Malice and love in Wuthering Heights illuminate that early 19th century England could not accept or nurture-unbridled love causing blind rage and an almost unquenchable desire for revenge. Heathcliff is blindly in love with Catherine and is consumed with the fires of hatred and malice when he is unable to marry Catherine. His only driving force is that of revenge.
Bronte's diction in Wuthering Heights shows the undying, yet impossible love, between Heathcliff and Catherine. Catherine's desire to live a genteel life with money and privilege makes their marriage impossible in her eyes. Claiming that "whatever [their] souls" were made of they were "of the same" material. Cleary she loves Heathcliff, acknowledging their similar nature. Since childhood they had been together, playing in the moors for hours upon end, yet at the death of her father, the hatred of Heathcliff by her brother shattered all hopes that they had of being together.
Title page of original edition of Wuthering Height...
Wuthering Heights (1970 film)
Wuthering Heights (song)Being raised from that of a street urchin to a gentleman's son, and then being forced back into the fields by his saviors son, leads to a large portion of Heathcliff's hatred and bitterness in life. Catherine sees this admitting that it would "degrade [her] to marry Heathcliff." Since he does not have money and is a lower class than her, she deems it impossible to marry him. She chooses a handsome, wealthy man that she does not care for at all. This choice leads to a mounting conflict throughout the rest of the text. With "you at peace" and Heathcliff to "writhe in the torments of hell" Catherine passes away, leaving him alone in the world with not a friend, and only a burning desire to hurt the man who had his only love in the world, Edgar Linton. He schemes and plots to destroy and...