Isabella flees Wuthering Heights

Isabella Linton's flight from Wuthering Heights is the decisive rupture that ends her disastrous marriage to Heathcliff, transforming her from a naive romantic into a bitter fugitive and permanently severing her ties to both the Heights and her brother Edgar.

Background and Causes

Isabella had married Heathcliff under the delusion that he was a romantic hero, but within twenty-four hours of leaving Thrushcross Grange she realized her mistake, her heart returning to her former home even as her body remained at the Heights. Heathcliff made no secret of his contempt, telling Nelly Dean that he had never loved Isabella and that she had abandoned her former life under a false impression of his character. He subjected her to systematic cruelty, hanging her little dog Fanny shortly after their wedding and declaring that he had no pity, that the more his victims writhed the more he yearned to crush them. Isabella's own letters described her existence at Wuthering Heights as a living nightmare, where she was denied even the basic comforts of a clean room or a servant's assistance, and where she was forced to share the house with the brutish Hareton Earnshaw and the hostile Joseph. The breaking point came when Heathcliff, after a period of brooding over Catherine Earnshaw's death, returned to the Heights in a fury and engaged in a violent struggle with Hindley Earnshaw, who had attempted to shoot him. During the fight Heathcliff disarmed Hindley, slashing his wrist with the knife, then kicked and trampled him, dashing his head against the stone floor. Isabella, who had taunted Heathcliff during the confrontation, realized that her presence had become intolerable to him and that her own life was now in danger.

The Flight

On the morning after the fight, Isabella found Heathcliff leaning against the chimney, gaunt and ghastly, his eyes nearly quenched by sleeplessness and weeping. She deliberately provoked him by comparing his grief to Hindley's injuries and by suggesting that Catherine Earnshaw would have despised him had she lived as his wife. Heathcliff, enraged, snatched a dinner knife from the table and flung it at her head, striking her beneath the ear. Isabella pulled the knife out, delivered another taunt, and then fled as Heathcliff lunged at her, only to be checked by Hindley's embrace. She burst through the kitchen, knocking over Hareton, who was hanging a litter of puppies from a chair-back, and then bounded, leaped, and flew down the steep road, quitting its windings to shoot directly across the moor, rolling over banks and wading through marshes, precipitating herself toward the beacon-light of Thrushcross Grange. She arrived at the Grange in a state of utter exhaustion, her hair streaming with snow and water, dressed only in a thin silk frock and slippers, with a deep cut under one ear and her face scratched and bruised. She declared that she would rather be condemned to a perpetual dwelling in the infernal regions than spend another night under the roof of Wuthering Heights.

Consequences and Aftermath

Isabella's flight marked the permanent end of her marriage. She refused to remain at Thrushcross Grange, fearing that Heathcliff would pursue her to torment Edgar, and instead insisted on being driven to Gimmerton, from where she departed the neighborhood forever. She established a new abode in the south, near London, where she gave birth to a son, Linton Heathcliff, a few months after her escape. She described the child as an ailing, peevish creature. A regular correspondence was established between Isabella and Edgar, but she never returned to the north. Heathcliff, learning of her whereabouts through other servants, did not molest her, though he expressed his intention to claim the child when he wanted it. Isabella died some thirteen years after Catherine Earnshaw's death, when Linton was twelve, leaving her son to be taken in by Edgar and then, ultimately, by Heathcliff. Her escape thus set in motion the final phase of Heathcliff's revenge, as he used the frail Linton as a tool to secure control of Thrushcross Grange and to force the younger Catherine into a miserable marriage.