Chapter XV Of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights: Chapter Analysis

   "My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff" (81)" These words, uttered by Catherine, in the novel Wuthering Heights are for me the starting point in my investigation into the themes of love and obsession in the novel. Catherine has just told her housekeeper that she has made up her mind to marry Edgar Linton, although she is well aware that her love for him is bound to change as time passes. That she is obsessed by her love for Heathcliff she confirms in the above quotation and by saying that she will never, ever be separated from him. Why does she not marry him then? Well, she has

Heathcliff cried vehemently, "I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!" Emily Brontë distorts many common elements in Wuthering Heights   to enhance the quality of her book. One of the distortions is Heathcliff's undying love for Catherine Earnshaw. Also, Brontë perverts the vindictive hatred that fills and runs Heathcliff's life after he loses Catherine. Finally, she prolongs death, making it even more distressing and insufferable.

In Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte uses the setting of the English Moors, a setting she is familiar with, to place two manors, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The first symbolizes man's dark side while the latter symbolizes an artificial utopia. This 19th century setting allows the reader to see the destructive nature of love when one loves the wrong person.

In Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, Isabella along with several other characters wonder, “Is Mr. Heathcliff a man. If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil?” (Brontë 136). Brontë portrays Heathcliff as the ultimate villain through his immoral actions, blatant disregard for family, deception of others for personal gain, and misanthropic loathing of society. Yet, in many ways, Heathcliff embodies the romantic hero through his relentless and fervent love for Catherine. This internal struggle between the impulses of love and hate ironically make Heathcliff’s inhumanity more understandable. Ultimately, Heathcliff’s hatred is an expression of his intense love for Catherine, and the reader gains sympathy for Heathcliff given that he is a tortured man instinctively acting on his own clouded emotions.

Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights display of cultural and physical features of an environment affecting one’s character and moral traits is showcased through the first Catherine’s development throughout the novel. Catherine is forced to “adopt a double character”, as she lives as a rebellious, passionate woman on the turbulent Wuthering Heights, while behaving politely and courtly on the elegant Thrushcross Grange(Bronte, 48). Each of these environments also contains a love interest of Catherine’s, each man parallel with the characteristics of their environments: Heathcliff, the passionate and destructive, residing in Wuthering Heights, while the civilized and gentle Edgar inhabits Thrushcross Grange. Catherine’s development in character due to her setting significantly contributes to the theme that pursuing passionate love is dangerous, such as the love shared by Heathcliff and Catherine.

The curious life Emily Bronte, author of Wuthering Heights and a collection of poems, has been highly analyzed alongside those of her sisters and fellow writers, Charlotte and Anne, for decades. Born in 1818, Emily was the fifth of six children born to Patrick and Maria Bronte. Her father was curate of Haworth parsonage in Yorkshire, England, a home for local clergymen, where Emily spent nearly all of her life. The lonely parsonage offered few companions for Bronte besides her family, but included a large library which consumed her childhood. Bronte never married, and much of her later life was filled with caring for her alcoholic brother, Branwell. This solitary life and experience with Branwell seems to have heavily influenced Wuthering Heights, the only novel written by Bronte, which centers on a similar setting of isolated, lonely households and contains a heavily alcoholic character.

Romantic love takes over many forms in Wuthering Heights, the passion of Heathcliff and Catherine. The love relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine, byr is is not like the other lovers in the story. In this story self-centered took over the need of the characters. Heathcliff murders the love of his life Catherine, after her death his obsession only gets worse. Heathcliff tries for her love with money and his attempts to join the society to which she is drawn. He's trying to take control of this relationship by getting revenge on Catherine by killing her daughter and ruining her life. He still professing his love for her, for Heathcliff

At the beginning of the novel, Heathcliff was a victim of orphanage at a young age. He had never experienced unconditional love from anyone. After Mr. Earshawn’s death, Catherine became his addiction because she accepted him for who he was in his eyes. At first, Catherine despised Heathcliff. In time, he latches on to her becoming totally engulfed with her. This devotion turns into an overwhelming love addiction towards her (“Wuthering Heights Love and Betrayal). Catherine’s presence helps calms the family’s antagonism for him. Heathcliff tolerated a lot from the family because of the love he shared with Catherine (Peele).

