by Zach Foth
"I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff, now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself that I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire."
"Misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or satan would inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart - you have broken it - and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me, that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - oh God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?"
-Wuthering Heights
Catherine and Heathcliff think of each other as the same. In fact, the language is so metaphysical that it seems that they are exactly the same person, or at least are bound in some sense, soul-to-soul. This makes their relationship all the more tense as they never find the realization of their love for each other in marriage. And so they are forced to exist in a kind of flux where each of them longs for the other but cannot merge their spirits. Heathcliff is haunted, perhaps willingly, by this thought that his nature is so intertwined with Catherine's own that her death would really take his soul to the grave with her, leaving Heathcliff to wander the material world with no hope of spiritual satisfaction. Their souls are bound and yet they are unable, or unwilling in Catherine's case, to marry. Even though in fits of revenge Heathcliff seeks to destroy and overcome the characters who've wronged him, his machinations are directed at himself when they are directed at Catherine. More so, Heathcliff is so enigmatic and little can be discerned about his history apart from his relationship with Catherine and her family. For this reason, he is as much a phantom as Catherine is herself.
