Romantic Love

Wuthering Heights was written by Emily Brontë. It was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second edition was edited by her sister Charlotte.

The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centers (as an adjective, Wuthering is a Yorkshire word referring to turbulent weather). The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.

It is considered a classic of English literature, and it is also considered part of the Romantic genre.

All along the story, romantic love takes many forms in Wuthering heights, for instance, the excessive passion between Heathcliff and Catherine, the romantic infatuation of Isabella, the puppy love of Cathy and Linton and the sexual attraction between Cathy and Hareton. These “lovers” are romantic in all senses, they are in some way selfish, they ignore the needs, feelings and claims of the others, they just care about their own needs and feelings.

The love-relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine, expresses the most romantic love ever, the one that wants to give oneself unreservedly to another and gain a whole self or sense of identity back, to be all-in-all for each other, so that nothing else in the world matters, and to be loved in this way forever. But are they true lovers? Is this kind of love real love? Or what type of love is this one?

Many times, Heathcliff claims Catherine to be his soul. In this way, Catherine and Heathcliff represent the essential isolation of the soul, the constant fight of two souls to be together. Their love is an attempt to break the limits of self, to fusion with another by uniting two incomplete individuals, and achieve a new sense of identity, a complete and unified identity.

But besides the endless passion between Catherine and Heathcliff love becomes an addiction. Or we can also say that romantic or passionate love is by itself and addiction, something that exists when a person's attachment to an emotion, an object, or another person is so huge that he starts to diminish his own appreciation and his ability to deal with other things in his environment, or in himself, so that he has become increasingly dependent on that experience as his only source of gratification. An addictive love wants to break down the limits of identity and unify with the lover into one identity. Catherine, for example, calls her relationship "a source of little visible delight, but necessary." Catherine wants his lover, no matter what the consequences could be, she just cares about her, she starts having such an addiction that she puts away the needs of her beloved.

We can say that this intense passion between these characters leads them to turn on and to torment others. Inflicting pain provides them some

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