This extract is obviously a key point in the whole story. It is the first time that Catherine directly reveals her internal feeling to Edgar and Heathcliff.
Edgar now can be examined as Catherine's fiancé. The reasons why Catherine chooses to marry him was that he is had some, young, cheerful, rich and also loves her. All these reasons make her "love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches, and every word he says". Such a string of words, at the beginning, sounds like a girl who has really fallen in love. However, actually, those sentences are void of content, and hardly express her genuine feeling and have not got any substantial significance. Those empty swear make people thinks that her affection to Edgar has not got a concrete and reliable foundation. Nelly quickly perceived that and uses a few questions to prove the emptiness.
English: Ponden Kirk 'Penistone Cragg' A rock at t...
Heathcliff (1984 TV series)
English: Mary HeathcliffCatherine's answer reveals her shallowness and shows that the only temptation for her to marry Edgar is the presentability.
When Nelly forces her to explain the obstacles in her heart. She became passionate immediately and direct the attention to where her soul exists. She narrates her squeer dream to Nelly, which reveals the real feeling inside her soul. In her dream, she cannot bear the life in heaven, so she was thrown out by the angel and sobbed for joy to come back to Wuthering Heights.
Her dream shows that she realised that she and Heathcliff have been excluded from the universe of conventional morality, for she was flung out by angels. But as always, she is a rebel, she never cares about the conventional notion of heaven, the only heaven for her is staying with Heathcliff. She also points out that her soul and Heathcliff's are completely same, therefore there is no boundary between them, they should be and they will forever be together. Compared to Heathcliff, Edgar is quite different and can never reach her soul.
As the story mentioned, Catherine is leading double lives, in one of them she is a graceful and polite young lady while in the other one she is wild, capricious and even cruel. As well as her life, she also experiences two kinds of feelings. One is for Heathcliff and the other one is for Edgar. She uses two contrasts to show the difference between Edgar and herself and Heathclff. For her, Edgar resembles moonbeam and frost while herself and Heathcliff should link with lightening and fire. Moonbeam and frost describe Edgar exactly. He is gentle, weak but polite and sociable. He never goes to extremity and is the typical gentleman who can be accepted by the society. From social angle, he is a ideal husband. Catherine is attracted by all these merits so she said she loves him. But actually, this kind of feeling is not real love, like the love she gives to Heathcliff. She knows the class she belongs to, so naturally she should and must choose a husband like Edgar. Therefore it was Edgar's position in society and his wealth make himself attractive to Catherine. However, she does love Edgar, but only in the conventional way, only because he is young, rich, cheerful, and his heart and soul, as Catherine said, is so foreign to Heathcliff and herself.
Meanwhile, when Catherine faces her feeling to Heathcliff, she begins to become passionate and shows intense emotion. Although she wrongly imagines that the marriage to Linton does not involve severance from Heathcliff, it really reveals her belief that she and Heathcliff are soul-mates and can never be separated by any incident. Catherine even says that she would forget the idea of marrying Edgar if it means that separation with Heathcliff. Her love to Heathcliff is extremely different from her so-called love to Edgar. Her love ignores all the social factors, the reason why she loves him is just "he is him", "he is Heathcliff". In another word, the reason of her love is love. Her love is simple, fundamental and uncorrupted, also sparkling like "lightening" and fierce like "fire", represents her spontaneous, powerful internal passion. This is the love comes from her heart and her soul, as she says, she can live only for Heathcliff. The significance of the whole world is the existence of Heathcliff. She herself describes her love as rock, which symbolizes firm eternity. On the contrary, she says her feeling to Linton like the foliage in the woods, which is a fantastic contrast with rock, is weak and can never lives a long time. She knows exactly that her love to Linton is just a embellishment in her life, can provide her a better life and wealth, but not the motivation and support for her soul. The reason she tried to rationalize her decision for marriage is just "if I marry Linton, I can aid Heathcliff to rise and place him out of my brother's power", her naïve plot. If she is willing to be honest to herself, she will find that, to some extent, she is just considering Edgar as a tool, at most a lovely and handsome tool. Edgar has never stirred her heart and influenced her soul. She many times describes her identity with Heathcliff as a timeless one, "I am Heathcliff", she focuses on the oneness of their souls, which can never be parted. Their love to each other is not bound by the usual constraints of mortal life.
Although Catherine is clever and capricious, she is also naïve and simple. She loves Heathcliff by the whole heart and soul, but it cannot prevent her persuing a good reputation and a respective position in the middle-class society. She innocently imagines that she can use these advantages to help Heathcliff, but when she think about " marrying Heathcliff will degrade myself", she herself bodily makes a obstacle between herself and her lover.
heathcliff, it's me cathy LET ME IN i'm so cold
Linton Fireworks 2013
* I've Come Home Now *
hello
which part of the novel is this from?
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