Heathcliff's Death

Heathcliff's Death is the final, enigmatic act of the man who, from a starving, houseless child picked up in the streets of Liverpool, rose to become the tyrannical master of Wuthering Heights. His demise is not a violent reckoning but a strange, quiet expiration, discovered in the very chamber where his beloved Catherine Earnshaw once slept. The event closes a cycle of revenge that had consumed two families, and it immediately transforms Heathcliff from a figure of living terror into a subject of ghostly legend, with the country folk swearing on the Bible that he walks the moors and the churchyard even after his burial.

The Discovery of the Corpse

The end comes not with a struggle but with a strange, unsettling stillness. After a night of groaning and murmuring to himself that lasted through the whole night and far into the morning, Heathcliff refuses entry to Hareton Earnshaw and even to Mr. Kenneth, the doctor, bidding them all be damned and insisting he is better and would be left alone. The following evening is very wet, with rain pouring down till day-dawn. When Ellen Dean takes her morning walk round the house, she observes the master's window swinging open and the rain driving straight in. Using another key to obtain entrance, she runs to unclose the panels of the oak-panelled bed, for the chamber is vacant. There she finds Heathcliff laid on his back, his eyes meeting hers so keen and fierce that she starts, and then he seems to smile. She cannot think him dead, but his face and throat are washed with rain, the bed-clothes drip, and he is perfectly still. The lattice, flapping to and fro, has grazed one hand that rested on the sill, but no blood trickles from the broken skin. When she puts her fingers to it, she can doubt no more: he is dead and stark.

The Corpse and the Mourners

The appearance of the corpse is as striking as the manner of its discovery. Ellen hasps the window and combs his black long hair from his forehead, trying to close his eyes to extinguish, if possible, that frightful, life-like gaze of exultation before any one else beholds it. They will not shut; they seem to sneer at her attempts, and his parted lips and sharp white teeth sneer too. Taken with a fit of cowardice, she cries out for Joseph, who shuffles up and makes a noise but resolutely refuses to meddle with him. Joseph's reaction is a final, bitter judgment on the man he served: he cries that the devil has harried off his soul, and he may have his carcass into the bargain, for aught he cares, exclaiming what a wicked one he looks, girning at death. The old sinner then falls on his knees and returns thanks that the lawful master and the ancient stock are restored to their rights. In stark contrast, poor Hareton, the most wronged of all, is the only one who really suffers much. He sits by the corpse all night, weeping in bitter earnest, pressing its hand and kissing the sarcastic, savage face that every one else shrinks from contemplating, bemoaning him with that strong grief which springs naturally from a generous heart, though it be tough as tempered steel.

The Burial and the Folklore

The burial itself is conducted with a deliberate, scandalous minimalism. Heathcliff is buried, to the scandal of the whole neighbourhood, as he wished. The attendance comprehends only Earnshaw, Ellen, the sexton, and six men to carry the coffin. The six men depart when they have let it down into the grave, leaving the small party to see it covered. Hareton, with a streaming face, digs green sods and lays them over the brown mould himself, and at present it is as smooth and verdant as its companion mounds. Ellen hopes its tenant sleeps as soundly, but the country folks, if asked, would swear on the Bible that he walks. There are those who speak to having met him near the church, and on the moor, and even within this house. The old man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen two on 'em looking out of his chamber window on every rainy night since his death. Ellen dismisses these as idle tales, yet she herself recounts an odd thing that happened to her about a month after the burial: on a dark evening threatening thunder, at the turn of the Heights, she encountered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs before him, crying terribly, a scene that hints at a lingering disturbance in the natural order.

The Cause of Death and Its Ambiguity

The precise cause of Heathcliff's death remains deliberately obscure. Mr. Kenneth is perplexed to pronounce of what disorder the master died. Ellen conceals the fact of his having swallowed nothing for four days, fearing it might lead to trouble. She is persuaded, however, that he did not abstain on purpose; it was the consequence of his strange illness, not the cause. This ambiguity points to the deeper, psychological and spiritual nature of his end. His death is the culmination of a long haunting, a monomania that had consumed him since Catherine's death. He had told Ellen of his conviction in ghosts and his eternal prayer for Catherine's spirit to return. He had described his desperate attempt to open her coffin, his feeling of her presence, and his torment of never quite seeing her. His final days, spent groaning and murmuring in her old chamber, suggest a man in the throes of a final, desperate communion with the dead, a state that his emaciated, four-day fast only intensified. The exultant sneer on his dead face hints that, in the end, he achieved the union he so desperately sought, a reading that transforms his death from a tragedy into a strange, dark victory.

The Restoration of the Earnshaw Line

The most immediate and profound consequence of Heathcliff's death is the restoration of the Earnshaw line. Joseph's prayer of thanks, that the lawful master and the ancient stock were restored to their rights, makes this explicit. For years, Heathcliff had held firm possession of Wuthering Heights, having proven to the attorney that Hindley Earnshaw had mortgaged every yard of land he owned for cash to supply his mania for gaming, with Heathcliff as the mortgagee. In that manner, Hareton, who should have been the first gentleman in the neighbourhood, was reduced to a state of complete dependence on his father's inveterate enemy, living in his own house as a servant. Heathcliff's death dissolves this unnatural order. Hareton, the wronged heir, is finally free to claim his inheritance and his place, a liberation that paves the way for his reconciliation with Catherine Linton and the promise of a future untainted by the old man's revenge. The death of the usurper is thus the necessary precondition for the healing of the younger generation and the return of peace to the moors.