Isabella's escape from Wuthering Heights

Isabella Linton's flight from Wuthering Heights marks the violent climax of her brief, brutal marriage to Heathcliff and her final break from the world she once knew. Arriving at Thrushcross Grange on the Friday after Catherine Earnshaw's funeral, she is a spectacle of physical and emotional devastation: her hair streams wet with snow and water, a deep cut bleeds under one ear, her face is scratched and bruised, and she wears only a thin silk frock and slippers in the winter weather. She has run the entire way from the Heights, counting numerous falls, and her first words to Nelly Dean are a breathless, laughing apology that she could not stop herself. The laughter is hollow; she is aching all over, and her appearance so alarms Nelly that the housekeeper refuses to stir until Isabella changes into dry clothes and has her wound bound.

The Road to Rupture: Life at Wuthering Heights Before the Escape

Isabella's account of her final days at the Heights reveals a household consumed by mutual hatred and barely contained violence. In the week before her flight, Heathcliff had been absent from the house nearly every day, returning only at dawn to lock himself in his chamber, where he would pray in a hoarse, strangled voice to what Isabella calls "senseless dust and ashes" — a deity she implies is confounded with his own dark nature. His obsession was Catherine's grave: he went straight down to the Grange each time he left. Hindley Earnshaw, meanwhile, had kept himself "tolerably sober" for the purpose of attending his sister's funeral, but instead of going to church he sat by the fire and swallowed gin or brandy by tumblerfuls, sinking into suicidal low spirits. Isabella herself had recovered enough spirit to endure Joseph's eternal lectures without weeping and to move about the house less like a frightened thief. She established a table and chair at one corner of the kitchen fire, reading old books late into the night, while Hindley sat opposite, his head on his hand, neither stirring nor speaking for hours. The only sounds were the moaning wind, the crackling coals, and the click of her snuffers.

The Night of the Escape: Hindley's Ambush and Heathcliff's Assault

The doleful silence was broken by the sound of the kitchen latch: Heathcliff had returned early from his vigil, owing to a sudden storm. Finding the entrance fastened, he went around to the other door. Hindley, roused from his stupor, exclaimed that he would keep him out for five minutes, and Isabella — weary of enduring, and glad of a retaliation that would not recoil on herself — agreed. Hindley put the key in the lock and drew the bolts. He then brought his chair to Isabella's table, leaning over it and searching her eyes for sympathy with the burning hate that gleamed from his. He proposed they combine to settle their debt with the man outside, but Isabella refused, saying treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends. Hindley took from his breast the pistol with a double-edged spring knife attached to the barrel — the same weapon he had shown Isabella on her first night at the Heights — and would have turned down the candle. Isabella snatched it away and seized his arm, declaring she would not hold her tongue. Hindley, desperate, cried that he had formed his resolution and would execute it, doing her a kindness in spite of herself and justice for Hareton. The only resource left to Isabella was to run to a lattice and warn Heathcliff of the fate awaiting him. She called out in a triumphant tone that Mr. Earnshaw had a mind to shoot him if he persisted in entering. Heathcliff answered with an elegant term she would not repeat, and she shut the window, returning to her place by the fire with too small a stock of hypocrisy to pretend any anxiety for his danger. Hindley swore passionately at her, calling her all sorts of names for the base spirit she evinced. In her secret heart, Isabella thought what a blessing it would be for Hindley if Heathcliff put him out of misery, and what a blessing for her if he sent Heathcliff to his right abode.

As she sat nursing these reflections, the casement behind her was banged onto the floor by a blow from Heathcliff, and his black countenance looked blightingly through. The stanchions were too close to let his shoulders follow, and Isabella smiled, exulting in her fancied security. His hair and clothes were whitened with snow, and his sharp cannibal teeth, revealed by cold and wrath, gleamed through the dark. He demanded entry; she replied that Hindley stood sentinel with a knife and loaded pistol. He asked for the kitchen door; she answered that Hindley would be there before her. Then she taunted him, saying it was a poor love that could not bear a shower of snow, and suggesting he go stretch himself over Catherine's grave and die like a faithful dog. Hindley, hearing Heathcliff's voice, rushed to the gap, exclaiming that if he could get his arm out he could hit him. But Heathcliff flung himself on the weapon and wrenched it from Hindley's grasp. The charge exploded, and the knife, springing back, closed into its owner's wrist. Heathcliff pulled it away by main force, slitting up the flesh as it passed on, and thrust it dripping into his pocket. He then took a stone, struck down the division between two windows, and sprang in. His adversary had fallen senseless with excessive pain and loss of blood. The ruffian kicked and trampled on him, dashed his head repeatedly against the flags, and held Isabella with one hand to prevent her summoning Joseph. He exerted preterhuman self-denial in abstaining from finishing Hindley completely, but finally desisted, dragged the apparently inanimate body onto the settle, tore off the sleeve of Hindley's coat, and bound up the wound with brutal roughness, spitting and cursing during the operation.