Many people, will consider Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte to be an intense love story; kinda like Romeo and Juliet on the Yorkshire Moors. However this story is one of revenge that arises from love. ‘Wuthering Heights’ is a multi-generational Gothic romance that centres around the doomed love between Heathcliff, an orphan and Catherine Earnshaw, the daughter of Heathcliff’s adopted father. Heathcliff grows in his adopted family, till he is reduced into a servant and runs away when Catherine decides to marry another. He returns later, rich and educated, to gain his revenge on the two families of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange that he believed had ruined his life. This dramatic story about passionate love, merciless hatred, violence

An interesting incident in the story takes place in Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff’s former home, when he returns with his new wife, Isabella Linton. He causes her great discomfort by leaving her alone in the house for a long period of time to the point of her describing him as “ingenious and unresting in seeking to gain [her] abhorrence” (Bronte 144). Heathcliff is only emotionally attached to Catherine; to all others, he treats cruelly and does not restrain his harsh insults. The major climax of the novel and the resolution to the main conflict occur with the final, dramatic union of Catherine and Heathcliff. As the two embrace and Catherine’s maid approaches them, Heathcliff “[gnashes] at [her], and [foams] like a mad dog, and [gathers] [Catherine] to him with greedy jealousy” (Bronte 159).

Heathcliff is a character from the novel “Wuthering Heights” that feels like life didn’t treat him fairly due to his lack of social status and due to his ambiguous nature. He and Catherine had both grown up together and in fact, his relationship with her provides the theme for the first volume. It was because of this relation as children that Heathcliff felt a strong connection with Catherin however, she later on didn’t feel the same way towards him. This would influence the story as a whole for their called “love” as children would be very influential in the second volume. Heathcliff feels like life was unjust to him due to the fact that later in the novel Catherine marries another man named Edgar Linton. The main reason why Catherine married

Bronte, The author of the Wuthering Heights, expresses many themes and morals in her book. The one most important in the Wuthering Heights is the theme of love and cruelty. The main characters, Catherine and Heathcliff, show these actions time and time again. They occur because of the other, much like the yin and the yang. Love leads to cruelty and cruelty leads to love. In Wuthering Heights, there are two different types of love shown: platonic and passionate. Both of these types of love lead to cruelty to other characters. As Heathcliff states boldly within the first few chapters of the novel, love’s cruelty survives even beyond death. “Cathy, do come. Oh do – once more! Oh! My heart’s darling; hear me this time, Catherine, at last!”

“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish,” said Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island. Any person can write a book, but to be able to write what you mean and affect your readers is very difficult. A writer simply can’t just drop dialogue into a character’s mouth without having any context of the dialogue. If an author has his or her character saying “I’m broke,” what does this really mean without any context? To Oprah Winfrey, being broke may mean she can’t buy a Silk Jet, a winery, or a country. To a middle- class American, being broke may mean they can’t buy a new pair of shoes that week, buy a new car, or get their hair

Catherine attempts to express her true feelings by stating “I am Heathcliff” (Bronte 97), and although she figures this “religious” like language and identity as a revelation of herself, she is constantly misunderstood by her only confidant; the servant simply cannot grasp the meaning of Catherine’s phrase, much less understand the concept of two intertwinable souls (Benvenuto 101). Alas, it is blatantly obvious that, from the beginning, Catherine and Heathcliff were meant to be torn apart. However, Catherine refuses to accept this reality. As stated by Benvenuto in his novel Emily Bronte, “ Separation from him is out of the question for her. Heathcliff is her inviolable self, as intimate to her as her own self-consciousness; and he is the other-torn-self that the self reaches towards, to become one with, and thus

The prime theme of Wuthering Heights may be stated as the love of Heathcliff for Catherine and the revenge that he takes upon various individuals, the revenge being evoked by the social contempt or disdain piled upon him by Hindley and Edgar and the frustration of his love. Hindley had a superior attitude towards Heathcliff from the time Heathcliff was brought as a boy to Wuthering Heights. He treated Heathcliff ruthlessly and made him work on the fields like other servants.While Edgar is his rival in love, and a successful rival as Catherine has married him in preference to Heathcliff. Wuthering Heights has a gripping plot with many dramatic situations which arouse feelings of pity or awe or fear