Emily's Beliefs

Emily's beliefs, I feel. are expressed in Wuthering Heights... fragment from my essay "The Double Soul of Emily "...."I lov'd her, and destroy'd her!" Byron

Wuthering Heights is no simple love story. It is the anguished expression of the fractured double soul of Emily Bronte, the double soul of humanity and of the tragedy of life; the splitting of that soul by existence in the world; a world of strife and of competition. Wuthering Heights is a masterpiece of double design; an expression of loss and desire; the desire to be whole, to be reunited with the original self that is always fractured by birth into the world. Wuthering Heights haunts its readers because it asks unanswerable questions; Who am I? Where do I belong? Where am I going? Whom do I love? How can I hold my love? What is now, the past, the future? Where is she? Where is he? How can I get in? How can I get out?

　

　

another fragment on Emily's beliefs....Emily Bronte, if she had any religion at all, paints a religion of the self in Wuthering Heights. Like The Byronic Hero, she must be true to herself and be united as a whole soul with her mirror image, Heathcliff. Cathy betrays the code, marries Edgar, suffers and dies but does not find rest. She is cloven in two. Heathcliff is forever faithful and cloven in two by Cathy's rejection and death. Yet he is always true to Cathy and to himself. He regrets nothing he has done, as it is true to his code. He must be with and for Cathy. He seeks, suffers and dies. He believes he will attain his goal. He will dissolve with his love; his Cathy.

Emily Bronte leaves us with the mystery. Do they walk? Do they sleep in the quiet earth? Where are they? Not here? Not there? Not perished?

Wuthering Heights is Emily Bronte's great agony of joy. It cries, I love you. Don't leave me. My heart's bliss is here, on this earth, on this moor, under this sky, with you who are more myself than I am. Wuthering Heights pulses with the passion for life, for food, for work, for family, for home, for childhood; an eternal childhood, and for an all encompassing and unending Mother-love.

and.... Wuthering Heights has two religions; the self righteous and punishing Christian Creed as hurled about by Joseph and the Earthy Creed of the integrated self, as sought and suffered by Cathy and Heathcliff....

Two phrases could illustrate the whole novel. " Where is She?" and " Heathcliff, Come back." They express the double passion, the double loss, the double longing, the double search, the Double Soul of Emily Bronte.