EMILY BRONTË: Wuthering Heights 22 Read the following extract, and then answer the question that follows it: I might as well have struggled with a bear, or reasoned with a lunatic. The only resource left me was to run to a lattice, and warn his intended victim of the fate which awaited him. "You'd better seek shelter somewhere else to-night!" I exclaimed in a rather triumphant tone. “Mr Earnshaw has a mind to shoot you, if you persist in endeavouring to enter." "You'd better open the door, you –" he answered, addressing me by some elegant term that I don't care to repeat. "I shall not meddle in the matter,” I retorted again. “Come in, and get shot, if you please! I've done my duty." With that I shut the window, and returned to my place by the fire; having too small a stock of hypocrisy at my command to pretend any anxiety for the danger that menaced him. 5 10 Earnshaw swore passionately at me; affirming that I loved the villain yet; and calling me all sorts of names for the base spirit I evinced. And I, in my secret heart (and conscience never reproached me) thought what a blessing it would be for him, should Heathcliff put him out of misery; and what a blessing for me, should he send Heathcliff to his right abode! As I sat nursing these reflections, the casement behind me was banged on to the floor by a blow from the latter individual, and his black countenance looked blightingly through. The stanchions stood too close to suffer his shoulders to follow; and I smiled, exulting in my fancied security. His hair and clothes were whitened with snow, and his sharp cannibal teeth, revealed by cold and wrath, gleamed through the dark. 15 20 "Isabella, let me in, or I'll make you repent!” he “girned”, as Joseph calls it. "I cannot commit murder,” I replied. “Mr Hindley stands sentinel with a knife, and loaded pistol.” "Let me in by the kitchen door!" he said. "Hindley will be there before me,” I answered. “And that's a poor love of yours, that cannot bear a shower of snow! We were left at peace in our beds, as long as the summer moon shone, but the moment a blast of winter returns, you must run for shelter! Heathcliff, if I were you, I'd go stretch myself over her grave, and die like a faithful dog The world is surely not worth living in now, is it? You had distinctly impressed on me, the idea that Catherine was the whole joy of your life – I can't imagine how you think of surviving her loss." 25 30 35 "He's there .. is he?" exclaimed my companion, rushing to the gap. "If I can get my arm out I can hit him!" I'm afraid, Ellen, you'll set me down as really wicked – but you don't know all, so don't judge! I wouldn't have aided or abetted an attempt on even his life, for anything – Wish that he were dead, I must; and therefore, I was fearfully disappointed, and unnerved by terror for the consequences of my taunting speech, when he flung himself on Earnshaw's weapon and wrenched it from his grasp. 40 45 The charge exploded, and the knife, in springing back, closed into its owner's wrist. Heathcliff pulled it away by main force, slitting up the flesh as it passed on, and thrust it dripping into his pocket. He then took a stone, struck down the division between two windows and sprung in. His adversary had fallen senseless with excessive pain, and the flow of blood that gushed from an artery, or a large vein. The ruffian kicked and trampled on him, and dashed his head repeatedly against the flags; holding me with one hand, meantime, to prevent me summoning Joseph. He exerted preter-human self-denial in abstaining from finishing him, completely; but getting out of breath, he finally desisted, and dragged the apparently inanimate body onto the settle. 50 55 There he tore off the sleeve of Earnshaw's coat, and bound up the wound with brutal roughness, spitting and cursing, during the operation, as energetically as he had kicked before. How does Brontë make Isabella's narration here such a dramatic part of the novel?