The Final Confrontation and Flight

The next morning, Isabella came down about half an hour before noon to find Hindley sitting by the fire, deadly sick, and Heathcliff leaning against the chimney, almost as gaunt and ghastly. Neither appeared inclined to dine, so Isabella ate heartily alone, casting looks at her silent companions with a sense of satisfaction and superiority. She then drew near the fire, went around Hindley's seat, and knelt in the corner beside him. Heathcliff did not glance her way; his forehead was shaded with a heavy cloud, his basilisk eyes nearly quenched by sleeplessness and weeping — the lashes were wet then — and his lips, devoid of their ferocious sneer, were sealed in an expression of unspeakable sadness. Isabella, gratified by his weakness, could not miss the chance of sticking in a dart. She whispered to Hindley that Heathcliff had trampled on and kicked him and dashed him on the ground, and that his mouth watered to tear him with his teeth because he was only half man, the rest fiend. Hindley groaned that if God would give him strength to strangle Heathcliff in his last agony, he would go to hell with joy. Isabella then observed aloud that it was enough Heathcliff had murdered one of them — Catherine — and that it was preferable to be hated than loved by him. Heathcliff's attention was roused; his eyes rained down tears among the ashes, and he drew his breath in suffocating sighs. Isabella stared full at him and laughed scornfully. He told her to get up and begone out of his sight. She replied that she loved Catherine too, and that Hindley required attendance which, for Catherine's sake, she would supply. She added that now Catherine was dead, she saw her in Hindley — Hindley had exactly her eyes, if Heathcliff had not tried to gouge them out. Heathcliff cried out for her to get up before he stamped her to death, and made a movement that caused her to make one also. She continued, saying that if poor Catherine had trusted him and assumed the title of Mrs. Heathcliff, she would soon have presented a similar picture. Heathcliff snatched a dinner-knife from the table and flung it at her head; it struck beneath her ear. Pulling it out, she sprang to the door and delivered another taunt, which she hoped went a little deeper than his missile. The last glimpse she caught of him was a furious rush on his part, checked by the embrace of Hindley, and both fell locked together on the hearth.

In her flight through the kitchen, Isabella bid Joseph speed to his master, knocked over Hareton — who was hanging a litter of puppies from a chair-back in the doorway — and, blessed as a soul escaped from purgatory, bounded, leaped, and flew down the steep road. Quitting its windings, she shot direct across the moor, rolling over banks and wading through marshes, precipitating herself towards the beacon-light of the Grange. She declared 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.

Aftermath: The Permanent Rupture

Isabella's escape was final. She refused to remain at Thrushcross Grange, insisting on being driven to Gimmerton, and from there she departed the neighbourhood forever. A regular correspondence was established between her and Edgar when things were more settled. Her new abode was in the south, near London, where a son — Linton Heathcliff — was born a few months after her escape. From the first, she reported him to be an ailing, peevish creature. She died some thirteen years after Catherine's death, when Linton was twelve or a little more. Heathcliff, meeting Nelly in the village, inquired where Isabella lived; Nelly refused to tell. He remarked that it was 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 Nelly gave no information, Heathcliff discovered through other servants both her place of residence and the existence of the child. He did not molest her, for which forbearance Nelly supposes he might thank his aversion. He often asked about the infant, and on hearing its name, smiled grimly, observing: "They wish me to hate it too, do they?" He added, "But I'll have it, when I want it. They may reckon on that!" Fortunately, Isabella died before the time arrived.

Thematic Significance: The Destruction of Romantic Illusion

Isabella's escape is the brutal education that shatters her romantic delusions. She had married Heathcliff picturing a hero of romance, expecting unlimited indulgences from his chivalrous devotion. Instead, she discovered a man who, on the very morrow of their wedding, had her weeping to go home; who hung up her little dog before her eyes; who told her he had no pity and that the more the worms writhe, the more he yearns to crush out their entrails. Her flight is not merely a physical escape from a violent house but a moral and psychological liberation from the fantasy she had constructed. She emerges from the Heights as a woman who has learned to hate as fiercely as she once loved, who can take satisfaction in her enemy's suffering, and who will never again be the naive girl who ran away with a gipsy. Her story serves as a dark counterpoint to Catherine Earnshaw's: where Catherine's love for Heathcliff was an elemental force that destroyed her, Isabella's infatuation was a willful blindness that nearly destroyed her, and her escape is the act of self-preservation that Catherine never managed.