The Theme Of Love And Love In Wuthering Heights

In Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Heathcliff’s strong love for Catherine guides his transformation as a character. While Heathcliff enters the story as an innocent child, the abuse he receives at a young age and his heartbreak at Catherine’s choice to marry Edgar Linton bring about a change within him. Heathcliff’s adulthood is consequently marked by jealousy and greed due to his separation from Catherine, along with manipulation and a deep desire to seek revenge on Edgar. Although Heathcliff uses deceit and manipulation to his advantage throughout the novel, he is never entirely content in his current situation. As Heathcliff attempts to revenge Edgar Linton, he does not gain true fulfillment. Throughout Wuthering Heights, Brontë uses Heathcliff’s vengeful actions to convey the message that manipulative and revenge-seeking behaviors will not bring a person satisfaction.

Wuthering Heights is a novel which deviates from the standard of Victorian literature. The novels of the Victorian Era were often works of social criticism. They generally had a moral purpose and promoted ideals of love and brotherhood. Wuthering Heights is more of a Victorian Gothic novel; it contains passion, violence, and supernatural elements (Mitchell 119). The world of Wuthering Heights seems to be a world without morals. In Wuthering Heights, Brontë does not idealize love; she presents it realistically, with all its faults and merits. She shows that love is a powerful force which can be destructive or redemptive. Heathcliff has an all-consuming passion for Catherine. When she chooses to marry Edgar, his spurned love turns into a

   "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

Upon hindsight following the two novels, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, one would label the monster and Heathcliff to be nothing short of villainous characters. Throughout each individual novel the two leads perform heinous actions that should leave readers feeling repulsed, and with no ounce of sympathy towards the principal characters; nonetheless, it is impossible not to. Heathcliff and the monster are not evil but rather characters to sympathize, both are the products of their environment and correspondingly, although for divergent reasons, are motivated by the supereminent emotions—love and hate.

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.

Wuthering Heights is a novel with a strong presence of children. As many other novels during the 19th century childhood became a central theme, because during that period arose a conscience about infancy, in many cases denouncing the terrible situation of children, especially in the cities. Emily Bronte was also conscious about children´s situation, as reflecting in the few poems she left. Thus, in Wuthering Heights, childhood has also a strong presence; however there are two important differences in respect to other approaches during the 19th century: on one hand, it is located in the country – far from the satanic mills of the cities. And on the other hand, children in Wuthering Heights are not as innocent as in other contemporary novels.

Martha Nussbaum describes the romantic ascent of various characters in Wuthering Heights through a philosophical Christian view. She begins by describing Catherine as a lost soul searching for heaven, while in reality she longs for the love of Heathcliff. Nussbaum continues by comparing Heathcliff as the opposition of the ascent from which the Linton’s hold sacred within their Christian beliefs. Nussbaum makes use of the notion that the Christian belief in Wuthering Heights is both degenerate and way to exclude social classes.

Wuthering Heights is structured around two parallel love stories in which motions verge between passionate love and hatred. Heathcliff and Cathy’s passion centre the novel, this passion condemns as immoral by Nelly (a servant girl who grew up along-side the Earnshaw’s) and also a Victorian reader, but could be interpreted as a love that transcends social boundaries and idealises them as a romantic hero and heroine. This is clear that Heathcliff expresses these passionate emotions as he sobs uncontrollably ‘Cathy, do come. Oh do – once more! Oh! My heart’s darling, hear me this time – Catherine, at last!’. Through the use of exclamation, we see that Heathcliff pines for his lover to come back to life and greet herself with him just once more, by using exclamatory we sense this desperation emphasising his true passionate love for Catherine and the emotions that built up their relationship; he has become broken without++ her. This closely links to the concept Shakespeare talks of in ‘Sonnet 116’ in which he says ‘But bears it out even to the edge of doom’. This

In her novel Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë uses a formal style of writing to portray the language of those used during the early 1800s. Throughout the majority of the novel, Nelly Dean is telling the story of how Wuthering Heights came to be the place that it currently is. Throughout Dean’s narration, characters are voiced differently due to their role in society. An example of this is shown when Brontë would use fragments of words to represent the speech of Hareton, one of the servants of Wuthering Heights. In contrast, Catherine, being well educated, would use sophisticated grammar and an extensive vocabulary whenever she spoke. Heathcliff was revealed as a two-sided character in this reading. On one hand, the author would use negative

The novel of Wuthering Heights involves passion, romance, and turmoil but most significantly carries cruelty as an overarching theme. Cruelty is apparent throughout the work most importantly when dealing with relationships between Heathcliff and Hindley, Heathcliff and Hareton, and even the emotional cruelty between Heathcliff and Catherine.

Catherine also started to be mean to Heathcliff after they have grown up and treated him badly. John Beversluis states that, “The Catherine Heathcliff relationship has traditionally been defined in terms of reciprocal love, a love not mearely sexual or romantic, but metaphysical in character”(Beverslius).Catherine wanted to marry Edgar Linton other than Heathcliff. Catherine started out loving Heathcliff more than herself. She wanted to marry Heathcliff. Catherine is in love with him, “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”(64). Catherine really

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!”

Emily Bronte includes a variety of themes in Wuthering Heights that are prominently strengthened by the use of symbolic figures. A specific theme that sticks with the reader is the theme of love, and a symbol that strengthens this theme is the 'ghost' of Catherine that appears a few times in this novel. Love drives the plot in this story and is the reason that everything unfolds the way that it does.

The presentation of childhood is a theme that runs through two generations with the novel beginning to reveal the childhood of Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw, and with the arrival of the young Liverpudlian orphan, Heathcliff. In chapter four, Brontë presents Heathcliff’s bulling and abuse at the hands of Hindley as he grows increasingly jealous of Heathcliff for Mr. Earnshaw, his father, has favoured Heathcliff over his own son, “my arm, which is black to the shoulder” the pejorative modifier ‘black’ portrays dark and gothic associations but also shows the extent of the abuse that Heathcliff as a child suffered from his adopted brother. It is this abuse in childhood that shapes Heathcliff’s attitudes towards Hindley and his sadistic

Someone having their true lover marry another person whom they do not truly love would be a difficult and undesirable situation. How a person in a similar situation reacts to it, especially in the long term, can reveal a lot about their character. Such is the case with Heathcliff, the main character of Wuthering Heights, a novel written by Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights takes place from the late eighteenth century through the early 1800s (decade) within the two houses of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange and on the land surrounding them (1, 58). The two houses are located in England and are near the village of Gimmerton (1, 102).