While love is magical and wonderful, it is also scary and can beat you down and carve you into a hard beast, or leave you an addict, craving, crawling and seizing more of this feeling at any cost. After the feeling has been formed with a person, never doubt the power of what the emotion can to do you, be it great or horrible. The strongest love story in classical literature is in the novel Wuthering Heights written by Emily Bronte where she develops the love story between Heathcliff and Catherine, proving the power of the emotion can carry on over a lifetime. Despite all negative or positive circumstances, the emotion always stays valid, and carries on through death.
The relationship begins with Heathcliff and Catherine meeting as children. Catherine's father, Mr. Earnshaw, adopts Heathcliff and Catherine gives him the usual sneers and cackling grins. She has not received the presents she wished for because her father had adopted a new son instead. However, she grows to adore Heathcliff. The personalities of Catherine and Heathcliff are to be noted.
Catherine is wild, mischievous, bold, and quick-tongued with a fire blazing inside of her that none could ever extinguish. She holds a blazing passion, and this passion matches that of Heathcliff. Heathcliff is her kindred spirit with a quick-hot temper, stubborn pride, bold personality, and an aura that captures a room the second he walks inside from his forbidding, daunting yet captivating ways.
The two hold a strong unbreakable connection, one that speaks without words. It is a love so solid, nothing could break it apart despite the unfavorable events placed upon them. Their love is so intense, it turns from beauty to destruction quickly because of how powerful the emotion stirs within the two characters. It causes them to create turmoil when interacting among others and destruction upon themselves. Yet, they cannot fathom any of this because of how they feel towards one another.
Catherine describes her love to Heathcliff in her speech to Nelly when she accepts the marriage proposal by Edgar Linton:
I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as moonbeam from lightening, or frost from fire.
(Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Page 80)
When Catherine ends up staying at Thrushcross Grange and falls in love with Edgar Linton, she finds she wants the civil, peaceful, proper life and marries Edgar Linton. She breaks Heathcliff's rejected heart into thousands of particles, though he attempts to hide his pain. Heathcliff knows inside Catherine really loves him and refuses to believe she has real feelings for this boring Edgar Linton who is a pretty doll without the intense, raging emotions Heathcliff and Catherine both share.
However, Heathcliff does not give up on his love for Catherine despite her marriage. Though he does return to her in quite a monstrous way throughout the course of the novel, one cannot help but see it is because his love for Catherine is so strong. He will stop at nothing, not even death, to be with Catherine. While his actions may make him appear an evil beast, for he hurts everyone in his path with his cruel actions and words, everything he says is out of excruciating pain for Catherine leaving him for Edgar Linton.
True, Heathcliff does marry Edgar's sister, Isabella, for the sake of revenge because he is upset Catherine has married Edgar. He does not always act maturely or rationally but rather upon his emotions, but then again, so does Catherine. This is a repeated theme throughout the novel but as readers, we understand because we see how conflicted his love is for Catherine.
As Catherine leads a happy (though monotonous life) with Edgar, we see towards the end of her life, she yearns for Heathcliff. When Catherine is dying, Heathcliff enters and the two embrace and it is almost as though the fire is lit back inside the both of them, and extinguishes her coming death. When she does die, Heathcliff finds her grave and begins digging to see her again. It is then he hears her spirit and he feels she is with him again. Thus, even after Catherine dies, her ghost drifts in and out of Heathcliff's life and keeps him stable. She provides him the only thing worth living for, though she is the only thing gone from the world the he seeks.
I know ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always -- take any form -- drive me mad! -- only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!
(Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Page 165)
Once, he re-opens her coffin when her husband dies, he is transfixed and his love is empowered again and he feels renewed. At the end of the novel, when Heathcliff dies, a young boy with sheep says he sees the dead Heathcliff.
There's a Heathcliff and a woman yonder, under t'nab' he blabbererd, 'un' I darnut pass 'em.'
(Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Page 325)
Thus, even after Catherine and Heathcliff were both married to other people, their lives spun in different directions, they did find one another in the end.