Around the month of December and the year 2006,
I was given Wuthering Heights to read in school.
It made it to my list of favourite books.
It made it to my list of favourite books.
Having received a wedding proposal
from Edgar Linton, Catherine, confiding to her housekeeper Nellie Dean, explains her love for Heathcliff: “My great miseries
in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from
the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and
he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not
seem a part of it.” Thus, she continues, “I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always
in my mind: not as a pleasure, […], but as my own being.” He is “in”, not “on
her mind”.
Heathcliff, being informed that
Catherine has died, tells Nellie Dean that he did not wait for her to learn this;
he already knew because he had felt it. Their souls are the same. She is “his
life, his soul” (he cannot live without). Heathcliff is as much Catherine as
she is him.
How do you define such a
relationship? I can see four main characteristics.
Written days of Heathcliff’s
arrival, Nel notices that “Miss Cathy and he were now very thick”, meaning
close together. When Hindley is sent off to college, the strong bond between
them grows as they are left to themselves to roam the countryside. “She was
much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent for her
was to keep her separate from him”, Nel observes. When Heathcliff is demoted by
Hindley, they still manage to sneak away. Even when he turns into a boorish,
uncultivated person running around ragged and dirty (as compared to Catherine
who has returned from the Lintons as a lady and is trying to balance her
relationship with both Linton children and Heathcliff), she remains his
constant companion. She is only 15 years old! This is still very mature. This
is still very much a childish bond, beyond which they actually never mature.
They remain puerile to their respective ends.
Second, the relationship between
Heathcliff and Catherine is platonic. They are both married to different
people, each has a child. (Heathcliff does not like his wife not his son; they
are both tools to work out his plan of revenge against Edgar Linton.) For
Catherine, Edgar Linton represents youth, charm, good looks, wealth(and he
loves her). Those are all temporary values, in her words “like the foliage in
the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees.”
(She not only tells Nellie but eventually also Linton himself before dying).
Her love for Heathcliff “resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of
little visible delight, but necessary.” Their relationship is spiritual.
Thirdly, this is tragic. Catherine
dies and accuses Heathcliff: “you have killed me”. After all he did leave.
However there was a misunderstanding: he left because he overheard her saying that
she would not marry him because of his status, without staying until she
explained her love for him. Heathcliff does not accept her accusation however: “Why
did you betray your heart, Cathy? [..] You have killed yourself […] Because
misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict
would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your
heart – you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.” When she
asks if she will forgive her, Heathcliff answers: “I will forgive what you have
done to me. I love my murderer - but yours! How can I? This is pure
Shakespeare.
Finally, the love between
Catherine and Heathcliff is self-destructive. He has lost “his life, his soul”.
If he would have died first, she would have found herself in an universe she “should
not seem part of it”. Catherine accuses Heathcliff that he will forget her once
she is dead. She knows that this cannot be true. When she dies, he asks her to
be haunted. He is, but she refuses to show her face. As his end inevitably
draws closer, he sees her in young Cathy, in Hareton, everywhere. Thus
concludes the narrator (Nellie Dean to Mr Lockwood), Heathcliff’s death (he had
stopped eating and sleeping) was “the consequence of his strange illness, not
the cause.” Only in death can they reunite, and Heathcliff makes sure that he
will be buried next to Catherine, so that their dust will mingle.
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