Heights Which Wuther

For various reasons, I've started re-reading Wuthering Heights. The first time I read it, I found myself focusing on Heathcliff's situation, though in retrospect that may have been because his dominates the latter half of it. I'm currently about halfway through it, and have come to realize that my initial impression of the flawed nature of Heathcliff's love might owe more to Catherine and her perception of it.

The true realization is this: Catherine's love is not a mature love. It is, in fact, a child's perception of love. This is not to say that it is good or bad, nor pure or calculating - perhaps more on that later. All I mean is that she envisions and conceives of love in the same way that younger people do. She says that "Whatever souls are made of, [Heathcliff's] and mine are the same," (81) - the sort of oneness which people experiencing love for the first time seek, not realizing that such closeness is ultimately confining and destructive. She displays a child-like assumption of primacy: "I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me" (122), and, in an interesting touch by Bronte, the form her ghost takes is not that of her at the end of her life, but her as a child, begging to be let back into the home where she lived with Heathcliff.

It is childlike to love in this manner because it's how you perceive love before dealing with failed relationships; it's the way you love before reality forces you to deal with people who don't love you, who fall out of love with you, before people tell you they've fallen out of love with you. Perhaps, then, this form of love is truer, is better, is more real. It's certainly simpler, and perhaps less satisfying in some ways, but moreso in others.

This being said, my enjoyment of Wuthering Heights is no less than it was the first time around. For while the love shared by Catherine and Heathcliff may or may not not be desirable, it is true. Would that we could all say such a thing.