Heathcliff and Catherine remain the most tragically violent and beautiful lovers in my memory. But what exactly was their love?
Wuthering Heights is a testament to what the human mind can conjure from mere happenings of our daily lives. Emily Brontë did what no other contemporary of hers could, she created a novel so gripping in its essence and so frustrating in its character, that its hard to stop thinking about those eerie, dark, moonless moors and their omnipresence in the lives of her characters.
Heathcliff and Catherine's love is inexplicable. You are left bewildered at their nastiness to their fellows. That anyone could be that brutal is beyond comprehension. But then you chance upon the parts where they are thrown together. And slowly, the mist clears out and you can see how raw, uninhibited and totally consuming their love for each other is. Were they right in being nasty to others because they couldn't be together? No.
But was their love something worth commending? Yes. It was worth commending because it transcends mortality and reason: it was worth commending because in the end, that is all they were actually capable of. No other human emotion was penetrating enough to keep them sane, so in essence, they only lived (and died) for each other's love.
Yes, it sounds crazy. Yes, it sounds impractical that someone could love a ghost. But then, if all literature did was give us a mirror for the real life, wouldn't it be a sad, sad life?
I picked out some quotes from the book that made me weep as I read them. Maybe they will change the impracticality of this love...
Transcending mortality
Heathcliff and Catherine are written to be star crossed lovers. Separated by class, their love is probably the most raw thing that literature has ever seen. Cathy's unbound affection grasps us as she tells her housekeeper “My love for Linton (her neighbour, and the man she chooses to marry because his class matches hers) is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.” Their souls are entwined, meant to be with each other. But rarely does it happen that the stars collide in favourable designs.
"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."- Catherine Earnshaw
Catherine dies a tragic death, devastating Heathcliff forever. However, their love transcends all that is ordinary. Heathcliff digs up her grave, and sets free his beloved's ghost. As Emily writes for his grief in what is probably the most powerful expression of love in the book, “Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you--haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe--I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”
So,
Can love transcend everything? Probably. Can someone love so dearly that they wish to submit themselves to their beloved's ghost just for the sake of having the satisfaction that they walk the space between the earth you inhabit and the heaven you both will go to once you are reunited? Yes. Does love always win? No. But maybe, it is worth all the tries.
"Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same."- Catherine Earnshaw
Catherine asserts her connection to Heathcliff by telling her listener that their souls are made of the same things. She calls herself and Heathcliff soulmates. And soulmates, they say, are destined to be together. But throughout the book, Emily tries to challenge that. She creates impossibilities to separate them. She puts the reader through hell because it is impossible to figure out what is right in this twisted, dark, violent love story. Does she succeed? Partly. She challenges the convention by creating a monster in Heathcliff and fuels his demons by killing Catherine. But she realises that nothing can be that cruel, and finally resigns by the end of the novel; knowing fully well that if not in body, their love shall meet in spirit. They do belong together, in all universes.
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