Treatment of passion in Wuthering Heights

Treatment of passion in Wuthering Heights.| Wuthering Heights: Story of Passion versus Love and Revenge. |Themes of Wuthering Heights: Love, Passion and Revenge. |How is passion presented in Wuthering Heights?

Q. Discuss the treatment of passions in 'Wuthering Heights.

OR

There are the two passionate characters in the novel and a portrayal of their passionate moods is the soul of the book.Discuss.

Emily Brontë and Her Masterpiece: 'Wuthering Heights’

 Emily Jane Brontë is one of the greatest woman novelists of Victorian era. Wuthering Height is a masterpiece by Brontë. Walter Allen calls it ‘the most remarkable novel in English.’ “Wuthering Heights” is the first and the only single novel written by Emily Bronte in her whole life. The novel tells love story of Catherine Earnshaw and Waif Heath cliff but at the same this is also a revenge story. Emily presents the deep, passionate love as well as she highlight the dark and evil nature of a human. Hatred and selfishness expressed between various characters in the novel; make the novel more satanic.

Catherine Earnshaw: A Wild Soul of Conflicting Passions

 Catherine is wild, strange creature, aching for security and yet not knowing what to do with it when her desire comes about. She is really one of those who will always demand the best of both the worlds. She finally betrays her childhood companion Heathcliff whom she really loves. She marries Edgar for sheer matrimonial motive to be the greatest woman of the neighbourhood.' Heathcliff is 'rough as a saw-edge and hard as whinstone.' His desire for revenge and his great passion for Catherine dominate the course of the story. Catherine's struggle and Heathcliff's ambitions break out at intervals throughout the book, like smouldering fire into scenes of passions-stormy, intense and tumultuous. In intensity, in effect, in impress produced on readers and rhythmical outburst, the passions expressed in the book are Byronic. The passions play a vital role in the novel. They are deeply interwoven into the action. They form the emotional con- tent of the novel. The passions bubbling with hatred, revenge, wrath and ardent feeling of love contribute a lot to its lyrical character.

 Catherine Earnshaw is an embodiment of violent passions. She is selfish, proud, haughty, ruthless, 'a wild and a wicked slip.' Often and on we find her bursting into feats of terrible passions. In a scene being enraged with Ellen for disobey-g her, she pinch her arm and slap on her cheek. Edgar is shocked to see all this. On Edgar's interference in the matter, she grows turbulent and immediately hits his ear with her free hand in a way that is not a joke to the utmost surprise of Edgar.

 Catherine marries Edgar for wealth and respectability. But her love for Heathcliff never dies out. On the other hand, it glows with fiery passion of love. A quality of other- worldliness is found in the relation between Cathy and Heathcliff. She says, "I shall never let Heathcliff know how much I love him. I don't love him because he's handsome, but because he's more myself than I am.- Whatever our souls are made of, Heathcliff's and mine are the same. Edgar's is as different from mine as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire....... My great miseries in life have been Heathcliff's miseries. My love for Edgar Linton is like the trees, in the woods. Time will change it, as winter changes tree. But my love for Heathcliff is like the eternal rocks beneath-they are not easily, but they are there. Ellen, I am Heathcliff. He is always in my mind...."

 At time of dying, Cathy accuses both Edgar and Heathcliff.. Her accusations boil with poignancy of passions ---- "you and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff! And you both come to bewail the deed to me, as if you were the people to be pitied! I shall not pity you, not I. You have I wish I could hold killed me and thriven on me ---- you, till we were both dead. I shouldn't care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings!

Heathcliff: Passion, Obsession, and Brutality

 Heathcliff is passion incarnate. His unknown parentage and Earnshaw's unwise favouritism makes him arrogant and Hindlay's constant bullying and humiliations and finally Cathy's rejection make him an avenging monster.

 In a terrible scene after Cathy's death, Heathcliff curses- her and the curses showered on Catherine are quite appalling. With frightful vehemence, he stamps his foot and groans in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion-"Why, she is a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven-not perished-where ? Oh! You said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer-I repeat it till my tongue stiffens-Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you- haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always-take any form-drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you !" Cathy's death tears his heart to pieces. His lamentation is soul- killing and heart-rending-"Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you oh, God! Would you like to live with your own soul in the grave? Oh! God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

Love versus Revenge: The Eternal Conflict

 Heathcliff marries Isabella to take revenge on the Lintons for having taken Cathy from him. Isabella becomes the victim of his physical violence. On Isabella's sardonic comment that if Catherine married Mr. Heathcliff, she would have voiced her hatred and disgust for she would fall a prey to his abominable behaviour, Heathcliff flies into anger and is caught into a frenzy of passion. He seizes a dinner knife from the table and flings it at her head, cutting her below the ear.

 He also behaves towards the Second Cathy with demon- like savagery. In Ch. XXVII, she attempts to escape from Wuthering Heights. She demands the key and without heeding the warning, "Now Cathy Linton, stand away from me or I shall knock you down," she grasps his closed hand and bends down to use her teeth on his hand. Heathcliff suddenly opens his fingers, he seizes her and holding her tightly gives her a shower of blows on both sides of the head.

The most appalling aspect of Heathcliff's brutality is seen in a scene where Linton is dying. He refuses to go or call a doctor. He speaks like an 'incarnate goblin'-"his life is not worth a farthing and I won't spend a farthing on him... let me never hear a word more about him! None here cares what becomes of him.'

 He is pure hate personified as he mutters! "I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails.

 Nelly understands from the peculiar behaviour of Heathcliff that this days are numbered. She urges him to repent of injustices. He says, "...I have done no injustice and I repent of nothing. I'm too happy. Yet I'm not enough happy." Nelly plucks courage and says, ... "Do you realise how unfit for heaven you are, unless a change takes place before you die? Heathcliff enjoins her "I tell you that I have nearly attained my heaven, I neither value nor covet the heaven of other people."

Conclusion: Passion as the Soul of Wuthering Heights

 So the passions expressed all through the book are of course violent and titanic. They form the key-note as well as the warp and woof of the wild and elemental atmosphere of the novel riotous and much of the lyricism of the book owes its origin to these stormy passions.

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