{"id":1546908,"date":"2026-01-29T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1546908"},"modified":"2026-01-29T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T08:00:00","slug":"is-wuthering-heights-actually-a-love-story-at-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1546908","title":{"rendered":"Is \u2018Wuthering Heights\u2019 Actually a Love Story at All?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What Kind of Love Story Is Wuthering Heights<\/em>, Anyway?<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Chloe Schama<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Photo: Courtesy Everett Colleciton. Collage by Vogue.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Like many members of this book club (I\u2019ll wager), I have a notebook somewhere in which I copied lines from Wuthering Heights<\/em> as a teen. Admittedly, it was a much more analog era, when people used pen and paper rather than the Notes app. I can almost summon the color of the ink on the page\u2014but what I\u2019ve never forgotten was the line itself: \u201cHe wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee.\u201d<\/p>\n

For years, I\u2019ve carried this line around in my mental notebook as an evocation of the most effervescent love a person could conjure: a union of joyous opposites! Except, maybe not.<\/p>\n

When I got to the line this time (my third reading, I think), it was Cathy junior (not the original Catherine, as I\u2019d thought) who uttered it to describe a feud with her cousin, the peevish, charismaless Linton, over what would constitute a perfect day. \u201cI said his heaven would be only half alive, and he said mine would be drunk,\u201d she continues. \u201cI said I should fall asleep in his, and he said he could not breathe in mine, and he began to grow very snappish.\u201d Opposites attract and all that, but this is not the material of magnetism.<\/p>\n

How could I have misrecalled something so fundamental? The language of Wuthering Heights<\/em> is so dense but so melodic, so complicated but rewarding, and it\u2019s struck me, on this most recent rereading, that there is a certain degree of enchantment that takes place when one first makes one\u2019s way through its seductive thicket. Did I lose the thread in that forest? Or did I just, after putting it down that first time, close my mind to what came after the doomed love of Catherine and Heathcliff and remember the novel only for those star-crossed lovers? They are particularly appealing to a moody teen.<\/p>\n

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My Love for Wuthering Heights<\/em> Is Why I Also Love Terrible Men<\/span><\/p>\n

By <\/span>Olivia Petter<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Now, on my third reading, about two decades later, I\u2019m not sure this is a love story at all\u2014no matter how firmly etched those two lunatics are in the pantheon of devoted lovers. Entire generations who (like me) first read Wuthering Heights<\/em> in high school may be holding on not only to lines and passages they slightly (or entirely) misremember, but also to an image of iconic love that is\u2026more than a little messed up?<\/p>\n

No matter how much the famous lines resound, it\u2019s hard to argue that Catherine and Heathcliff are the paragon of romance. In the very same scene that sees Catherine declare, of Heathcliff, \u201cWhatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,\u201d she vows to marry another \u201cbecause he is handsome, and pleasant to be with,\u201d and because he will make her rich\u2014lovely!<\/p>\n

The bond between Heathcliff and Catherine is less pure than born of a sense of persecution, an us-versus-them embattledness: The two soul mates versus Catherine\u2019s virulent brother Hindley; the two wild creatures of the moors, peering through the windows of Thrushcross Grange at the insipidly civilized Lintons. \u201cI left her,\u201d Heathcliff says, recounting the story of how Catherine first comes, accidentally, to spend time at the Grange, \u201ckindling a spark of spirit in the vacant blue eyes of the Lintons\u2014a dim reflection from her own enchanting face\u2014I saw they were full of stupid admiration.\u201d Years later, Catherine’s love for Heathcliff seems most activated when she senses the drift of Heathcliff\u2019s attention\u2014and it is his unfaithfulness that prompts her to most explicitly disdain the man she has married instead. \u201cYour veins are full of ice-water,\u201d she says to her even-keeled husband, Edgar, \u201cbut mine are boiling, and the sight of such chillness makes them dance.\u201d And there is no small element of torture involved in Catherine and Heathcliff\u2019s relationship, almost as if the pleasure and joy that they bring each other can only be appreciated when they\u2019re deprived of it. How strange\u2014or maybe not\u2014that I\u2019ve never heard passages of Wuthering Heights<\/em> quoted during wedding vows.<\/p>\n

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What Reading \u2018Wuthering Heights\u2019 Taught Me About My Parents\u2019 Marriage<\/span><\/p>\n

By <\/span>Upasna Barath <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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What are<\/em> the purest examples of love in this book? Reading as a married mother, decades separated from my own roiling teenage loves, I\u2019m struck that the most believable examples of love in Wuthering Heights<\/em> are much quieter and more parental or filial: Edgar for his daughter Cathy, and hers for him; Nelly for the \u201clittle lamb\u201d Hareton, whom she raises as her own before she is banished from the Heights. Isabella\u2019s love for her hard-to-love son Linton happens mostly offscreen, but seems to have some genuine affection behind it, as well\u2014it\u2019s almost the only thing Linton speaks of favorably. (Set aside, for a moment, examples of the opposite: Hindley\u2019s virulent and inexplicable hatred of his son Hareton; Heathcliff\u2019s careless and manipulative use of his own son for revenge.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Yes, I\u2019m aware that no one reads this novel and comes away from it feeling like it\u2019s a story about the beauty of parental love. But\u2014and this is undoubtedly a function of where I am in my own life\u2014these were the scenes that pressed most pointedly on my heart, this time around. \u201cCatherine\u2019s despair was as silent as her father\u2019s joy,\u201d Bront\u00eb writes of the daughter attending her father on his deathbed, withholding her own suffering so that he may have a peaceful passage. Catherine and Heathcliff\u2019s antics didn\u2019t affect me this time\u2014it was that line that got me.<\/p>\n

Like all great works of literature, Wuthering Heights<\/em> rewards rereading. You may encounter a beloved and familiar line that reveals itself completely foreign; you may re-arrange your entire concept of the book.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: http:\/\/vogue.com\/article\/is-wuthering-heights-actually-a-love-story-at-all<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Books What Kind of Love Story Is Wuthering Heights, Anyway? By Chloe Schama January 29, 2026 Photo: Courtesy Everett Colleciton. Collage by Vogue. Like many members of this book club (I\u2019ll wager), I have a notebook somewhere in which I copied lines from Wuthering Heights as a teen. Admittedly, it was a much more analog […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-1546908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-vogue-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1546908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1546908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1546908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1546908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}