Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, Catherine Ernshaw and Heathcliff's love is monumental in such a way that nothing seems to come between them. Even when Catherine marries another and Heathcliff moves away- their love brings them back to each other- though not in a way that the reader would expect. The death of the two main characters brings them together, finally, as lovers and as soul mates. Yet upon reading and watching the movie version of this novel, it is hard to come to terms with the fact that death is what brings the lovers together.

Catherine states that she and Heathcliff are one and the same, "whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and [Edgar's] is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire," yet if that was true why she would have married another is a question that I think the movie does a better job of answering than the novel. While Heathcliff left and abandoned her after overhearing part of her conversation, Catherine was the one that decided to move on. She promised to never love another when Edgar asked her to marry, yet in the movie you can see in her facial expressions that she is still in love with Heathcliff.

Another scene that depicts her passionate love for Heathcliff, is “Oh, Edgar, Edgar!” she panted, flinging her arms round his neck. “Oh, Edgar darling! Heathcliff's come back—he is!”...But the lady's glowed with another feeling when her friend appeared at the door: she sprang forward, took both his hands And she tightened her embrace to a squeeze," I found that, while the novel did an excellent job of describing the interactions between characters, the actors in the movie portrayed such emotion through their facial expressions and body language that as a reader you came to understand how much pain Catherine was in now that Heathcliff had returned. She was married to Edgar yet was in love with Heathcliff, and now that he had returned her marriage was in jeopardy. Catherine has to decide wether or not to stay with her husband or to leave him for her "true love."

Both the novel and the movie portray Heathcliff and Catherine’s romance in their own way yet the movie allows for a better interpretation of their emotions.