Passionate Destruction: a Comparison of Wuthering Heights and Twilight
What makes a person choose a one-sided relationship? Obsession? Love? Why would anyone want to torture themselves knowing that their partner can never truly love them? What is insanity and why is it so popular among the gothic community? Wuthering Heights is a classic gothic novel by English author Emily Brontë. This novel deals with the passionate and ultimately doomed love of Catherine Earnshaw and the gypsy orphan Heathcliff and how their masochistic love destroyed themselves and the lives of the people they touched. On the other hand, there is the Twilight saga by contemporary young adult author, Stephanie Meyer. She brought forth a new kind of vampire who is not destroyed by sunlight but instead is transformed into a mesmerizing diamond studded Adonis. The love of Edward and Bella is all consuming and, in many, cases painful. With the happy ending Catherine and Heathcliff never got, is it truly possible that these two novels have anything in common? The evidence proves that it is. Despite having been set many years and miles apart, Wuthering Heights and Twilight have many similarities in the authors’ exploration of unhealthy relationships, masochism and insanity.
Be it real or fiction, relationships are volatile cocktails of love, lust, honesty and secrets. There are the healthy ones that benefit both parties and protect them both from constant harm. In Wuthering Heights and Twilight we see examples of unhealthy relationships. These relationships always include more than the two people involved, are complicated and the people involved seem almost eager to hurt themselves and each other. Catherine and Heathcliff are the ultimate anti-love story. They are two people cut from the same cloth, both cruel, masochistic beings that enjoy inflicting pain upon themselves and others. Though Catherine says she is completed by Heathcliff, she marries Edgar Linton. Edgar is not much better than either Catherine or Heathcliff. He is solely devoted to his wife who is in
Be it real or fiction, relationships are volatile cocktails of love, lust, honesty and secrets. There are the healthy ones that benefit both parties and protect them both from constant harm. In Wuthering Heights and Twilight we see examples of unhealthy relationships. These relationships always include more than the two people involved, are complicated and the people involved seem almost eager to hurt themselves and each other. Catherine and Heathcliff are the ultimate anti-love story. They are two people cut from the same cloth, both cruel, masochistic beings that enjoy inflicting pain upon themselves and others. Though Catherine says she is completed by Heathcliff, she marries Edgar Linton. Edgar is not much better than either Catherine or Heathcliff. He is solely devoted to his wife who is in