Just for kicks, here's my last lit paper of the term
Obviously, there are spoilers if you have not read the book, which I highly recommend.
Wuthering Heights, one of the most enduring novels of all time is a tale of love and passion, or perhaps simply passionate love. The novel has been embraced as an ultimate love story, which though tragic, still seems able to transcend all else. Love is the strongest motivating factor in the book; all else (positive or negative) is influenced by the brutal love that Heathcliff and Catherine share. A love that is stronger than blood, time, and even stronger than death. This is where true passion comes into play, passion that could also be labeled obsessive or even as an addiction. Is this truly love or unnatural passion that has gone horribly awry? The dictionary defines love as: “an intense feeling of deep affection” while passion is labeled as “a strong and barely controllable emotion.” The mixture of these two definitions of love and passion combined with lack of example, isolation, and the surprisingly intense “sameness” or “soul sharing” of Heathcliff and Catherine prove to be a perfect storm for a highly idealistic and painfully destructive relationship that razes everything in its path and leaves the reader with nothing but a two gravestones on the moors, side by side, the ultimate expression of love and passion that never dies.
From the beginning of the narration by Nelly, there is passion between the young Heathcliff and the young Catherine. When Mr. Earnshaw brings home Heathcliff as a small boy, Heathcliff immediately arouses a passionate response from Catherine, a fit about the riding crop that she did not receive. Though there is no love between the two children yet, there is still an intense reaction that sets the tone for the rest of their relationship. Heathcliff and Catherine spend all of their time together, playing on the moors during which they grow to greatly love one another. This deep affection that grows on (or perhaps out of) the wild and untamed moors is telling of both the character of Heathcliff and Catherine. It is clear they are both free and reckless spirits who not only find solace and understanding in one another but they also define and complete each other, with utter devotion, which often defies set rules for them to stay away from one another in later years. They form an indivisible bond that signifies them as soul mates, which both Heathcliff and Catherine refer to throughout the book. In growing up together in isolated setting, their natures were allowed free and unchecked reign that is later curbed and shut away in the name of manners and decency. At least Catherine makes this decision and forces it on Heathcliff. This change begins after Catherine is forced to stay with the Linton family after their dog attacks her during one of their illicit excursions onto the moors. This stay profoundly changes Catherine and is the catalyst for the darker violence and passion the rest of the novel exhibits. She is civilized, cultured, and apparently ready to abandon her loyalty to Heathcliff for convention, choosing to be rational and practical instead of following her true heart’s desire to always be with Heathcliff. She goes as far as to say: “"It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how much I love him ...” (Bronte Chapter 9 pg 98)
Though Catherine speaks on how it would be degrading to wed Heathcliff in a social capacity, she admits that she and Heathcliff share a soul and becomes distressed when Nelly speaks of them separating. “My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again …” (Chapter 9, pg 100) Catherine and Heathcliff both frequently speak (often to other people) about how their souls are the same, two halves of the same whole, soulmates. They use the term soul to define themselves and in the process their love becomes necessary to live as Catherine stated in the quotation above. In creating their own definition of love, their love, though incredibly selfish, is able to transcend all else that is important to them both. It is a highly idealistic, but painfully destructive love that allows for nothing but complete surrender or obliteration. In the process of defining themselves, they forged a joint identity that cannot be broken. Even when Catherine dies, she still continues to haunt Heathcliff until he also dies and they are reunited in the afterlife and also in a very literal sense as Heathcliff is buried next to Catherine with the sides of their coffins that lay next to one other are removed. This is what they define as love.
