Welcome to the final day of Wuthering Heights Week here at White Rose of Avalon, my Darlings. Today’s post is about Dark Romance and lessons we can learn from Wuthering Heights!
I just knew I had to cover this subject for the final day of Wuthering Heights Week. After all, there is no denying that this Gothic Romance novel is heavy on both the horrific Gothic elements and the romantic elements. The novel is a prime example of a truly Dark Romance, which has become increasingly popular yet again in recent years. That has led to a lot of discourse about whether Dark Romance books are glorifying toxic relationships. Certainly, a book like Wuthering Heights fits that conversation, and is often misunderstood, with some people certainly idealizing the toxic relationships in the narrative. However, I do not think that was Emily Brontë’s intent when she wrote such a deeply romantic tale about two very troubled people. In fact, I think it can be argued that Emily Brontë’s only novel may just seek to teach lessons about not idealizing relationships.
So, let’s get into what lessons we can learn from Wuthering Heights to use in our own relationships. Firstly, I think that the novel is a great example of why communication is key. At the end of the day, most of the tragic and terrible events that occurred later in the novel could have been avoided if Cathy had an open discussion with Heathcliff. The turning point moment, which both shows how deeply Cathy loved and prioritized Heathcliff and how misguided she was, is her discussion with Nelly about Edgar proposing. She had already accepted Edgar Linton’s proposal, thinking that she could use his money to help Heathcliff. As Nelly pointed out, her reasoning for accepting his proposal was lacking, given she could not aptly describe why she loved Edgar, ending with stating that she loved him because he loved her. After that part of the conversation in which Nelly stated that Edgar would try to keep Catherine from Heathcliff, Catherine was adamant would not happen. Cathy was very specific in describing how she loved each man, which is where we get the famous line “Whatever Souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” So, she truly revealed her plan, for if she had married Heathcliff, they would be beggars and unable to get him out from under her brother’s control, but with Edgar’s money, she could help him!
So, as I said, this reasoning is misguided, but Cathy’s heart was in the right place, for her true loyalty was with Heathcliff, even stating that her love for him would never alter, unlike her changeable love for Edgar. Now, had Cathy spoken to Heathcliff before accepting the proposal from Edgar, letting him know what she had in mind, things could have been very different. She could have avoided Heathcliff running off after hearing she was engaged to another man. Together, they could have made a plan, maybe to either run off together or agree to use Edgar’s money, which would have been wicked in its own right, but a healthier move for the relationship between the two!
The next lesson I want to touch on is not seeking to be overly possessive of your lover. This lesson is found within all of the jealousy that Heathcliff had over the friendship between Edgar and Cathy, and even later in Cathy when she first noticed Isabella’s desire for Heathcliff. Heathcliff clearly thought that Cathy was his, and while he surely had her heart, he did not realize that she could have been friends with the Linton siblings and still been in love with him. If Heathcliff had not sought to possess all of Cathy’s attention, to keep her from other connections, he may not have pushed her away. This is again rooted in miscommunication to a certain extent, but it is also rooted in jealousy and fear that blinded Heathcliff to the fact that Cathy truly always had loved him best!
The final lesson I want to touch on is not use others to make your lover jealous. Both Cathy and Heathcliff do this, pitting the Linton siblings in the middle of their relationship. Once again, with better communication, they could have set proper boundaries. This boundary could have been that Cathy and Heathcliff made it clear that she was not interested in Edgar Linton romantically from the very beginning of her friendship with the Linton siblings. Had that been set, Heathcliff would have never left, come back three years later, having made a fortune, and married Isabella to spite Cathy and especially Edgar!
In an alternate universe, Cathy and Heathcliff could have run off together, he could have made his fortune by whatever means he did with Catherine in tow, and they could have come back to get revenge on her brother. That would have been how they could both be happy. However, they could not communicate, overcome jealousies, or keep up proper boundaries long enough for this to happen.
With all that being said, for as toxic as their choices made their relationship, there is no doubting that Cathy and Heathcliff truly loved one another, which is why their haunting the Moors together as ghosts makes me so happy. They could only be together in death, but at least with the release of death, they found freedom.
So, while Wuthering Heights is not a love story that should be idealized, I firmly believe that we can learn lessons about how to be better in our own relationships from the story. We can learn what not to do and how not to act, which is sometimes strangely the best way to form a healthy relationship. It is easy to fall into the trappings of toxic behavior when you do not know better, but when you see just how much pain can be caused by doing the wrong things, via Dark Romance fiction, you can learn how to avoid the pitfalls! The issues arise when we romanticize the toxic behaviors, instead of learning from them. Cathy and Heathcliff made all the wrong decisions based on their own traumas and their own youthful ignorance. We can learn from them to not do that, to be better in our relationships, and to avoid things coming to a boiling point. So, in conclusion, I do believe that we can have a love where we feel just as intensely about our lover as Cathy and Heathcliff do about one another, but with open communication, that relationship can be healthy instead of tragically toxic!
I hope you have enjoyed this post, looking at lessons we can learn from Wuthering Heights and how we can learn from Dark Romances what not to do in relationships. What other lessons have you learned about relationships from this novel? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is a book cover for the novel. I found the image on https://openlibrary.org/books/OL40260470M/Wuthering_Heights
LINK TO AVALONIAN ROSE FAERY MYSTERIES PATREON: patreon.com/AvalonianRoseFaeryMysteries
Further Reading
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- https://whiteroseofavalon.life/2021/04/10/heathcliff-as-byronic-hero/
- https://whiteroseofavalon.life/2022/03/17/wuthering-heights-a-happy-ending/
- https://whiteroseofavalon.life/2022/09/26/catherine-earnshaw-a-faery-changeling/
- https://whiteroseofavalon.life/2024/11/29/the-two-catherines-of-wuthering-heights/
- https://whiteroseofavalon.life/2022/04/27/emily-brontes-impact-kate-bush-the-music-videos-and-the-unthanks/