Wuthering Heights snippets

Wuthering Heights 1
Reading Wuthering Heights today:I found these two passages moving:p. 80. This is when Cathy comes to tell Nelly about her dream on the eve of her acceptance for Linton’s hand in marriage.

“This is nothing,” cried she; “I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn’t have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff, now; so he shall never know how much I love him; and that, not because he is handsome Nelly, but because he is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton’s is as different as the moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.”

In this passage, she says that Heaven is not her home. So even after death, Cathy does not go to Heaven, but instead roams the earth, haunting Heathcliff and Wuthering Heights. I wonder though why it is young Cathy who does that instead of the older Cathy. Isn’t it the older Cathy who is more passionate than the younger Cathy? Or am I wrong? If it is the younger Cathy that is still roaming the earth, there must be something incomplete. Perhaps her childhood was incomplete? But then, I thought Cathy had more freedom in childhood than when she was older. After all, it was when she got older that she got notions of upper class propriety and then had to go against her nature.

The concept of Heaven: is Heaven found on Earth? I have wondered about this question myself. If we all have to control our passions and seek salvation just so we have the hope of going to Heaven in the after-life, then what is point of striving for Heaven on this earthy? Is there a Heaven for us on this earth? Is Heaven our final Home? What is Home? I read somewhere that your home is with your soulmate…and hence, Cathy’s was with Heathcliff, even if she was dead and he was living, she could not find a home in Heaven. So was EB referring to mythology or evangelical religion…or is she merging the two and saying how in essence, Faith is the one and the same whichever way you look at it? Is EB saying that our Heaven belongs on Earth if our soulmate is on earth? Does EB’s concept of religion falter here…or is she taking a radical standpoint? I would think more the latter. Why is EB interested in such notions as an Earthly Heaven? How about death and redemption according to EB? I believe that EB is starting to talk about a new form of religion: love as religion. Wherever there is true love, there is Heaven, there is Home.

Cathy says her home is not with Linton, just as she does not belong in Heaven.

I like Cathy’s use of metaphors in the last line. I believe that moonbeam refers to Linton and lightning to Heathcliff, and similarly, that frost refers to Linton and fire to Heathcliff. Shows how the two men are polar opposites. Yet, Cathy marries Linton, so showing that she is going COMPLETELY against her nature.

Cathy proclaims that they are soulmates here.

p. 82. This is when Cathy continues to talk about how she cannot ever be separated from Heathcliff even in marriage.

“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 I were annihilated, the Universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees-my love for Heathcliff is like the eternal rocks beneath-a source of little visible delight but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff-he’s always, always on my mind-not as pleasure, anymore than I am always a pleasure to myself-but as my own being-so don’t talk of our separation again-it is impracticable; and”

This is also a very powerful passage. Cathy’s feelings for Heathcliff are of haunting intensity. This kind of love goes beyond death, and beyond life. It transcends our notions of any kind of earthly love. I am convinced that EB is forming her own religion here. This is a new idea of what we think about love. Cathy forgets herself as an ‘individual’, but merges her identity with that of Heathcliff. Is that a good thing? I am not sure. I do value independence….I believe Jane Eyre is different from Cathy in this respect. I don’t recall her saying that she was a part of Rochester as Cathy was a part of Heathcliff. Instead, Jane asserts that Rochester is her ‘equal’, NOT herself.
Again, Cathy reiterates that she and Heathcliff are soulmates.

I like Cathy’s comparison of love to nature, as this connected to the wild moor setting.

The phrase “I am Heathcliff” from a more feminist view point could be interpreted like saying how Cathy (being female) leaves her own identity for the sake of the man she loves. So is this saying that a woman in love takes the identity of her beloved? Meaning is her own nature going to be repressed because of her falling in love with a man? Is the man going to dominate her always? Why isn’t it “Heathcliff is me?”

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