This disturbing and unnatural passion for one another is clear through the entire novel and is so tightly woven into their definition of love that it is impossible to separate them. It is the strongest emotion in the book and inspires not only intense love but also hate and revenge. After Catherine dies, Heathcliff quite literally feels as if half of his soul has been ripped away and that all that was good in him, all that wanted to be good for Catherine’s sake is gone with that part of his soul. In its place is a gaping hole of acute pain, suffering, and need for vengeance, which he passionately throws himself into with the same intensity that he loved Catherine. His meaning for life is gone and passionate revenge is the only way he now knows how to create a new identity for himself without Catherine. Catherine on the other hand, believes that as long as Heathcliff exists, she will also continue to be: “...surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here? 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 remained, I should still continue to be; and, if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the Universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem part of it." (Chapter 9 pgs 99-100) Catherine, though admitting that she will love only Heathcliff until she dies, she uses an excuse of aiding Heathcliff “to rise and place him out of [Hindley’s] power” (Chapter 9 pg 99) to marry Edgar Linton for social reasons. Socially she seems to believe that she can have Edgar’s standing and money while romantically she can have the love of Heathcliff that to her, will be completely unchanged. When confronted by Nelly about her motives Catherine states that she has never thought of actually leaving Heathcliff in the first place: “He quite deserted! We separated!' she exclaimed, with an accent of indignation. 'Who is to separate us, pray? They'll meet the fate of Milo! Not as long as I live, Ellen: for no mortal creature. Every Linton on the face of the earth might melt into nothing before I could consent to forsake Heathcliff. … I shouldn't be Mrs. Linton were such a price demanded! He'll be as much to me as he has been all his lifetime.” (Chapter 9 pg 99) Catherine believes that nothing will change her relationship with Heathcliff and if that were the price she would not consider the union, as Heathcliff is her life and reason for being, and nothing should take away from that passion. Her union with Edgar is both civilized and proper and while she is devoted to him on some level their interaction lacks any kind of passion or serious attachment on Catherine’s behalf, though she says later "You [Heathcliff] and Edgar have broken my heart!" (Chapter 15 pg194) She wants to have both a socially acceptable marriage and the fierce and profoundly deep, passionate connection, which in the end leads to her death when she cannot cope with the balancing act. Catherine might have had a chance for a better life with Edgar if Heathcliff had not existed or if Catherine had simply chosen to marry Heathcliff and become a “beggar.” (Chapter 9 pg 99) Catherine’s passion for Heathcliff is what separates her from Edgar and sets Heathcliff on the path of ultimate revenge borne of betrayal and loss.
Much of the pain that Heathcliff and Catherine experience stems from the fact that they were primarily raised without proper examples of what love is or how healthy relationships function. Heathcliff has no parents but was found on the streets of Liverpool as a young boy, knowing only Mr. Earnshaw as a caretaker and father figure, who dies when Heathcliff is still very young. He is raised as the clear favorite of Mr. Earnshaw, who cares more about Heathcliff’s interests than he does about his own children’s. Nelly later explains to Lockwood how Mr. Earnshaw and the household indulged him: “It was a disadvantage to [Heathcliff]; for the kinder among us did not wish to fret the master, so we humoured his partiality; and that humouring was rich nourishment to the child's pride and black tempers.” (Chapter 5 pg 48) Catherine has been raised by her father, her mother having passed away when she was still very young. Her father loves her in his own way but does not show her much kindness and does not set much of an example for how she should behave, instead he merely reprimands her and is occasionally darkly amused when she rises to the occasion. He seems to find her wild and rebellious nature vexing but he lets her run freely on the moors with Heathcliff. When Catherine tries to express affection for her father, he pushes her away: “'Nay, Cathy,' the old man would say, 'I cannot love thee, thou'rt worse than thy brother. Go, say thy prayers, child, and ask God's pardon. I doubt thy mother and I must rue that we ever reared thee!' That made her cry, at first; and then being repulsed continually hardened her …” (Chapter 5 pg50-51) Through Mr. Earnshaw’s example, or lack there of, Heathcliff and Catherine have no predisposition regarding class or what is socially acceptable. They also do not understand the concept of love as a forgiving and generous quality, only as a selfish and manipulative emotion that is capricious. When Hindley becomes the master of Wuthering Heights, it becomes clear that he too did not gain a proper understanding of what good character is from his father, instead he becomes a cruel tyrant, exacting revenge from Heathcliff who was more loved by his father, though he was not Mr. Earnshaw’s natural son. The example that Mr. Earnshaw set for Heathcliff and Catherine was undisciplined and implied that class did not matter and that it was best to harden their emotions and to act selfishly so as to achieve their own interests instead of looking out for one another.
