*squeals* Cathy And Heathcliff Running Around The Heights And The Moors With An Half Exasperated Half

*squeals* cathy and heathcliff running around the heights and the moors with an half exasperated half angry nelly chasing after them.

I was just thinking of two passages from Wuthering Heights that tend to be overlooked.

The first is one sentence spoken by Catherine #1 when she confronts Heathcliff about his courtship of Isabella:

“If you like Isabella, you shall marry her.”

The second is this brief speech of Heathcliff in his first meeting with Nelly during Catherine’s illness:

“I wish you had sincerity enough to tell me whether Catherine would suffer greatly from his [Edgar’s] loss: the fear that she would restrains me. And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place, and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished hm from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drunk his blood! But till then – if you don’t believe me, you don’t know me – till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head!”

Both of these moments add nuance to Heathcliff and Cathy. For all their unhealthiness and toxic behavior, and as selfish, jealous, possessive and codependent as their love largely is, there’s still a capacity for selfless love in both of them. Cathy would have accepted Heathcliff and Isabella’s marriage, despite knowing that Edgar will be furious about it and ban Heathcliff from Thrushcross Grange, if only Heathcliff had genuinely loved Isabella. Meanwhile, Heathcliff refuses to physically hurt Edgar because it would make Cathy unhappy, and claims that if she were his wife but still cared for Edgar, he wouldn’t have banned him from her presence.

Of course “I won’t kill her husband” isn’t exactly beyond basic decency, and Heathcliff’s implication that he only refrains from it to spare her feelings is hardly admirable. Besides, we could argue that Heathcliff is flattering himself in this speech. After all, he still seeks psychological revenge on Edgar and knowingly causes strife in the Lintons’ marriage, and as a boy he was very resentful of Edgar and Cathy’s friendship, even before romance or marriage were ever mentioned. It seems unlikely that Cathy could ever have had a free, untroubled friendship with Edgar if Heathcliff had been her husband, even if he never openly objected to it. As for Cathy, though she insists that her objection to Heathcliff courting Isabella has nothing to do with jealousy, few readers have ever believed her. (Although her character becomes more interesting if we assume she’s telling the truth, IMHO.)

Still, there’s at least a part of each of them that’s willing to respect the other’s love for someone else and that values the other’s happiness more than their own jealousy. It’s a weaker instinct than it could have been if they had been emotionally healthier people, but it’s still there.

I wouldn’t claim that Wuthering Heights is a romance or that Heathcliff and Cathy’s love is “relationship goals,” but it doesn’t ring true either when people go to the opposite extreme and claim “We’re supposed to completely disdain Heathcliff and Cathy’s relationship, it’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of mad passion, etc.” We don’t need to idealize them or idealize their relationship to see a fundamental purity and (in the old, “frightening” sense of the word) sublime beauty to their love, or to feel that despite everything, they really do belong together. As much as we tend to react against pop culture’s idealized view of them and highlight their blatant negative behaviors both as individuals and as a couple, sometimes it’s worthwhile to remember the better side of their bond too.

Haunt me...

Continuing some thoughts…so many use Catherine’s obvious ignorance of marriage and sex in her conversation to Nelly about Edgar’s proposal to say her relationship with Heathcliff is platonic. But this ignores that she’s a 15 year old girl in a time when women were kept in the dark as much as possible about anything that happens between men and women. Nelly herself says she is either “ignorant of the duties you undertake in marrying; or else that you are a wicked, unprincipled girl” - I think based on other knowledge of Catherine it should be assumed that she’s ignorant (which is no fault of her own). On Heathcliff’s part - he obviously already desired her as a wife at 16 which is why he ran away when she said she couldn’t marry him. 

By the time we see Catherine and Heathcliff as adults and more experienced, they still consistently choose each other. As we see throughout the novel he still holds his attachment with Catherine as more important than other potential physical/romantic relationships, such as with Isabella. These feelings may not be as clear on Catherine’s side but this could simply be because Heathcliff is alive through more of the novel so we don’t spend as much time with her. When we do though, it should be noted she was already pregnant by the time Heathcliff returns which I think would increase the unlikelihood of their pursuing anything physical. At this time she is being pushed and pulled by various forces into the Linton family and away from Wuthering Heights, her childhood, and Heathcliff. Still I think its safe to assume that she’s more knowledgeable about marital duties during this time period and she would have been taught that her husband should be her main focus, and yet she consistently treats Heathcliff has his equal, if not his superior.

Just because their relationship is never consummated does not mean it was meant to be seen as platonic. From what we know of Emily Brontë I don’t think she would have written about an actually physical adulterous affair; in part because of her own personal morality and that it probably wouldn’t have gotten published. It also (totally my own conjecture) seems to be deliberate to bolster the element of yearning, unfulfillment, and tension that is constant through the book. All of this to say, no, they are not platonic lol. 

100 FEMALE CHARACTERS IN 2021

8. Elizabeth Bennet ☆ Pride and Prejudice (2005) dir. Joe Wright