drawing and in colour; but it was well-nigh
impossible to make him more alive beside Catherine and Heathcliff. If
Emily's hand fails in Edgar Linton it gains strength again in Isabella.
These two are the types of the civilized, the over-refined, the delicate
wearers of silk and velvet, dwellers in drawing-rooms with pure white
ceilings bordered with gold, "with showers of glass-drops hanging in
silver chains from the centre". They, as surely as the tainted Hindley,
are bound to perish in any struggle with strong, fierce, primeval flesh
and blood. The fatal moment in the tale is where the two half-savage
children, Catherine and Heathcliff, come to Thrushcross Grange.
Thrushcross Grange, with all its sickly brood, is doomed to go down
before Wuthering Heights. But Thrushcross Grange is fatal to Catherine
too. She has gone far from reality when she is dazzled by the glittering
glass-drops and the illusion of Thrushcross Grange. She has divorced her
body from her soul for a little finer living, for a polished, a
scrupulously clean, perfectly presentable husband.

Emily Bronte shows an unerring psychology in her handling of the
relations between Isabella and Catherine. It is Isabella's morbid
passion for Heathcliff that wakes the devil in Catherine. Isabella is a
sentimentalist, and she is convinced that Heathcliff would love her if
Catherine would "let him". She refuses to believe that Heathcliff is
what he is. But Catherine, who _is_ Heathcliff, can afford to accuse
him. "'Nelly,'" she says, "'help me to convince her of her madness. Tell
her what Heathcliff is.... He's not a rough diamond--a pearl-containing
oyster of a rustic; he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.'" But Isabella
will not believe it. "'Mr. Heathcliff is not a fiend,'" she says; "'he
has an honourable soul, and a true one, or how could he remember her?'"
It is the same insight that made George Meredith represent Juliana, the
sentimental passionist, as declaring her belief in Evan Harrington's
innocence while Rose Jocelyn, whose love is more spiritual and therefore
more profoundly loyal, doubts. Emily Bronte, like George Meredith, saw a
sensualist in every sentimentalist; and Isabella Linton was a little
animal under her silken skin. She is ready to go to her end _quand
meme_, whatever Heathcliff is, but she tricks herself into believing
that he is what he is not, that her sensualism may justify itself to her
refinement. That is partly why Heathcliff, who is