This scenario of lack of proper example and care was able to play out without interference because of location of Wuthering Heights and the extreme isolation it offered from the rest of the world. Mr. Earnshaw was an older man who humored Heathcliff to such a degree that he allowed him to do whatever he pleased, often while he often sternly disapproved of Catherine’s antics and told her to repent. Despite this discrepancy however, he generally allowed them both to run wild out on the moors, further isolating them from not only from himself but also from society and class. When left to their own natural devices, Heathcliff and Catherine passionately indulge themselves in whatever they wish to do, which is often exploring and antagonizing the household of Wuthering Heights. Convention, class, or society has no places on the untamed moors or the isolated setting of Wuthering Heights and as such they grow up knowing little of the world that lies outside of their own home. This is acutely apparent when Heathcliff and Catherine make a trip to the Grange to make fun of the Linton children who they view with both disgust and a kind of pity, though Catherine is certainly more curious about Edgar and Isabella’s lives than Heathcliff is. When they look into the window, Heathcliff and Catherine see the two sibling arguing about who will hold their dog. “We laughed outright at the petted things; we did despise them! I [Heathcliff] would not exchange, for a thousand lives, my condition here, for Edgar Linton's at Thrushcross Grange - not if I might have the privilege of flinging Joseph off the highest gable, and painting the house- front with Hindley's blood!'” (Chapter 6 pgs 57-58) Heathcliff, and Catherine, at the time were perfectly content to stay sequestered away in their own isolated world of the moors and Wuthering Heights. They defined each other’s world and gave it special meaning that was only made possible if the two of them were together to acknowledge and participate in its being. As such, when Catherine changes after her stay with the Lintons and decides to forsake the joint created world that was isolated for a broad conventional world, Heathcliff’s whole reality comes crashing down upon him and he flees to escape coming to terms it. The choice is passionate love versus rational love. Catherine naively believes she can have both. She can continue her relationship with Heathcliff as it has always been while she is able to keep her high social and monetary status. She is unable to commit fully either way. Heathcliff on the other hand was ready to make the ultimate commitment and is unable to stop obsessing over Catherine during the three years he is gone. He tells Nelly: “"For every thought she [Catherine] spends on Linton, she spends a thousand on me . . . If he [Edgar] loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have …”(Chapter 14 183). They are both the same and he knows that Catherine will have been unable to stop obsessing over him either. It is her nature in the same way it is Heathcliff’s. Catherine chooses to marry Edgar for purely social reasons (which she is not familiar with due to her isolation), and in doing so she forsakes both her nature and her heart, setting off a chain reaction of passionate pain, hate, revenge, and self destruction.
A crucial turning point in the novel takes place when the marriage of Catherine and Edgar has occurred and Heathcliff returns after the couple has been married for one year. The marriage is not at all what Catherine expected and while Edgar expresses a seemingly genuine attachment to her, Catherine is much too passionate and wild for him to control and Edgar’s "cold blood cannot be worked into a fever." (Chapter 11 pg 144) When Edgar finally makes a stand in their marriage, forcing her to chose between himself and Heathcliff, and Catherine responds by flying into a fit (literally dashing her head against furniture until she bleeds and grinding her teeth) and locks herself away to starve. When she hears that Edgar is not enquiring after her and is in his library studying, Catherine lashes out further: “What in the name of all that feels has he to do with books, when I am dying?' (Chapter 12 pg 149) Catherine and Linton are as different as night and day and while Catherine was aware of this when she married him, she did not think that it was of importance since she did not love Edgar and planned to carry on her intimate relationship with Heathcliff. She even says to Nelly before the marriage takes place: “Edgar must shake off his antipathy, and tolerate [Heathcliff], at least. [Edgar] will, when he learns my true feelings towards him.” (Chapter 9 pg 99) Edgar does not tolerate Heathcliff and forces him out of his home. Catherine has made both her world and Heathcliff’s collapse by her selfish and misguided motivation to attempt a duel following of passion and rationality. As different as Catherine is from Edgar and passion is from rationality, Heathcliff and Catherine are remarkably similar on one another. Their deep-seated passion for one another is borne from the recognition of each other’s genuine and unadulterated self in one another. They are the targets of each other’s passion because on a primal level they recognize that they are two halves of the same whole. In their relationship, they endeavor to transcend their own boundaries of their incomplete self and combine to form a complete individual. In doing so they form a new identity, one which is impossible to break, even in death. Catherine says: “I am Heathcliff.” (Chapter 9 pg100) and that Heathcliff “Is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same …” (Chapter 9 pg 98) Later on her deathbed, Catherine says she will take him with her in death, as he is “in her soul” (Chapter 15 pg 197) and Heathcliff upon hearing of Catherine’s death is utterly distraught “Be with me always----take any form ---drive me mad---only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! O God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!" (Chapter 16 pg 205-206) Heathcliff driven mad by the seemingly unbreachable separation and even digs up Catherine’s grave to be with her even for a few moments relating to Nelly how she has haunted him, transcending even death to be with him. “Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years - incessantly - remorselessly …” (Chapter 29 pg 352) After Heathcliff finally dies, he is relieved and happy to meet his end, uncaring of anything but meeting Catherine after their long years apart. The bond and single forged identity that they poured themselves into based on their own sameness of wild passion and shared soul holds strong even after Heathcliff and Catherine are both dead. At the end of the novel nearby townspeople even say that they can see the figure of Heathcliff and a young woman, presumably Catherine, wandering the moors, never again to be separated.
