A Wuthering Love

The trivial arguments. The brutal affections. The withered memories. Wuthering Heights is a love novel at its core, a book about the love between unstable and reckless people. So clearly it is a viable resource in the answering of my big question. The most inspiring love affair occurs between the tender Catherine and rowdy Heathcliff. Heathcliff musters all his strength to getting the girl that it corrupts him. When the girl marry's another, Heathcliffs heart changes and spends her whole life in flaunts of revenge and romantics. When Catherine dies a tragic death Heathcliff utters that Catherine's soul must not be at peace as long as he lives, going on to say, "'Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!... I cannot live without my life!'" He wants her soul to be restless until he dies. Yet all he wants is her, and if she does not leave him, then at least he can live, because if she were to leave him he would die. His maddened love has sapped the strength from him, forcing Heathcliff to rely on talks of ghosts and spirits as a source to his life. Heathcliff in the end is the embodiment of a weakness that thrives in the depths of love. Catherine also provides an interesting statement on love. Her famous quote, "'I am Heathcliff!'" creates a distinct balance between love being strong or weak. She is Heathcliff. The weakness of love is shown as she trades away all her individuality with this statement. She essentially loses her self, losing Catherine, which would be a distract downfall and weakness. More optimistically, however, this quote evokes an images of soul mates and kindred spirits. Their souls are bound together and exist as one, which relates to the previous quote about Heathcliff. In this case they're love provides strength for both of them, they are connected and bound on a deeper level then the romantics of others. Catherine's 3 letter statement lends my question a fascinating answer. In this example love is both a strength and a weakness, love is a double edged sword, one side gives strength, the other side fuels weakness. Maybe this will be the ultimate answer to my question. Or maybe not.