Wuthering Heights

'Til Death Do Us Part

"My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm 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 Bronte's Wuthering Heights. It seems awkward to our modern day society because we aren't 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 you'll have in a few days - and you shall have plenty of that. You can bear plenty; you're 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