In Catherine’s Shoes

I put down the novel Wuthering Heights after I finished reading it for the umpteenth number of time now. I first read it when I was in high school. Ever since I know not how many times I have read it again and again. Perhaps I could quote many a lines and paragraphs verbatim from there. The book is one of the few prized possessions I have carried with me back from time immemorial. The smell of the crumpled yellow pages still reminded me of the first time I read it. And every time I re-read it, there are always old memories and newer things to ruminate on.


For those who haven’t read this novel by Emily Bronte, this is, in a nutshell, the story of two people who grew up together and fell in love with each other in the process. Heathcliff was an orphan who grew up in the house of the Earnshaws with the love of Catherine Earnshaw and the hatred of her brother Hindley Earnshaw. Poverty and Cathy’s disapproval forces Heathcliff to go away, only to make a fortune and to return after years to discover Cathy being married to the rich Edgar Linton smitten by Cathy. To avenge him, Heathcliff marries Edgar’s sister Isabella, amidst the emotionally charged episodes of Cathy’s illness and Heathcliff’s allegations to Cathy for betraying him and marrying someone else for his wealth. Cathy dies amidst the pangs of unrequited love, delirious and never really regaining her senses, only to haunt Heathcliff. Heathcliff goes a step further and avenges the entire family by getting hold of the family possessions and the next generation children, not even sparing his own son Linton. The novel ends with the death of the tyrant Heathcliff, thereby unifying himself with the spirit of his beloved Cathy.


Every time I read it, it makes me wonder about certain idiosyncrasies in women, certain shades of their personality, certain prowess to wreak havoc that is so very characteristic of not just Catherine, but so many other women. Why is it that the ways of love meander and get lost amidst the greater dimensions of wealth and recognition? Why is it that women may fall in love with the less affluent, but always end up marrying the rich? Why do the poor go away, only to return even richer than the rich, only to plant regret-seeds and remind women of their shameless whimsicality? And why is it that no matter how rich the husband is, women never really forget their love, old flames, and the good old days of penurious existence with the lover? Why do the embers never die, and are rekindled merely with a glance, certain words spoken, or even in silence? Why is it that they punish love only to regret it later? And why is it that old flames have a certain way of making a second-hand entrance into their lives, only to hurt a lot many innocent lives in the process? Why is the loyalty and integrity of women always being tested? Why do women always find themselves on the crossroads, forced to make seemingly cogent but impossible choices? Why?


“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods; time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath--a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind, not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own.”
Mark Catherine’s words. If she loved Heathcliff as much as she did, why did she make him ashamed of his penuriousness and let him go away only to marry someone richer and more affluent? Why did she seek greener pastures if this is what she felt- " . . . he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire."? And if this is what she wanted, why did hidden passions surface the moment they met again?

Heathcliff’s words to Cathy on her deathbed are so gut-wrenching, yet so very true.

“You teach me how cruel you've been, cruel and false. Why do you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry, and wring out my kisses and tears; they'll blight you- they'll damn you. You loved me, then what right had you to leave me? What right, answer me, for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart--you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine”.


“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you--haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe--I know that 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!”

I wonder if it merely reflects a woman’s constant need to make better choices in life, or a very flippant and sadist side of her personality to hurt and abandon what she loves, only to live with the loss for the rest of her life? Or do they do it because at the end of the day, they are certain about the roles they play in the life of men, that does not deviate a great deal from the role of the progeny bearer? Perhaps they realize with time that it doesn’t really make a difference as to who they are married to, because they must perform the same roles for any man. Or perhaps it is the need to seek security and recognition, and to be associated with the rich and the powerful.


Infallible. Unfailing. Irrevocable. And a many more adjectives to be associated with us. Then why the euphemisms like incentive-seekers that boils down to nothing more than the word S-C-H-E-M-I-N-G?

True, there have been Jane Eyres too. There have been women who gave their youths and lives for the cause they believed in, the men they loved, rich or poor, mute or blind. But not always. Women are constantly evaluating the incentives and investments for love. Is it the euphemistic word for a sense of security at every level in life? Is it like flaunting to the best bidder? And while the best bidder gets you, you always harbor dark secrets in the inner chambers of the heart, pains of unrequited love, mysteries of unfulfilled passions and fantasies? An inherited trait to keep the inscrutability tag intact perhaps.

“If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime, he couldn't love you as much as I do in a single day.”


That is what he told her in the final moments of her death, seeing life ebbing away. I wonder if she never regretted trading a man’s love for another man’s wealth. I wonder if she ever regretted not knowing how it felt to wake up next to the man she loved all her life, instead of feigning love in a relationship of convenience. I wonder if she never regretted not making babies with the Heathcliff, the man who possessed her mind and soul and loved her back with everything he had. But then, she had to throw away everything, everything she had that any other woman would trade her life for, to lead a life of calmness and predictability sans the tumults. She has my sympathies, if not my empathies.

But then, there are such Catherines everywhere, and a tiny bit of Catherine in every woman, that bit that can get a man crazy enough and send him away, only to settle for something that might seem a better alternative, but has lost the flavor of life in the process. Like the prelude to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” I wonder what a single woman in possession of youth must be in want of.


Security indeed. I wonder what kind though. And at what cost.

Ugly fodder for thought.