Like many love stories that end in tragedy, the question of “Could this have been prevented?” remains in the reader’s thoughts as the book ends. Heathcliff and Catherine certainly destroyed themselves over their passionate love and as a result, also destroyed the lives of others. Their love was passion, strong and completely uncontrollable to either Heathcliff or Catherine. Despite their attempts to separate themselves from one another, it could not be done. So permanent is this bond that the ultimate separation of death and time could not sever it. Their passionate love, lack of example and direction of what healthy and sacrificing relationship entails, and isolation from the outside world that lead to the sameness of their identities that they combine into one likeness and shared soul, is to blame for the passionate anguish, loss, and devastation that follows their attempted separation from one another. Desperation, shared souls, and selfish passion defined the love of Heathcliff and Catherine, setting them apart from the conventional definition of what love is and how such an attachment is formed. They loved each other with a pure and idealistic raw passion that was all consuming, destroying everything in its path. All that remains are two gravestones and two ghosts, wandering the wild moors for all eternity, their story both an enduring monument and a warning, of a true but tragic love this is eternal and restless as the dark and stormy moors.
Also this is a pretty good adaption if you have nothing better to do. :P
Wuthering Heights, one of the most enduring novels of all time is a tale of love and passion, or perhaps simply passionate love. The novel has been embraced as an ultimate love story, which though tragic, still seems able to transcend all else. Love is the strongest motivating factor in the book; all else (positive or negative) is influenced by the brutal love that Heathcliff and Catherine share. A love that is stronger than blood, time, and even stronger than death. This is where true passion comes into play, passion that could also be labeled obsessive or even as an addiction. Is this truly love or unnatural passion that has gone horribly awry? The dictionary defines love as: “an intense feeling of deep affection” while passion is labeled as “a strong and barely controllable emotion.” The mixture of these two definitions of love and passion combined with lack of example, isolation, and the surprisingly intense “sameness” or “soul sharing” of Heathcliff and Catherine prove to be a perfect storm for a highly idealistic and painfully destructive relationship that razes everything in its path and leaves the reader with nothing but a two gravestones on the moors, side by side, the ultimate expression of love and passion that never dies.
