It’s a long time since I read Wuthering Heights. The recent ITV mini-series was excellent, it portrayed the passion between Heathcliff and Cathy about as well as I think it could be done.
The obsession and violence, violence to gentleness, love. I think passion comes straight from our spiritual selves, that slew of forces we normally skate above, unleashed. And so I think the psychic connection between the two is a phenomenon that does exist. I also think the violence that one would expect should be abhorrent is an essential part of the experience. Having freed the beast that is passion, both see it as part of what is their shared and very naked entwinement of a life, and very much part of how they can feel what they share. Intense shows of affection and loving become very close to violence. To be less is not to be experiencing life at all. (Well that’s my stand on the matter.)
What’s interesting is that Emily Bronte had such a handle on it. But she had a short life, 1818–1848, which never got old enough to be a tired life or a cynical one. She had the isolation to free up her imagination, the environment to be acquainted with people and nature that were far from tamed, the experience of her older brother’s lack of discipline and his dying, a father who encouraged their imaginations and left them to their own devices. And if they were away from the hurly-burly of city life maybe it was a case of still waters run deep.
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