Introduction
The ‘Wuthering heights’ is admired not least
for the power of its imagery, its complex structure, and its ambiguity, the
very elements that confounded its first critics. Emily Brontë spent her short
life mostly at home, and apart from her own fertile imagination, she drew her
inspiration from the local landscape the surrounding moorlands and the regional
architecture of the Yorkshire area-as well as her personal experience of
religion, of folklore, and of illness and death. Dealing with themes of nature,
cruelty, social position, and indestructibility of the spirit, Wuthering Heights has surpassed the
more successful Charlotte Brontë's Jane
Eyre in academic and popular circles. However, it is a love-based novel
that goes through all these things or a very interesting creation based on the
love of catherine and Heathcliff.
Objectives
The main objective
of this assignment is to systematically illustrate the Wuthering Heights by
Emily Bronte as a love story by comparing it to the qualities that should be in
a love story.
Research
problem
Wuthering
Heights comes under realism and romanticism, but it contains many elements and
ideas from the Gothic novel. The novel revolves around the strange love story
between Catherine and Heathcliff. This love having a great impact on the other
characters. This love is very hard to
characterize; from many critic’s point of view, we cannot know for sure if this
love drives them mad or not. So, this study is to realize whether Wuthering
Heights is a love story or not.
Methodology
Books,
and web article were used to gather the referent data and data was analyzed
through the comparative methodology on the qualities that should be in a love
story.
Discussion.
Romantic love takes many
forms in Wuthering Heights:
the grand passion of Heathcliff and Catherine, the insipid sentimental
languishing of Lockwood, the coupleism of Hindley and Frances, the tame
indulgence of Edgar, the romantic infatuation of Isabella, the puppy love of
Cathy and Linton, and the flirtatious sexual attraction of Cathy and Hareton.
These lovers, with the possible exception of Hareton and Cathy, are ultimately
self-centered and ignore the needs, feelings, and claims of others; what
matters is the lovers' own feelings and needs.
Their
love is an attempt to break the boundaries of self and to fuse with another to
transcend the inherent separateness of the human condition; fusion with another
will by uniting two incomplete individuals create a whole and achieve new sense
of identity, a complete and unified identity. This need for fusion motivates
Heathcliff's determination to "absorb" Catherine's corpse into his
and for them to "dissolve" into each other so thoroughly that Edgar
will not be able to distinguish Catherine from him.
Love
has become a religion in Wuthering Heights, providing a shield
against the fear of death and the annihilation of personal identity or
consciousness. This use of love would explain the inexorable connection between
love and death in the characters' speeches and actions.
Nevertheless,
Catherine and Heatcliff are inconsistent in their attitude toward death, which
both unites and separates. After crying "Heathcliff! I only wish us never
to be parted," Catherine goes on to say, "I'm wearying to escape into
that glorious world," a wish which necessarily involves separation
(Ch. xv, p. 125).
Conventional
religion is presented negatively in the novel. The abandoned church at
Gimmerton is decaying; the minister stops visiting Wuthering Heights because of
Hindley's degeneracy. Catherine and Heathcliff reject Joseph's religion, which
is narrow, self-righteous, and punitive. Is conventional religion replaced by
the religion of love, and does the fulfillment of Heathcliff and Catherine's
love after death affect the love of Hareton and Cathy in any way? Does the
redemptive power of love, which is obvious in Cathy's civilizing Hareton,
relate to love-as-religion experienced by Heathcliff and Catherine?
Is what Catherine and Heathcliff call love and generations of readers have
accepted as Ideal Love really an addiction? Stanton Peele argues that romantic
or passion love is in itself an addiction. What exactly does he mean by
addiction? An addiction exists when a person's attachment to a sensation, an
object, or another person is such as to lessen his appreciation of and ability
to deal with other things in his environment, or in himself, so that he has
become increasingly dependent on that experience as his only source of
gratification.Individuals who lack direction and commitment, who are
emotionally unstable, or who are isolated and have few interests are especially
vulnerable to addictions. An addictive love wants to break down the boundaries
of identity and merge with the lover into one identity. Lacking inner
resources, love addicts look outside themselves for meaning and purpose,
usually in people similar to themselves. Even if the initial pleasure and sense
of fulfillment or satisfaction does not last, the love-addict is driven by need
and clings desperately to the relationship and the lover. Catherine, for
example, calls her relationship "a source of little visible delight, but
necessary." The loss of the lover, whether through rejection or death,
causes the addict withdrawal symptoms, often extreme ones like illness, not
eating, and faintness. The addict wants possession of the lover regardless of
the consequences to the loved one; a healthy love, on the other hand, is
capable of putting the needs of the beloved first.
Conclusion
In Wuthering Heights, Catherine falls in
love with Heathcliff, a boy her father adopts. Their love is doomed, and both
eventually marry other people. Catherine dies in childbirth, and Heathcliff
joins her in death after enacting his revenge upon the next generation. At the end finally we can
conclude that, Wuthering Heights as a life story revolving around love. because
all these events and characters are based on the love of Catherine and
Heathcliff. Love and the passion is the main theme and revenge, social class, etc.
are seen as some of the other themes of this love story.
Therefore
this story can be identified as a love story which grown up with commitments,
patience, revenge and believing to archive each others love.