From the beginning of the narration by Nelly, there is passion between the young Heathcliff and the young Catherine. When Mr. Earnshaw brings home Heathcliff as a small boy, Heathcliff immediately arouses a passionate response from Catherine, a fit about the riding crop that she did not receive. Though there is no love between the two children yet, there is still an intense reaction that sets the tone for the rest of their relationship. Heathcliff and Catherine spend all of their time together, playing on the moors during which they grow to greatly love one another. This deep affection that grows on (or perhaps out of) the wild and untamed moors is telling of both the character of Heathcliff and Catherine. It is clear they are both free and reckless spirits who not only find solace and understanding in one another but they also define and complete each other, with utter devotion, which often defies set rules for them to stay away from one another in later years. They form an indivisible bond that signifies them as soul mates, which both Heathcliff and Catherine refer to throughout the book. In growing up together in isolated setting, their natures were allowed free and unchecked reign that is later curbed and shut away in the name of manners and decency. At least Catherine makes this decision and forces it on Heathcliff. This change begins after Catherine is forced to stay with the Linton family after their dog attacks her during one of their illicit excursions onto the moors. This stay profoundly changes Catherine and is the catalyst for the darker violence and passion the rest of the novel exhibits. She is civilized, cultured, and apparently ready to abandon her loyalty to Heathcliff for convention, choosing to be rational and practical instead of following her true heart’s desire to always be with Heathcliff. She goes as far as to say: “"It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how much I love him ...” (Bronte Chapter 9 pg 98)
Though Catherine speaks on how it would be degrading to wed Heathcliff in a social capacity, she admits that she and Heathcliff share a soul and becomes distressed when Nelly speaks of them separating. “My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again …” (Chapter 9, pg 100) Catherine and Heathcliff both frequently speak (often to other people) about how their souls are the same, two halves of the same whole, soulmates. They use the term soul to define themselves and in the process their love becomes necessary to live as Catherine stated in the quotation above. In creating their own definition of love, their love, though incredibly selfish, is able to transcend all else that is important to them both. It is a highly idealistic, but painfully destructive love that allows for nothing but complete surrender or obliteration. In the process of defining themselves, they forged a joint identity that cannot be broken. Even when Catherine dies, she still continues to haunt Heathcliff until he also dies and they are reunited in the afterlife and also in a very literal sense as Heathcliff is buried next to Catherine with the sides of their coffins that lay next to one other are removed. This is what they define as love.
This disturbing and unnatural passion for one another is clear through the entire novel and is so tightly woven into their definition of love that it is impossible to separate them. It is the strongest emotion in the book and inspires not only intense love but also hate and revenge. After Catherine dies, Heathcliff quite literally feels as if half of his soul has been ripped away and that all that was good in him, all that wanted to be good for Catherine’s sake is gone with that part of his soul. In its place is a gaping hole of acute pain, suffering, and need for vengeance, which he passionately throws himself into with the same intensity that he loved Catherine. His meaning for life is gone and passionate revenge is the only way he now knows how to create a new identity for himself without Catherine. Catherine on the other hand, believes that as long as Heathcliff exists, she will also continue to be: “...surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here? 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 remained, I should still continue to be; and, if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the Universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem part of it." (Chapter 9 pgs 99-100) Catherine, though admitting that she will love only Heathcliff until she dies, she uses an excuse of aiding Heathcliff “to rise and place him out of [Hindley’s] power” (Chapter 9 pg 99) to marry Edgar Linton for social reasons. Socially she seems to believe that she can have Edgar’s standing and money while romantically she can have the love of Heathcliff that to her, will be completely unchanged. When confronted by Nelly about her motives Catherine states that she has never thought of actually leaving Heathcliff in the first place: “He quite deserted! We separated!' she exclaimed, with an accent of indignation. 'Who is to separate us, pray? They'll meet the fate of Milo! Not as long as I live, Ellen: for no mortal creature. Every Linton on the face of the earth might melt into nothing before I could consent to forsake Heathcliff. … I shouldn't be Mrs. Linton were such a price demanded! He'll be as much to me as he has been all his lifetime.” (Chapter 9 pg 99) Catherine believes that nothing will change her relationship with Heathcliff and if that were the price she would not consider the union, as Heathcliff is her life and reason for being, and nothing should take away from that passion. Her union with Edgar is both civilized and proper and while she is devoted to him on some level their interaction lacks any kind of passion or serious attachment on Catherine’s behalf, though she says later "You [Heathcliff] and Edgar have broken my heart!" (Chapter 15 pg194) She wants to have both a socially acceptable marriage and the fierce and profoundly deep, passionate connection, which in the end leads to her death when she cannot cope with the balancing act. Catherine might have had a chance for a better life with Edgar if Heathcliff had not existed or if Catherine had simply chosen to marry Heathcliff and become a “beggar.” (Chapter 9 pg 99) Catherine’s passion for Heathcliff is what separates her from Edgar and sets Heathcliff on the path of ultimate revenge borne of betrayal and loss.
