“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you--haunt me then. 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! I cannot live without my soul!”~Heathcliff
Oh, the bittersweet pain of it all. I could so easily let myself be consumed by the lovely and ridiculous drama, and just cry. Cry now as I did years ago, and as I will years from now. The words are excruciating. It’s as if Emily Brontë reached inside me, ripped out my heart, threw it on the floor, and stomped on it. And I love her for it.
I’m not perfectly sure when I first read the story of Cathy and Heathcliff - and Wuthering Heights. I want to say I was in the eighth grade, home from school, sick in bed – or I was acting like I was sick. No, no, I was sick, because now I remember my mother bringing me some cold green grapes, to cool my fever. Perhaps it was the fever that caused my heart to burn for those insanely driven, torn-up, lovesick fools.
Reading Wuthering Heights was a turning point for me. It’s when I came to the realization that deep down (and I can admit it now) I crave stories about tormented, passionate, and unrequited love. Love that exists, yet can never be. Love that, with a single touch, can lift you into the clouds, or with a single word, slam you back down to the ground, causing you to ‘take to the bed’ for days, maybe weeks. Love that is without pride...
Heathcliff:
"I want to crawl to her feet, whimper to be forgiven... for loving me. For needing her more than my own life... for belonging to her more than my own soul.
Yes, I remember reading, while eating my green grapes, peeling each one with my teeth, before devouring them whole, never taking my eyes off the pages. I was taken in. I remember now. It was crazy love. Crazy!
Heathcliff:
"If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime he couldn't love you as much as I do in a single day."
Oh you beautiful, beautiful fools.
Back and forth they would go, stepping all over themselves, leaving, coming home. Dying, yet never living, and never letting go. Why did they do that? Why couldn't they just be happy?
Cathy:
"Go on, Heathcliff. Run away. Bring me back the world." (Don't do it, Heathcliff! She doesn't know what she's saying - stay!)
I can’t write about the book, without mentioning the movie (and there is only one movie as far as I'm concerned). To see/hear the words on screen and 'in person' - was almost too much for me to take in. The intensity between Cathy and Heathcliff, the way they would look at each other, and say hateful things, because they loved each other so much - it was a trick of the heart. Emily would be proud to see her young lovers on the screen, frolicking in fields of heather, naming their dreams, one by one, crushing those dreams, only to return to the same Wuthering Heights in the end. For that is where their souls were born, and that is where they would die.
I became obsessed with the story, and then after seeing the 1939 film with Lawrence Oliver and Merle Oberon, I was toast - hooked for life. I could see myself in both Cathy and Heathcliff. I wanted to hang out with them, be like them - be them, yet shuddered to think it.
In the final scene when Heathcliff hears of Cathy’s grave illness, runs to her bedside only to have her die in his arms, of a broken heart – well I have to gear up for that scene, for it will be the best cry I’ll have all year. I don’t know why Wuthering Heights makes me feel so co-dependent. Only Emily Brontë can remove the spell. And she’s just not going to do it. And I’m glad.
Emily Bronte, Author