A Psychoanalytic Approach to Wuthering Heights

A Psychoanalytic Approach to Wuthering Heights

Before anything else, I would like to talk about the nature of the principle characters of this novel. I’d like to start with Catherine as she seems to be the central character of this love story. Of course the latter is my personal assumption. Catherine is the very representative of nature and naturalism. From the first chapters of novel and Mrs. Dean’s great and elaborate account of Catherine, we encounter the portrayal of wild nature represented by the moor. Totally intractable and precarious in nature, the moor is the most appropriate identifier of Catherine’s character. In fact, her childhood interest in the moor leads us to the conclusion that she has no touch of reason till the time she is prohibited by her sister-in-law and brother after her five-week stay at Lintons’. Interestingly, she takes her playmate, Heathcliff, to the moor to spend the joyful private time with him and this is the very foreshadow that prognosticates Heathcliff’s later confusions and sufferings as a result of her precarious and wild nature. However, Heathcliff himself has no sheer difference in character with her regarding naturalism. Ironically enough, he never undergoes any obligatory changes to abandon such a character and on the contrary he is inspired by tyrannical treatment from Hindley to assume his naturalism. Based on these assumptions we can conclude that these two lovers are the representatives of id in this novel. They act upon every impulse without any contemplations or control of wild passion. To cut the long story short, they act as their unconscious bids them to do. They are not alone in this aspect as Hindley also joins them in this characteristic in a different manner. As a result of...

... middle of paper ...

...ly it was so for Catherine. It reminds me of the closing line of Shakespeare’s poem, “She should have died hereafter”, in which the poet concludes his marvelous poem by an identical tone: signifying nothing. Using two short syllables which reminds me of the hectic life of Catherine and her hasty decisions and actions based on her id which lead her with a drastic velocity to the point of her second ailment. The concluding syllable of the first word which is long portrays the anguish that both Catherine and her surroundings were undergoing during her disposition. And finally two abrupt and short syllables of the last word, nothing, represents the abruptness and quickness of her death which was all in all signifying nothing. Mrs. Dean’s aptly chosen words paraphrase the last line of this poem in a more tangible manner: “One little pulse at her heart, and nothing more.”