Much of the pain that Heathcliff and Catherine experience stems from the fact that they were primarily raised without proper examples of what love is or how healthy relationships function. Heathcliff has no parents but was found on the streets of Liverpool as a young boy, knowing only Mr. Earnshaw as a caretaker and father figure, who dies when Heathcliff is still very young. He is raised as the clear favorite of Mr. Earnshaw, who cares more about Heathcliff’s interests than he does about his own children’s. Nelly later explains to Lockwood how Mr. Earnshaw and the household indulged him: “It was a disadvantage to [Heathcliff]; for the kinder among us did not wish to fret the master, so we humoured his partiality; and that humouring was rich nourishment to the child's pride and black tempers.” (Chapter 5 pg 48) Catherine has been raised by her father, her mother having passed away when she was still very young. Her father loves her in his own way but does not show her much kindness and does not set much of an example for how she should behave, instead he merely reprimands her and is occasionally darkly amused when she rises to the occasion. He seems to find her wild and rebellious nature vexing but he lets her run freely on the moors with Heathcliff. When Catherine tries to express affection for her father, he pushes her away: “'Nay, Cathy,' the old man would say, 'I cannot love thee, thou'rt worse than thy brother. Go, say thy prayers, child, and ask God's pardon. I doubt thy mother and I must rue that we ever reared thee!' That made her cry, at first; and then being repulsed continually hardened her …” (Chapter 5 pg50-51) Through Mr. Earnshaw’s example, or lack there of, Heathcliff and Catherine have no predisposition regarding class or what is socially acceptable. They also do not understand the concept of love as a forgiving and generous quality, only as a selfish and manipulative emotion that is capricious. When Hindley becomes the master of Wuthering Heights, it becomes clear that he too did not gain a proper understanding of what good character is from his father, instead he becomes a cruel tyrant, exacting revenge from Heathcliff who was more loved by his father, though he was not Mr. Earnshaw’s natural son. The example that Mr. Earnshaw set for Heathcliff and Catherine was undisciplined and implied that class did not matter and that it was best to harden their emotions and to act selfishly so as to achieve their own interests instead of looking out for one another.
This scenario of lack of proper example and care was able to play out without interference because of location of Wuthering Heights and the extreme isolation it offered from the rest of the world. Mr. Earnshaw was an older man who humored Heathcliff to such a degree that he allowed him to do whatever he pleased, often while he often sternly disapproved of Catherine’s antics and told her to repent. Despite this discrepancy however, he generally allowed them both to run wild out on the moors, further isolating them from not only from himself but also from society and class. When left to their own natural devices, Heathcliff and Catherine passionately indulge themselves in whatever they wish to do, which is often exploring and antagonizing the household of Wuthering Heights. Convention, class, or society has no places on the untamed moors or the isolated setting of Wuthering Heights and as such they grow up knowing little of the world that lies outside of their own home. This is acutely apparent when Heathcliff and Catherine make a trip to the Grange to make fun of the Linton children who they view with both disgust and a kind of pity, though Catherine is certainly more curious about Edgar and Isabella’s lives than Heathcliff is. When they look into the window, Heathcliff and Catherine see the two sibling arguing about who will hold their dog. “We laughed outright at the petted things; we did despise them! I [Heathcliff] would not exchange, for a thousand lives, my condition here, for Edgar Linton's at Thrushcross Grange - not if I might have the privilege of flinging Joseph off the highest gable, and painting the house- front with Hindley's blood!'” (Chapter 6 pgs 57-58) Heathcliff, and Catherine, at the time were perfectly content to stay sequestered away in their own isolated world of the moors and Wuthering Heights. They defined each other’s world and gave it special meaning that was only made possible if the two of them were together to acknowledge and participate in its being. As such, when Catherine changes after her stay with the Lintons and decides to forsake the joint created world that was isolated for a broad conventional world, Heathcliff’s whole reality comes crashing down upon him and he flees to escape coming to terms it. The choice is passionate love versus rational love. Catherine naively believes she can have both. She can continue her relationship with Heathcliff as it has always been while she is able to keep her high social and monetary status. She is unable to commit fully either way. Heathcliff on the other hand was ready to make the ultimate commitment and is unable to stop obsessing over Catherine during the three years he is gone. He tells Nelly: “"For every thought she [Catherine] spends on Linton, she spends a thousand on me . . . If he [Edgar] loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have …”(Chapter 14 183). They are both the same and he knows that Catherine will have been unable to stop obsessing over him either. It is her nature in the same way it is Heathcliff’s. Catherine chooses to marry Edgar for purely social reasons (which she is not familiar with due to her isolation), and in doing so she forsakes both her nature and her heart, setting off a chain reaction of passionate pain, hate, revenge, and self destruction.
