Wuthering Heights...?

[Gladys]

but it is also interesting to consider what effect Heathcliff had on the next generation. I feel there is very little effect of any significance. He tries to do to Hindley's offspring what Hindley had done to him, but the result is complete failure.

A complete failure for whom? If anything, Heathcliff seems quite satisfied with his handling of the next generation. Ultimately, their future becomes irrelevant to Heathcliff because he sees his no longer in the land of the living. Heathcliff's personal failure consists in a dawning realisation that nothing on earth can make up for his loss of Catherine. Wuthering Heights is, throughout, a love story of sorts.

I don't remember Catherine showing any sort of enduring generosity/affection towards Heathcliff (apart from her childhood affection, which I don't think counts as a reflection on Heathcliff's personality - Cathy was just a kid who liked to break the rules with another kid.) When the grow up, all they share is some sort of animalistic passion for each other, not love or affection.

Call Catherine's deep attraction to Heathcliff pity, sympathy, generosity, childhood affection, animalistic passion or love, it incontestably drives the entire novel! Even as "sleepers in that quiet earth".

Am I the only one who sees the indisputable generosity and kindness of Mr Earnshaw inherited by his passionate daughter? There is something profoundly admirable in the strength, integrity and passion of Catherine, and in her uncompromising defiance of society and its petty norms. With more empathy than Mr Lockwood, the unreliable narrator, I echo, "How any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth?"

[JCamilo]

JCamillo, I was talking about DNA when I said there were no traces of Heathcliff or his progeny left by the end of the novel, which is significant in this enclosed tale of two families and one outsider, but it is also interesting to consider what effect Heathcliff had on the next generation. I feel there is very little effect of any significance. He tries to do to Hindley's offspring what Hindley had done to him, but the result is complete failure. Hareton grows into a rude but generous and affectionate young man, who actually loves Heathcliff.

I try to avoid the jugement in terms of failures and sucess, but here is something to consider. As you say, Heathcliff tries to do with the kids what Hindley did to him. So, in the end, Heathcliff "failure" is Hindley failure. And what that generate? A new generation - those rightful owners - who seems to be an improvement of what there before. It was a househood that generated Hindley and Cathy (and a good deal of Heathcliff), now it generates Hareton and new Cathy. The change is clear, as you said, Heathcliff is a bringer of chaos. Let's not think of him of someone with a plan to win in the end - He was what he was, like the psychological novels that would follow Emily's death, it is about his existence, not his success - but as someone who brings changes.

All Heathcliff's grand plans are defeated by his mental breakdown at the end (or Catherine's ghost, if the reader prefers it that way), and the two properties revert to the rightful heirs. Heathcliff is like storm or flood or fire. The effects are felt for a while, but then the tempest is gone, the survivors pick themselves up, and in time the balance of nature is restored.

I do not even think Heathcliff had a plan to take the proprieties, except as part of the torture he was planning to do with them. Even the whole marriage with Linton was just a way to have Cathy under his control rather than hope to take the place of the Lintons. In a moral reading, Heathcliff is defeated, but as I said, he erased pretty much all that was wrong with the Linton's with his acts, either it was his intention or not.

[JCamilo]

Am I the only one who sees the indisputable generosity and kindness of Mr Earnshaw inherited by his passionate daughter? There is something profoundly admirable in the strength, integrity and passion of Catherine, and in her uncompromising defiance of society and its petty norms. With more empathy than Mr Lockwood, the unreliable narrator, I echo, "How any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth?"

Yes, only you

Which act of generosity original Cathy had? Like her father she likes Heathcliff, but that is all (or everything). She does not really defy society, She marries the conventional Edgar (which was the usual script that would be accepted by all society) and ignores any possibility of change or risk denying Heathcliff (and hers) love. What she expected? Heathcliff to nod and be her doorman? Her death is much more because she kept denying Heathcliff irresistible will and possibility of change. I also think you are not giving Emily the credit to actually write a love story so passionate and touching with a couple of selfish individuals, the kind that would only care about themselves and never feel anything true about others in another stories.

Now, is Mr.Lockwood a true unreliable narrator? At least with the technical meaning of the term. The technique would still be developed and Emily or Melville are still far from the subjective unrealiable first person narrator that Dostoievisky, Machado de Assis, Maupassant or Henry James would employ. Even if we consider that Emily's novel is advanced, we also have to consider how it was a work from a yet imature writer, that sometimes Nelly and Lockwood seems to have the same voice, the only difference is the past frame for one and the present for another. Anyways, so does not turn in an argument about Emily's potential, Lockwood is certainly not on team Heathcliff. He evens correct himself - or the first impression he had - and obviously has some sympathy for the kids at least out of his disgust to Heathcliff acts. If anything he would paint a more unfavorable side of Heathcliff even if we consider - there is no motive to this - he altered the version of past Cathy given by Nelly (another narrator that is more sympathetic to Cathy and less to Heathcliff). At anything, he may be a narrator prone to mistakes, not a unreliable, and if he is not very sympathetic towards Cathy, we probally must consider there is no big motives given to him to feel it.