Lark

The lark appears at three crucial moments in Wuthering Heights, each time as a marker of the natural world's vitality and of the emotional distance between the characters and that vitality. In the novel's ecology of birds—ranging from the lapwing Heathcliff once promised not to shoot to the grouse Cathy seeks on the moors—the lark stands apart as a creature of pure, unmediated song, its presence always associated with the open sky and the heather-covered hills that define the landscape of the Earnshaws and the Lintons.

The Lark as a Sign of Spring and Recovery

When Catherine Linton first leaves her sick-chamber after her brain fever, in March, Edgar Linton brings her a handful of golden crocuses and tells her that the snow is gone, the sky is blue, and "the larks are singing." He urges her to go out into the hills, where the air blows sweetly and might cure her. The lark's song here is part of a cluster of natural signs—thaw winds, warm sunshine, brimming becks—that Edgar offers as proof of life's return. But Catherine, who has just said she will never be on those hills but once more, receives the news with tears that stream unheeded down her cheeks. The lark's song, which should herald recovery, instead underscores the gulf between the world's renewal and her own irreversible decline.

The Lark as Companion to Cathy's Happiness

Years later, when the younger Catherine is sixteen and still untouched by tragedy, Nelly Dean describes a spring walk on the moors: "I found plenty of entertainment in listening to the larks singing far and near, and enjoying the sweet, warm sunshine; and watching her, my pet and my delight, with her golden ringlets flying loose behind." The larks here are part of a landscape of pure, cloudless pleasure, their song woven into the happiness of a girl who is, at that moment, "a happy creature, and an angel." The larks sing "far and near," filling the air with a music that matches Cathy's own bounding, carefree movement. This is the last moment of uncomplicated joy before she encounters Heathcliff and is drawn into the orbit of Wuthering Heights.

The Lark in the Heaven of Two Cousins

In the secret meetings between Cathy and Linton Heathcliff, the lark reappears as part of a philosophical disagreement about happiness. Linton describes his "most perfect idea of heaven's happiness" as lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with "the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, and the larks singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly." Cathy counters with her own vision of a heaven full of motion—rocking in a rustling green tree, with a west wind blowing, bright white clouds flitting rapidly, and not only larks but throstles, blackbirds, linnets, and cuckoos pouring out music on every side. The lark is the one bird both visions share, but Linton's heaven is static and passive—a state of ecstatic peace—while Cathy's is active and wild with joy. The lark, singing "high up overhead" in Linton's heaven, becomes a symbol of the distance between their temperaments: he wants to lie still and listen; she wants to join the dance. They agree to try both heavens when the right weather comes, but the promise is never fulfilled.

The Lark's Narrative Significance

Across these three appearances, the lark functions as a natural barometer of the characters' relationship to the moors and to each other. For the dying Catherine Earnshaw, the lark's song is a sound she can no longer inhabit; for the young Cathy, it is the soundtrack of a happiness that will not last; for Linton Heathcliff, it is part of a fantasy of peace that his own frailty and his father's cruelty will never allow him to realize. The lark never appears in the scenes of violence or imprisonment at Wuthering Heights; it belongs to the open air, to the heath, to the world that the novel's characters can glimpse but cannot always reach.