Essay: : How does the relationship of Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights reflect

Emily Brontë's yearning for a sense of timelessness that transcends the boundaries of life and
death?

Despite its reputation of being one of the greatest romance stories ever written,
“Wuthering Heights” covers romantic love only briefly. Emily Brontë succeeded in
capturing a rather metaphysical concept of love through the very special relationship of
Catherine and Heathcliff. That being a relationship almost completely represented through
the nostalgic feelings of Heathcliff himself. It is of particular interest that death and
childhood are recurring themes not only in the novel, but also in Brontë's poems. In what
follows, I would like to discuss what I see as the main characteristic of “Wuthering Heights”
as a metaphysical novel: the strong opposition between earthly life and a notion of
timelessness that Emily Brontë herself yearned to achieve. I will do so by illustrating, through
an analysis of three of her poems, in which way she reflected on death and childhood. Then, I
will move towards the prominence and importance of these themes in the novel and more
specifically in the relationship of the lovers. Finally, by reference to a final poem of Brontë, I
will demonstrate how this relationship reflects her own yearning for this sense of
timelessness that transcends the boundaries of life and death.

The success of “Wuthering Heights” partially overshadowed Emily Brontë's

accomplishments as a poet. However, the poems have great value in understanding her views
on many subjects. Irving H. Buchen, in his “Emily Brontë and the Metaphysics of
Childhood and Love”, asserts that “Bronte is a death-oriented poet” (63). Many of her poems
did indeed deal with themes surrounding death. Her poem "Death" provides an apt example.
The title immediately sets the tone of the poem. Moreover, the first sentence reads "Death!
that struck when I was most confiding" (39). The poem is also about grief. The lines “Little
mourned I for the parted gladness, / For the vacant nest and silent song / Hope was there, and
laughed me out of sadness;” (39) indicate that while the speaker mourns, they feel a sense of
indifference toward death. This is explained earlier when Brontë uses the imagery of a
“withered branch” (39) to personify time. The speaker acknowledges that their loneliness and
grief are temporary, because earthly life is nothing compared to the bliss of eternity. The
following lines are highly interesting:

Cruel Death! The young leaves droop and languish;

Evening's gentle air may still restore

No! the morning sunshine mocks my anguish,

Time, for me, must never blossom more!

Strike it down, that other boughs may flourish

Where that perished sapling used to be;

Thus, at least, its mouldering corpse will nourish

That from which it sprung- Eternity (39).

The former stanza seems to indicate that despite the cruelty of death, the speaker longs for it.
They feel mocked by “the morning sunshine” and exclaim “Time, for me, must never
blossom more! (39). In other words, they desire to die in order to experience eternity together
with the person they mourn. In the latter stanza it is mentioned that this personified image of
time is the origin of the “mouldering corpse” (39). This reflects Brontës pantheistic
conception of God. The same thing can be seen in a different poem called “Last Lines” (81-
82), which is believed to contain Brontës last written lines (Shorter 81). The first lines “No
coward soul is mine, / … / I see Heaven's glories shine, / And faith shines equal, arming me
from fear” (81) indicate again that the speaker has no fear of dying. Moreover, they exclaim
that they are “So surely anchor'd on / The steadfast rock of immortality” (81). With these
lines, Brontë considers immortality through God. Lastly, the line “Every existence would
exist in Thee” (82) proves this further. Emily Brontë’s conception of God is broader than the
way in which the Christian God is usually presented. Likewise, her idea of immortality tends
to be more comprehensive than that of a hell or a heaven. In addition to death, childhood is a
recurring theme in her poems. Buchen (64) provides the poem “The soft unclouded blue of
air” (331) as an example of how “Bronte believes that the best that life has to offer exists in
fullest form outside of life”. To solve the research question of this paper, I plan to give a
deeper analysis of the poem. It begins with a description of a spring day and continues with
the speaker explaining how they lay on the grass and recall their childhood. The recollection
of childhood seems to be a pleasurable experience, as the speaker exclaims “All harsh
thoughts perished, memory mild / Subdued both grief and passion wild” (331). The
following stanza seemingly indicates the presence of another person:
But did the sunshine even now

That bathed his stern and swarthy brow,

Oh did it wake—I long to know—

One whisper, one sweet dream in him,

One lingering joy that years ago

Had faded—lost in distance dim? (331).

