Editing Wuthering Heights (section)

=== Love ===

One 2007 British poll presented ''Wuthering Heights'' as the greatest love story of all time.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/aug/10/books.booksnews Marin Wainwright, "Emily hits heights in poll to find greatest love story". ''The Guardian'', 10 August 2007.]</ref> However, "some of the novel's admirers consider it not a love story at all but an exploration of evil and abuse".<ref name=Young/> [[Helen Small]] sees ''Wuthering Heights'' as being both "one of the greatest love stories in the English language" and at the same time one of the "most brutal revenge narratives".<ref>"Introduction" to ''Wuthering Heights''. Edited by Ian Jack and Introduction and notes by Helen Small. Oxford University Press, 2009, p. vii.</ref> Some critics suggest that reading ''Wuthering Heights'' as a love story not only "romanticizes abusive men and toxic relationships but goes against Brontë's clear intent".<ref name=Young/> Moreover, while a "passionate, doomed, death-transcending relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw Linton forms the core of the novel",<ref name=Young/> ''Wuthering Heights'':

{{blockquote|... consistently subverts the romantic narrative. Our first encounter with Heathcliff shows him to be a nasty bully. Later, Brontë puts in Heathcliff's mouth an explicit warning not to turn him into a Byronic hero: After{{nbsp}}... Isabella elop[es] with him, he sneers that she did so "under a delusion{{nbsp}}... picturing in me a hero of romance".<ref name=Young/>}}

"I am Heathcliff" is a frequently quoted phrase from the novel, and "the idea of{{nbsp}}... perfect unity between the self and the other is age-old", so that Catherine says that she loves Heathcliff "because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same" (Chapter IX).<ref>Helen Smart, "Introduction" to Wuthering Heights. Edited by Ian Jack and Introduction and notes by Helen Small. Oxford University Press, 2009, p. xiii.</ref> Likewise Lord David Cecil suggests that "the deepest attachments are based on characters' similarity or affinity",<ref>[http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/wuthering/iamheath.html "I am Heathcliff"], [[City University of New York|cuny.edu]]</ref> However [[Simone de Beauvoir]], in her famous feminist work ''[[The Second Sex]]'' (1949), suggests that when Catherine says "I am Heathcliff": "her own world collapse(s) in contingence, for she really lives in his."<ref>Beauvoir, 1952, p.&nbsp;725{{incomplete short citation|date=September 2023|reason=Is this from The Second Sex? Publisher needed.}}</ref> Beauvoir sees this as "the fatal mirage of the ideal of romantic love{{nbsp}}... transcendence{{nbsp}}... in the superior male who is perceived as free".<ref>Kathryn Pauly Morgan, "Romantic Love, Altruism, and Self-Respect: An Analysis of Simone De Beauvoir". ''[[Hypatia (journal)|Hypatia]]'', Spring 1986, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 129. {{JSTOR|3810066}}</ref>

Despite all the passion between Catherine and Heathcliff, critics have from early on drawn attention to the absence of sex. In 1850 the poet and critic [[Sydney Dobell]] suggests that "we dare not doubt [Catherine's] purity",<ref>"Currer Bell," ''Palladium, September'', 1850. Reprinted in ''Life and Letters of Sydney Dobell'', ed. E. Jolly (London, i878), I, 163–186.</ref> and the Victorian poet [[Swinburne]] concurs, referring to their "passionate and ardent chastity".<ref>A. C. Swinburne, "Emily BrontE," in ''Miscellanies'', 2d ed. (London, I895), pp. 260–270 (first appeared in the Athenaeum for 1883).</ref><ref>[http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/wuthering/sex.html "Sex in ''Wuthering Heights''"], [[City University of New York|cuny.edu]]</ref> More recently [[Terry Eagleton]] suggests their relationship is sexless, "because the two, unknown to themselves, are half-siblings, with an unconscious fear of incest".<ref>[https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n21/terry-eagleton/nothing-nice-about-them "Nothing Nice about Them"] by [[Terry Eagleton]], ''[[London Review of Books]]'', vol. 32, no. 21, 4 November 2010.</ref>