hello, sorry for the mistakes I use a translator.
⚠️ Spoilers about the book “Wuthering Heights”.
While in a scene from the series The Mentalist, Rigsby asks Cho what book he is reading, Cho replies “Wuthering Heights”, Rigsby therefore asks: you tell me if it ends well! then walks away, and Cho says: (…not really..).
The book is about a broken family and the characters are all loathsome at times. We have Mrs and Mr Earnshaw who have 2 children: Hendley and Catherine. One day, Mr. Earnshaw brings back an orphan “Heathcliff” who is persecuted by Hindley but becomes Catherine’s double. they are inseparable, soul mates. hence Catherine’s famous line “so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.” .
Heathcliff does not hear this part, only the first where Catherine tells her servant that she could not marry him because of her social status, her poverty, her brother’s hatred of her, among other things… Heathcliff then disappears to prepare his revenge. Catherine searches for him at night in heavy rain and catches brain fever. Being a novel where loves are always idealized and more passionate than in reality, we attribute this fever to his grief (meningitis maybe).
So, Catherine then marries a Linton, a man of her rank, and loves him with a reasonable and non-passionate love like Heathcliff but adapts to this life and like everyone else is careful not to upset her she doesn’t have a seizure.
Only, 3 years later, Heathcliff arrives at his door like a new man. no one knows where he was or what he did but he looks respectable, well-groomed, of a better rank. Catherine is so happy that her husband agrees that they go for a walk sometimes. She always wanted to have them both…They still love each other, nothing could break their love. but Heathcliff still wants revenge. So he seduces Catherine’s sister-in-law (Miss Linton), and becomes a tyrant towards her, making her live a horrible life, with abuse, belittling etc… she finally has a child by him “Linton Heathcliff” and ran away with him.
While he was seducing Miss Linton, Heathcliff argued with Catherine and Mr Linton who was fed up with this horrible man breaking the family peace they had chasing him away and asked Catherine to make a choice: Linton or Heathcliff. Catherine cannot choose, frustrated she begins to have a seizure and again develops a brain fever accompanied by a hunger strike and delusions which will be fatal to her just after she gives birth to a daughter, which Mr Linton will call Catherine.
Heathcliff worked to obtain all the property of Catherine’s brother through games and bets and he then recovered Wuthering Heights. Hindley dies and Heathcliff also recovers the latter’s son “Hareton”, on whom he takes revenge by speaking badly to him, treating him like a servant and depriving him of education. One day, after the death of Miss Linton (sister of Mr Linton, wife of Heathcliff) Heathcliff takes him back, being his father, and mistreats them until he becomes weak, timid, the very opposite of a respectable and always whiny, sullen and bad company. he also has very fragile health. Heathcliff has already taken revenge on Hindley by taking Wuthering Heights and his son from him, now he is taking revenge on Linton by taking his nephew from him, whom he intends to marry to little Catherine in order to recover the Linton family barn upon the death of Mr. Linton and mistreat all descendants as he sees fit.
At the end, after he forces little Catherine to marry young Linton, young Linton dies and Catherine is unhappy, degraded, beaten, deprived of friends, her horse, walks and her books in Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff then took over Wuthering Heights and the barn, and he mistreated everyone. his revenge has been accomplished or almost accomplished…
because Catherine and Hareton, after months of hating each other, fall in love and Heathcliff dies. Despite all his efforts, he left 2 young people who loved each other and did not choose the path of destruction, and they thus recovered the goods coming from their family which were rightfully theirs. At their wedding it is assumed that Heathcliff’s ghost finally joined his Cathrine. so the big question is why does Cho say it doesn’t really end well? I didn’t understand… thank you! 🫶🏼
EDIT : with many comments, I understood. Cho doesn’t say yes or no, he says “not really.” We can’t say that it ends well when throughout the book the characters hurt each other, mistreat each other physically and psychologically, and almost all die just because the cycle is broken and there is hope for the last generation. We can’t say that it ends badly either, precisely because of this broken cycle and this hope. So does it end well? Not really…I think that there was so much suffering and abuse until the end that the glimmer of hope for Cathy and Hareton is not enough to say that it ends well…
by Debbiefrench