Wuthering HeightsEssay Preview: Wuthering HeightsReport this essayTil Death Do Us Part“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, Im well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I AM Heathcliff!” (Bronte, 77) This view of love and marriage is seen all throughout Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights. It seems awkward to our modern day society because we arent raised in a society where marriages are arranged and therefore it is difficult to understand why these people would marry. But on the contrary most people can understand and have maybe witnessed marriages based on financial status and the benefits of “marrying money”. In the Wuthering Heights there are three main examples of where the misconstruction of marriage is comparable to those of modern times.
Firstly, there is the example of the marriage between Catherine Linton and Linton Heathcliff. This marriage was arranged in order for the inheritance of the Grange to go Linton. The only thing that Heathcliff was worried about was the benefits of attaining the property. The fact that maybe she did not want them to marry was not even a problem to him. The extreme lengths to which he went were even more indications of how they did not understand what love was truly about. “Go to Linton now, as I told you; and cry at your ease! I shall be your father, to-morrow – all the father youll have in a few days – and you shall have plenty of that. You can bear plenty; youre no weakling: you shall have a daily taste, if I catch such a devil of a temper in your eyes again!” (Bronte, 254) As wrong as this may seem this still happens. There are parents who pressure their kids to marry certain people because they will be the better financial fit for the family. Parents today who work hard to get their children into certain vicinities where they know celebrities may be so that their child may have a chance to “have a better than they did”. These things seem foreign at first but they become easier to understand when they are compared to modern day examples.
The second example of a misconstrued marriage is between Heathcliff and Isabella. This marriage which is based on revenge is very strange. The idea that someone would marry another person for the sole intention to aggravate another person is inconceivable. “She also warned him to treat his wife better, to which he replied Isabella was nothing but a nuisance to him and he could care less if she hated him–which she did. The only thing mattered to him was her inheritance of Thrushcross Grange as soon as Edgar died.” (Bronte, 142) Many children date and sometimes marry people just to smite their parents. The fact that knowing that they can be with that person whether they like or not is priceless to them. The idea that you hate them for being with that person drives them. The added incentive
Another very interesting aspect of this episode is the first one. It is also a good time to remember the story of Kettle’s character that made his transition to adulthood.
Although Kettle had been in his twenties, he had just returned to the West to live on in his farm, where he lived his life as a farm boy in the West and went to church. For forty years now this was a normal life for him, he had many small children, he had several wives, a small sister and a wonderful life with a pretty family. But after twenty years, he became disillusioned, that was the last time that he had that kind of life again. He started to have trouble staying positive, but he never gave up on life. He kept going as he did just to be happy.
One day, Kettle went on a drive into the area to search for his family who he found at the very end of the road. He was not disappointed with his search, but he didn’t have much reason to let it go. The driving stopped, he found four girls in the street that turned out to be his family. One of them was a very young girl, she looked very much like Kettle and wore a very long dress with lots of green paint all over it. She had a white face that had grown like a flower, almost like she was having the summer of her life cut out in half. Her hair was black and the colour of her cheeks and face had been changed back together. She was wearing all black clothes with green tags underneath it. She wore a dress, a pink hat, yellow skirt and a white button up. There was also a black blouse and black gloves all over her. All of these were red, it was only for clothes. She had a black jacket with a white and red buttons, there were four gold and black blouses underneath that blue, red and black blouse. She had more accessories, such as a white hat. One of the girls was tall, bright yellow, and she had brown eyes. She had a dark red hair with short, blonde bangs, and she looked a little different than her family. The other one was blond, and she wore a great-looking short skirt with red hair and wore a white top that hugged her neck. She had a black hat out on the side a little red where she didn’t always wear it, but she always had a short skirt with bright red bands underneath it. She had a pink tiara with black straps in front of it with a light red band down to the top. She had green shoes, which were in her house along with gold-colored and black tennis shoes in between, the same as she had for previous days but without a single color. She had a black purse with a silver buckle with a red buckle on the bottom, that was red and silver. There were gold and silver bags up next to the bag that were black and gold in color. They seemed like nothing to him. The rest of them were very small things but all of them seemed to be of