Read for my Brontë class in my last year of university.

Just absolutely fucking fantastic. Emily Brontë presents a masterclass on writing, and her background as a poet really shines through with every line spoken of or between Heathcliff and Catherine.

”’…for what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on the flags! In every cloud, in every tree—filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object, by day I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men, and women—my own features—mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!’”

I wrote my class paper on the way love and death in this novel are tied up in each other’s business, describing the dynamic as the two being both vessels and harbingers of one another. By that, I refer to

Spoiler

the confrontation scene between Heathcliff and Catherine before her passing

, for love as a harbinger of death;

Spoiler

the grief-stricken outburst and subsequent actions of Heathcliff after Catherine has passed

, for death as a vessel of love; and

Spoiler

Heathcliff’s ultimate demise

, for both love as a vessel of death and death as a harbinger of the eventual love between

Spoiler

Hareton and Cathy

. Additionally, there exists a third element to bridge the seemingly-large, yet actually-small gap between love and death here, thus completing this sort of doomed triangle—that element being religion, or, more specifically, the devotion the worshiper has for the worshiped. Taking all of the above into the account, I then cross-examined the trajectory of Heathcliff’s character with those of Tragedian heroes like Oedipus to evaluate if he qualifies as one via the standards proposed by Aristotle. This paper was very fun to write, and I attribute my passion for it to Brontë’s skill and the beautiful story she told!