Et in Arcadia Ego

There's something about the final scene of Wuthering Heights. The way Heathcliff and Catherine and Edgar are side by side in death, equal as they couldn't be in life. The scene serves as a memento mori, a reminder of mortality. As Lockwood looks at the graves of the trio, their earthly feuds and problems meaningless in the dust they inhabit.

Memento mori is a common motif in art and literature. It basically consists of a living thing being confronted with a symbol of death. Take the title of this blog for instance. The Latin phrase translates into "even in Arcadia, I am there", the "I" being Death. Arcadia was a group of city states in Ancient Greece and is often referred to as a utopia. Therefore, the phrase represents the presence of death even in a perfect society. The phrase titles a Guercino painting in which 2 shepherds find a skull, a reminder of death and mortality. The phrase also appears on the barrel of Judge Holden's gun in Blood Meridian.

An anamorphic skull also appears in Han's Holbein's The Ambassadors. The skull appears beside a shelf containing objects such as a lute with a broken string and the Lutheran bible, representing the living world and the discord that prevailed over it at the time. Above the skull is a shelf holding objects representing the study of the heavens, such as an astrolabe and a celestial globe, hinting at a higher plane of being in heaven transcending the living world in all its chaos, as well as the spectre of death.

This is reminiscent of Wuthering Heights, where the earthly struggles and quarrels of Heathcliff, Catherine and Edgar led to their ruin. Ultimately their struggles were meaningless in death, and thus the final scene not only reflects the equality each found in death, it has a theme of vanitas, of the fleeting nature of earthly delights and pursuits. 

Romance Served Cold, The Triumvirate of Wuthering Heights

I've often called the romance in Wuthering Heights between Catherine and Heathcliff a "cold romance", comparing it to romance stories such as Romeo and Juliet. I do this because the romance in Wuthering Heights is a very destructive one, evoking many dark emotions associated with great passion. I think it's time I expand more into these dark emotions, since they are what ultimately sets this story above other, more annoying romance stories. I'm looking at you, Twilight.

We can observe a triumvirate of emotions that lead to the ruin of all parties involved. Envy, wrath and pride. I've identified these emotions with names of three of seven deadly sins for a reason. As a friend of mine wrote on a blog far superior to mine, a religious writer will often have religious overtones in their work.

Heathcliff is, I'm sure many will agree, a very good example of wrath. Particularly revenge. A majority of the work is dedicated to setting up Heathcliff as this character with a tragic past who then brings ruin onto everyone in reach for something not really caused by any one individual like Edgar, Catherine, or even Hindley; but rather the society to which Heathcliff had the misfortune of being brought into. A society that says that he is different, and therefore inferior. That Edgar Linton is superior. That Catherine will be forever unattainable to him, that they may share the strongest romance in the world and he will still never be in his ideal reality. And so he lashes out, against anyone and anything in reach. And his revenge is silent and cunning; in the end he has taken the property of the two men he hated the most, he has spread a corrupting influence into the very souls of the Lintons and Earnshaws, and for all intents and purposes, he has elevated himself. But what has he accomplished? The woman he loved is dead, he drove another woman away from her family. Hindley died a drunk, too numb to reality to actually grasp how Heathcliff revenged himself on him. Edgar is dead, his son is dead, Hareton was only a means to revenge, never the object of it. All Heathcliff has left is himself really, he got his revenge; and he has nothing to show for it. The ending to Wuthering Heights is particularly reflective of this, which I shall have no guilt in spoiling because if it's okay to spoil Star Trek Into Darkness the day after it hits theaters then it's okay to spoil a 200 year old book about psychopaths who may or may not be vampires. At the end of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff becomes much more mellow, but also much more despondent. What exactly is he fighting for at the end of the book? What has he accomplished? More than Edgar? More than Catherine? Or much less?

And of course, how might we have an effective love triangle without envy? Not even just romantic envy, Wuthering Heights feels like it's teeming with social commentary, since it is very much the rigid class stratification that leads to the struggles of the book. Sure, each character is responsible in their own way of the events of the book, but really their warped personalities are a result of what society has fed them all their lives. Heathcliff is inferior, Catherine's responsibility is to marry upward, Edgar is high class, the list goes on. And then we also have classic romantic envy. This combination of both social and romantic envy is the result of human passion, and so it is evident that human passion is a major driving force behind the events of Wuthering Heights, which is sort of obvious, but at the same time I was personally impressed by the way passion was depicted in Wuthering Heights, which is why I mention it here.

Pride is the third of the triumvirate. The characters of Wuthering Heights are all very proud characters, and for them to match their wills against each other is akin to an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Or rather an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object and the immovable object marries the unstoppable force's best friend who is also an unstoppable force and meanwhile the other unstoppable force went to brood.

Emily Bronte basically presents these things as a part of human emotion and therefore a part of being human as a whole. It further makes Wuthering Heights "a book about everything."