This person is described as "the iron man”, of whom the speaker is sure used to be "an ardent
boy" (331). Time had taken away his childlike joy and innocence. It is questioned whether
”nature’s mingled harmony” (332) makes him reminisce about his youth as well. The
references to nature bear significance in this poem. This is apparent in the following stanza:
Perhaps this is the destined hour

When Hell shall lose its fatal power,

And Heaven itself shall bend above

To hail the soul redeemed by love (333).

With these lines, Brontë suggests that the blossoming nature has the ability to “hail the soul
redeemed by love” (333). It is as if she equates birth to heaven, or the sep and the rest of
earthly life to hell. Above all, it is only nature that can make one experience that proximity to
heaven again. Buchen encapsulates it perfectly: “the periods just after birth and just before
death are valued because of their proximity to timelessness” (65). This explains why Brontë
was obsessed with death as well as childhood.
The same rationale appears in “Wuthering Heights”. Brontë's conception of timelessness
serves as the driving element of Catherine and Heathcliff's love. However, their interactions
show that there is a thin line between love and hatred. When Heathcliff first enters the
Earnshaw home, Catherine spits at him for being the reason her father lost her whip “in
attending on the stranger” (39). Nelly explains how they thereafter quickly grew very fond of
eachother. Her being the narrator of most of the novel, makes it challenging to truly
understand their relationship. The reader is mostly left to imagine it themselves. Deborah
Lutz points this out as well: “It is the very invisibility of this love, perhaps, that has made it
so exemplary” (390). Regardless, the following scene gives the reader a profound insight into
Catherine's feelings. It is perhaps the most famous passage of the entire novel:
I cannot express it; but surely you and every body have a notion that there is, or
should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I
were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's
miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is
himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all
else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger:
I should not seem a part of it.—My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods:
time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for
Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but
necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff — He's always, always in my mind — not as a
pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself — but as my own being —
(88).
She confides Linton’s marriage proposal to Nelly and elaborates on her metaphysical
connection to Heathcliff. The problem of the narrator arises again, as Nelly does not
understand Catherine's words at all, yet she explains it as if it were most natural. Catherine
cries “If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be;” (88), clearly
insinuating that the connection of their souls exceeds earthly life. Buchen declares that “it is
almost as if to Bronte each soul is incomplete or created only in part at birth. The other half
exists both in and beyond the world-in another soul or in God” (68). However, it would be
more just to state that Brontë sees birth as a separation of souls that were priorly complete
and perhaps, may never find their way back together. Although this applies to Catherine and
Heathcliff in “Wuthering Heights”, I believe Brontë gives it a more universal interpretation
in her poems. This is visible in the poem discussed earlier called “Death", where Brontë
suggests that each soul springs from “Time's branch” (39). That implies a more collective
origin of all souls. Catherine exclaiming “My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks
beneath” (88) also displays Brontë’s pantheistic views. As she believed that the soul resides
in nature itself. Another crucial passage is that of Catherine's delirium and her recalling of her
youth. Catherine imagines herself being at the Heights again and exclaims “Oh, if I were but
in my own bed in the old house!” (132). Lutz highlights the importance of Catherine’s oak
bed in this passage. She argues that “it is into this bed, which represents, among other things,
her child's body, that she wants to move” (349). Additionally, Lutz refers to Heathcliff’s
death as well, because he happened to die in that same bed. In other words, this bed becomes
not only a carrier of the past, but also a place close to the afterlife and thus the timelessness
they yearned for (Lutz 394). The bed becomes a true bearer of the past when it evokes the
spirit of Catherine as Lockwood spends the night in it. The final confrontation between
Catherine and Heathcliff perhaps carries the most metaphysical weight. Heathcliff screams:
"You deserve this. You have killed yourself", while Catherine is on her deathbed. Even then,
the toxicity of their relationship emerges. Instances like this make it hard to imagine how the
story would have unfolded if the two did end up getting married. Lutz argues that “somehow,
Catherine and Heathcliff 's impossible relationship must fail and lead to death in order for a
successful repetition to reach fulfillment” (405). The importance of childhood intensifies
even more in volume two. Heathcliff spends the rest of his life mourning and yearning for
Catherine. He looks for her in everything and really does find her everywhere. Brontë shows
this by using the element of gothic. Near the end of the story Nelly wonders “Is he a ghoul, or
a vampire?”. His presence and behavior near the end of his life conjures up a spiritual
atmosphere. Although Lockwood’s encounter with Catherine’s spirit suggests that it is truly a
gothic novel, the reader is left to wonder if it is perhaps all Heathcliff’s imagination. Nearing
the end of his life, Heathcliff seemingly failed in reassembling Catherine by collecting her
relics. However, this passage suggests it might all have been in preparation for their destined
reunion:
I have a single wish, and my whole being and faculties are yearning to attain it. They
have yearned towards it so long, and so unwaveringly, that I'm convinced it will be
reached — and soon — because it has devoured my existence: I am swallowed up in
the anticipation of its fulfilment.
‘My confessions have not relieved me — but they may account for some, otherwise
unaccountable phases of humour which I show. O God! It is a long fight; I wish it
were over!' (346)
It is remarkable that while Heathcliff cries “O God! It is a long fight; I wish it were over!”
(346), he has no desire to end his life. As earlier mentioned it is the “proximity to
timelessness” (Buchen 65) that makes it such a valuable experience for him. This further
demonstrates that Brontë does not simply equate death with the afterlife. Timelessness, for
her, might have been a state that she knew she would never reach. Deborah Lutz, quoting
Robert Polhemus, reminds us that “Wuthering Heights” represents the “involuntary vocation
of being human” (398). That being the way Heathcliff and Catherine wished their souls
would never have been separated.

