Wuthering Heights, Read \"Remembrance\" Emily Bronte Compare

¶ … Wuthering Heights, read "Remembrance" Emily Bronte compare actions feelings Heathcliff final chapter Wuthering Heights feelings speaker final stanza "Remembrance." The essay-based sources: "Remembrance" (Emily Bronte) Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte).

Undying love in Emily Bronte's poetry and prose

Emily Bronte's poem "Remembrance" offers a complementary poetic narrative to her great novel Wuthering Heights. Both the poem and the novel have similar themes: undying, eternal love, unruly protagonists, and the manner in which the world can interfere with 'pure' affection. In the novel, the anti-hero Heathcliff's love for Catherine transcends class, marital alliances, and even death. Both the poem and the book suggest that love is not tenderness or even necessarily spending one's life with someone else in a social alliance such as a marriage. Love is something intrinsic to the nature and spirit of two human beings who share the same soul.

Heathcliff's passion for Catherine Earnshaw is undying, even after her marriage to Edgar Linton and her death. He is determined to be buried beside her, even though he despises the institutions of religion. "Mind, particularly, to notice that the sexton obeys my directions concerning the two coffins! No minister need come; nor need anything be said over me. - I tell you I have nearly attained my heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncovered by me...If they did [refuse me to be buried], you must have me removed secretly [Nelly]; and if you neglect it you shall prove, practically, that the dead are not annihilated!" Heathcliff's declaration echoes the words of Catherine Earnshaw's earlier in the novel when she says that she would not want to go to heaven, because Heathcliff would not be there.

Bronte's conception of love is mature enough to acknowledge the fact that other aspects of life in the 'real world' may impinge upon love: "forgive, if I forget thee, / While the world's tide is bearing me along" says the speaker of "Remembrance." Catherine, in particular might be criticized for forgetting about her passion for Heathcliff, given that she decides to marry a wealthy man rather than a stable boy. Heathcliff, in an effort to prove his worthiness to Catherine, undertakes extraordinary measures, spanning from making his fortune in America to marrying a woman he does not love. Heathcliff's attempts to attain 'worth' involves gaining social status and power, given this is what Cathy seems to value, based upon her marriage to Edgar Linton.

However, in contrast to Heathcliff, who devotes his life to first prove himself to Catherine, and then to pursuing revenge, the speaker of "Remembrance" seems to have a more balanced sense of his or her obligations to the dead, lost lover: "Then did I check the tears of useless passion -- / Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine" says the speaker, apologizing for not actively seeking suicide. Heathcliff seems to live on only to ensure that the Linton family that stood between himself and Cathy are punished. Once his revenge is complete, he is eager to die and rejoin the ghost of Catherine. "There's Heathcliff and a woman yonder, under t' nab,' says one village boy who swears he sees the original, ghostly Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff haunting the moors, 'un' I darnut pass 'em."

"Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish, / How could I seek the empty world again?" explains the speaker of "Remembrance," showing fortitude and a refusal to languish in pain. In contrast, Heathcliff does nothing but wallow in self-inflicted misery, effectively refusing to be happy or to allow others to be happy until he can be one with his beloved Cathy again. "You might as well bid a man struggling in the water rest within arms' length of the shore," he says, eagerly embracing death. "My soul's bliss kills my body, but does not satisfy itself."