More themes in Wuthering Heights: religious

The prodigal returns - Heathcliff comes back to Wuthering Heights after a three-year disappearance; he's grown, handsomer than ever, apparently prosperous, no one can tell exactly where he's been or what he's done - perhaps served in the army? - and he's not saying. Mainly what we know is that he has 2 things on his mind: vengeance against mean "brother" Hindley and winning the now-married Catherine. You can fault Catherine's husband, Linton, all you want for his rudeness toward Heathcliff but at least he understands the danger: this guy's out to get him and to steal his wife. Why should he welcome him back with open arms into his home and into his society? There's still so much ominous going on in this novel - made even more so by the turbulent climate, the illness that the narrator, Lockwood, is suffering, and the dark landscape itself - probably the best example in literature since King Lear of the Romantic fallacy - the external environment reflects and in some ways creates the internal mood of the characters. Another element I didn't touch on yesterday in noting some major themes of Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" (race, class, incest) is the religious dimension of the novel: many references to the characters living in a version of hell, and you have the strange and doctrinaire servant, Joseph, rambling around and quoting scripture at everyone; the nightmare that Lockwood suffers during this stay at WH when he dreams of a long sermon in which the minister catalogues sins; the names themselves (isn't the servant who tells Lockwood the story of Catherine and Heathcliff named Ellen/Nelly Grace? - maybe I'm wrong on that), the sense overall that Heathcliff is devilish and Satanic and that he offers temptation to the vulnerable Catherine (there's another scene where Nelly is gathering apples - an Edenic reference). Lots of little pieces to pull together, and I'm not thinking that WH is exactly allegorical, but there are religious systems, symbols, and implications throughout that color the novel and make it feel as if the characters are fighting for salvation and that their souls are at stake. We'll see how this plays out through the course of the novel.