That childhood and death are tied to timelessness leads us to the purpose of not only
"Wuthering Heights", but also Emily Brontë herself. A final and most important poem that
Buchen addresses fully sums up that notion (66). “Were they Shepherds, who sat all day”
(193) is about love, and more specifically that of children. Brontë uses an apposition of two
unhappy lovers who used to love eachother so tenderly when they were young. The woman
seemingly speaks about another woman she loved:
Our love was love from heaven:
At least if heavenly love be born
In the pure light of childhood's morn, (195)
(…)
She was my all-sufficient light;
My childhood's mate, my girlhood's guide,
My only blessing, only Pride (196)
Again, there is a speaker recalling their childhood. Her childhood friend laid by her side as
“her cheek chang[ed] in the mortal strife” (203). It is important that she describes their love
as "heavenly" (195) and continuously repeats that no love will ever measure up to what they
had. The line “In the pure light of childhood’s morn” (195) suggests that her death is what
makes it so heavenly. They experienced a love that had not yet been tainted by earthly life.
This is analogous to the lovers in "Wuthering Heights," in the sense that the entire novel is
essentially about how they used to love each other when they were young. Moreover, “'For
what thou wert I would not grieve, / But much for what thou wert to be;” indicates that the
speaker mourns for what they could have been. The same goes for Heathcliff, while there is a
good chance that their love would have withered over time as well. It is precisely that
unfulfillment of their love that made it so worthy. Whether or not Brontë experienced this
notion of heavenly childhood love herself does not take away from how much she valued it
and therefore reflected this on Catherine and Heathcliff.

The prominence of childhood and death in Emily Brontë's poems provide an interesting
picture of her philosophical beliefs. She longed for a perhaps unattainable sense of
timelessness that encompassed her entire life. Reinforced by the element of the gothic, this
too finds its way into “Wuthering Heights”. Heathcliff's obsession with recreating the past
might as well have been a reflection of her own. It is up to the reader to determine whether
their heavenly love carried on in the afterlife.