To expand on the title: the impermanence of life is no match for the all-consuming love that defines our existences, and remains here long after we are gone. That is why grief is sometimes so profound. Surviving the person you love is devastating. Like a grenade, it is never the impact that kills you, but the shrapnel. Grief works the same way. It is never the shock that makes us go down, but the wounds left behind.
Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights is, probably, the character most consumed by grief I have ever had to witness (I accept recommendations, if there is anyone out there more unhinged and affected by the death of a loved one than him, in any other book). His love for Cathy, reeking of toxicity and pregnant with destruction from the very beginning, is too much from him to handle once the object of his desires is gone. Dead. Never to come back—physically, anyway, because her ghost never stops haunting him, which is mentally corrosive for him.
For Heathcliff, his mourning and grief is incapacitating: “And yet I can not continue in this condition! I have to remind myself to breathe almost to remind my heart to beat!” (Brontë 277). It is driving him mad, in the most simple of explanations. But can we, as readers, blame him? We could, if we are being completely honest, because it is not as if he behaved in the best of ways—towards Cathy or towards anyone. But love is such a primitive, inherent part of the human condition. We are nothing without love. Life starts with it, continues with it, dies with it.
Even after death, love still remains. Grief is the most ardent manifestation of love once life has vanished. And not to quote a Marvel Cinematic Universe project in the middle of a brief exploration of grief in one of the best works of literature (to me), but the miniseries Wandavision had an interesting take on it. When one of the characters asks the grieving protagonist “But what is grief, if not love persevering?”, he sheds light on how much bigger love is than both life and the sadness that comes from the loss of it.
Wuthering Heights is more complicated than that, because neither Heathcliff nor Cathy knew how to love normally. They lived and loved in a way that was poisonous, so for Heathcliff, grieving is not tender reminiscing and a path to healing but deadly penitence. He even feels revengeful, in a way: “May she wake in torment! … Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as I am living!” (146). In a way (the worst of ways for him), love has defined Heathcliff’s existence. But his love is rotten, and it will remain that way long after he is gone.
That is why these concepts scare me. Love is too powerful, life is too short, and we cannot do anything about it other than live and die. Heathcliff and Cathy lived and died miserably—do not make that mistake.
P.S: I do not think Wuthering Heights is a love story. Not in the traditional sense. But I still believe it highlights how unimportant (and impermanent) life is when faced with the aftermath of such a loss. Wounds that deep take longer than an entire man’s lifespan to heal.
References
Brontë, Emily. Wuthering heights. Ignatius Press, 2008.