Reading the Classics discussion

I have been thinking about love a lot, and how circumstances beyond our control dictate who we love and who we love AND get the chance to be married with, for life.

WH has always been one of my favourite books, and when I first read it when I was young, 13, I always felt sorry for them all, including Heathcliff, I marvelled at how everything went so wrong but his and Cathy's love survived till the end. I thought that was true love but now I have changed my mind.

Fast forward to more than a decade, I have a different take. If Hindley was kind to HC and Earnshaw didn't die so early and didnt show such outward favouritism, I think HC would have fallen for the neighbourhood girl, Isabella, who, feminine and naturally soft/submissive would have turned even the hardest man loving. HC's stoic personality would warm to her and love protecting/defending her.

And Cathy would find Edgar's gentle kindness soothing. Her fiery temperament would have brought joy and life to him, and she would feel accepted, heard and seen by him.

But as we know none of these things happened. HC's degradation hurt Cathy, and they in turn took out their frustrations on the Lintons. I see HC's love for Cathy as partially borne out of some harden vengeful desire to somehow get back at Hindley ultimately, although he himself might not have realised this. He probably was aware that he suffered, he never had a single thing, and to him, Cathy was all he ever had, and that drove him crazy, he was suffering and in pain. And he suffered more when she married Linton.

As for Cathy, she was obviously confused, as a passionate person myself and prone to be addicted to people, I think for her it was a case of loyalty and passion for someone whom she deemed was her whole childhood. She loved HC because he suffered unfairly. She died young, she met HC almost as soon as she could form her first coherent thought; she never knew life without/outside of HC. she never had the chance to grow into her own person.

I don't know, as an adult who is almost middle aged I have seen a lot of things in life, and i'm not saying i am a sagepot but i am wiser than I was when I was 13, and I can see so clearly how, when we love another, its hardly because of just one thing, hardly just because of pure love for that person.

Do you agree with me, yes or no, let me know why.

Weirdly, if my theory holds true, then they all ended up with the right people anyway. But instead of a happily ever after, we can see that the end could be the same, even if the journey was wrong and evil. Destiny held strong even when fate tried to steer them the other way.