Wuthering Heights: The Extremity of Love as a Religion

In Emily Bronte’s, Wuthering Heights, love is an all-consuming fiery religion.  It consists of obsession, necessity, passion, and madness.  Their love, as a religion, is as extreme as the Calvinism presented in The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.  It is personal and cannot be understood by all.  For Catherine Linton and Heathcliff, the consequences of being in love in this way represents three interrelated environments: their separate lives, their shared selves (i.e. soul mates), and the entire process itself of being in love and separated from that love.  Perhaps Catherine’s infamous quote from the classic story is in chapter nine, when she says, “… but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same…” (59). Catherine speaks of her love for Heathcliff early in the text.  Many readers think this is narcissism at its most profound.  However, it is possible that rather than celebrating her sense of self in another, Catherine’s mere existence depends on the identity of Heathcliff as a soul and a person.  They are incomplete selves, like two ragged halves to a whole, and desperately need the other to survive.  The incompleteness is what constantly drives both Catherine and Heathcliff through their own perceived manias.  It seems their souls/spirits are so forceful, heated, and longing to be connected, that their physical bodies cannot take the strain.

After Catherine’s death, Heathcliff is wild with the loss of her.  Then an opportunity presents itself to Heathcliff that will boldly allow them to be eternally together.  In chapter twenty-nine, Heathcliff tells of his plan to remove a side of Catherine’s coffin – “not Linton’s side, damn him” (211), so that Heathcliff can be buried beside her with the respective side of his own coffin missing, fundamentally being laid at rest together in one coffin.  He goes on to say, “… I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep, by that sleeper, with my heart stopped, and my cheek frozen against hers… of dissolving with her, and being more happy still,” (212).  This is obvious foreshadowing, but illustrates to readers how peaceful their deaths will be for nearly everyone involved.

As religious followers seek redemption, forgiveness, Heaven, etc., Heathcliff and Catherine seek the powerful salvation that only they each can give the other.  It can be said that “the marriage of the surviving heirs of Earnshaw and Linton restores peace” (Encyclopedia Britannica) to the families and potential victims to the catastrophe that is the love between Catherine and Heathcliff.  However, the marriage occurred after the deaths of both hero and heroine.  There is no textual evidence that proves the truly that scorn, passion, and love throughout Wuthering Heights comes from any other couple than the storm that is Catherine and Heathcliff.  When they are past, so is the storm.

 

Bronte, E. (1996). Wuthering heights. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/497082/religion

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/650100/Wuthering-Heights