The True Love in the Wuthering Heights
Have you ever known what it felt like to truly love someone? There is lust, infatuation, puppy-love but have you ever known true love? In “Wuthering Heights” Catherine and Heathcliff think they have found true love, but other may conclude they just have a crude mix of affection, lust, infatuation and need. Cathy shows very well that she does not truly love Heathcliff. Love is when two people would do anything to be together no matter what size, color, social status or imperfection. 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 I love him” (pg. 73) Catherine says she would not even think of marrying Edgar if Hindley had not degraded Heathcliff, making him a common servant. If Cathy really loves Heathcliff none of this should matter. In the end Catherine is deciding to marry Edgar, this completely tears Heathcliff apart to the point where he runs away from Wuthering Heights.
Heathcliff is being put through miserable heartbreak and when he finally returns to Wuthering Heights he takes a liking to Isabella, Edgar’s sister. This is Heathcliff’s way of bothering Cathy, not for revenge but just to get a rise out of her. If you really love someone, although you will get jealous, you want them to be happy even if it does not include being with you. ‘That’s not the plan. The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him; they crush those beneath them.
You are welcome to torture me to death for your amusement, only allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style, and refrain from insult as much as you are able. Having levelled my palace, don’t erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home. If I imagined you really wished me to marry Isabel, I’d cut my throat! ‘” Heathcliff admits that he knows that Catherine does not want him to marry Isabella, which is partly the reason he is marrying her. Heathcliff is trying to make Catherine jealous and it works quite well.
Heathcliff does not truly love Cathy, he wants her to be miserable and envy Isabella like he envies Edgar. Catherine and Heathcliff’s love was a very selfish one, its almost like they used each other. They had no one else to be with, so they latched onto each other. “Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you–haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe–I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! (pg. 176) Heathcliff will not let Catherine rest or move on because he selfishly needs her to suffer with him. Heathcliff will then blame Cathy and say she has broken her own heart.“You teach me how cruel you’ve been – cruel and false. Why do you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry, and wring out my kisses and tears; they’ll blight you – they’ll damn you. You loved me–then what right had you to leave me? What right–answer me–for the poor fancy you felt for Linton?
Because misery, and degradation and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart–you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine” ( pg. 170) Heathcliff takes no responsibility for faults or mistakes he may have made, instead he chooses to blame them all on Cathy. It seems very few people know what true love is, and for those who have found it have found the most precious and wanted thing in the world. Catherine and Heathcliff think that they have true love but in reality they do not.
