Love is one among the master passions that have stirred the feelings of man kind in every generation. It is the life force and the perennial source of the highest bliss of life. Like all the great dramatists and novelist EMILY BRONTE has also touched upon the THEME of love. Love is the reigning passion of Wuthering Heights. Bronte’s treatment of love and elemental passion is strikingly new and novel. she has neither initiated the copy book style of the romantic love nor has she introduced Shakespeare’s love at first sight.
In Wuthering Heights the love of Heathcliff and Catherine is not sudden abrupt nor is love in thirty seconds. It is the culmination of long years of association. It is a long journey from childhood to manhood. Their love has its roots in their childhood. They love each other because of their similar nature and liking. A spiritual affinity exist between Catherine and Heathcliff. Catherine loves Heathcliff not because he is handsome, smart and attractive but because of his kind sympathetic and affable nature. It is the souls closeness and not the infatuation that brought them close to each other. Their souls crave for union. They cannot live without each other’s love.
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Emily Bronte treatment of love is striking unique. In most of the Shakespearean comedies the culmination of love is mamlage. But Bronte in Wuthering Heights is treated love and marriage differently. Love is quite different from marriage. Marriage is transcendent and ephemeral. But pure love is not the love that alters even when alteration finds. Surprisingly, Catherine loves for Heathcliff but decides to marry Linton. Her love for Heathcliff is sincere and innocent but her concept of marriage is quite different from the run of the mill style. She lives happy with Linton but Heathcliff return after a lapse of three years and his meeting with Catherine created a volcano of emotions and feelings of love in Catherine’s heart. The poignancy of her love and her intense feelings for Heathcliff can be measure when she says, “Linton could not love as much in Eight years as he could in a day”.
On the other hand Heathcliff cannot live without her nor can she without him. For love’s sake Heathcliff can move from heaven to earth and from earth to heaven. She is his paradise, his fortune, his pleasure and his heart’s heart. Life without Catherine is meaningless. “He says, ‘O Cathy! O my life! how can i bear it”. Their love is so intense, so deep, so natural, so spiritual that even after death they cannot bear the pangs of separation and even death cannot separate their souls. Catherine love for Heathcliff is equally sincere and extreme intense. She says, “My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff miseries”. Further her passionate and poignant feelings of love could be felt when she says, “If all els perished, and he remained i should still continue to be, and if all els remained and he were annihilated, the universe could turn to a mighty stranger”. Further she says, “My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath a source of little visible delight but necessary”.
Although, Catherine dies yet Heathcliff hopes to be united with her soul and finally they are spiritually united. Their bodies are not united but after their death, their souls are united. Throughout the novel the novelist deals with the elemental passion of love. Her conception of love is not merely a lust of blood and the permission of will. It is the love of the soul and love of elemental human passion. It is a craving for the union of the soul. Bronte has given little importance to physical charms and sensual attraction. She has presented in this novel the elemental passion of love in a very forceful language. Love ultimately triumphs and their is defeat of a sense of revenge and hatred.
