How Does Shakespeare Present the Theme of Love and Marriage?
The influences of nature and nurture are ambiguous (unclear), how far do you agree with this statement as far as childhood is concerned? In this essay I am going to be arguing how far I agree that the influences of nature and nurture are ambiguous. To help develop my argument I am going to use the likes of Heathcliff, Cathy, Isabella and the Linton’s. I agree strongly with the statement that the influences of nature and nurture are ambiguous; my reasoning for this is that the novel is not focusing on this aspect and therefore doesn’t get fully explored. The theme of childhood, voiced by the elder Cathy on her deathbed, is continued in the main action of the second half of the book [.. .] in one way or another childhood is in fact the central theme of Emily Bronte’s writing’. ‘ This time in Catherine’s life, which is unquestionably associated with Heathcliff’s appearance in her house and the strong feelings the boy then arouses in her, is, indeed, described at length by the narrator Nelly, as it will determine the following events in the novel.
Catherine’s dreams of happiness are associated with childhood all through her life, and even on her death-bed she still looks like a child in Nelly’s eyes: ‘She drew a sigh, and stretched herself, like a child reviving, and sinking again to sleep and five minutes after I felt one little pulse at her heart, and nothing more! ”. Finally it is the ghost of a child that visits Lockwood, the newcomer and second narrator in the novel. Until she dies at the age of nineteen, Catherine clings in a passionate way to her childhood memories.
The most revealing passage is the scene which takes place after Heathcliff has returned from a long absence and has just quarrelled with Catherine’s husband, Edgar Linton. This scene, in which she raves, is significant as it echoes the childhood scenes in which she suffered from being separated from Heathcliff. Her memories have actually never stopped cropping up in an insistent way and she now cannot help lamenting about ‘what has kept recurring and recurring till I feared for my reason. ^ The past years even end up overlapping the present situation and the adult in Catherine totally identifies with the child. The year she has spent with Edgar then seems to vanish at once. Her physical sensations as she lies in her bed at Thrushcross Grange release images from the past and she sees herself lying in her bed years earlier at Wuthering Heights. She yearned to transcend death and to recover the freedom she used to share with Heathcliff when she was a child: ‘Their mutual destruction by tooth and nail in an effort, through death, to get back to the lost state of gypsy freedom in childhood’.