A crucial turning point in the novel takes place when the marriage of Catherine and Edgar has occurred and Heathcliff returns after the couple has been married for one year. The marriage is not at all what Catherine expected and while Edgar expresses a seemingly genuine attachment to her, Catherine is much too passionate and wild for him to control and Edgar’s "cold blood cannot be worked into a fever." (Chapter 11 pg 144) When Edgar finally makes a stand in their marriage, forcing her to chose between himself and Heathcliff, and Catherine responds by flying into a fit (literally dashing her head against furniture until she bleeds and grinding her teeth) and locks herself away to starve. When she hears that Edgar is not enquiring after her and is in his library studying, Catherine lashes out further: “What in the name of all that feels has he to do with books, when I am dying?' (Chapter 12 pg 149) Catherine and Linton are as different as night and day and while Catherine was aware of this when she married him, she did not think that it was of importance since she did not love Edgar and planned to carry on her intimate relationship with Heathcliff. She even says to Nelly before the marriage takes place: “Edgar must shake off his antipathy, and tolerate [Heathcliff], at least. [Edgar] will, when he learns my true feelings towards him.” (Chapter 9 pg 99) Edgar does not tolerate Heathcliff and forces him out of his home. Catherine has made both her world and Heathcliff’s collapse by her selfish and misguided motivation to attempt a duel following of passion and rationality. As different as Catherine is from Edgar and passion is from rationality, Heathcliff and Catherine are remarkably similar on one another. Their deep-seated passion for one another is borne from the recognition of each other’s genuine and unadulterated self in one another. They are the targets of each other’s passion because on a primal level they recognize that they are two halves of the same whole. In their relationship, they endeavor to transcend their own boundaries of their incomplete self and combine to form a complete individual. In doing so they form a new identity, one which is impossible to break, even in death. Catherine says: “I am Heathcliff.” (Chapter 9 pg100) and that Heathcliff “Is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same …” (Chapter 9 pg 98) Later on her deathbed, Catherine says she will take him with her in death, as he is “in her soul” (Chapter 15 pg 197) and Heathcliff upon hearing of Catherine’s death is utterly distraught “Be with me always----take any form ---drive me mad---only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! O God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!" (Chapter 16 pg 205-206) Heathcliff driven mad by the seemingly unbreachable separation and even digs up Catherine’s grave to be with her even for a few moments relating to Nelly how she has haunted him, transcending even death to be with him. “Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years - incessantly - remorselessly …” (Chapter 29 pg 352) After Heathcliff finally dies, he is relieved and happy to meet his end, uncaring of anything but meeting Catherine after their long years apart. The bond and single forged identity that they poured themselves into based on their own sameness of wild passion and shared soul holds strong even after Heathcliff and Catherine are both dead. At the end of the novel nearby townspeople even say that they can see the figure of Heathcliff and a young woman, presumably Catherine, wandering the moors, never again to be separated.
Like many love stories that end in tragedy, the question of “Could this have been prevented?” remains in the reader’s thoughts as the book ends. Heathcliff and Catherine certainly destroyed themselves over their passionate love and as a result, also destroyed the lives of others. Their love was passion, strong and completely uncontrollable to either Heathcliff or Catherine. Despite their attempts to separate themselves from one another, it could not be done. So permanent is this bond that the ultimate separation of death and time could not sever it. Their passionate love, lack of example and direction of what healthy and sacrificing relationship entails, and isolation from the outside world that lead to the sameness of their identities that they combine into one likeness and shared soul, is to blame for the passionate anguish, loss, and devastation that follows their attempted separation from one another. Desperation, shared souls, and selfish passion defined the love of Heathcliff and Catherine, setting them apart from the conventional definition of what love is and how such an attachment is formed. They loved each other with a pure and idealistic raw passion that was all consuming, destroying everything in its path. All that remains are two gravestones and two ghosts, wandering the wild moors for all eternity, their story both an enduring monument and a warning, of a true but tragic love this is eternal and restless as the dark and stormy moors.
Also this is a pretty good adaption if you have nothing better to do. :P
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