Victorian Era Love in
In Wuthering Heights love comes in many forms. There are various examples of it throughout the novel. Most people think first and perhaps only, of Heathcliff and Catherine. There love was obsessive and destructive. It burned them both with a fire so big it could not be put out even by death. Heathcliff loved and hated Catherine, cursed her soul that she would have no peace, and then begged her to haunt him so he could have none either (Bronte 201). But there is much love to be found in Bronte’s 1847 novel. Consider for example Lockwood.
Lockwood is one of two narrators for the story and describes himself, among other things, as a snail (Bronte 5) in the face of social discomfort. He is awkward at best and cruel at worst as we see in chapter 3 and, again, as he described himself. Yet for all of this he maintains some longing and hope that Cathy will love him. He does little to make it happen but pines for it, albeit silently, nonetheless.
Hareton, Catherine’s nephew, and Cathy, her namesake, learn to love one another, but it is a far-cry from the type of love Catherine and Heathcliff had for one another. Instead theirs was a love that reflected their humanity and kindness.
Edgar Linton married Catherine out of love but his ability to love was vastly different from Heathcliff’s. Instead of the dangerous, obsessive man that Heathcliff was, Edgar was a gentler soul. But Catherine did not have any passion for Edgar. Quite the contrary she derided as a child and that continued into adulthood and their marriage. She tried to convince either herself or others or both that she did love him at times, but she qualified her assertion noting their marriage gave her what she wanted most: upward mobility in society (Bronte 103). She also said that she and Edgar were different and had nothing in common and that they should not marry (Bronte 103). She tells Nelly she knows her love for Linton will change “as winter changes the trees” (105). This is particularly interesting because winter leaves trees barren and lifeless as if they were dead when they are still living. This is what Catherine sees for herself and Edgar. These are not the words of a woman who loves a man.
Bronte’s story fits firmly into the many themes typical for Victorian literature. Bronte managed to romanticize practically every aspect of life, even the bad things people do and have done to them. Victorian literature was noted for being lengthy, descriptive, and fraught with the pain and sadness of life. Bronte captured many of those aspects.
The primary aspects of Victorian literature were serialization, industrialization, and class, the issue of science versus religion, progress, nostalgia, gender, and utilitarianism (Bennet & Royle 185). In Wuthering Heights, love is affected by the themes of class, nostalgia, gender and utilitarianism.
Nostalgia was a frequent theme in Victorian literature. It was almost as if readers of the era loved the pain, embraced the sadness (Bennet & Royle 186). While it may be most often considered in the works of Scott’s Ivanhoe or Tennyson’s poems of Camelot, Bronte included it as well. Nostalgia appears in Wuthering Heights in the form of the sadness that comes from letting go. The entire book is about just that: letting go. Although Catherine is a major character in the story, she does not exist throughout the timeframe it covers. In the story, Catherine is dead and we only know her from the reminiscences of others. And it is in writing a novel in which one of its two main characters is dead that nostalgia cannot be any more clearly written. The entire book is spent hanging on to something (or in this case perhaps someone) who is gone the way Victorian literature reflected the need to hang on to its cultural past (Bennet & HeithHRoyle 190).
The idea of gender is brought to the front in Wuthering Heights. Although not in the traditional sense of women breaking through glass ceilings, caring for themselves and not depending on the irascible husband/father/other random male figure, Bronte does include it nonetheless. She places her female characters in a world where they have little choice. They live in a place where choosing what appeals to your nature is ground out of women under the heel of a boot until their own nature itself becomes one of embracing the paternalism of the day. Cathy is practically held captive, and the very idea of well-bred girls roaming the moors and playing with poor orphaned children is unfathomable. Ultimately Catherine gives up her childhood and her love to comply with the social constraints and familial obligations laid on her and marries a man she does not love in order to improve her station in society as there was no other way for her to do so otherwise.
Wuthering Heights is quintessential Victorian era literature. Bronte borrowed from many of the aspects we know today to be hallmarks of the era. She affected her characters with emotive, brooding hearts, brutality both physical and emotional, and painted a picture that reflected the effects of all of these things on the people doomed to have survived them.
Works Cited
Bennett, Andrew and Nicholas Royle. Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (3rd ed.), 2004. Print. New York: Pearson Longman.
Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights, 1967. Print. New York: Washington Square Press.
