Tracy,

Yes, we’ve reached our happy ending. Heathcliff finally finds joy as his visions of Cathy grow more vivid and he shuffles off his miserable mortal coil to be reunited with her. Or, as we’d say in more clinical terms, he had a series of strokes.

I know, I’m a cynic.

I love your idea of Victorian Lives Matter. I was saddened by the young deaths of the characters in Wuthering Heights, but as you pointed out, their ages were consistent with the times. Tuberculosis is a thief that robbed us of many great people. Check out this list, it’s mind-blowing.

But you asked me why we should read sad stories. Awareness and empathy are two good reasons you provide. I’ll add perspective. It’s good to be reminded that as terrible as things seem, they could probably be much, much worse. Is that also cynical of me? Maybe. There’s a reason sad books so often appeal to us more when we’re young. It’s not that teens thrive on schadenfreude, but when you’re navigating the vagaries of the teenage social scene and have to make important life choices while hormones are waging a battle for your brain, it’s sure nice to be able to think, “Well, at least I’m not trapped in an abusive marriage because I have literally no other options except to drop dead of lung disease.”

You asked a couple of other questions:

Do Heathcliff and Cathy redefine love for the reader?

Are soulmates real?

I think those are intertwined.

We need to think about where this notion of soulmates comes from. It’s typically credited to Plato, who wrote in The Symposium (370 BC) that Zeus created the two genders when he got worried that perfect and complete humans would get too powerful, so he split them in two. This is supposedly why people are looking for their other half—to complete them. I’m not even going to go into the problems of thinking about gender as something other than a social construct, or as a binary. Let’s just say that this line of thinking certainly limits the soulmate options for many people.

What really got in the way of this searching-for-my-other half idea when it comes to romantic partners is that for centuries in most cultures there was almost no choice involved in marriage. Marriage were an institution between two families made for economic reasons. This is still the case in many parts of the world. Marriages were made for money, and people found intellectual, social, emotional fulfillment through platonic relationships with other people, regardless of gender. They weren’t looking for one magical person to meet all of those needs.

This romanticized idea of soulmates really made its big comeback during the Victorian period. Sure, Shakespeare dabbled back in the Elizabethan, but the idea really took off later, especially in Gothic Fiction. The Brontë sisters were key in bringing it back through literature–Emily in Wuthering Heights and Charlotte in Jane Eyre. You might say they lit the fire and it’s been burning strong ever since, as evidenced in countless books, tv shows, and movies. “You complete me,” indeed.

So, do Heathcliff and Cathy redefine love for the reader? They definitely helped shift how the Western world thinks about love for generations. But I’d like to again point out the ages of the characters whose passionate soulmateness we use as a template for perfect love. Juliet was 13 in Romeo and Juliet. Heathcliff and Cathy were teenagers. Jane Eyre was 10 at the beginning of the book and 20-ish when the main narrative ends. Isn’t that when we’re supposed to believe in magical, lightning-strikes love? When we’re teenagers and hormones make everything bigger and more dramatic? Kate Bush wrote her biggest hit from the point of view of Cathy in Wuthering Heights. You know how old she was when the inspiration hit her and she wrote it? 18.

I wonder if we’re all missing the point because we read these stories when we’re teenagers ourselves and fall for the romance. Isn’t that what I wrote in my very first entry for this book club? I remembered liking all the moody broodiness when I was a teenager. We get caught up in the magic of Heathcliff and Cathy’s bananas love, but Brontë wrote an entire book about how that love destroyed them and everyone around them. I’m not convinced she was so pro-soulmate. Let’s not forget, she doesn’t end the book with Heathcliff’s spiritual reunion with Cathy. She leaves us with the love between Cathy Jr. and Hareton–a love that grew over time through proximity and helping each other, rather than the struck-by-lightning soulmate oneness of Cathy and Heathcliff. They loathed each other in the beginning, but doesn’t their love seem happier? Healthier? Maybe Wuthering Heights is a cautionary tale about searching for our one true soulmate. Personally, I think Brontë might very well have agreed with relationship therapist Esther Perel’s assessment:

“This idea of finding “The One” is problematic for relationships. The paradox of choice creates a real sense of anxiety for people looking to find a long-term partner. The expectations of one person to satisfy all of our many emotional, physical, and spiritual needs is a tall order for one individual. Perhaps, instead of looking for a person who checks all the boxes, focus on a person with whom you can imagine yourself writing a story that entails edits and revisions. As a reminder, there are no perfect stories.”

I think that’s where I land. Who needs a soulmate? Gimme someone I can write a story with. I bet Brontë would have loved that. Or at least loved to have that option.

So, here we are at the end. What’s my takeaway? Old me felt frustrated by all the drama. I just wanted to shake each character and tell them to snap out of it. Your wise prompts to remember the context, the lack of choice people (especially women­) had is what kept me reading. And Nelly. I really like Nelly. So, I’m all for doing another book. This time let’s be a little snappier to make it easier for people to follow along. When we announce the book, we’ll determine how many chapters we’ll read per week and we’ll stick to that. Sound good? The real question is what book should we do next? Do you have any other shameful gaps in your literary past, Tracy? I’ll out you as never having read Lord of the Flies, but I can’t take more teenage drama right now, so you’re on your own there. I’ll confess to having read almost no Jane Austen (I know, I KNOW), but since you wrote your thesis on her, I’m afraid my amateur entries would be one long eye roll for you.

What say ye, dear readers? Any suggestions?

Posted by Eliane