legitimate purpose: scarcely one chapter has escaped a pen-and-ink commentary covering every morsel of blank that the printer left. Some entries are detached sentences, while other parts take the form of a regular diary, scrawled in an unformed, childish hand. At the top of an extra page, Lockwood is greatly amused to behold an excellent caricature of Joseph, rudely yet powerfully sketched, which kindles within him an immediate interest for the unknown Catherine.

The Diary's Account of Childhood Tyranny

The diary's first legible entry begins with the words 'An awful Sunday' and immediately establishes the oppressive atmosphere of Wuthering Heights under Hindley's rule. Catherine writes that she wishes her father were back again, calling Hindley a detestable substitute whose conduct to Heathcliff is atrocious, and declaring that she and Heathcliff are going to rebel, having taken their initiatory step that evening. The entry describes a day of flooding rain that prevents church attendance, so Joseph gets up a congregation in the garret, commanding Heathcliff, Catherine, and the unhappy ploughboy to take their prayer-books and mount. They are ranged in a row on a sack of corn, groaning and shivering, hoping that Joseph will shiver too so that he might give them a short homily for his own sake—a vain idea, as the service lasts precisely three hours.

The diary records Hindley's cruelty in vivid detail, including his exclamation of 'What, done already?' when the children descend from the service, and his insistence that they have a master who will demolish the first person who puts him out of temper. When Heathcliff snaps his fingers, Hindley commands his wife Frances to pull his hair as she goes by, which she does heartily before seating herself on her husband's knee, where the two sit like babies, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour. Catherine and Heathcliff make themselves as snug as their means allow in the arch of the dresser, fastening their pinafores together and hanging them up for a curtain, only to have Joseph tear down the handiwork, box Catherine's ears, and croak at them. The diary thus captures not only the physical deprivation of the children but also the emotional neglect that fuels their rebellion and their desperate clinging to each other.

The Diary as a Window into Catherine's Soul

The diary's significance extends far beyond its literal contents, for it becomes the textual embodiment of Catherine's inner life and her profound identification with Heathcliff. The names scratched on the window ledge—Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Heathcliff, Catherine Linton—prefigure the very speech in which Catherine declares her unity with Heathcliff, insisting that he is more herself than she is and that her love for him resembles the eternal rocks beneath, a source of little visible delight but necessary. The diary, like the speech, reveals that Catherine's identity is not singular but multiple, suspended between the claims of her birth family, her passionate bond with Heathcliff, and the social world of the Lintons that she will eventually enter.

The diary also establishes the pattern of Catherine's rebellious spirit and her refusal to accept the authority that Hindley and Joseph represent. Her declaration that she and Heathcliff are going to rebel is the first articulation of a defiance that will define her entire life, from her childhood escapades to her fateful marriage to Edgar Linton. The diary's childish handwriting and faded hieroglyphics make it a poignant artifact of a self that is already forming, already torn between the wild freedom of the moors and the constraints of domestic order.

The Diary's Narrative Function and Legacy

The diary functions as a crucial narrative device, providing Lockwood—and through him, the reader—with an unmediated glimpse into the past before Ellen Dean begins her long retrospective account. It is the first piece of evidence that the story of Wuthering Heights is not merely a tale of present misery but the culmination of decades of passion, cruelty, and loss. The diary's discovery also establishes Lockwood's role as a curious and somewhat unreliable observer, whose encounter with Catherine's name repeated in all kinds of characters prepares him—and the reader—for the haunting that follows.

The diary's legacy extends to the novel's later themes of memory and haunting. Catherine's words, once written in a childish hand, continue to reverberate through Heathcliff's tormented consciousness long after her death. His obsession with her image, his sense that the entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist and that he has lost her, echoes the diary's function as a record of a self that refuses to be forgotten. The diary, like Catherine herself, becomes a ghost that haunts the narrative, a textual remnant of a passionate life that refuses to be contained by death or silence.